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West told to cease meddling in Muslim world
Islamic scholars blamed protracted conflicts in the Islamic world on Western countries and incessant disunity among Muslim nations
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Islamic scholars blamed protracted conflicts in the Islamic world on Western countries and incessant disunity among Muslim nations.
The West's perpetual interference in many Muslim states has resulted in enduring domestic strife within them, they said Thursday on the sidelines of the third International Conference of Islamic Scholars (ICIS) in Jakarta.
The scholars urged Western nations to change the pattern of their relations with Islam in order to end the widespread conflicts.
The three-day international conference, attended by some 300 Muslim scholars from 65 countries, is hosted by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) -- Indonesia's largest Muslim organization -- and will end Friday after the adoption of several key recommendations.
"The main cause for the chaos we see in Muslim countries is the external factor -- the Western interference. In the 19th century, they exploited and made Muslims backward," senior Iranian Muslim scholar Mohammad Ali Taskhiri said at a news conference.
"Western countries chose to stay put even when we gained independence, meddling in our economic and domestic affairs because they wanted to maintain their presence and exploit our natural resources."
Taskhiri pointed out Iran's nuclear program as an example, saying Western countries continued obstructing its efforts to develop the technology for peaceful purposes.
Said Sulaiman Hassan Qeeeq from Palestine and Ali Mahmoud Hassan from Somalia shared Taskhiri's views, saying foreign intervention rendered the Muslim world powerless to stop internal conflicts.
Hassan Qeeeq said the ongoing hostility between Palestine and Israel was not a conflict of religions but rather one between "the colonized and the colonizers", who were supported by Western powers.
"Islam teaches its followers to live peacefully with non-Muslims. So it's a question of occupation by these powers, not a question of Islam and the Jews," he said.
The Islamic scholars, however, acknowledged conflicts also occurred because of internal problems within Muslim communities.
Mahmoud Hassan said there was no unity among Muslim countries on economic or political views.
"Each of us takes our own path, building a unity in views heavily relying on our own national interests," he said.
He added Muslim governments did not fully support Islamic civil society organizations because of the "influence of foreign imperialist states".
They instead focused on developing the political and economic aspects of their Muslim administrations, Hassan said.
Taskhiri concurred, saying these national interests often hampered efforts to unite Muslim countries, and said such interests were mostly concerned with their relations with Western powers.
He added many Muslim countries were still attracted to their Western counterparts, thus always welcoming everything they had to offer.
NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi said the conference was aimed at finding shared ideas among Muslim scholars about the root causes of conflicts and enabling scholars to view them objectively rather than based on their own personal interests.
"We hope scholars can identify aggressions, and can build a defense system against aggressions," he said.
Hassan Qeeeq said the conference was an event to "declare a clear stance against injustice by the Western world" toward Muslim communities worldwide.
The recommendations to be issued at the forum should be adopted as a policy in each of the participating countries, he added.
