Global Governance and Muslim Organizations

Leslie A. Pal, M. Evren Tok, Leslie A. Pal, M. Evren Tok

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319925608
• eBook ISBN: 9783319925615
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, represented on the world stage by 57 states, as well as a host of international organizations and associations. This book critically examines the engagement of these states in systems of global governance and with a variety of policy regimes, including climate change, energy, migration, humanitarian aid, international financial institutions, research and education. Chapters explore the dynamics of this engagement, the contributions to global order, the interests pursued and some of the contradictions and tensions within the Islamic world, and between that world and the 'West'. An in-depth perspective is provided about the traditional and new forms of multilateralism and the policy spaces formed which provide new opportunities for the Muslim and non-Muslim world alike.

© The Author(s) 2019

Leslie A. Pal and M. Evren Tok (eds.)Global Governance and Muslim OrganizationsInternational Political Economy Serieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92561-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Global Governance and Muslim Organizations: Introduction

Leslie A. Pal¹ and M. Evren Tok²

(1)

Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

(2)

College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

Leslie A. Pal (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

M. Evren Tok

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

Global governanceMuslim-majority statesModernityGood governanceDemocracy

End Abstract

This book is about the constructive engagement of Muslim-majority states (MMS) and Muslim organizations with global governance. Among the rising populist movements in Europe and the US, the generic terms “Islam” and “Muslim” are often associated with terror, civil war, instability, transnational crime, crisis, authoritarianism, and corruption. “Political Islam” is framed as an existential threat to the West and to global stability: in addition to terrorist groups such as the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Al-Shabaab, there is the Shia-Sunni conflict that arcs across the entire Islamic world, specifically in the geopolitical rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Mention OPEC , and its reflexive image is a cabal of Arab sheikhs dedicated to driving up oil prices. The migrant crisis in Europe, and the ceaseless waves of asylum seekers, reinforces the sense of a Muslim world defined by its cauldron of conflicts, wars, hopeless poverty, and abuse of human rights. Combined with world leaders’ perceptions and declarations reflecting negative connotations of Islam, as in the case of President Trump, all leave the Islamic world under pressure in the global arena.

Put this way, of course these are evident caricatures. Our point in this book is simply that along with the “clash of civilizations” (or, to use Achcar’s phrase, a “clash of barbarisms” (Achcar, 2006)), there is also a “cooperation of civilizations,” an engagement that is often ignored or simply overshadowed by the Middle East crise du jour. There are some 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, a population growing more quickly than the world’s Christian population and projected to be equal to it by 2050, if not before (PewResearchCentre, 2015). This Muslim population—the ummah or ummat al-Islamiyah or global community of believers—is represented on the global stage in a variety of ways. The most direct is through states, primarily Muslim-majority states¹ or states with a significant Muslim minority. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) calls itself the “collective voice of the Muslim world” and has a membership of 57 states² spread over four continents (see Fig. 1.1). The OIC is one of the largest blocs of states in the United Nations (UN) , and its members are active in all UN bodies, including some of its security operations. MMS are represented in two other international governmental organizations that overlap with the OIC: the Arab League³ and the Economic Cooperation Organization.⁴ MMS are key players in the global economic system through membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), through their role in global energy markets, and through their sovereign wealth funds (among the largest in the world). Three members of the OIC—Indonesia (the most populous MMS, with over 255 million), Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—are also members of the G20. Turkey is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Fig. 1.1

Members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. (This figure is reproduced courtesy of M. Wong)

The Muslim world is also represented through a constellation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) . The OIC lists 18 affiliated organizations that cover the spectrum of economics and finance, universities, youth, sport, and science (see Table 1.1). There are charitable organizations such as Islamic Relief USA, which operates in 34 countries (including the US and a variety of non-MMS), as well the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, with 190 national societies (designated as Red Crescent in Muslim states but part of the same international movement) (Peterson, 2015). The Qatar Foundation sponsors Reach Out to Asia, an organization supporting education in crisis-affected areas throughout Asia. And sometimes the state and non-state vectors of interaction intersect—Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the first time the event has been held in a Muslim country. FIFA estimates that 3.4 billion people watched the 2014 matches and 1 billion watched the final game between Argentina and Germany. The 2022 Cup will bring a different kind of attention to the Middle East and, inevitably, the Islamic world.

Table 1.1

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation: affiliated organizations

Islamic Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (ICCIA)

Organization of Islamic Capitals and Cities (OICC)

Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation (ISSF)

World Federation of Arabo-Islamic International Schools (WFAIIS)

Organization of the Islamic Shipowners Association (OISA)

Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYF-DC)

International Union of Muslim Scouts (IUMS)

Federation of Consultants from Islamic Countries (FCIC)

Islamic World Academy of Sciences (IAS)

General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions (CIBAFI)

Federation of Contractors from Islamic Countries (FOCIC)

OIC Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT)

Standards and Metrology Institute for Islamic Countries (SMIIC)

Islamic Cement Association (ICA), Istanbul, Turkey

International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)

Association of Tax Authorities of Islamic Countries (ATAIC)

Real Estate Union in Islamic States (REUOS)

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Broadcasting Regulatory Authorities Forum (IBRAF)

Source: Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, affiliated organizations. Available at: http://​www.​oic-oci.​org/​page/​?​p_​id=​66&​p_​ref=​35&​lan=​en

None of this cooperation or coordination implies complete agreement or harmony, but it does underline the simple fact that global governance routinely involves MMS, Muslim organizations, and the supportive engagement of 1.6 billion people across the planet.

This is not a book about grand theory. We propose no overarching framework of global governance that will explain the Islamic political world. It is a book, however, about instances and examples of constructive engagement between Islam and the West, MMS and Muslim NGOs and the international system. This is an effort regarding the need to bring an alternative pathway to enrich the study of international relations and to contribute to the building of Global IR (Acharya and Buzan, 2017).

We will define “global governance” more precisely below, but for the moment, it simply means the various coordinated and uncoordinated machineries (they are plural and messy) of state and non-state organizations and interactions that help resolve and manage common issues, problems, and challenges around the planet. At the level of high theory, there are important questions of compatibility and accommodation between Islam and non-Islamic cultures and institutions. These are important practical questions as well, where communities overlap, co-exist, or are in conflict. But in the shadow of these debates, there are remarkable examples of practical efforts and institutional bridges that help make the world work and work better. This book is dedicated to exploring these examples, in the hope that they can point ways forward.⁵

Before outlining the chapters in this book, we briefly describe what we mean by global governance and then address three misconceptions about Islam and the world: that MMS are an undifferentiated bloc, that Islam inevitably is in a “clash of civilizations” with the West, and that Islam is incompatible with modernity. Each, if entirely true, would imply that Islam’s only engagement with global governance would be an oppositional and conflictual one. Defining global governance is crucial to the theme of the book—we need to be clear about what we expect MMS and Islam to be engaging with and contributing to. Defining the nature of Islam as we understand it in political terms is also an unavoidable obligation; otherwise it is too easy to lapse into either grim pessimism or untempered confidence.

Global Governance

The current concept of “global governance” is roughly about 20 years old, stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–1991 and the accompanying sense of a new, more cooperative world that would emerge to address global public problems. The Commission on Global Governance’s 1995 report, Our Global Neighborhood, argued that, with the end of the Cold War, there was now a prospect of “strengthened commitment to the pursuit of common objectives through multilateralism” and a new sense of “greater collective responsibility in a wide range of areas, including security – not only in a military sense but in economic and social terms as well – sustainable development, the promotion of democracy, equity and human rights, and humanitarian action.” It defined global governance as “formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest” (Commission on Global Governance, 1995: 4).

James Rosenau articulated the concept more precisely, but in broadly similar terms (Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992). The world had been increasingly interdependent before the end of the Cold War, but that interdependence was now more evident as the pace of globalization accelerated. He argued that world affairs were being governed in a “bifurcated system” of world politics:

one an interstate system of states and their national governments that has long dominated the course of events, and the other as a multicentric system of diverse types of other collectivities that has lately emerged as a rival source of authority with actors that sometimes cooperate with, often compete with, and endlessly interact with the state-centric system. …[T]he global stage is thus dense with actors, large and small, formal and informal, economic and social, political and cultural, national and transnational, international and subnational, aggressive and peaceful, liberal and authoritarian, who collectively form a highly complex system of global governance. (Rosenau, 2002: 72–73)

Global governance is evidently not the same as a “world government” or indeed a system of governing the globe that is the exclusive preserve of states or state-based organizations. For our purposes, this means that the system that MMS and Islamic organizations are engaging with is much more varied and complex, more disaggregated, and even sectorally specific than the UN or the other usual state-dominated organs. It is a vast machinery of gears and belts and mechanisms that collectively generate, at times, some degree of global coherence around key issues (e.g., the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference), manages to provide global regulatory frameworks in key areas (e.g., telecommunications and the Internet, aviation, global financial systems)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Global Governance and Muslim Organizations: Introduction
• 2. Reforming Governance in Muslim-Majority States: Promoting Values or Protecting Stability?
• 3. Philosophical and Historical Origins and Genesis of Islamic Global Governance
• 4. Islamic Legitimacy Still Matters: The Rule of Law and Governance in Contemporary Arab Muslim-Majority States
• 5. Global Governance and the Informal Nature of Islamic Development Assistance: The Peculiar Case of Gulf States
• 6. Islamic Charities and Global Governance
• 7. The OIC and the Paris 2015 Climate Change Agreement: Islam and the Environment
• 8. Global Environmental Governance and the GCC: Setting the Agenda for Climate Change and Energy Security
• 9. Scaling Up Research Governance: From Exceptionalism to Fragmentation
• 10. Governance and Education in Muslim-Majority States
• 11. Can the Sharī’ah Be Compatible with Global Governance? Islamic Financial Institutions as a Laboratory for Conceptual Analysis
• 12. Global Governance: Is There a Role for Islamic Economics and Finance?
• 13. The Muslim World in Cyberia: Prospects for E-Governance and Digital Capacity Building
• 14. Global Governance and Labour Migration in the GCC
• 15. Conclusions
• Back Matter