by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE • February 6, 2023
A special meeting of the OIC in Islamabad, Pakistan on December 19, 2021. (Photo by Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images)
- OPEC and the OIC are infused with nearly incalculable wealth and most member states of the OIC have found themselves upbraided for questionable ethics.
- One critic suggested: “If the OIC Summiteers are serious about the burning issues of justice, freedom and good governance, then they should schedule a special debate on the Transparency International’s (TI) 2003 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which ranked 38 of the 57 OIC member nations in its latest chart of the corruption levels of 133 countries… [it] is dismal reading for OIC as it is an overall indictment of the failures of the OIC countries to grapple with the problem of corruption…”
- The UN itself is certainly not above reproach in the corruption department, as evidenced, among other cases, by the “Oil-for-Food Program;” the extensive history of “food for sex” with children by “peacekeepers” who enjoy immunity from prosecution; or the trial of Chinese executive Julia Wang, who attempted to purchase an influential UN post.
- One may wonder why Nicaragua, not an Islamic country, and with significant problems on its own home front, would trouble itself with submitting the motion. A cursory investigation reveals some significant motivation: “With the majority vote of the Sandinista Caucus, the National Assembly today approved the Loan Agreement signed between the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and the Republic of Nicaragua… The project, which has an estimated investment of 23 million dollars, of which the OPEC Fund will finance 20.5 million…”
- The OIC even attempted to co-opt UN forces as a pretext for Islamic military support of Lebanon’s offensive against Israel.
- Returning to the pre-1967 lines — simply the armistice lines from 1949 where fighting had happened to stop — is nothing short of suicide for Israel; it would be virtually indefensible, and the UN and all of its sponsors are well aware of that.
- It would seem… that protecting freedom of religion, outside of Islamic fundamentalism, is not of any particular concern to the OIC or what now stands mostly as its legitimizing but rapidly crumbling front, the UN. The collaboration between the OIC and UN is simply a pretext to twist international law — and public opinion — to their own purposes, whether they are promoting themselves or delegitimizing the State of Israel.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) presumptuously calls itself “The Collective Voice of The Muslim World,” and simple observation of its activities would seem to place it as Islam’s political Caliphate. One would wonder, then, how such a single-interest organization could lay claim to such a disproportionate amount of the United Nations’ attention.<
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It is already a tired truism to say that the United Nations has a distinctly anti-Israel bias. The US became exasperated with this laser-like focus and, in unequivocal condemnation of the agency, withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2018 and, for the same reason, from UNESCO the following year.
Predictably, a UN Committee on the Status of Women resolution singled out Israel as the only state in the world to be condemned for violations of women’s rights, as well.
How can such an overwhelming amount of time, paperwork and energy of the UN’s extensive agencies, professedly representing global interests, be so single-mindedly devoted to the censure of a single democratic state?
Second only to the UN, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the world’s largest intergovernmental organization.
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The last 2 paragraphs contain both the question and the answer