Morocco World News
Morocco World News
New York, September 29, 2012
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the member States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Friday called on the international community to strive towards the elimination of all tendencies towards hatred and polarization and for the criminalization of Islamophobia.
Following the Annual coordination of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, held on Friday on the sidelines of the 67th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, the Minister deplored the spread of provocative actions that aim at feeding intolerance between religions and cultures and escalating confrontation between them.
They “expressed strong condemnation of the production and projection of the reprehensible film insulting the noble Prophet (PBUH) by an irresponsible group in the US, resulting in unfortunate violent incidents”, while calling on the “the United Nations and its Secretary General to assume their responsibilities in countering irresponsible violations of producing media materials defaming religions and their symbols through criminalizing such defamatory acts against religions and their symbols.”
During the deliberations of the OIC annual meeting, most delegations stressed that Islam is the most targeted religion by these actions and hatred more than other religions, and urged General Assembly of the United Nations to pass a resolution that would make Islamophobia a type of racism and incitement to hatred.
In this regard, they called on the Organization of the Islamic Conference to play a leading role in coordinating the efforts of the Islamic countries and urge them to speak with one voice in international fora to combat Islamophobia.
During the General Debate of the UN General Assembly, most Muslim countries expressed their grave concern regarding the mounting hatred targeting Islam and its symbols across the planet, as well as discrimination against Muslims and called on member states to enact national laws that would criminalize Islamophobia.
