EXACTLY HOW COULD THE WoT BE GOING ANY BETTER?:

Musharraf for Islamic renaissance (Daily Times, 12/08/05)

President General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday urged Muslim leaders to work out a strategy for an Islamic renaissance, recommended mandatory contributions by each member state for a common science and technology fund and asked extremists to shun violence.

“From this holy city of peace and tolerance, I appeal to all extremists in our society to see reason, and shun the path of violence,” Gen Musharraf said in his speech at the Third Extraordinary Summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

“Senseless acts of terrorism committed by a handful of misguided individuals while claiming to act in the name of Islam have maligned our noble faith of peace, tolerance and compassion … We must condemn and reject all forces of terrorism and extremism, banning organisations which preach hate and violence. We must promote the Islamic values of tolerance and moderation,” he said. The president said most Islamic societies remained far removed from the expanding frontiers of knowledge, education, science and technology. Any dreams of progress on these fronts would remain unfulfilled if not fully backed by collective will and adequate financial resources, he said. [...]

Gen Musharraf urged Muslim leaders to pursue transparent and accountable governance, develop human resources by investing more in education, and promote full respect of human rights as enjoined by Islam, especially the rights of women and children.

The Muslim world needed quickly to break out from its “stagnation of centuries”. The OIC summit at Putrajaya was “a summit of reflection; Mecca must be a summit of decision and action,” Gen Musharraf said. [...]

Earlier in the day, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders to unite and tackle extremists make greater educational efforts to promote tolerance. “We do not have the luxury of blaming others for our own problems. It is high time we addressed our national and regional problems with courage, sincerity and openness,” said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turkish secretary general of the OIC.

OIC Sets New Target: Dialogue and Human Rights (Salih Boztas, Zaman, Cihan News Agency, Anadolu News Agency (aa), December 08, 2005, zaman.com)

Convening at the Saudi city of Mecca, the Organization of Islamic Conference has set a 10-year action plan to break down prejudice.

In the frame of the road map, the organization will contribute to inter-religious and inter-faith dialogue, as well as to the protection of human rights, and the rapprochement of religious sects will be prioritized. The OIC summit that began at Safa Palace on Wednesday will focus on the road map. A declaration, on which foreign ministers made the final touches the other night, was signed by 57 member countries. Since Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer did not attend the meeting, Turkish Speaker of Parliament Bulent Arinc and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul represent Turkey at the summit. A more precise explanation of the religion, as well as participation in the process of inter-civilization dialogue, was among the decisions reached. “This is a great transformation,” all participants agreed on about these decisions. Saudi Arabia, hosting the summit, termed these experiences as a “return to fundamentals”.

In Iraq, Signs of Political Evolution: Parties That Shunned January Vote Are Now Embracing the Process (Jonathan Finer, December 8, 2005, Washington Post)

As Iraqis nationwide prepare to go to the polls for the third time this year on Dec. 15 -- this time for a new parliament -- candidates and political parties of all stripes are embracing politics, Iraqi style, as never before and showing increasing sophistication about the electoral process, according to campaign specialists, party officials and candidates here.

"It is like night and day from 10 months ago in terms of level of participation and political awareness," said a Canadian election specialist with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a group affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party that is working to ease Iraq's transition to democracy. The institute, which has provided free campaign training to more than 100 Iraqi parties and describes its programs as nonpartisan, granted a reporter access to its employees and training sessions on the condition that no one on its staff be named.

Evidence of political evolution is plastered all over Baghdad's normally drab concrete blast walls and hung on lampposts at nearly every major intersection: large, colorful, graphically appealing posters conveying a wide variety of punchy messages.

Television and radio airwaves are replete with slick advertisements costing anywhere from $1,250 per minute on al-Sumariya, a Lebanon-based satellite station focused on Iraq, to $5,000 per minute on al-Arabiya, a network based in the United Arab Emirates that is popular across the Arab world.

In one 30-second spot, a smartly dressed and smiling Allawi -- normally known for his brusque demeanor -- is shown seated on a stool in a dimly lit studio. "My faith is in Iraq," he tells the camera, to underscore his secularism.

Even the arrival of American-style negative campaigning is evidence of a growing political sophistication, the election trainers said.

The degree of change involved in the adoption of Western standards as the measure of the health of their culture can hardly be overstated.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2005 12:15 PM