Prime Minister Gilani’s visit to Turkey has, once again, brought out the need for Muslim countries to give up their reliance on the US-led West and exploit their own resources through mutual cooperation. There can be no better and more effective way of dispelling the hostile environment that their enemies have created around them in an attempt to frustrate the Muslim countries’ move towards progress and prosperity. The two Prime Ministers, Yousuf Raza Gilani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed 18 memorandums of understanding on Tuesday, covering a wide range of fields, decided to raise the quantum of bilateral trade from $1 billion (figure for 2008) to $2 billion by 2012, and pledged to take Pakistan-Turkish ties to “greater heights”.
An unfortunate reality of the Muslim world is that while nature has endowed it with all kinds of valuable resources, they are only fractionally being put to use for its own betterment; the major chunk goes to serve the life and economy of other countries. And those countries, grown richer and more powerful with the help of those very resources, turn round and demand the Muslim world to follow their dictates, in foreign as well as internal policies. We have to shake ourselves out of our timid and compliant response and take stock of our prized possessions: human, material and natural. There is little doubt that by pooling them together we can rewrite history and meet any challenge in the world. The need is to rise above old rivalries and bickering that tend to hinder us from coming together and think in terms of the strength and influence that we, as a united entity, can acquire – Nation
