It will bring together the heads of government of more than 50 Muslim countries and it will be Dr Mahathir Mohamad's swansong.
After 22 years as Malaysia's Prime Minister, he's due to step down on 31 October just days after the conference ends.
If that summit allows us a glimpse into the present and the past of the Muslim world, another gathering held in Kuala Lumpur in mid-September perhaps allows us a glimpse of the future.
Muslim youth
The International Conference of Young Muslim Leaders was staged as a precursor to the OIC meeting and brought together young people from almost every continent.
There were Russians, whose magnificent headgear evoked the domes of St Basil's cathedral in Moscow, Togoans in dazzling robes, Syrians in suits and even a brace of Americans.
Looking at the conference programme a cynic might have suggested that Malaysia had gathered together bright young Muslims from around the world to have a succession of elderly Malaysians lecture them on what a wonderful place Malaysia is.
But the themes those senior Malaysians explored - education, development and religious tolerance - were all issues that the delegates were keen to discuss.
Ishaq Kunle Sanni, the leader of Nigeria's Muslim Youth Movement put it best. "The devil makes work for idle hands, so finding jobs for the youth of tomorrow is a very crucial matter," he told me.
Social injustice
Among the factors that link those areas that have provided violent Islamic militants with their most fertile recruiting ground are poverty and unemployment. Underpinning much of the anger in the Islamic world is a sense of social injustice.
Religion, politics and economics are much more closely bound together in Islam, a faith that advocates brotherhood and equality among believers.
Compounding that sense of social injustice is what many see as political injustice.
"We continuously see our brothers, sisters and young people being killed by Western troops in Iraq, Palestine and other places - these are the scenes that are formulating the minds of young Muslims," says Ahmed Mohamed Rostom from the Future Youth Club in Egypt.
Images from the Palestinian Intifada, Afghanistan and Iraq are all adding to the radicalisation of Muslim youth.
That's further sharpened by the response of the authorities in the United States following the September 11 attacks. They have singled out people of Arab extraction or those with Muslim names for additional security checks when they travel to America.
Edina Lekovic, an American who edits Minaret, a magazine for American Muslims, says that they are left feeling that they have been labelled as potential terrorists by virtue of their faith.
"There are 1.2 billion of us and I think the majority of us are dealing with feeding our children, getting an education and finding success in our own lives, while maintaining our religion and what we feel are our ways of worship," she says.
Future leaders
Others raise the issue of education. It's not simply that many parts of the Muslim world lack decent schools and universities.
It's that there has also been a growth in the number of madrasas or religious colleges turning their backs on the wider world and preaching a very insular conservative message.
A significant minority have been linked to the rise in violent militant groups. Many of the delegates wanted to see such schools reformed.
These were not radicals gathered in Kuala Lumpur. No representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Taleban here.
No, these were potential leaders of the Islamic world in Malaysia's own image, mainstream, inclusive of other faiths and engaged in the modern world.
Parting shot
In a sense the conference was preaching to the converted. All the more curious that the Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad should close the event with a bellicose call to arms.
For Dr Mahathir Muslims should master science so the world of Islam can stand up to the West.
"We need modern weapons. We need tanks, battleships, fighter planes, knowledge of rockets," he told the delegates. "These are the weapons that can strike fear into the hearts of our enemies and defend us."
It was a discordant note in a gathering that had focused on constructive solutions to the problems Muslim communities face.