There is a conference on Islamophobia in Istanbul this weekend sponsored by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. (and a separate scholarly conference on the same topic next week.)
The aim of the conference is to “establish a dialogue among those interested in analyzing the phenomenon of Islamophobia objectively by tracing the roots and practices of discriminatory policies against Muslim societies in order to understand the context in which racism against Islam has developed and the role it plays today in undermining Muslim human rights.”
The PLO was invited to the conference, and – as it does when it joins any international initiative – it will attempt to hijack the conference to make it into an anti-Israel hatefest.
The Palestinian representative has stated that he will demand that the final communique of the conference include “a clear condemnation of Israel for its role in supporting a campaign of Islamophobia, and it should stress that confronting Islamophobia in the world requires solving the Palestinian issue in a just solution that guarantees the rights of the Palestinian people in an independent state according to international resolutions with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Keep in mind that by any reasonable metric, Israel gives Muslims more rights and freedoms than most Western countries do – no limits on minarets, no limits on women wearing Islamic dress, and a higher percentage of Muslims in official roles than probably any other Western country. (Even Algeria just passed a law limiting women wearing burqas.)
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