OIC: "Combating Islamophobia is and will continue to be one of the biggest challenges faced by the Muslim World"

Well, Jihad Watch can offer a handy five-point plan for countering "Islamophobia":1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Don't thank us, just get to work. "Islamic body seeks new role to fight 'Islamophobia'," by Diadie Ba for Reuters:

DAKAR (Reuters) - Facing "Islamophobia" in the West, the world's biggest Islamic body is seeking to rebrand itself this week as a forum for settling conflicts peacefully and for redistributing wealth to the world's poorest states.

So, in other words, global pressure and scrutiny have gotten the organization to do something constructive. Or at least to pay lip service and try to look busy.

At a summit on Thursday and Friday in Senegal, the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will seek to agree on a modern charter that will give it a more active, influential role as the voice of Islam in a globalised world.

OIC leaders meet in Dakar at a time when suspicion in the West about the Muslim world remains high, still colored by the September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda in the name of militant Islam.

Subsequent attacks by Islamic militants in Spain and Britain, coupled with the U.S.-led "war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, have stoked fears of a global clash of civilizations.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu called for a concerted effort by the group to promote dialogue and mutual respect with the non-Muslim world to fight hatred and bigotry.

"Combating Islamophobia is and will continue to be one of the biggest challenges faced by the Muslim World," he told OIC foreign ministers meeting in Dakar.

With its members spanning the Middle East, Africa and Asia, differences of race, language and history, and even religious observance, have often prevented the world Islamic community -- known as the Ummah -- from acting as a unified, cohesive force.

The OIC groups some of the planet's richest countries, such as oil producers Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, with poor African nations like Guinea Bissau, Niger and Burkina Faso who languish at the bottom of U.N. development rankings.

Senegal, hosting its second OIC summit in 17 years, wants the Islamic Ummah to harness its geographical reach and immense resources so it can punch at its full weight in the world arena and assist its poorest members, mostly in Africa.

"The OIC has existed for 30 years but is still trying to find itself," host President Abdoulaye Wade told Reuters ahead of the March 13-14 summit in Dakar, whose roads and avenues have been given a face-lift for the Islamic gathering.