Economic cooperation can unite Muslims: Analyst
Takfiri extremists believe terrorism is the road to Muslim unity and a new caliphate.
They are wrong. Indiscriminate violence is un-Islamic. It turns the public – both Muslims and non-Muslims – against the perpetrators and their agenda. And sectarian violence is the worst possible method of achieving unity.
Most Muslims support Islamic unity. Two thirds of Muslims worldwide want to “unify all Islamic counties into a single Islamic state or caliphate” according to a poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org. And they know that the only way to achieve this is to eject the European, American, and Zionist colonial powers from Muslim lands. Roughly three-quarters of the world’s Muslims agree that the US military must be made to withdraw from all Muslim countries; and they support legitimate armed struggle against occupation.
Muslims also want to expel the international banking institutions, and their usury-based financial system.
But how can Muslims eject the US military, and the banksters who own it, without getting mired down in debilitating violence which inevitably leads to the death of large numbers of civilians (mostly Muslim civilians killed by US military terrorists and their surrogates)?
All available polls show that Muslims, even more than non-Muslims, strongly oppose violence against civilians. They know that terrorism is not a viable or acceptable means of achieving their goals, and oppose the slaughter of civilians no matter who is doing it.
So what is the most practical road to Muslim unity?
Economic cooperation.
Yesterday in Islamabad, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called for Muslim members of the D-8 Organization, which unites eight developing countries, to intensify their economic ties. The Iranian top diplomat’s statement suggests that the road to empowerment and eventual unity for Muslim countries lies in cooperative economic development.
The D-8 organization unites the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. These nations taken together possess vast human and material resources. Their net population is over one billion.
The D-8 is a sort of Islamic version of the BRIC axis of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. And though the D-8 is currently well behind the BRICs in GDP, it may be joining them in the not-too-distant future. Turkey and Malaysia have registered impressive economic growth comparable to that of the BRIC countries; Iran has realized amazing technological, educational and economic achievements under the forced self-reliance of sanctions; and the other five members of the D-8 likewise have tremendous potential.
Foreign Minister Zarif’s call for unity-through-development at the D-8 embraces a wide variety of Muslims with a significant number of non-Muslim brothers and sisters. Consisting of Hanafi-majority Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Shia-majority Iran, Shafi’i-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, and Nigeria with its roughly equal number of Shafi’is, Malikis, and Christians, the D-8 group unites people from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. It includes a wide diversity of ethnic and cultural groups and a variety of religious schools of thought.
Islam has a long history of multi-cultural and multi-confessional unity. Muslims who want to unite should build on that history.
The European nations speak different languages and have been fighting each other for centuries. Yet during the past few decades the European Union has emerged as the world’s most economically powerful de facto nation-state. European unity was achieved not through military conquest, but through economic cooperation.
Why can’t Muslim nations – which have a common culture, religion, and scholarly language – also unite through economic cooperation?
By lowering trade barriers and encouraging joint ventures, the D-8 countries can gradually build a more prosperous and integrated supra-national entity. The D-8 should actively work with the BRIC countries to promote a more politically and economically balanced world. It should invite other countries to join, including non-Muslim-majority countries when appropriate. And it should promote policies that are in harmony with Islam’s traditional emphasis on justice and charity and its rejection of tyranny and the hoarding of wealth.
The D-8 countries should follow Iceland’s example by ejecting the international bankers and creating a transparent and honest public currency system. Since Muslim-majority countries control a major share of the world’s energy resources, they should pull the plug on the petro-dollar and move to a petro-dinar. If Muslim energy-exporting countries insisted on gold and silver rather than worthless paper in exchange for their non-renewable resources, they would quickly build the reserves necessary to launch a real alternative to the usurious fiat currency system currently dominated by the big Euro-American banking families – who are the real power behind Zionism.
For decades the Middle East has been divided between rulers who cooperated with the bankster empire (led by the House of Saud) versus those who challenged it. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi both challenged the petro-dollar – Hussein by swapping oil for other currencies, Gaddafi by proposing a gold dinar – and paid the price. Meanwhile, Iran has been challenging the empire since 1979, and has managed to defend itself while doing so. Today, Tehran is emerging from the sanctions period as a key player in the diversification of the world economy and power structure.
That diversification is inevitable. Make no mistake: The Euro-bankster empire is facing its expiration date. The rise of the BRICS, together with the coming rise of the D-8 and its friends, is creating a multi-polar world.
What role will the Muslim-majority lands play in this new world? By joining together economically, while respecting each others’ cultural and religious diversity, Islamic nations can work for a more just and equitable prosperity as they move the Ummah – the Islamic nation – toward unity.
