China and the Islamic world join hands for global peace, development and prosperity

China attended the 48th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), held on March 22-23, 2022, in Islamabad, Pakistan. Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the session at the special invitation of the OIC. It was the first time that China has been invited to join the OIC’s high-level forum.

The theme of this year’s session was “Building Partnerships for Unity, Justice, and Development,” which perfectly coincides with the Chinese vision. For instance, China has been promoting partnership, unity, harmony, understanding, development, and a shared future of humankind. Moreover, China has been contributing to the goals of global peace, stability, and prosperity. With identical visions, then, it is very much natural for China to work together with the Islamic world to achieve similar goals.

China has been helping many poor Islamic countries and has become a major trading partner with and a major source of investment for some of them, contributing to their socio-economic development.

The Islamic world has been targeted and victimized by the West for almost two decades already. After the staged incident of 9/11, the US along with its NATO allies embarked on the Islamic world openly. Whether, it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, or theArab Spring, millions of Muslims were killed, millions were injured, millions were made homeless, millions were forced to live as refugees, infrastructure was destroyed, industry and agriculture were damaged. Above all, the social fabric was distorted, while intolerance, extremism and terrorism were promoted.

Western-backed dirty media played an extremely negative role. With propagated fake news, fabricated stories, and distorted images of Muslims, cases of Islamophobia increased tremendously and Muslims were discriminated against, insulted, and subjected to hate in the West. Discriminatory immigration laws were introduced and biased visa regimes were established.

This has created an awareness among the Islamic world and awakened their people. They understood well that the West is not willing to accommodate them and instead treats them poorly. Most especially, the Ukraine crisis has made such feelings even more fervent. The treatment of Ukrainian refugees and Muslim refugees points to visibly different sets of attitudes. How the biased Western media has reported on the Ukraine war, and how they have kept silent on Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc., has raised many questions among the Muslims.

On the contrary, the Islamic world is looking for partnering with China. China’s participation in the OIC Session was just the beginning, but, it is the first step toward a future relationship between China and the Islamic world. There are 57 sovereign Muslim countries that are members of both the UN and the OIC. These Muslim countries can extend political support for China at the UN and at all other international forums. The Islamic world is rich in natural resources, especially in energy commodities, and with China being a net importer of oil and gas. There are around two billion Muslims spread all over the world. China, as the second-largest economy in the world, can help the Islamic world to also grow its economy. China has achieved marvelous developments in modern science and technology and can share its advanced experiences with the Islamic world. Furthermore, China has emerged as a rising geopolitical power, with China’s support for the Islamic world able to be considered a balancing factor in geopolitics that guarantees the stability and security of the world.

China itself has a huge population of domestic Muslims. They are living like other minorities in complete harmony and performing an important role in the social and economic development of the country.

In the days to come, with their common vision and shared destiny, China and the Islamic world will jointly contribute to the goals of global peace, development, and prosperity.  

Zamir Ahmed Awan is a non-resident fellow with the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) and a sinologist at the National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan. E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com.

The opinions expressed in this article reflect those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of People's Daily Online.