President Abdoulaye Wade, who is today elected Chairman of OIC, delivered his address to the Muslim Ummah. He said, “the rekindling of the Islamic Ummah in the 21st century will be done with a revitalized organisation, endowed institutional capacities, and human and financial resources commensurate with our ambitions. The OIC revision process complies with this requirement and it is only through this urgent reform that our organisation will meet our expectations. On your behalf I would like to express the Ummah’s gratitude to the various teams which have been working interminably, particularly our foreign Ministers and Secretary General, to present us with a draft charter that takes all the proposals into consideration and should normally register the full consensus of member states represented in Dakar.”

He continued saying, “However, it is our responsibility as heads of Member states to take this historic decision to usher our organisation into an ascending path to ensure that it keeps the Ummah’s beacon bright and live up to expectations of our peoples.

We have tried to downsize the outstanding difficulties, then we suggested that new proposals on which full consensus has not been reached should not be thrust aside. These should be considered at a later date, during the period of the summit, to enable us adopt the charter unanimously, and without reservation. I promise to use the possibilities provided by the charter which, like all basic laws, lays down provisions, to rapidly have these issues considered, if they exist. Should the occasion arise, a document listing all these diverse proposals shall be distributed to all members and discussions opened.

My priority will be the Palestinian issue with the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian State within safe borders, and peace between Palestine and Israel as part of the quest for global peace in the Middle East. We are resolved to achieve a just and lasting peace between Palestine and Israel.
I would like to appeal to both Israelis and Palestinians, to immediately bring a halt to the violence regardless of its origin, whether in action or reaction and to observe a cease-fire to enable me to undertake consultations and make proposals on a peace process.”

President Wade said further: “Challenges are extremely numerous.
The primary challenge is the existential challenge confronting Muslims as human beings threatened by the continuing environmental degradation due to the climate change which is essentially man-induced.
Innovative Financing in the Fight against Poverty and Development. ” We hope that Arabs would invest as largely as possible in Africa, not only in Muslim Africa like Senegal, Morocco, Djibouti, among others, but all over the continent.
Investments are no longer a risk in Africa, where democracy is gaining momentum. Africa is the continent of the future with a projected consumer population of over 1.7 billion by 2050. Enhanced education would help to produce a highly qualified cadre and educated people.”

Mobilisation of Prohibited Interest
“I would like to propose some ideas on how to mobilize huge resources to combat poverty and finance development, in addition to the mobilization of Zakaat.
Islamic scholars do remind us that interest is prohibited by the Sharia. What should therefore be done with the huge interest generated by the deposits of oil-producing Muslim countries in Western banks?
I would like to make my view clear about sovereign Muslim funds. One has to distinguish between interests granted by Western banks on funds deposited by Muslim countries, whose religion prohibits interest, and the investment of oil money.

Today, our freedom to worship in peace should be a concern to us, since we are unfortunately witnessing a certain Islamophobia fuelled and sustained by evil spirited people, experts in the falsification of history and looming from all sides. We must admit that people in the West are developing a certain tolerance for Islam. An increasing number of mosques are surfacing in Europe, which could not be imagined some twenty years ago.

EKMELEDDIN IHSANOGLU, the substantive secretary general of the OIC said:
‘The situation in Palestine remains deplorable, due to successive crises fabricated by Israel to stall the peace process and to thwart the many peace plans and initiatives proposed by the international community. We have condemned these practices.
In our relations with the Western World, we are going through difficult times. We strongly feel that our religion, its sacred symbols, and on both community and individual levels, Muslims are being targeted by a campaign of defamation, denigration, stereotyping, intolerance and discrimination. It seems that ignorance about Islam and also calculated animosity with deep historic roots on a part of a minority in the West, as well as our failure do disseminate the true values of Islam are the reasons of this increasing wave of Islamophobia. We are confronted by hatred and bigotry of radical marginal groups of people who believe that it is only through insulting Muslims and their religious symbols that they can demonstrate their commitment to freedom of speech’.