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NEW DELHI, May 6 (TNS): In a move likely to displease Pakistan as Bangladesh\u00a0has sounded the first official call to induct countries with large Muslim populations, like India, as observers to the\u00a0Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a club which has only Muslim majority countries as its members, Indian media reported.<\/p>\n
At a meeting of\u00a0OIC\u00a0foreign ministers in Dhaka on Saturday, Bangladesh minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali called for reforms in the organisation that can pave the way for countries like India, which are not Muslim majority, to get an observer seat in the OIC.<\/p>\n
Though Pakistan is unlikely to welcome the proposal as it uses the forum to regularly target India, the list of likely candidates also includes its \u201call-weather\u201d ally China and Bangladesh has also put forward the \u201cinclusion\u201d argument to say that large Muslim populations should not be denied a say at the OIC. Muslims in India constitute 10% of the global adherents of the faith.<\/p>\n
Egypt, with a population of 92 million, is 5% of the global Muslim population. In terms of Muslims as a percentage of the global population, India ranks third after Indonesia and Pakistan. Ali said, \u201cA number of countries, not OIC members, have a large number of Muslims as their citizens. The Muslims may be minority in those countries, but in terms of number they often exceed the total population of many OIC member countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a need to build bridges with those non-OIC countries so that a large number of Muslim populations do not remain untouched by the good work of OIC. That is why reforms and restructuring is critical for OIC,\u201d the Bangladesh foreign minister said. Calling for reforms of the organisation to make it more contemporary, Ali said, \u201cWe need to rethink our work, method and process of functioning to cater to the needs of the current era and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bangladesh\u2019s suggestion received support of the OIC secretary general. This is not the first time there has been a call to bring countries like India into the ambit of the OIC, but Pakistan has always held a veto position. In the past decade, however, India\u2019s relations with the Islamic world have undergone aconsiderable transformation.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Times of India<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI, May 6 (TNS): In a move likely to displease Pakistan as Bangladesh\u00a0has sounded the first official call to induct countries with large Muslim populations, like India, as observers to the\u00a0Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a club which has only Muslim majority countries as its members, Indian media reported. At a meeting of\u00a0OIC\u00a0foreign ministers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63962,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63960\/revisions\/63962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}