Abdullah: Muslim and West links vital

obmar · Abdullah: Muslim and West links vital

Abdullah: Muslim and West links vital

By ROYCE CHEAH

International Forum on The Makkah Declaration

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has proposed for the Muslim world to forge close partnerships with the West to help realise the goals of the 2005 Makkah Declaration.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said such a partnership would go a long way to restore confidence in each other and close the dangerous divide that has developed.

The Makkah Declaration is a plan of action to effectively improve the political, intellectual, economic, scientific, social and cultural standing of all countries in the Muslim world over 10 years.

“The West has much to gain from the emergence of a more peaceful, stable and prosperous Muslim world,” Abdullah said in his keynote address at a seminar to assess the progress on the declaration.

The seminar, organised by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), saw the attendance of numerous Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) members as well as non-Muslim dignitaries.

Abdullah, who is also OIC chairman, said that 20 months after the declaration was made, members had not been able to move significantly beyond the preparatory planning and coordination stages.

Abdullah also cautioned that the declaration was the outcome of an exercise of collective political will among the leaders of the ummah and that it was only the beginning.

“Many solemn declarations gather dust on the shelves of history because the will to implement was weak and follow-through slackened.

“The Makkah Declaration should not become one of this,” he said.

Abdullah said that a sustained collective political will, the recognition that human capital development was of utmost importance and the mobilisation of the international community needed to be accomplished before success could be realised.

“We of the ummah should be under no illusion of the magnitude of the task before us. Turning one country around is already an enormous challenge, transforming entire portions of the ummah across several continents is a colossal undertaking.”

Abdullah also touched on the need for the Muslim world to fully empower and emancipate women to restore the Muslim world's dignity and esteem.

“Women constitute half the resources and half the human capital of the Muslim world. Marginalising women marginalises the Muslim world. We only impoverish ourselves,” he said.