The OIC hosted several journalists from New York at its headquarters in Yıldız Palace as part of a trip organized by its representative office to the United Nations. Answering a question, İhsanoğlu said the US’s image in the Muslim world was severely tarnished because of the previous administration but Obama’s efforts to remedy that are welcomed. “They [Muslims] are now expecting concrete steps to resolve a set of issues,” he added.İhsanoğlu also discussed a variety of other subjects at his meeting with the American journalists. He particularly denounced terrorist activities carried out in the name of Islam. “Those [terrorist] groups are marginal in the Islamic world, and their acts do not bind Muslims,” he said, adding that democratic values will become more internalized in the Muslim world in parallel with economic development and the rise of the middle class.
Touching upon the topic of secularism in Turkey, İhsanoğlu said the country has no problem with being secular and its history of modernization dates back to the Ottoman Empire, as it had a constitution, parliament and elections back then. He also said there is not a class of clergy in Islam and that mosques do not hold the same place churches have in Christianity. “There has not been a state-church kind of clash in the Muslim world,” he stated.
