The OIC's account with Israel

In recent days the consultation meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was held online. In our last article we touched upon President Erdoğan's criticisms, made at this meeting where many issues facing the Islamic world were expected to be discussed, of the Islamophobic rhetoric that has lately been voiced especially by French President Macron.

A significant part of these criticisms in fact concerned the Islamic world rather than Macron. After all, Macron's finding the audacity to speak so boldly about Islam and Muslims stems from the Islamic world's inaction and its failure to take a stand as a whole. Moreover, in the end Macron's hatred and hostility toward Islam is in practice no greater than the hatred of Islam held by some rulers of the Islamic world.

While we were still discussing Macron's outrageous words, Hamad al Mazrouei, the paid journalist of Muhammad bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in an interview he gave to an Israeli newspaper, had the impudence to say that our Prophet unjustly expelled the Jews of Khaybar from Medina in the year 629, and, unable to restrain himself, even apologized to Israel on behalf of Muslims for this. The words of someone who has sunk to this level of abasement and baseness reveal an unprecedented hatred toward the Prophet and Islam. It is an instructive example showing that there is no limit to the abasement into which the disgrace of the Deal of the Century drags a person.

The OIC of course has an obligation to develop a common stance, discourse and cooperation against attacks coming from outside, but before that, one must look at whether the Organization still really has the quality of representing Muslims. For this, they first need to focus not so much on what non-Muslims do to Muslims as on what Muslims do to Muslims. Because currently 90 percent of the oppression inflicted on Muslims is carried out again by Muslims or by the hands of Muslims. The remaining 10 percent happens with the connivance or cooperation of Muslims who hold power.

Despite this, the declaration issued as a result of the OIC consultation meeting surprisingly stated concern over the conditions of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. It even called for the release of the detained Palestinians, saying that there is serious concern about their worsening health conditions and the mistreatment they are subjected to.

The statement, which also expressed concern about the health condition of the Palestinian detainee Maher al-Akhras, who has been on hunger strike for 88 days in an Israeli prison, also made a call for the international community to intervene for the release of the detainees.

The statement, which pointed out that Israeli prisons lack the necessary health conditions and that this situation has led to at least 31 Palestinian detainees contracting the new type of coronavirus (Covid-19), also asked the international community to put pressure on Israel to provide appropriate health and treatment services to the detainees and to protect human rights.

These are indeed things we would always want to hear from the OIC. However, we also know that the Organization's power in this matter is not limited to making such calls. First, it is possible to impose sanctions on Israel for what it does and deter it. If the Organization's powerful members sincerely put their weight behind it, there is no chance of Israel holding those prisoners even for a day. Yet these members of the Organization, on the contrary, have entered a race of normalization to embolden Israel further on this path despite its many violations.

Why would Israel change its stance in the face of such calls, which in any case will have no sanction and no effect?

Second, is the condition of the Muslim prisoners held in the dungeons of those same powerful members any better than that of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel's dungeons?

If you like, let us take a look at the Egyptian dungeons. There are currently tens of thousands of people there who have been arrested in a completely arbitrary manner, without even being brought before a court, facing every kind of torture and mistreatment for years. All of these detainees are respected, civilian people of the country who have not been involved in any act of violence. Their difference from Israel is that, in the case of most of them, no news can even be obtained, they are not allowed to meet their lawyers, and some are held in order to punish their relatives who are the real target and cannot be reached.

And in the UAE, is the slightest possibility of opposition not a sufficient reason to be held in dungeons indefinitely, without questioning, without trial, for years under the harshest conditions? Today the UAE is the place with the most intense human rights violations in the Islamic world. Who are those whose rights are violated if not Muslims?

And in Saudi Arabia, from whom should account be demanded for the thousands of scholars, emirs, politicians and intellectuals who, although not opposition, were arrested merely because they did not put on enough of a show of support and were thrown into prison without question, and from whom no news could be had for months, for years?

These people are as valuable to Muslims as the Palestinian detainees in Israeli dungeons, at least. Some of them are among the scholars who are a common value of the entire ummah. Of course all of them are children of the ummah, human beings.

Can there be the slightest sign of sincerity in those who deem such oppression fit for their own children asking Israel to account for the Palestinian detainees?