First UN Islamophobia seminar flays violence in name of Islam

By: Nabil Raza

UNITED NATIONS: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday opened the first UN seminar on confronting Islamophobia with a plea not to judge Muslims by the acts of extremists who deliberately target and kill civilians.

The daylong forum came six months after a UN seminar devoted to confronting anti-Semitism, also a first for the world body. Both were part a series entitled “Unlearning Intolerance,” sponsored by the UN Department of Public Information.

Annan urged people to condemn terrorist and violent acts carried out in the name of Islam but which “no cause can justify.”

"Muslims themselves, especially, should speak out, as so many did following the September 11 attacks on the United States, and show a commitment to isolate those who preach or practice violence, and to make it clear that these are unacceptable distortions of Islam,” he said.

Annan said “it is essential that solutions come from within Islam itself” and suggested that the Islamic scholarly principle of “ijtihad,” a process of critical inquiry, could foster free debate into what is good and bad in Muslim cultures as well as others.

He stressed that Islam “should not be judged by the acts of extremists who deliberately target and kill civilians.”

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