AFP: JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Growing Islamophobia echoes the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1930s with US leaders resisting it but Europeans abetting the trend for political gain, the head of the world's largest Islamic group said.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said xenophobia directed at Muslim immigrants was taking hold, especially in Europe.
Vote-seeking politicians were advancing extremist groups behind the anti-Muslim sentiment.
"This issue has become a political agenda item," the Turkish head of the 58-member OIC told AFP in an interview, while stressing that Islam was also a European religion.
"What worries me is that political authorities or political parties, instead of stopping this, or fighting this, some of them are using this for their political ends, to gain more popular support in elections," he said.
"I'm afraid that we are going through a process like the beginning of the '30s of the last century, when an anti-Semitic agenda became politically a big issue (together with) the rise of fascism and Naziism .... I think now we are in the first stages of such a thing."
A "pandemic of Islam vilification" is rising steadily, he warned, as documented by the OIC's newly-established office to monitor Islamophobia around the globe. >>> Paul Handley (AFP) | Friday, November 05, 2010
