Thanks to Elbasy, the main city of Kazakhstan became the center of the OIC

Since the first years of sovereignty, the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Elbasy N. A. Nazarbayev has been carrying out large-scale work to strengthen the international authority of our country. The capital of Kazakhstan has become a landmark place for the second largest organization in the world after the UN and a key forum of Islamic states. Ten years ago-on June 28, 2011 (in the Year of the 20th anniversary of Independence of the Republic of Kazakhstan) - at the 38th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CMID of the OIC)held in Astana The Organization of the Islamic Conference was renamed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The organization was founded in September 1969 at the conference of Heads of Muslim States in Rabat with the aim of ensuring Islamic solidarity in the social, economic and political spheres, the fight against colonialism, neocolonialism and racism.

The OIC is the largest and most influential official governmental Muslim international organization. Currently, it unites 57 countries with a population of about 1.5 billion people.

Since joining the OIC in 1995, Kazakhstan has been steadily developing cooperation with the General secretariat, subsidiary bodies and institutions of the organization. Thus, Kazakh delegations took part in all the largest summits of the Organization. In addition, Kazakhstan has participated in meetings of foreign ministers since 1996.

The creation and maintenance of close partnership relations with Muslim countries meets the long-term interests of Kazakhstan, which were formulated by Elbasy in his 2006 Address in the form of the need to develop cooperation with Islamic countries as one of the priorities of the republic's foreign policy.

Kazakhstan has become one of the first in the post-Soviet space to start working towards legislative support for the functioning of Islamic finance. And the main supporter of such promotion was Elbasy, who back in 2003 supported the initiative of the President of the Islamic Development Bank on the introduction of Islamic financial instruments in the country. In 2008, the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan was instructed to develop a separate bill on Islamic finance, which constantly monitored the issue of its interdepartmental coordination and approval in the country's Parliament.

The corresponding law was adopted in 2009. In accordance with it, amendments were made to a number of legislative acts (the Civil Code, the Tax Code, the Law "On Banks and Banking Activities" and the Law "On the Securities Market"), which generally laid the foundation for the development of the Islamic financial industry in the country and created the opportunity to open Islamic banks and Islamic investment funds in Kazakhstan. After the introduction of the new Law on Islamic Finance, the first commercial Islamic bank Al Hilal was established in Kazakhstan, which began its activities in the country in the spring of 2010.

In addition, the First President made significant steps to strengthen international and regional security, promote dialogue between the Islamic world and the West, counter Islamophobia and strengthen the non-proliferation regimes of weapons of mass destruction. And in these efforts, Elbasy found like-minded people who, in 2011, in the young capital of Kazakhstan, accepted the initiatives of the current chairman of the OIC with approval and enthusiasm.