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Rabat – The Moroccan Association of Malaga has launched an application to combat Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims.
The NGO considers the application as part of the National Program for the Prevention of Islamophobia.
The program seeks to protect the Muslim community in Spain against the rising scourge of Islamophobia and its circumstances.
The NGO said that the European Council and the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination define Islamophobia as a “form of racism and xenophobia manifested through hostility, exclusion, rejection, and hatred against Muslims.”
The National islamophobia Prevention Program, according to the NFO, is co-financed by the Asylum, Migration, and Integration Fund (FAMI).
The program seeks to “give specialized attention to cases of discrimination based on Islamophobia, improving the victims’ knowledge of their rights and existing resources,” as well as to increase the level of awareness and ability “to detect discriminatory incidents caused by Islamophobia.”
Part of the program, the application is available on Google Play for free. Europa Press believe that 46% of Islamophobic attacks occur on the internet.
Anadolu Agency reported in March that religious discrimination and hate crimes in Spain have increased, quoting a report from the Spanish Ministry of Interior.
Miguel Angel Aguilar, a coordinator for services dealing with hate and discrimination crimes in Barcelona, told the press that his country is observing an increase of hate crimes “even though not at an alarming level, in Islamophobia and attacks against Muslims, and in religious hate in conversations on social media.”
The report stated that there has been a 120 % increase in hate crimes in 2017.
Aguilar, according to Anadolu Agency, said that 39 out of 41 cases “related to religious hate crimes in 2017 were about Islamophobia.”
Catalonia tops the list of regions in which religious hate crimes occur. The region is home to 2 million Muslims.
