“Islamophobia” and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday. The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.
“The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of racism and racial discrimination,” Pakistan’s representative to the U.N., Masood Khan, said at a meeting of the planning body, or “prepcom bureau,” according to prepared remarks. Speaking on behalf of the OIC, Khan told the meeting that “there has been a stark rise in hate crimes, discrimination, racial profiling and intolerance against Muslims in many countries.”
The Hudson Institute’s “Eye on the U.N.” project, which is observing the process in Geneva, described it Monday as the U.N.’s “latest anti-Jewish and anti-American extravaganza.”