Al-Azhar calls for enacting law criminalizing Islamophobia

CAIRO – 16 June 2022: Al-Azhar Institution, the top Sunni Islamic Institution in the world, called for enacting a new law on the protection of mosques and the confrontation of Islamophobia.

The Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism called for an urgent need to enact a new law that guarantees the protection of mosques, confronts Islamophobia and criminalizes it explicitly to ensure the protection of Muslims, and their families and places of worship.

The call was issued following continuous follow-up of the hate speech against Islam and Muslims that has spread in many European countries, the observatory said in a statement on Thursday.

The observatory mentioned that The Norwegian Brandelij organization has issued a report about crimes of discrimination revealing that a total of 768 attacks were recorded against mosques in Germany in the period between 2014 and 2021, which means that a mosque was attacked every two days.

In the first quarter of 2022, 83 cases of hostility against Islam were recorded.

Talking about Islamophobia, Al Azhar Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb said in June 2019 that western media promoted the wrong image of Islam through the term “Islamophobia,” despite the Islamic clergymen and scholars’ efforts to clarify and rectify this misconception

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb added that Islamophobia was rooted in politicians and media people’s culture due to funds of anti-Islam people.

“We have media and physical capabilities, as well as the new satellite channels that enable us to do justice to that religion that is followed by more than a billion and a half of Muslims [worldwide], but we care more about other interests that we lack,” Al Azhar Sheikh said.

“Up to this moment, we never heard about Christianity-phobia, Judaism-phobia, Buddhism-phobia or Hinduism-phobia. I believe that no newspaper or a channel or

TV program in the West or in the East dares to speak about a phobia of any other religion or belief,” Tayeb said.

Islam rejects violence among people of any religion, he added, saying “We do not hold the Christian religion, nor Christ [peace be upon him], nor Moses [peace be upon him] responsible for the terrible massacres of Muslims by believers of other religions. We do not label a religion by terrorism, violence or brutality. We remain deeply aware of the vast difference between religions' teachings, and the traders of religions,” he continued.

Additional reporting by Samar Samir