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December 7, 2004

UN seminar on Islamophobia:
Annan calls for end to negative stereotypes of Muslims

December 7, 2004 - Seeing Islam as a monolith, distorting its tenets and equating Arabs with the entire Islamic world are among the many practices that now make up the prejudice called Islamophobia and must be stopped, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said today.

"Islam's tenets are frequently distorted and taken out of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or to symbolize a rich and complex faith," he said in an address entitled "Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding," part of a UN-sponsored series on "Unlearning Intolerance." The daylong forum brought together academics and activists from around the world to discuss the growing phenomenon of anti-Muslim bias. Representatives of the New York Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), two leading American Muslim civil rights organizatiions, also attended the seminar.

"Some claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, or irrevocably hostile to modernity and the rights of women. And in too many circles, disparaging remarks about Muslims are allowed to pass without censure, with the result that prejudice acquires a veneer of acceptability."

No one should underestimate the resentment and sense of injustice that members of one of the world's great religions, cultures and civilizations felt as they looked at unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, the situation in Chechnya and the atrocities against Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Annan said.

"But we should remember that these are political reactions - disagreements with specific policies. All too often, they are mistaken for an Islamic reaction against Western values, sparking an anti-Islamic backlash," he said.

The first seminar in the series, organized by the Educational Outreach Section of the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), took place on 21 June with an opening address by Mr. Annan and fellow-Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as keynote speaker. It was called "Confronting Anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding."

Like other religions, Mr. Annan said, the Islamic world grouped together modernizers and traditionalists and the most populous Muslim countries are not Arab, but are located in non-Arab Asia, from Indonesia to part-Asian, part-European Turkey.

Despite the ferocity and prevalence of xenophobia, "people are not hard-wired for prejudice," he said. "In some cases they are taught to hate. In others, they are manipulated into it by leaders who exploit fear, ignorance, or feelings of weakness."

Unlearning intolerance was partly a matter of legally protecting human and civil rights, as well as providing relevant education, leadership, social integration and dialogue, he said.

Dialogue should include day-to-day contacts which "can be especially useful in demystifying the 'other'," Mr. Annan said.

In his keynote speech, Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University in Washington, DC, questioned the use today of the suffix "phobia," saying that when Islam rose and covered land from France to China within one century, the Christian West had a fear of Islam that was both religious and political.

By contrast, the non-Islamic world today was very powerful from many points of view. Unfortunately, the reservoir of historical consciousness had been resurrected and Islamophobia was not only a question of fear, but also a matter of hatred, Professor Nasr said.

Muslims were not trying to be aggressive, they were trying to be themselves, he said, but in many areas that effort had led to fanaticism and the fanaticism on one side was feeding the fanaticism on the other side.

In analyzing Islamophobia, therefore, it was important to take into account not only the role of extremism in Islam, but also the role of extremism among Christians and Jews, he said.

The first seminar was accompanied by a photo exhibition open to the public and entitled "Diaspora: Homelands in Exile" by Frederic Brenner. Today's event was highlighted by a similar photo exhibition, called "Islam," by Iranian photographer Abbas, a former president of the Magnum photographers' cooperative.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=12742&Cr=islam&Cr1=#

The Muslim Public Affairs Council attends the seminar

The seminar, which focused on the current realities of Islamophobia and the role of education and the media in countering damaging stereotypes, represented a historic opportunity for American Muslims to learn from and strategize with prominent participants in the ongoing international dialogue on Islam and Muslims.

To contribute to this important task, MPAC's delegation met with representatives from the United Nations, its Member States and affiliated non-governmental organizations, who emphasized the need to transcend tolerance. The 20-member group of scholars, professionals and community activists included MPAC's National Director Ahmed Younis, Communications Director Edina Lekovic and Washington, DC staffer Amin Alsarraf, as well as a representative of the New York Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

"The context of the on-going dialogue is tolerance, which represents a minimal connection between two particles," said Dr. Ahmad Kamal Aboul Magd, who is Professor of Public Law at Cairo University and Judge for the World Bank Administrative Tribunal. "We are fully aware of the eminent dangers that are continually crossing the boundaries of geography, politics and populations in the effort of making life more enjoyable for all people. Tolerance is very minimalist, negative, and passive. The same goes for coexistence."

In a panel addressing the role of education, Professor Noah Feldman, author of "After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy," characterized the pervasive nature of anti-Islam sentiment as a challenge to be met with honesty and objectivity.

"Even spreading a better understanding of Islam does not guarantee the end of Islamophobia, but it can protect against a particularly virulent response to misinformation," said Feldman, Associate Professor of Law at New York University. "Here in the United Nations, the principle that governs is that persons who disagree can nonetheless find common ground to benefit the greater good."

During the audience Q&A session which followed the panel, National Director Ahmed Younis introduced the delegation as a group of American Muslims who believe that there is no dissonance between being an American and a Muslim. He asked Feldman how he, in his capacity as a writer, educator and legal expert, could bolster such mainstream moderate voices.

"Muslim Americans have an extraordinary challenge in front of them – to go out to university campuses, to television, to write in newspapers and write books and to communicate their distinctive perspective. Be honest," Feldman responded. "Feel no need to be apologetic. When you see that a version of Islam that you find attractive should be pushed – say so. All I can do is tell you is that I’m looking forward to a day that an American of Jewish origin would not be called by the media to talk about Islam."

Giandomenico Picco, Special Adviser and Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for the UN Dialogue among Civilizations, articulated the source of phobias as a fear of change, which is compounded by the media attention given to individuals and groups with extreme views.

"It is time to take away from the hands of the extremists the ability to dictate the agenda," Picco said. Dr. Aziza Al-Hibri, University of Richmond law professor, and Amaney Jamal, Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University, also discussed the real consequences of extremism which undermines the work of moderates to claim their identity and define their religious and political beliefs independently.

"Too often, the diversity of Islam has been seen through the lens of extremism," said Dr. John Esposito, founder of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. "It will not be eradicated easily or soon. Therefore, we all have a critical role to play. Religious and political leaders, educators, and media people, the private and public sectors are charged today to promote inter-religious and intercultural dialogue that is grounded in mutual understanding of others.

"The message is simple: Islam is not the enemy, religious extremism is," added Esposito, who will be a keynote speaker during MPAC's national convention on December 18th.

“Islamophobia and tolerance derogatory terms”

Addressing the opening session of “Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding”, prominent Muslim thinker, Ahmad Kamal Abul Magd, criticized as derogatory the use of the two terms “Islamophobia” and “tolerance” when speaking about one of the three monotheistic religions.

“When we talk [for example] about anti-Semitism, we are talking about something concrete about some people who are hostile to Semitic people as we focus on the agony of the victims of this phenomenon,” said Abul Magd, who is the vice-president of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights.

But when “we talk about Islamophobia we do the opposite thing…We focus on the subjective state of mind of whoever for good reason or without reason is imagining a certain threat.”

He said the core of the problem lies in the fact that “Muslims and Arabs are suffering from a wave of hatred and a wave of mistreatment.”

“So I would rather very much substitute the word anti-Islamism for the word Islamophobia.”

Abul Magd further said he finds the word “tolerance” derogatory of Islam.

“When we speak about tolerance we speak about something very minimalist, very negative and very passive,” he said.

“What we are aiming at is such more positive than the mere tolerance. Usually you don’t tolerate something you admire or like but you tolerate something you are going to live with although you do not like.”

Abul Magd added peoples of the world need to act in unison to “make life on this planet more peaceful and more enjoyable. So we need each other to join hands in a common effort.”

“We need to use other terms other than tolerance and the same goes for co-existence.”

Abul Magd further regretted that the West “all of a sudden” has forgotten the remarkable contributions and cooperation Islam has made to the humankind.

“Now we are faced with depicting Islam as a threat to the march of progress, democracy, modernism and peace…The sadness in this irony or paradox is that we are made to forget a long history of cooperation not only in past ages but also in the last century…the last half century.

“How could we forget, for example, during the World War II all Muslim countries and the Arab world sided with allied forces against [then Nazi] Germany and helping the so-called free world to curb the growing influence of communism and Marxism?” He wondered.

“How could we forget the role played by Islam as a faith, a system of law, a code of values and a code of ethics?”

Ahmed Kamal Aboulmagd also pointed out that the notion of "holy war" does not exist in Islam.

"In Islam and in Islamic literature there is no such thing as 'a holy war.' This is [a] Western invention that was attributed to us, I don't know how and why and when," Aboulmagd said. "In the Koran, there are many verses that say [that] when you need it [jihad], and you Muslims need it -- [you need] explicit authorization to engage even in a war of self-defense. So the concept of holy war is always a hateful thing."

A Matter of Hatred

Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University in Washington, DC, also questioned the use today of the suffix “phobia,” saying that when Islam rose and covered land from France to China within one century, the Christian West had a fear of Islam that was both religious and political, according to the UN web site.

“By contrast, the non-Islamic world today was very powerful from many points of view. Unfortunately, the reservoir of historical consciousness had been resurrected and Islamophobia was not only a question of fear, but also a matter of hatred,” he said in his keynote speech.

Muslims were not trying to be aggressive, they were trying to be themselves, he added, but in many areas that effort had led to fanaticism and the fanaticism on one side was feeding the fanaticism on the other side.

“In analyzing Islamophobia, therefore, it was important to take into account not only the role of extremism in Islam, but also the role of extremism among Christians and Jews,” Nasr said.

The implications of Islamophobia

"The impact and implications, the influence of Islamophobia raised many questions and issues," said John Esposito, director of Washington's Georgetown University Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

"No. 1, it certainly feeds the perception in many parts of the Muslim world that it's not a war against global terrorism -- it's a war against Islam. It raises questions about the extent to which our [U.S.] domestic and foreign policies are influenced not simply by a concern about extremism that we need to address them, but in fact by Islamophobia."

Esposito called for more efforts from educators and the media to correct distorted perceptions and to promote inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.