World Evangelical Alliance Criticises UN Report on Islamophobia

The religious liberty arm of the World Evangelical Alliance has rebuffed last week's report from the UN claiming that the source of Muslim extremism is the "defamation" of Islam.

"I would propose that the very heart of the issue is not 'defamation' of Islam or 'baseless' Islamophobia," expressed Elizabeth Kendal of the WEA's Religious Liberty Commission, "but the fact that the dictators of Islam are now as ever consumed and driven by 'apostaphobia!'"

"Indeed the new openness brought to the world through globalisation and developments in information and communication technologies is causing the power stakeholders and religious dictators of the non-free world to be seriously gripped by apostaphobia - a well-founded fear of loss of adherents, which is manifested primarily as uncompromising repression and denial of fundamental liberties, by violent and subversive means," she said Monday.

Kendal, who serves as the principal researcher for the WEA RLC, was writing in response to a report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) written by Doudou Diene, the UN's special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

According to Diene, the "defamation" of Islam generates dangerous Islamophobia, which leads to the repression of Muslim rights and in turn drives Muslims to extremism.

He believes that Islamophobia should be defined as "a baseless hostility and fear vis-a-vis Islam, and as a result a fear of and aversion towards all Muslims or the majority of them."

In his report, Diene recommended that the international human rights covenants be "reinterpreted and amended" to deal with Islamophobia.

In response, Kendal said that the assertions in Diene's report were untrue, and argued that any efforts to tie religion to race should be rejected.

Kendal argued that the report took a bias viewpoint by only examining the democratic parties, governmental alliances, and traditionally democratic parties while staying silent on totalitarian regimes and religious dictatorships.

The partiality of the report was apparent, Kendal wrote, when Diene cited the Crusaders as an example of early Isamophobia without mentioning jihads, Dhimmitude (laws governing non-Muslims minority), and the fact that the unsuccessful Crusaders to the Holy Land were counter-insurgencies in response to imperialist Islamic jihads.

In his report, Diene also claimed that the perpetuation of the "clash of civilisations and religions" theory was derived from the Cold War mindset, which caused contemporary Islamophobia rather than, as Kendal pointed out, Islamic imperialism, repression and terrorism.

The UN special rapporteur's report was submitted to the sixth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) last week after Diene was invited to report on "the manifestations of defamation of religions and in particular on the serious implications of Islamophobia on the enjoyment of all rights".

"[Diene's] recommendation will no doubt be discussed in the next session of the UNHRC," Kendal reported in Monday's special prayer bulletin for the RLC.

She added that it was likely to elicit a resolution to draft an amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In her closing remarks, Kendal warned that if Diene's proposed amendments got the go ahead, then the "Islamisation of international human rights will have begun".