Speech of HE Ms. Karen P. Hughes 

Welcoming Remark by HE Dr. Rajmah Hussain

Excellencies

Dear Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to all participants to this very important gathering on the occasion of the launching of the OIC Ambassadorial Group in Washington DC.

I would also like to extend very special welcome to Her Excellency Ambassador Karen Hughes, the US Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

It is a duty and pleasure for me to acknowledge and highly appreciate the leading role and immense contribution of Her Excellency Dr. Rajmah Hussein, Ambassador of Malaysia to the United States in the preparation and successful completion of this initiative.  Actually, her success in this project did not come to me as a surprise, as I had already witnessed her hard work for setting up a similar Group earlier in Vienna.

I understand that, as it is the case in all other OIC Groups in different parts of the world and at various international organizations, the Ambassador of the OIC Ministerial Conference will be chairing the Washington Group for a year.  Therefore, I wish all the success and convey my felicitations to the first Chairman H.E. Mr. Yashar Aliyev, Ambassador of Azerbaijan as he embarks upon his new and challenging journey.

I had desired to be with you on this important occasion, however, as the launching ceremony coincided with the Human Rights Council high segment meeting, I was unable to travel to Washington DC. Nevertheless, I look forward to visiting Washington DC during the current year, hopefully in September.

Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am of the view that besides exchange of views on issues of political significance, particular emphasis should be put on promoting interaction and tolerance through structured and sustained dialogue with pertinent US government officials, legislators, public and academic institutions and media.  Activities to promote the image of Islam as a progressive and enlightened religion should be encouraged and corresponding endeavours should be promoted.  Development of close contacts with the mass media in Washington DC should be particularly encouraged to express the perspectives of the Muslim World on international developments.

The formation of the OIC Group in Washington DC reaffirms the OIC’s commitment at the highest level towards constructive dialogue with relevant members of the US administration, particularly the White House, the Congress and the State Department, on issues of common concern.  In this context, I must state that we are pleased with the dialogue and cooperation we have started with the State Department following the mutually fruitful initial contacts established through Undersecretary of State H.E. Mr. Nicholas Burns during my visit to New York last September.  It is our sincere desire to continue this dialogue at the highest level.

Ladies and Gentlemen

In conclusion, I would like to assure you that the OIC General Secretariat will extend all necessary support to valuable efforts of the OIC Group in Washington DC in achieving its objective.

I wish all the success to your Group and thank you all.

Speech of

Ambassador Rajmah,

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished guests and friends here today,

I am honored to join you. Congratulations as you launch this new Ambassadorial Washington group of the Organization of Islamic Conference.  We at the State Department have worked hard over the last year to strengthen our relations and interaction with the OIC.  We share an agenda to support the positive contributions and values of Muslim countries and citizens; we too have many Muslim citizens who make an incredibly positive contribution here in our own country.  We have a shared interest in making sure that the mainstream voice – which is the dominant voice – is heard from Muslim communities.   And I believe you and I share a common mission -- creating a more constructive dialogue between your countries and mine-- a friendly, frank and honest dialogue that is vital if we hope to achieve a better and more peaceful world. I know His Excellency Secretary General Ihsanoglu and the OIC have made promoting East-West dialogue a top priority – and I hope this Washington working group will be an important step in furthering that goal.

The world is hungry for progress toward peace – and that is, after all, a core message of all the world’s great religions -- “Salaam.”   The vast majority of people in our world, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or those of no faith at all --  want to live secure lives of opportunity – this is not a goal owned by any country, but a shared human goal -- despite differences of language or culture or skin color, so much more unites us as human beings than divides us. Yet we live in a world where misunderstanding and mistrust are spreading, often being fanned by extremists, their murderous acts and their rhetoric of hate.  One of our great shared challenges is to isolate and marginalize these extremists, and nurture our common interests and values by finding ways to bridge differences and doing a better job of truly listening and seeking to understand each other.  

Together we must address the misperception fostered by extremists that there is a “clash of the civilizations,” that the West is somehow in conflict with Islam, because I know -- and you know -- that simply isn’t true. Islam, as a major world religion, is part of the West and an important part of America. As a government official, I represent an estimated six-to-seven million America Muslims who live and work and worship freely in this great country. One of the things I’ve worked to do is to empower their voices and demonstrate respect for Muslim culture and contributions both here and abroad. In today’s diverse, global and multi-cultural world, people need to be more respectful of each others and of all faiths.  Many important Muslim voices have made that argument for many years – even centuries -- as I was reminded last night at a celebration sponsored by the Embassy of Turkey honoring the 800th anniversary of the birthday of the great Sufi poet, Rumi, whose message was one of love, acceptance and tolerance.  

During the 18 months that I have served as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, we have dramatically increased the number of our exchange programs so we can bring more people from other countries to the United States -- and send more Americans overseas.  We have increased the number of participants in our State Department educational and cultural programs to nearly 39,000 this year.  We  are putting a  greater emphasis on those people-to-people programs because more Americans need to learn more about your different cultures and countries and learn to speak your languages. We want and welcome more people from your countries to come here so they can see for themselves that we share many of the same values – that like you, we care about our families, many of us care deeply about our faith, we want our children to be educated and have opportunities, we want to live in a secure and a just world.  There’s no better way to discover those common values than to meet one another and visit each other’s homes and countries. Almost every participant in these exchange programs says the same thing afterward: “It changed my life.”  

One of my favorite new programs is called “Citizen Dialogue,” which sends delegations of Muslim Americans as citizen envoys to other countries.  It grew out of a conversation I had with a Turkish woman when I was in Germany. She told me how isolated the Muslim community in Germany often feels.  I asked her if I could visit her community and meet with people there.  She told me, quite bluntly, “no.”  “We’re not interested in meeting with our own government,” she said, “Why would we want to meet with yours?”  I asked, “Could I send some Muslim American citizens?” She replied, “That would be wonderful.”  Based on that, we launched a “citizen dialogue” program, sending Muslim Americans from all walks of life to places as diverse as Jordan, Pakistan, India, Denmark – the group that recently went to Malaysia, including an Imam, appeared on Malaysia’s top-rated morning television program – the station was so interested that it is sending a camera crew to America this spring to film American Muslims in their homes for an 8-part prime time series on Islam in America. It will air during the month of Ramadan this fall.

This is progress.  These kinds of people-to-people programs are invaluable in challenging stereotypes and countering the misinformation that radical extremists put out to drive a wedge between our countries.  

Last week I was pleased to see that Secretary General Ihsanoglu condemned the recent violence by terrorists who targeted innocent civilians in Algeria.  He restated the clear position of Islam again killing innocent people. And he expressed solidarity with the Algerian authorities for all measures taken “to contain the violence and isolate the terrorists.”  He is exactly right and I applaud him and the OIC for taking that strong stand.  

The time has come for more people of every country to speak out and make clear that violent extremists only pervert religion when they bomb hospitals, universities, wedding parties, mosques, employment centers, even groups of children.  And tragically, the vast majority of those being killed are Muslims. 

Just yesterday The New York Times had a story about the recent killing of 35 people in six suicide bombings in Pakistan.  The story said:  “The indiscriminate terror, sown by lone bombers, with explosives strapped to their chests wandering into a crowd, is a new experience for Pakistan, and it has shocked and angered many here.” 

In Afghanistan, President Karzai has condemned the recent  killings of teachers, clerics, scholars, elders, widows and children and made clear these murders have nothing to do with religion. As he said, “There is no link between the actions of these people and Muslims. In Islam,  if you kill an innocent person it is equal to having killed humanity. That is how strong it is, the verdict is that strong.  …..why would they go and burn the vineyard of a poor Afghan widow why would they kill her, burn her orchard or spear her baby? …there is no link to any argument that they offer, they are simply merchants of death.”

And these merchants of death threaten all of us.  Their acts of terror rip apart the ties that bind us together – respect for the breath of God in each of us, respect for our common dignity and human decency.

The time has come when good people of all faiths must join together to make these acts of terror unacceptable, just as grassroots citizens united against slavery in Great Britain in the 1800s.  The movie “Amazing Grace,” which has been showing in Washington theaters, tells the story of how William Wilberforce helped lead a grassroots citizens campaign against slavery. It is a very timely reminder that individuals of conscience can make a difference.  It took time, but ultimately, slavery went from being an international norm to an international pariah.

Time and again, we have seen concerned citizens in all parts of the world step forward and take a principled stand that changed the tide of history –

Like one of my personal heroes, Rosa Parks, a black woman from the rural south who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man -- and took a stand at a time when my country was failing to live up to its founding conviction that all of us are created equal…

Like Nelson Mandela who campaigned against the injustice of apartheid from a jail cell in South Africa…

We must do the same for terrorism and make the notion of killing oneself in order to kill others a matter of shame – never honor. Decent people throughout the world must be of one voice in clearly stating that no grievance, no matter how legitimate --- and there are many legitimate grievances in the world – but none of them can ever justify the targeting and killing of innocents.

We all are part of a greater struggle that calls on each of us – no matter what our faith community – to work together for peace, life, and hope.

And that is why we are focusing more of our public diplomacy efforts around the world on what I call “The diplomacy of deeds” – the concrete ways in which America is working to provide more education programs of all kinds, teaching women to read and young people to speak English…America is providing food and better health care across the world, from the Palestinian territories to Africa…and more job opportunities so young people and all people can aspire to better lives. Together, we must work to provide our young people with reasons to live rather than reasons to die. 

It is my great hope that the proposals from this new working group will be constructive, focused not on criticizing or castigating one country or another, but on working cooperatively to bring about the greater peace and justice that we all want.  As you pursue important efforts at the UN Human Rights Council to promote resolutions against the defamation of Islam, I hope you might consider broadening those resolutions to include respect for all faiths and people’s freedom to worship and express themselves as they choose. If we can work together to defuse disagreements, create more economic ties as the OIC Sec. General has proposed, expand education programs, expand health initiatives and meet on a regular basis in the spirit of peace, I know our countries and our world will be better for it.  We may not resolve all our differences, but I believe we can prepare the way for a safer, more prosperous, more respectful world for the next generation.  I like to say I view my new job as waging peace, and I use the word “waging” deliberately because I believe we have to be very intentional about it. There is honor in peace – and as men and women of honor, I hope you will join me in this vital work. 

Thank you for having me. Congratulations and I very much look forward to working with you in the future.

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Ambassador of Malaysia to the United States

Guest of Honour, H.E. Ambassador Karen Hughes,

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs of the State Department,

Excellencies, Ambassadors of the Member and Observer Countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) based in Washington DC,

Invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In Malaysia’s capacity as Chair of the OIC Summit, it gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to the Willard Intercontinental Hotel for this Launching of the OIC Group in Washington DC.  This is indeed an auspicious moment when we can gather all the representatives of the OIC Member and Observer Countries based in Washington DC together for the first time.  You would recall that the idea for forming the OIC Group in Washington DC was mooted during the IFTAR dinner that I hosted at the Embassy of Malaysia on October 12 last year and following several consultations among the Expanded OIC Troika (comprising the Ambassadors of the countries of the past, present and future Chairmen of the OIC Summit and Foreign Ministers Meeting together with Saudi Arabia as the host of the OIC Secretariat and the OIC Permanent Observer to the UN in New York), the consensus to form the OIC Group was achieved and endorsed at the meeting of the OIC Ambassadors held at the Embassy of Malaysia on January 17, this year.

The agreement reached has been to form the OIC Group in Washington DC only on an informal basis, at Ambassadorial level and with meetings to be held on a not too frequent basis in view of the demands of time on the bilateral agenda of the OIC Ambassadors in Washington DC.  The OIC Group will be led by the country chairing the OIC Foreign Ministerial Meeting, which at present is Azerbaijan and to be followed by Pakistan later in the year. 

The formation of the OIC Group in Washington DC is to provide a platform for the OIC Ambassadors to get together informally to consult on issues affecting the Muslim Ummah and to correct misperceptions of our noble religion Islam which is a religion of peace and not of violence, to interact with members of the US Administration as well as to get together socially to get to know one another better in a bilateral setting like Washington DC where our priorities and agenda differ.  The formation of the OIC Group has been done in a constructive spirit and must be seen to be so and not otherwise.   At a time of much regional and international strife, the unity of states should be of paramount importance and should be encouraged.

In closing, let me say how grateful I am to Mr. Herve Houdre, General Manager of the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, who rose to the occasion and generously offered to host the first luncheon for the OIC Ambassadors on the occasion of the Launching of the OIC Group.  Mr. Houdre, please accept our heartiest thanks for your generous hospitality.  Having stayed in this hotel when I first arrived last July to assume my post as Ambassador of Malaysia to the United States of America, let me testify as to what a wonderful hotel the Willard Intercontinental is and this, no doubt, is due to your leadership, Mr Houdre, as General Manager.

As a token of appreciation, I would like to present a small gift to Mr. Houdre and invite him to say a few words of welcome to the OIC Ambassadors and Distinguished Guests present here today. Thank you.

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