By Supna Zaidi
Last month the New York Post reported that the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the international body of 57 Muslim countries, has "paid one of the highest prices ever this year, $1,925 per square foot, for two Midtown townhouses it will use as its headquarters and its UN representative's residence."
A more public presence in New York of the OIC, which has observer mission status at the UN, coincides with the Obama administration's much-heralded "outreach to the world's Muslims."
Obama's apparent view of Muslims rests on numerous errors. The legacy of colonialism has been subjected to extensive criticism, much of it correct, but that should not imply reducing the Muslim world to a passive player, eternally victimized. Further, Muslims should not be viewed through the lens of Saudi-Wahhabi fundamentalism and its variants, which have convinced most of the world's non-Muslims that all Muslims dress in a certain way, follow certain rituals, customs, and rulings, and hate the rest of the world.
The OIC charter empowers it to represent the global Muslim community in international organizations like the UN, where it recently lobbied for a resolution against "defamation of religion." The charter further illustrates radicalism within the organization, making Palestinian demands a critical organizing point, with Jerusalem projected as an Arab capital (and eventual OIC headquarters).
The OIC has shown that it generally opposes secular and democratic values. The 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam negated the universality of human rights standards in Muslim majority countries. In the future, a voting clique in the UN, led by the OIC, may repeatedly challenge free speech, gender, and minority rights as well. To prevent such an outcome, non-Muslim leaders must extend their outreach beyond "established" Muslim interest groups backed by Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes. The task of locating and supporting moderate Muslim groups will be difficult, especially in the new American political climate.
Unlike the Obama administration, whether the president's strategy is or is not correct, the adherents of radical Islam do not seek better global relations. Muslim extremists desire supremacy, not respect for differences. They believe Islam is at war with the West. As long as oil revenues prop up a Saudi regime unwilling to undertake serious reform, radical Islamist influence will grow.
Still, the Muslim world is not monolithic. Its populations follow the normal range of human choices that men and women in western nations fall under - liberals, conservatives, different in sexual and other choices, and in-between. Muslims include free spirits, hipsters and conformists, along with feminists who aspire to be rocket scientists or actors, and traditional housewives who want to be mothers. The actress may want to wear a head covering, while the housewife prefers a dress and heels. Individual and collective religious conscience is supported by separation of political and religious power.
All religious options should be protected under the law, except when they promote criminality or terrorism, and from authoritarian religious dictates. How to do so is the question, and so far the OIC has not offered any positive answers.
(Supna Zaidi is assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum and editor of Muslim World Today.)
