Consistent with the turmoil in the Middle East, where the conflict in Gaza is adjudged as “plausible genocide”, emotional sentiments about the land invasion of Israel in Gaza on October 28th 2023, three weeks after the security breach of Israel by Hamas and various Islamic groups, have remained high.

The fact that these events immediately led to the participation of Hezbollah and the Houthis, speak amply about the highly emotional nature of this political geography.

One still pockmarked by settle colonialism, apartheid and uneven distribution of resources across the lay of the land; some of which have been bombed, literally, into a moonscape.

A year – one of the most difficult ones – in the Middle East and Iran has seemed like perpetuity.

With no end to the multiple armed conflicts in Israel, Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, even occasionally parts of Iraq and Syria, ending, the future looks dire, both for the Global South and Global North.

Any deeper animosity between Israel and Iran could lead what is now a regional conflagration into a potential nuclear war. Why?

With Israel poised to strike Iran, at any given time – a war whose chosen targets, especially the oil production and nuclear programs in Iran will deeply affect Teheran’s collective responses – the Middle East, indeed, North Africa, Eurasia and parts of Eastern Europe, are watching with bated breath.

Will the conventional and nuclear sword of Damocles be dropping any time soon?

However, as all eyes revolve these critical regions, that also straddle on some of the most strategic sea lanes in the world, not least the Suez Canal, Bosphorus, the Marmara Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, it is important to understand there are countries in the Muslim world that continue to retain a rational mindset of how the mess in these regions should be handled.

One of the most important data, to demonstrate the soundness of the strategic calculation of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who just attended the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia, is the nomination and confirmation of Professor Osman Bakar as the 7th Rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) on September 18 2024. Once again why? A slight foray into history is key.

The IIUM was founded in 1983. Following a treaty between the government of Malaysia and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Indeed, for the governments of Maldives, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. To be sure, to become co-sponsors of IIUM.

IIUM has passed through the leadership of various rectors, all of whom were moderates. But the one rector who proved most influential was the tenure of the late Abuhamid AbuSulayman.

It was the strength of the latter, in the field of “Islamic International Relations (IIR)” that opened the way for IIUM to be the seat of scholarship and pacific activism.

The late Professor Abdulhamid AbuSulayman, who completed his PhD thesis at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of IIR, has always argued that the Islamic world is capable of functioning side-by-side with the Westphalian international order.

The classical distinction between “Darul al Salam”, the zone of peace and “Darul al Harb”, the zone of war, is not a frozen conflict between the Islamic world and the West.

For that matter, any emerging non-Islamic order, such as East Asia, especially the Confucian civilisation that is, at a minimal, comprised of China, Japan, South Korea, not least Vietnam, and the overseas diaspora of these countries; including those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

Be that as it may, important as IIR is to IIUM, there are several crucial reasons why Anwar has made the right choice on Professor Osman Bakar as the new Rector.

It is important to reflect on Anwar’s deliberation to understand how IIUM, ASEAN Chairmanship and IIR can each strengthen Anwar’s hand through Professor Osman Bakar.

Key among which is to comprehend how Professor Osman Bakar, with a direct access to Anwar, will try to lead the IIUM in the next two years, potentially, more.

First and foremost, while Professor Osman Bakar may have inherited an institution that is in need of much physical facelift, due to years of unfortunate neglect, as each of the rector after Professor Abuhamid AbuSulayman, could not a firm grip on a secure access to PMO, Professor Osman Bakar is different.

Professor Osman Bakar has the confidence of Anwar the 10th PM of Malaysia, to allow Islamic disciplines – for the lack of a proper word – to blossom side-by-side, with Western and Eastern knowledge paradigms.

But due to the constant turbulence in the Islamic world, much of the burden of financing IIUM has rested in Malaysia.

Invariably, Professor Osman Bakar is tasked with the job to carry out most of the reforms in the IIUM.

Some of the heaviest duties have rested in the hands of Professor Osma Bakar to keep the IIUM resilient and sturdy.

With the assurance given by Anwar to commence his tenure as soon possible.

If anything, to assure Professor Osman, that the latter will receive all the financial help IIUM can get.

Invariably, to place the institution, which has spawned subjects as deep as medical sciences to social studies and Islamic theology, as the seat of Islamic restoration.

Indeed, to restore IIUM back to its lofty goals – as a centre of excellence – that can recruit and train international scholars of high repute. That would in turn trigger what Anwar called an Asian Renaissance.

Anwar has after all appreciated the scholarship of Osman Bakar in the field of the History of Science, Islamic Philosophy, Civilisational Studies and Epistemology; all of which are critical to the much needed inter faith and cultural initiatives to ameliorate the disastrous conflicts that have been sprouting up from the underbelly of the West, not excluding the Islamic world.

This enmity had given rise to the regularity of their clashes since the day of the Crusades in 1093 A.D. as launched by Pope Urban II well up to the contemporary period.

Ostensibly, this phenomenon has also morphed into a serious structural mis-reading of Islam and the West.

Most, if not all of the conflicts, in ancient and modern history, were based on a mutual quest for imperial preponderance.

In the case of Islam, not because it was necessarily expansionist and imperialist, rather Islam has merely wanted to make its presence felt in the ramparts of the Roman and the Persian empires as the two civilisations rose to their heights only to gradually decline from inner focus on a luxurious lifestyle among the small elites at the top.

Islam appeared in the early part of the early 7th century A.D. to make an onslaught against the Roman and Persian empires, that were already locked in conflicts anyway.

Yet Islam was not an ecumenical religion. Nor was that can use force to convert others to its belief system.

As the Quranic dictum affirms, “One shall not use force in the matter of faith”. In other words, Islam is premised on the voluntary embrace of the creed of one God and Prophet Muhammad as the final messenger that comes from a long line of Prophets that locate their moral authority of the same but beginning with Adam and Eve too.

In and of itself, to the degree Islamic troops were able to conquer the Babylonian Empire in 1493, for example, what is now Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire sought to emulate some of the best practices of the Roman Empire – indeed to rectify the shortcomings of the past.

For example, if the Roman Empire, especially from the republican period, 10 AD to 400 AD onwards, was always involved in multiple waves of war, to exhaust its opponents, Islamic strategy did not launch such wars time and again to obtain eventual victory.

Rather, the strategy was shaped by allegiance to pay the necessary poll tax for Islamic troops to provide the necessary security.

Hence, while a typical Roman way of war was to keep sending wave after wave of Roman legions, some of whom were population absorbed by the Roman emperor, by granting them citizenship, only to induce them into accepting the cause of going to repeated war against the likes of non-Romans, Islamic strategy did not repeat this.

In choosing Osman Bakar as the Chair of Al Ghazali in Comparative Civilisations and Epistemology in the Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) at IIUM, to be the 7th Rector, Anwar wanted Professor Osman Bakar to continue what he was doing. Understand and explain Islam’s contact and connections with multiple civilisations.

Indeed, to strategically deploy the Chair and eminent scholarship of Professor Osman Bakar to help make Islam in Southeast Asia, the moderate face of Islam.

Potentially, to make it more visible to an America that identifies Islam with the Middle East as a region always on fire; when it should be an oasis of peace for teeming humanity.

Indeed, as events would have it, Professor Osman Bakar was also a Professor at Georgetown University, with the Centre in Christian and Muslim Understanding, when 911 occurred in 2001.

Hence, Professor Osman Bakar was – as he is still – totally conscious of the need to clear away any suspicion that the Islamic world and the West were constantly at loggerheads.

Secondly, it has been compellingly shown by Classicists and theologies, that the period in the 12th to the 14th century A.D., during the “Translation Movement” of the Abbasid Period was marked by the confluence of ideas between the likes of St Thomas Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, Al Khawarizmi, father of the invention on Algebra and Algorithm, that has pulsated the Western civilisation forward, as their scientists and physicists have had to latch onto these breakthroughs during the heydays of the Islamic world, especially in Andalusia, to be on par with the latter.

The scholarship of the late Albert Hourani has been nothing but impressive. Professor Osman Bakar has been chosen by Anwar to lead IIUM at a critical juncture of what Anwar has called “the post-normal time”.

This is a period where everything seems to be entangled and enmeshed in perpetual chaos.

Third, Professor Osman Bakar, has remained one the world’s most precocious minds on the study of Islam and Confucianism; not mentioning other religions, too.

The works of Ibn Arabi, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Moses Maimonedes, Ibn Khaldun, Hamzah Fansuri and more are also not beyond the pale of Professor Osman Bakar’s life long scholarship.

Due to all these factors, although more can be mentioned about Professor Osman Bakar, it is clear that Anwar, who has always seen himself as a serious “Muslim Democrat” is adamant that the Muslim world, such as a trading country like Malaysia, cannot disengage from the Global North nor Global South.

Implicit in the appointment of Professor Osman Bakar as the Rector of IIUM is the internationalisation of its outlook, trajectory, potentially, triggering a spike in more foreign students and scholars to jointly pitch their minds together.

If anything, to allow ASEAN to work with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and China; the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and BRICS and in due course, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation (OECD) and other regional organisations (RO), too. Not least the European Union (EU) and even BRICS.

Indeed, as the world wrestles with some serious conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Anwar Ibrahim has also urged the Osman Bakar to establish any initiatives that can ameliorate, if not eliminate, the taut and tight Western narratives that tend to see Islam as a threat.

(Dr Phar Kim Beng is Expert Committee Member of the Centre of Regional Strategic Studies, CROSS.)