By Hassanal Noor Rashid
The Kuala Lumpur Summit entitled: The Role of Development in Achieving National Sovereignty, was held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, the 18th to 21st December 2019. As a background the Kuala Lumpur Summit is “an international platform for Muslim leaders, intellectuals and scholars from around the world to discuss and exchange ideas about the issues revolving in the Muslim world.”
The Summit saw the gathering of various representatives from Muslims countries ranging from diplomats, to civil society members. Notable attendees were, Hassan Rouhani President of Iran, Recep Tayyip Erdogan President of Turkey, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Emir of Qatar, Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah Ibni Almarhum Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah Al-Musta’in Billah, Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia
Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia, who had initially declined to attend the KL Summit, had nominated his Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, to attend in his place. However Ma’ruf Amin had cancelled his visit as well, due to health issues.
Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan had also withdrawn his attendance to the conference, which some have speculated was due Pakistan’s financial ties with Saudi Arabia, the latter had displayed deep disapproval for the summit
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had also officially protested against the Summit, describing it is as an attempt to directly rival and delegitimize the OIC, and in said that it would only serve to divide the Muslim Ummah
In Dr. Mahathir’s opening address, Mahathir clarified the position of the Summit was not to challenge any official cooperative bodies and states, and the aim of the summit was to bring out in the open and clarify the various challenges facing the Ummah which impede advancing developments in technology, economy and society.
Various topics were covered throughout the two days’ worth of panel discussions. Topics covered issues such as Education, redistribution of wealth, Food Security, Technology, and National Identity. While the talks were fairly holistic and very well-received by the attendees, as some have noted, there were numerous other issues which were not discussed such as the matter of the role and voices of Muslim converts in Muslim societies, the concept of Waqf when discussing on matters to do with Islamic Economical developments. The issue of women’s participation in the wider role of development was mainly touched in a single panel on the 20th December 2019.
While the issue of the on-going refugee crisis that has displaced millions of Muslims across various conflict zones was touched upon during the Summit, most notably by Erdogan during the opening ceremony, as well as by Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, Sultan of Perak during the closing ceremony, the main thrust of the summit revolved mainly around potential implementable strategies and how to address the major issues in the Muslim world. Topics such as the Uyghur issue in China, was largely absent in the discussions. This reflected Dr. Mahathir’s earlier statement that the focus of the summit should be one mainly on economic development, and not one primarily centred on religion and politics
The Summit’s highlight was ultimately the exchange of various Memorandum of Commitments between various the various participating countries, mainly in the fields of technology, trade and even youth training engagements.
While the summit can be considered a success in the sense that some progressive discussions took place to highlight the various challenges of the contemporary Ummah, it remains to be seen if this Summit will be much like all other previous high level talks that see only discussions but lacking any implementation and actualization from both a governmental and societal level
Report by Hassanal Noor Rashid, JUST Programme Coordinator