The Organization of Islamic Cooperation: Politics, Problems, and Potential

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the world’s leading international Islamic organization. Turan Kayaoglu provides the first accessible and concise introduction and overview of this important organization. This book details the OIC’s struggle to address popular Muslim demands balanced against the member states’ reluctance to support the OIC politically and materially. Despite this predicament, the organization has made itself increasingly relevant over the last decade through increasing its visibility as the representative body of Muslim unity and promoting its role as a reliable interlocutor on behalf of Muslims in global society. Outlining the history, workings and goals of the OIC, the book also highlights key issues that may influence the OIC’s ability to realize its potential in the future. This will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations and islamic studies.https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_books/1105/thumbnail.jp

The Extension of Westphalian Sovereignty: State Building and the Abolition of Extraterritoriality

What explains the abolition of extraterritoriality in world politics? Which factors account for the variation in the timing of the abolition process? I develop a state-building explanation for the abolition of extraterritoriality. I find that traditional explanations of the abolition of extraterritoriality that rely on power and culture do not account for Western states’ decisions to keep or abolish extraterritoriality. I suggest that the state-building practices of non-Western countries, specifically the institutionalization of a state-based legal system, are key to explaining why Western states decided to keep or abolish extraterritoriality. I test my argument against alternative explanations using a comparative case study of the abolition process in Japan and China

A Rights Agenda for the Muslim World? The Organization of Islamic Cooperation\u27s Evolving Human Rights Framework

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is uniquely well placed to advance human rights in the Muslim world, but has repeatedly failed to fulfill that potential. Under the reformist leadership of Ekmelledin Ihsanoğlu, can the organization’s rights agenda move beyond traditional obstacles, namely members’ focus on state sovereignty and the debate over the role of sharia? Could the recently established Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights (IPCHR) form the basis of a robust international human rights regime for the Muslim world? In a new paper published by the Brookings Doha Center (BDC), former visiting fellow Turan Kayaoğlu discusses how the OIC can become a more effective proponent of human rights. The paper, A Rights Agenda for the Muslim World? The Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Evolving Human Rights Framework, describes the changing approach and tenor of the OIC’s rights policy. Based on extensive interviews with senior OIC officials, the paper takes a close look at the organization’s various human rights instruments and notes a shift in its approach. Recent mechanisms – most importantly the IPHRC – have dropped a former emphasis on the centrality of sharia. The OIC’s traditional understanding of state sovereignty, however, has remained intact and led to important shortcomings in the new body. This paper demonstrates how the IPHRC can nevertheless grow into an effective promoter of human rights, and offers recommendations on how the international human rights community can assist in that process

Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory

In the past 10-15 years, an increasing number of revisionist scholars have rejected the most significant elements of the argument about the centrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the evolution and structure of international society. At the same time, the prominence of this argument has grown in the English School and constructivist international relations scholarship. I deconstruct the function of the Westphalian narrative to explain its pervasiveness and persistence. I argue that it was first developed by nineteenth century imperial international jurists and that the Westphalian narrative perpetuates a Eurocentric bias in international relations theory. This bias maintains that Westphalia created an international society, consolidating a normative divergence between European international relations and the rest of the international system. This dualism is predicated on the assumption that with Westphalia European states had solved the anarchy problem either through cultural or contractual evolution. Non-European states, lacking this European culture and social contract, remained in anarchy until the European states allowed them to join the international society upon their achievement of the standards of civilization. This Westphalian narrative distorts the emergence of the modern international system and leads to misdiagnoses of major problems of contemporary international relations. Furthermore, their commitment to the Westphalian narrative prevents international relations scholars from adequately theorizing about international interdependencies and accommodating global pluralism

Constructing the Dialogue of Civilizations in World Politics: A Case of Global Islamic Activism

Since the late 1990s, Islamic activists have been active in promoting a series of initiatives and institutions known as the \u27dialogue of civilizations\u27. This agenda was initiated by the former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and subsequently promoted by faith-based movements such as the Gulen movement, and organizations such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference/Cooperation. The agenda of the dialogue of civilizations has been a response to the discourses of the end of history, the clash of civilizations, and the rejection of the West by Muslim fundamentalists. This article focuses on the emergence and spread of this agenda among Islamic elites, groups, and institutions. It argues that this agenda has become a significant part of contemporary Muslim thought and practice of world politics. Essentially, the dialogue agenda has facilitated institutional change within Islamic international organizations, spurred various Islamic attempts to accommodate other religions theologically, and instigated grassroots Islamic mobilization for interfaith dialogue. All these developments have fixed the dialogue agenda firmly in some Muslim circles and shaped their engagement with world politics

Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China

Legal Imperialism examines the important role of nineteenth-century Western extraterritorial courts in non-Western states. These courts, created as a separate legal system for Western expatriates living in Asian and Islamic coutries, developed from the British imperial model, which was founded on ideals of legal positivism. Based on a cross-cultural comparison of the emergence, function, and abolition of these court systems in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China, Turan Kayaoglu elaborates a theory of extraterritoriality, comparing the nineteenth-century British example with the post-World War II American legal imperialism. He also provides an explanation for the end of imperial extraterritoriality, arguing that the Western decision to abolish their separate legal systems stemmed from changes in non-Western territories, including Meiji legal reforms, Republican Turkey\u27s legal transformation under Ataturk, and the Guomindang\u27s legal reorganization in China. Ultimately, his research provides an innovative basis for understanding the assertion of legal authority by Western powers on foreign soil and the influence of such assertion on ideas about sovereignty.https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_books/1046/thumbnail.jp

Emon, Anver M., Mark Ellis, and Benjamin Glahn, (Eds.). Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Book review

The OIC and Children\u27s Rights

Established in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an intergovernmental organization the purpose of which is the strengthening of solidarity among Muslims. Headquartered in Jeddah, the OIC today consists of fifty seven states from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The OIC\u27s longevity and geographic reach, combined with its self-proclaimed role as the United Nations of the Muslim world, raise certain expectations as to its role in global human rights politics. However, to date, these hopes have been unfulfilled. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights sets out to demonstrate the potential and shortcomings of the OIC and the obstacles on the paths it has navigated. This is Chapter 8 of the book