The Organization of Islamic conference : a step towards ummatic unity?

Abstract

The idea of Islamic (Ummatic) unity has received much renewed support and commitment from the leaders of Muslim community around the world in the past sixteen years or so. In this time the leaders have gone beyond the age-old practice of merely paying lip-service to the 'ideal' (or necessity) of unity as and when circumstances dictated it, and have actually taken concrete steps to translate the ideal into a structured functioning reality. The establishment of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1970, arguably represents perhaps history's first successful attempt to create a systematic, voluntarily agreed international body, a sort of mini-UN of the Muslim world, in order to generate unified attitude and united action on a specific set of issues of crucial importance to the member-states. Since its early days in the 1970s, the OIC has experienced a proliferation of specialized subsidiary or affiliated bodies, all designed to maximize the opportunities for mutual consultation and joint action in the service of ummatic unity. In this paper we propose, firstly, to examine the development of the idea of Muslim unity through the years, and, secondly, to assess how far and with what effectiveness, the OIC represents a fruition and functional symbol of Muslim unity on global level.