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Rabat – UN expert Ahmed Shaheed yesterday warned the UN Human Rights Council that institutional islamophobia is reaching epidemic levels. Ahmed Shaheed presented his annual report to the rights council as part of his role as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Persistent global Islamophobia is not an accident, Shaheed warned the UN, it is driven by states.
“Islamophobia builds imaginary constructs around Muslims that are used to justify state-sponsored discrimination, hostility, and violence against Muslims,” Shaheed stated, adding that these result in “stark consequences for the enjoyment of human rights including freedom of religion or belief.”
The theme of the report issued by the special rapporteur on the freedom of religion or belief this year was “Countering Islamophobia/ Anti-Muslim Hatred to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief.”
In it, Shaheed’s office “examines how Islamophobia/anti-Muslim hatred infringes upon freedom of religion or belief.”
Undermining personal freedoms
Islamophobia is both persistent and purposefully driven, undermining personal freedoms of Muslims across the world through “discrimination, hostility, and violence towards Muslim individuals and communities.”
The report presents the World Trade Center attacks in New York on 11 September 2001 as the starting point of an era of Islamophobia, targeting nearly 1.6 billion Muslims. The horrific acts of an extremist fringe has resulted in “institutional suspicion of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim,” the report warned this “has escalated to epidemic proportions.”
According to the UN report, Islamophobia has “served to perpetuate, validate, and normalize discrimination, hostility, and violence towards Muslim individuals and communities.”
“Human rights monitors and affected communities stress that many Muslims feel pressure to conceal or underplay their religious identity to make themselves less identifiable as Muslims or seem more “moderate” in an effort to reduce State and public suspicion, to avoid attacks, and to exercise their agency and human rights,” the report stated.
Persistent and state-driven
This persistent and state-driven Islamophobia does not only hurt Muslims, but anyone “perceived” to be as such as many conflate religion with race, according to the UN. Islamophobia, the UN report adds, infringes on several key human rights and calls for an urgent response.
That response, the UN report advises, should constitute a “human rights approach to countering discrimination and intolerance engendered by Islamophobia and to better ensure that measures for addressing the phenomenon are grounded in international law and uphold the human rights of all.”
Yesterday, UN Special Rapporteur Shaheed warned the Human Rights Council of the dire impact this persistent and institutional Islamophobia is having.
“In such climates of exclusion, fear and distrust, Muslims report that they often feel stigma, shame, and a sense that they are ‘suspect communities’ that are being forced to bear collective responsibility for the actions of a small minority,” Shaheed said.
Shaheed advised the council on the road ahead. “I strongly encourage States to take all necessary measures to combat direct and indirect forms of discrimination against Muslims and prohibit any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence,” he said.
