Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Jahangir Amuzegar, Managing the Oil 

Wealth: OPEC’s Windfalls and Pitfalls (London and New 

York: I.B. Tauris, 2001); Nathan J. Citino, From Arab 

Nationalism to OPEC: Eisenhower, Kind Saud, and the 

Making of U.S.-Saudi Relations (Bloomington: Indiana 

University Press, 2002); Dag Harald Claes, The Politics 

of Oil-Producer Cooperation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview 

Press, 2001).

Organization of the Islamic Conference

  

(OIC)

The OIC is an international body composed of 

57 member states, most of which have Muslim 

majorities. There are also 13 states and organiza-

tions that have observer status, including the a

rab

l

eagUe

, the United Nations, the Russian Fed-

eration, Thailand, and the m

oro

 n

ational

 l

ibera

-

tion

 F

ront

 of the Philippines. In June 2007 the 

United States announced that it would be sending 

a special envoy to OIC meetings. i

ndia

, with the 

world’s second largest Muslim population, has 

expressed a desire to obtain observer status, but 

this has been blocked by Pakistan, its chief rival 

in South Asia.

The OIC was established in Rabat, m

orocco

,

in September 1969. Its aims are to promote coop-

eration among Muslim countries and to serve as a 

collective voice for Muslim interests on the world 

scene. In the aftermath of World War II several 

new transregional power blocs of nation-states 

were created. These included the bloc of Western 

capitalist countries led by the United States and 

western European countries, the bloc of commu-

nist countries led by the Soviet Union and China, 

the nonaligned countries (such as India, i

ndone

-

sia

, and e

gypt

), as well as international organiza-

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