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Islamic world must look to Bandung spirit of collaboration, minister says
The ummah (Muslim community) ought to muster the spirit of collaboration as championed in the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, Indonesia’s top diplomat Retno LP Marsudi said in a public lecture on Wednesday.
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Afghan women attend a consultative grand assembly, known as Loya Jirga, in Kabul, Afghanistan April 29, 2019. (Reuters/Omar Sobhani)
T
he ummah (Muslim community) ought to muster the spirit of collaboration as championed in the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference so it could better contribute to global politics, Indonesia’s top diplomat said in a public lecture speaking to the potential role of the global Islamic community.
Speaking to an audience of Islamic studies students on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi called for some collective soul-searching among member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), many of which continue to face adversity ranging from poverty to conflict.
She stressed that 21 of the OIC’s 56 members were categorized as least developed countries (LDCs), while more than a fifth of its combined population – 1.81 billion according to a 2018 estimate – lived on less than US$1.9 per person per day, formerly the international poverty line. (As of September 2022, it has been set to $2.15/person/day.)
The situation was worsened by the proliferation of inter- and intra-state conflict, she said, citing an oft-repeated statistic from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) that 60 percent of conflict occurred in Muslim countries.
On top of that, she also noted that the Muslim ummah was not immune to geopolitical rivalries, and that some Muslim countries were being used as a battlefield for proxy wars.
“These facts should serve as a wake-up call for the Muslim world. The ummah must first be able to solve our own problems in order to further contribute as part of a solution to global challenges,” Retno said in her remarks for discussion at a university in Depok, West Java.
“Against [the background of] these problems we have no other choice but to revive the Bandung spirit in today’s global context,” she added.
