World Evangelical Alliance criticises UN report on Islamophobia

WEA logoThe 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.

Christian Today, 20 September 2007