Miliband calls for 'Islamic coalition' with West

LONDON - British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said that security in today’s world can no longer be guaranteed by the world’s only superpower, or even a concert of great powers. The threats from climate change, terrorism, pandemics and financial crisis are too large and too diffuse and over the last decade the focus of the relationship between the west and the Muslim world has narrowed.
During his speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies on Thursday calling for a ‘coalition of consent’ between the West and the Muslim world Miliband said terrorism has distorted our views of each other and skewed our engagement with each other. Organisations with different aims, values and tactics were lumped together. Little or sometimes no distinction was drawn between those engaged in national territorial struggles and those pursuing global or pan-Islamic objectives; between those that could be drawn into domestic political processes and those who are essentially anti-political and violent.
He was of the view that decisions taken many years ago in London are still felt on the landscape of the ME and South Asia. Ruined Crusader castles remain as poignant monuments to the religious violence of the Middle Ages. The British Foreign Secretary said that the lines drawn on maps by Colonial powers were succeeded, amongst other things, by the failure - it has to be said not just ours - to establish two states in Palestine.