Kazakhstan Ready to Host OIC Meeting

    By Siraj Wahab
    As Kazakhstan prepares to host the 38^th session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s Council of Foreign Ministers from June 28-30 in Astana, the nation’s capital, President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the significance of the event for the Muslim country.
    “As the leader of a new nation that will mark only the 20th anniversary of its independence, I am calling upon world leaders to engage in an open dialogue and a joint search for ways to strengthen global peace and security,” Nazarbayev said in a special article for the Jeddah-based OIC Journal. “We have been persistently repeating this call from the first days of Kazakhstan’s independence.”
    He expressed concern at the growing anti-Islamic sentiments in the world and said any manifestation of intolerance poses serious threat to global peace and security.
    “We consider increasing intolerance toward Muslims, their discrimination at labor and housing markets apparent in some countries outside the Muslim world, to be dangerous. We condemn the incidents of violence and insult against Muslims in those countries.”
    Describing Kazakhtan as OIC’s youngest member, the president listed a number of challenges the Muslim world faces, from ongoing conflicts to the turmoil created in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
    “Political regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the humanitarian catastrophe Libya is facing today have set in motion a wave of many hundred thousand refugees,” he said. “These events have triggered dramatic radicalization of public opinion in other OIC countries leading to an aggravation of internal contradictions, including between religious and ethnic groups.”
    Nazarbayev also noted challenges facing the world from globalization to hunger in Third World countries.
    “The entire Islamic world suffers losses from the raging instability in a number of countries,” Nazarbayev said. “Enormous damage has crippled not only their national economies but also cut off trade and economic ties between countries. We all know that under conditions of globalization a crisis in one country has a pernicious effect upon the wellbeing of others.”
    He said the OIC would provide an excellent forum to examine these issues. “Under these circumstances, it is as important as ever to use the enormous positive potential of cooperation within the Organization of the Islamic Conference,” he said. “I am convinced that even at this complex and crucial historical moment there is no alternative to consolidation and integration.”
    He also expressed confidence that OIC members would find ways to capitalize on their economic clout.
    “The Muslim world’s collective economic potential is inexhaustible, and we should combine our efforts in order to develop truly effective mechanisms of economic cooperation, mutual assistance and development promotion in the interests of each member state,” he said.
    He called for a robust mechanism to promote Islamic banking.
    “Kazakhstan is the first post-Soviet country that through law has approved a full package of tools of Islamic financing, and we have opened a bank that operates on Shariah principles,” he said.
    According to him, Kazakhstan plans to issue and list sukuk and other Islamic bonds. “In the nearest future we will adopt a law that will allow our national companies to issue Islamic bonds,” he added, according to Arab News.