There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, but the collective GDP of the 57 nations that are part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, is a trifling five percent of the world total, even if you round up the numbers. The solution to this incongruity? An Islamic common market.
  
The Organization of the Islamic Conference — whose member nations include oil-rich Saudi Arabia with its GNI of $10,430 as well as the desperately poor Chad, with its GNI of $260, and the until very recently war-torn Sierra Leone, with its GNI clocking in at US $200 — convened in Malaysia for the first World Islamic Economic Forum (think Davos, transported to Kuala Lumpur). Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the OIC chairman and Prime Minister of the host country, touted the financial and political benefits that could be accrued from unfettered — or, at least, less bureaucratically hindered — free trade between the 57 nations.  

Should such a trade agreement come to fruition, the nations would no doubt benefit; even some of the poorest member nations, such as Chad and Seirra Leone, are rich in gold and diamonds, respectively. The hinderances are the breathtaking levels of corruption within the countries that are making the nations’ economies underproductive, not to say crippled.  

Mimi Hanaoka