The historical past of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a faith-based worldwide physique based in 1969 in Rabat, Morocco, is intimately intertwined with the historical past of Israel and its political actions within the West Financial institution and Gaza. This connection is already seen within the group’s founding doc. Its Constitution, signed in the identical 12 months and efficient from 1972, explicitly mentions solely two of its 57 Member States (MS) and three of its MS’ cities (cf. Arts. 14, 18, 21, 39), and it implicitly alludes to just one non-MS: Israel. It may be learn in its preamble that the OIC MS decided ‘to help the wrestle of the Palestinian individuals, who’re presently underneath international occupation’ and ‘to ascertain their sovereign State with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital’.
On this contribution, I argue that Israel acts as a quasi-non-MS inside the OIC and, extra particularly, as a case of what I outline as destructive memberness. Although formally excluded, it is ready to form the interior dynamics of the group whereas serving as a constitutive different, or enemy, in Schmitt’s terminology (2007). The appliance of the buddy/enemy distinction to Worldwide Relations is just not uncontested: Teschke (2011) has argued that Schmitt’s conceptual vocabulary was solid inside a particular ideological context, particularly the legitimation of Nazi Germany’s spatial politics, which makes its de-contextualized utility problematic. Because of this, the idea is employed right here as a descriptive system geared toward mapping how opposition constructions identification inside a global group, slightly than as a normal explanatory framework.
Faith and IR
IR students as social scientists had been comparatively late in recognizing the function performed by faith, initially embracing the Orientalist tendency to label it as a primordial impulse destined to vanish as societies modernize (Modongal, 2023). Occasions such because the 1967 Six-Day Struggle, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the tip of the Chilly Struggle led some students (Huntington, 1993; Juergensmeyer, 1993) to acknowledge that faith certainly performs an important function in IR. Such acknowledgment grew stronger after the 9/11 assaults and the rise and fall of ISIS, additional consolidating the place of faith inside the self-discipline. Authors have since re-interpreted outdated ideas in mild of this attitude: as an example, the idea of ‘spiritual gentle energy’ (Ozturk, 2023) was developed from Nye’s thought of ‘gentle energy’ (1990). It’s significant that, as of at the moment, the second largest worldwide group after the UN is the OIC, a physique based on spiritual floor, whose very existence challenges earlier assumptions in regards to the marginality of faith in world politics.
Though the OIC was based in 1969, the thought of an Islamic supranational entity traces again to the idea of ʾummah, an Arabic time period which means ‘neighborhood’ (cf. Quran 3:104). The thought of a political entity whose borders had been outlined not solely by territorial conquest or treaties however primarily by the shared religion of its inhabitants took institutional kind within the Caliphate instantly following the demise of Muhammad in 632. The Caliphate, as a political establishment, lasted till 1922 with the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate by the Kemalist Turkish Nationwide Meeting. Since then, Islamist ideologues, pundits, thinkers, politicians, and theologians have advocated for the reconstitution of the Caliphate, usually referring to the best mannequin of the primary 4 Caliphs, the Rašidūn, or ‘Rightly Guided’ (Rida, 2024). Extra typically, the renewed emphasis on unity on a spiritual foundation in Islam has been labelled Pan-Islamism, a political motion initially proposed by Abdülhamid II to face the territorial losses suffered throughout his reign from 1876 to 1909, in opposition to the Tanzimat reforms (Chouinard, 2010). Influential thinkers reminiscent of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1839–1897), Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), and Rashīd Rida (1865–1935) argued that the unity of the Islamic world could possibly be each a supply of decline, if uncared for or misinterpreted, and a possible foundation for its rebirth if correctly understood.
Know your Enemy, Know your Mates
The straw that broke the camel’s again was the 1969 arson assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Denis Michael Rohan, an Australian Christian fundamentalist. The next summit in Morocco, which gathered representatives from 24 Muslim international locations and preceded the First Islamic Convention of Overseas Ministers in Jeddah the next 12 months, successfully remodeled the Pan-Islamic impetus right into a acknowledged worldwide group. Whereas faith was the frequent denominator, the Islamization of the wrestle towards Israel was concurrently catalyzed, regardless that it might later crystallize in a extra radical kind with the Muslim Brotherhood’s exercise within the Gaza Strip (Litvak, 1998).
Egyptian President al-Nāṣir’s Pan-Arabism was being counteracted by Saudi Arabia’s King Fayṣal by Pan-Islamism (Sheikh, 2003). After the demise of the founding father of the trendy Saudi state ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz in 1953 and the ensuing lack of a robust legitimizing issue, the tendency of his son Saʾūd (1953–1964) to align carefully with Egypt and Syria turned more and more problematic. Occasions such because the 1956 Suez Disaster and the 1958 formation of the United Arab Republic led to al-Nāṣir’s surging recognition because the chief of a secular, socialist, and republican Pan-Arabism (Baba, 1992). The values he represented posed a direct menace to the area’s autocratic regimes. After succeeding his brother, King Fayṣal, a political and diplomatic maven, seized the chance to champion Pan-Islamism. Following years of efforts that included the inspiration of the Muslim World League in 1962, he leveraged the aftermath of the 1967 battle to take decisive motion in 1969.
Although studying the OIC as a purely anti-Israeli establishment can be removed from actuality, the political, in Schmittian phrases, was deeply rooted within the designation of Israel because the enemy. The wrestle towards Israel offered a typical framework by which cooperation on a spiritual foundation could possibly be promoted and the group’s identification strengthened, whereas the pervasiveness of Palestine-related considerations allowed for an additional complexification of the OIC’s construction by the institutionalization of Committees and Teams particularly devoted to the trigger, such because the Al-Quds Committee, the Six-Social gathering Committee on Palestine, and the Ministerial Contact Group on the Query of Palestine and Jerusalem (Alrantisi, 2025). Furthermore, Israel as a typical reference level of opposition has continued to form collective motion, as proven by Saudi Arabia’s name for an unprecedented joint Arab-Islamic extraordinary summit on 11 November 2023 in Riyadh, a format replicated in 2024 and 2025. Whereas the Arab League has traditionally confirmed unable to create a typical entrance able to transcending nationwide pursuits or, in different phrases, of stopping nationalism from changing into nationwide particularism (Manduchi, 2017), Pan-Islamism has confirmed its function as a main automobile for collective motion, leveraging the identification of a typical adversary to bridge the hole between divergent nationwide agendas.
OIC’s Inside Position-play
Though, in response to its Constitution, OIC MS are ‘equal in rights and obligations’ (Artwork. 2), some nations exert extra affect than others, successfully selling their pursuits inside particular niches. Constructivist analyses spotlight, as an example, how the group’s foundational ideas are interpreted by MS in response to their respective identities and pursuits. In such situations, the Saudi conception of the ʾummah as a purely spiritual entity contrasts with that of Iran, which views it as a theological-political entity; in the meantime, Pakistan perceives it as a safety neighborhood, whereas Turkey and Malaysia reframe the idea by the lens of moderation and modernization (Sheikh, 2003; Kayaoglu, 2015). Balances of energy, identities, and values, nevertheless, are mutable variables that must be reassessed periodically in IR.
The disaster that divided the GCC in 2017, pushed by Qatar’s proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood and promoted by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, pushed the Gulf monarchies to search out frequent floor with Israel with a purpose to face the perceived menace posed by Islamism, Turkey, and Iran (Mohamed, 2024). Studying the Abraham Accords normalization course of between Saudi Arabia and Israel on this mild permits one to understand a possible reconfiguration of roles inside the OIC: as soon as the nation that hosts two of the holiest websites in Islam (Medina and Mecca) strikes away from the centrality of the Palestinian trigger, the area it had lengthy occupied inside the group turns into open to contestation. The assaults on 7 October 2023 and the next battle offered Turkey, the primary Muslim-majority nation to have acknowledged Israel, with a chance to recalibrate its stance: the normalization initiatives of 2022 had been changed by Erdoğan’s harsh criticisms and an escalation of tensions with Netanyahu.
Turkey, along with Qatar, performed an important function in mediating the ceasefire settlement between Hamas and Israel, whereas on the identical time pursuing a international coverage geared toward consolidating its place as a regional energy, a trajectory that has more and more been perceived in Israel as a supply of concern, at occasions much more vital than Iran (Ynet, 2020; Bar’el, 2025). To pursue this function, Turkey has progressively distanced itself from the place it had lengthy occupied each outdoors and inside the OIC: that of a bridge-country, an Islamic-Western actor in a position to mediate between totally different political and cultural spheres, in addition to a secular chief oriented towards selling Islamic artwork and tradition (Kayaoglu, 2015). Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu’s election as Secretary-Normal in 2004 positioned Turkey in a distinguished function inside the group, selling moderation and interreligious dialogue and additional shaping its identification inside the OIC. Whether or not Turkey shall be prepared to consolidate its more and more confrontational stance in direction of Israel and to make the Palestinian trigger a defining element of its function inside the group stays an open query. This difficulty additionally extends to different strategic decisions, such because the OIC’s engagement with India as an rising energy (Kulaklikaya, 2025) or the attainable intensification of tensions surrounding Kashmir (Rubin, 2025).
Then again, Turkey’s historic bridge-role could possibly be reinterpreted or partially assumed by Pakistan. In contrast to Turkey, Pakistan is a founding member of the OIC. To maneuver on this path would indicate a shift from its conventional function inside the group, usually characterised by a robust safety orientation, its standing as the one Muslim nation to own nuclear weapons, and its use of veto energy in ways in which have restricted the inclusion of Indian and Chinese language Muslims (Kayaoglu, 2015). The ‘Islamabad Peace Talks’ of April 2026, regardless of their restricted outcomes, had been pushed extra by financial than safety concerns (Peltier, 2026). Though Pakistan has beforehand engaged in mediation efforts, significantly with regard to Iran (Pirzada, 1987), its function in facilitating dialogue between the USA and Iran has contributed to presenting it as a doubtlessly dependable middleman, able to repositioning itself inside the OIC.
A Matter of Memberness: The place Does the Constitutive Enemy Match?
In an article titled Porous organizational boundaries and related states: introducing memberness in worldwide organizations (2023), Hofmann et al. present a helpful framework to maneuver past the binary conception of membership in worldwide organizations (IOs) and the unique concentrate on formal members. They account for the affect exerted by so-called third-party states, particularly international locations that don’t meet the formal standards of membership, whether or not by way of language, geography, or spiritual composition, however that may nonetheless purchase the standing of observers, companions, or associates. Their goal is to conceptualize these actors as able to influencing IOs. They introduce the idea of memberness, a variable geared toward capturing what related states do inside an IO. They distinguish between three varieties of memberness: payrollers, which give general-purpose materials contributions; sponsors, which give ideational inputs that form the allocation of sources; and advisors, which give technical information and experience. In mild of the dynamics outlined above inside the OIC, and contemplating its particular historic and ideological trajectory, increasing this framework permits for a broader understanding of how IOs’ inner configurations are formed in response to exterior actors and occasions.
Constructing on this typology, I suggest the idea of destructive memberness to explain a state that, whereas formally excluded from an IO, exerts structural affect over it by functioning as its constitutive enemy. In contrast to payrollers, sponsors, or advisors, a quasi-non-MS shapes the group not by direct participation however by its place within the worldwide system, which compels member states to react, outline themselves in opposition, and institutionalize that opposition.
If one asks which state most deeply influences the OIC, the reply is determined by how the vary of related actors is outlined. Limiting the evaluation to member states excludes actors reminiscent of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which have nonetheless influenced the group (Karčić, 2013). Increasing it to incorporate third-party states nonetheless dangers overlooking a pivotal actor that has formed the OIC’s agenda and identification to a substantial extent. Amongst Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Turkey, on the one hand, and Israel on the opposite, dismissing the latter on the premise of its non-membership obscures the extent to which most of the group’s defining moments have been formed, at the very least partially, by Israeli home and international insurance policies. Although critics have pointed to the OIC’s restricted effectiveness in advancing the Palestinian trigger, the group has nonetheless contributed to the development of what has been described as ‘a robust pro-Palestinian norm amongst Muslim states… [socializing] Muslim leaders throughout the globe right into a pro-Palestinian world-view’ (Kayaoglu, 2015, 62). From a constructivist perspective, the identification of an enemy, understood in Schmittian phrases, performs a major function in shaping how an IO understands itself and its place within the worldwide enviornment.
To revert the plot of Azem’s The Guide of Disappearance (2019), by which Palestinians abruptly disappear and Israel is left to query its identification with out them, one could ask what would grow to be of the OIC if Israel’s function as a constitutive enemy had been to be essentially altered. Whether or not by a full withdrawal from the occupied territories or by extra coercive insurance policies, such a shift would alter the situation of destructive memberness on which a major a part of the group’s identification has been constructed. This doesn’t indicate that the OIC lacks different features: present literature has highlighted its function in selling financial cooperation and Islamic finance amongst its member states (Ma & Hou, 2015; Majeed, 2015; Badreldin, 2020). On the identical time, the centrality of the Palestinian difficulty stays a key ingredient in understanding its improvement.
How Israel’s place is framed, then, turns into essential for extending this evaluation past the OIC. Israel is neither a member state nor a third-party actor in formal phrases, but it exerts a type of affect that differs from that of each classes. Via its bilateral relations with member states, and thru its capability to activate or de-escalate points such because the standing of Jerusalem or the situations in Gaza, it impacts the group’s agenda and inner cohesion. On this sense, Israel might be seen as some of the structurally influential actors shaping the OIC, even when this affect operates in a different way from that of its member states. Because the group’s constitutive enemy, it doesn’t promote a specific interpretation of the ʾummah from inside the institutional framework. Its affect is oblique, and infrequently not absolutely intentional in its mechanisms, even when it produces observable political results. Processes of normalization with international locations reminiscent of Morocco or Saudi Arabia, as an example, can contribute to redefining these states’ roles inside the OIC and the positions they advance. Israel’s place can due to this fact be understood by way of destructive memberness: a quasi-non-MS whose affect operates by the structural strain it exerts on member states’ identities slightly than by institutional participation. The type of gentle energy at play on this case is peculiar, because it derives much less from deliberate technique than from the political penalties of Israel’s existence and insurance policies.
Re-thinking the OIC
Beginning the evaluation of the Group of Islamic Cooperation by a Schmittian lens dangers overlooking the truth that enmity is a traditionally produced and institutionally mediated situation slightly than a transhistorical fixed. The ideas of quasi-non-MS and destructive memberness are right here proposed as correctives: heuristic instruments geared toward mapping how a non-member state can, voluntarily or involuntarily, form an IO’s identification, agenda, and inner equilibrium by its international and home insurance policies.
In mild of the latest developments of the Israel-Palestine difficulty, a rethinking of the OIC seems needed. Like different worldwide organizations, it operates as an intergovernmental discussion board whereas additionally performing as a producer of collective norms and identities. On this context, Israel occupies a structurally central place inside the OIC’s political and normative horizon. It’s each an object of collective positioning and, not directly, an element that contributes to shaping that positioning.
These member states that pursue normalization threat opening area for different actors, reminiscent of Iran, Turkey, Qatar, and varied Islamist actions, to border themselves as the first defenders of the Palestinian trigger and of a broader Islamic political identification. Developments within the Israel-Palestine battle ought to due to this fact be learn not solely of their rapid geopolitical dimension, but in addition by way of their implications for the interior equilibrium of the OIC and the continued reconfiguration of roles, identities, and types of management inside it.
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Additional Studying on E-Worldwide Relations
