In a global community of more than 50 Muslim countries the imperative urgency of self-empowerment is supreme now. At no other time in history have Muslims shared so many pains of failure, betrayal and denial.

The United Nations has failed them in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia.  The international body is nothing more than a tool of the West to victimize Muslims, all under the false pretense of promoting human rights, democracy and women's liberation. 

Today's UN is only a Western shadow power-base in disguise. So long a bellicose regime has one of the Big Five powers as its accomplice, it can get away with snuffing world opinion or its palpable crimes against humanity, until it run out of tricks. Israel's Ariel Sharon, cares little about the UN.   Nor did Milosevic of Serbia until the West finally reined in him.

A century of colossal human sacrifices in Chechnya could not warrant the UN's intervention, as the West would not let it block their budding romance with the Russian Bear. Kashmir can be expensed for India's lucrative trades, and Algeria's military suppression of democracy may be ignored as it is hedging against Islamic resurgence. As for Iraq, the US does not need Saddam to battle Iran anymore, as he ballooned into another Frankenstein.

The Mujahideens of Afghanistan, despite crushing the ungodly Soviet regime are expendable, now that the West has tamed Russia.  Once touted as "Afghan heroism", the Taliban are now pariahs in the West.

With no surprise the UN recognizes the pro-western opposition in Afghanistan which controls only 5% of the country, while denouncing the Taliban who control 95% of the land. Things haven't changed in Afghanistan, what has is the relationship between them and the United States.

With the demise of the US backed pseudo military administration in Indonesia, they see no more opportunity in backing Indonesia's claim on Irian Jaya.

The UN claims to promote democracy, but is there a true democracy within the UN?  Only if one digs deep enough, will one find that the super powers have veto rights to stamp out world opinion. Israelis can rumble tanks, pound cannons and grenade defenseless citizens as long as the US locks in a veto for them. Some Western pundits have even argued that other Arab countries should donate land to the Palestinians to end the conflict.  But this argument could be countered by proposing that the US or Europe become the cradle of a Jewish state.  After all, Israel is a British-French brainchild.

The 700 year failure of the Bosnian experiment of social integration is a grim reminder that European civility is only skin-deep. What happened in the Bosnian holocaust may very well happen again anywhere in the West. Muslims should have no reason to feel as though they live in a comfort zone in the West when there isn't any. Muslims are tolerated here, at best. At the behest of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Serbian bloodhounds abound. To the Catholic psyche, Islam still is a heretic religion. To the Western agnostic, Islam is a concocted mythology and to Dante, the last Prophet of Islam is cast to the lowest of the hells. This is so much the case, that the Crusade psyche still rules when they decide how to divide Bosnia, to acquiesce demise of freedom in Algeria, to placate and nurture a culpable perpetrator like Salman Rushdie, or connive incessant human rights violations in Turkey. Islamophobia is the order of the day.

The Western megalomania invades global society culturally, politically and by trade, ostensibly or otherwise. The youths are doped into Hollywood glamour or MTV music mania. Trades are conquered in the name of globalization. Trade protectionism still applies when and where it suits the West, but for the rest of the world, the sweet tune of trade globalization pours in.  The trade imperialism has just replaced the good old days of brutal conquests.

Now, does the western democracy have to be so ubiquitous or irreplaceable? Is it so indispensable and inimitable in human history? For one thing democracy is a political institution fusing out of collective needs of freedom, emancipation from the repressive Church and a rebellion against belittling human dignity in the European Middle Ages. But that's solely a European experience. There is no parallel in the Islamic history of empirical and scientific minds like in the European Inquisition. Secondly, societal dynamics dictated various political institutions that were not stone-graved and inevitable in human history. There were equally great or greater human civilizations like the Aztec, Mayan, Chinese, and Persian, in their own rights, than the present Western one that did not institute democracy. Yet their achievements and niche in human history are equally imposing. The West wants democracy not for the love of the Muslims but this is how they can establish their ideological superiority and political maneuverability that they can toy with. By no means is democracy an ultimate experience in human institution.

The alternative to this dead-end cycle is self-empowerment of the Muslims through creating a United Muslim Organization (UMO). But first they must mature. They must have their own united military peace force; universal mandate and dispute settlement avenues to uniquely fit them. Wherever they need protection as a minority, the UMO peacekeepers should step in. All Muslim countries should decide their united foreign and trade policies in this UN like forum, leading to a common market and preferential trade platform. The world would only learn to respect them for their unity of purpose, principle of justice and togetherness. Like the Prophet said that the entire Ummah is like a single body, if any part gets hurt, so does the rest. The existing OIC (Organization for Islamic Countries) may propel leadership in this cohesion.

This is not a dream come true for Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. What distinguishes the united Muslim approach is the global sense of coalescence against the backdrop of unrelenting trepidation, coercion and masquerading in stamping their rights. Their global existence underlines an even more universal legitimacy. They have the divine commandment of unity of purpose, unity of cohesion and unity of one God that they utter so many times in their prayers. Civilization gets enriched with progressive thoughts and actions that are universal.

The Muslims have no alternative to self-empowerment for their own sake and world peace. They have no substitute to mould their destiny either.