Süleyman ŞENSOY, Chairman of TASAM and World Islamic Forum
( 23.09.2016, Kuala Lumpur )
His Excellency Esteemed Minister; Esteemed Rector Professor Ms. Zeliha KAMARUDDIN; very estimable Vice Minister of Family and Social Policies Esteemed Mehmet ERSOY who is presented here as the representative of Turkish State and Turkish Government; Vice Minister His Excellency Husoki Ahmad TALEPNA, very estimable Director of JAKIM Esteemed Othman MUSTAPHA, very estimable participants and media members, ladies and gentlemen, very estimable representatives of diplomatic missions.
I want to start with our statements that we are very pleased to be here, in the 1st World Muslim Women Summit and Exhibition with a committee of 140 people. I want to express our gratitude towards Malaysian Islamic University and all the other esteemed institutions at Malaysian side, to General Secretary of the OIC and also to the Family and Social Policies Ministry and all related institutions at Turkish side due to their supports and contributions to this process.
We have cared too much and worked for months for this phase because of that we will take over this summit as Turkey and we host World Islamic Forum Secretary in Istanbul. We have an International Organization Committee on this subject consisting of women oriented NGO’s. The president of this organization committee is Esteemed Habibe ÖÇAL, Women’s Branch President of the Confederation of Public Servants Trade Unions that has 400 thousand women members and she is also in our midst.
We want to state that we are waiting for national and international intense supports and interests from our related formal authorities to this process for both success of the summit of this year and success of the process of forthcoming year and the most importantly, institutionalization of this summit as a global network.
Without doubt, in behalf of understanding World Women Summit, the world that we live in is important. Because we live in a very sophistical world that the rivalry between the East and the West has warmed up with sophistical parameters and it is getting harder for human mind and substructure to adapt, and hereby, we have to highlight the factor of “Muslim Women“ for their essential functions. Because the balances in the world is changing and when we take a look at back, we can see that the 19th century was completely a European age, the 20th century was completely an American age and the 21st century will be the Asian age. It is clear that we have to work hard to make the Islamic world that widely has taken part in Asia affected rightly from these processes and progresses, opportunities and menaces.
The world is being directed by three basic parameters and it is accelerated by October 11th, 2001. These are laying in front of us as “micro-nationality“, “integration“ and “unpredictability“. We need much more awareness and we have to work much harder in attempt to protect other Islamic countries from chaos and the processes that occurred in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Besides, we are living under impartial challenges that are affecting the whole world.
I don’t have a chance for a detailed speech about these in an opening speech but it is clear, we as the Islamic world have very serious deficiencies in relation to unsustainability of “production - consumption - growth“ formula; a fast discharge of middle class; insecurity of energy, food and water; passing to fourth dimension in all fields of life; changing nature of the state and adapting expectation managing.
What our countries need in all this process is to construct a structuring with a well defined political aim and an economical policy to reach this aim and sectoral policies that will be constructed under this policy and in order to achieve this; the Muslim woman (since every boy is raised by a woman) has to build capacity as a soft power in terms of both national integrity and international effectiveness and integration of the Islamic world. Besides, Islamic world has a strong diaspora in Western and non-Muslim countries and we have to place importance on Woman magnitude in these Islamic diaspora studies.
Finally, I want to state that it is military and economical power what supports the political genius. Therefore, what we tell as romantically and sloganically fails when it lacks economical and military power. As the Islamic world, we need much more self-criticism. Without supporting of “power and justice“, no belief or view can be represented institutionally, it just can be locally or personally. So, for a systematic perspective, we need to accumulate “power and justice“ construction in terms of both national and international scale.
I think that the most important contribution of this summit - in this meeting and in following studies - is to draw a very important Muslim Women perspective with comparative studies to the women literature that is made by the Western world. And as another important matter, I consider that the Muslim Woman factor has a great function in relation to protect our traditions and morals against extraordinary risks of cultural standardization and vital threats.
I hope that this process started with the World Muslim Women Summit would develop stimulating and critical thinking in all Islamic world. Once more, I present my best regards and greetings to all participants, very esteemed protocol members, His Excellency Esteemed Minister and to you all.
