| Fadlullah calls for turning the Organization of the Islamic Conference into an effective Islamic gathering |
Sayyed Fadlullah's communiqué on the last summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and its current state
The Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah issued a communiqué in which he commented on the last summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and its current state. He said:
One of the things that call for sorrow is that the Islamic meetings have turned into formal ones, or much like a speech rally in which the lecturers compete in using big and resounding words, that will not yield any practical results that serve the Islamic causes.
The Islamic summits have become more like the Arab summits: merely a move to occupy the political vacuum on the general Islamic level, or an attempt to suggest to the Muslim masses that there are those who are looking after their affairs. Despite these attempts, the concrete facts prove that just like the Arab League, the organization was not able, throughout its history to solve one Islamic problem, or to lift the oppression or injustice of any Arab or Muslim people.
This scene which is laughed at by the entire world which looks at a Muslim world of about one billion and a half people, whose summits are no more than a sound phenomenon that is not different than the various Arab and Muslim similar phenomena. These summits no longer deserve any reactions, but are rather met by international indifference. The summits of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference now convene and issue their final communiqué without arousing the attention of the Islamic people, not to mention the nations of the world.
It is interesting that there has been a talk in the summit about considering the Iranian nuclear file as one of the threats that confront the nation, while they neglect the Israeli challenge that represent a threat on the very existence of the Arabs and Muslims.
It is tragicomic that the summit have coincided with the declaration of the enemy's war minister that Israel is the strongest force in the region in a radius of 1500 kilometres whose centre is Jerusalem. It is as if that Israeli imminent danger should be transformed to what looks like on ordinary existence in the nation's body, so that the problem would be the nation's Arab and Islamic component. What the Muslim people notice is that the organization of Islamic Conference that was born in the midst of dangerous challenges that confronted the Palestinian cause, the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque, deals now in its communiqués and discourse, with the Israeli occupation of Palestine as something legitimate, and only talk about details, as if the Palestinian cause has become an issue of a military campaign, in which Israel violates "human rights" and commits "war crimes", as if the occupation itself does not represent a violation of human rights or a crime against humanity and against Islam.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference should become an effective Islamic league that sets plans and devises mechanisms to keep the Palestinian cause from being eradicated, after the entire world have watched the gradual eradication of the Palestinian people for more than 60 years, and to reassert the right of return for this people that has been neglected by the entire world even in the relevant international resolutions.
Faced by these great challenges, it is no longer accepted that the Organisation would remain just a forum for speeches that echo the American positions, or a one that appeals to the so-called "International Community" to bear its responsibilities towards our peoples since there is nobody in the world that bears the responsibility of others. The International Community cares only about its strategic interests that seem to crash always with the interests of the peoples… It has been clear to all that this International Community, that has become an American annexation, and whose security council has become more like the American National Security Council, is directly responsible for our tragedy's and catastrophes and the occupation that sits heavily on our lands from Palestine to Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the Organisation of Islamic Conference should free itself from the American and international pressures and think seriously of how to turn the Muslim world to a united economic bloc whose wealth goes to its peoples and whose rich countries support its poor ones instead of going to the wealthy or the Western circles, and the arms factories, or solve the crisis of the western economies, and decrease their unemployment while illiteracy, poverty and unemployment rates in our countries are soaring … It also has to deal with dangerous phenomena that threaten the inner structure of our Islamic society such as the Takfir phenomenon that institutes killing and murder on a sectarian or religious bases, especially that due to certain complications, it has driven some of those represented in the Summit to embrace this dangerous phenomenon, which hits Islam from the inside and distort its image in the foreign countries.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference has to leave this state of political economic and civilized deafness and shoulder its responsibility of defending Islam and its values, and protecting Islamic unity inside the Muslim society that is threatened by an American and Israel enemy that wants to fragment the Muslim communities into confessional and sectarian states. It should make use of all the elements of internal strength whether national wealth on even the rejecting or resistance organisations to let the others understand that playing with the future peoples or violating our sacred issues is intolerable. It should emphasize to the entire world that Islam is a movement of tolerance and dialogue, but at the same time it represents sublime values and principles that does not accept tyranny oppression and injustice.