The World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) has launched a scathing attack on a report that focused on combating defamation in religions in particular Islamphobia, asserting that at the heart of the issue, 'is not the defamation of Islam or baseless Islamophobia, but … dictators of Islam are now as ever consumed and driven by apostaphobia!"
Elizabeth Kendal, the Principal Researcher at the WEA RLC, wrote in the ministry's newsletter that all religious liberty advocates and everyone who is interested in free speech should study Doudou Diene's report, who recommended the international human rights covenants should be 'reinterpreted and amended' to deal with Islamophobia.
Diene's reported Isamophobia arose due to the defamation of Islam which in turned drove Muslims to extremism (par. 17); furthermore, he believed that Islamophobia should be defined as 'a baseless hostility and fear vis-avis Islam, and as a result a fear of and aversion towards all Muslims or the majority of them."
These generalisations were untrue, Kendal responded in the newsletter, where she argued that any efforts to tie religion to race should be rejected.
Kendal also wrote right from the beginning the report took a bias viewpoint by only examining, the democratic parties, governmental alliances, traditionally democratic parties (par. 6) but was silent on totalitarian regimes and religious dictatorships.
The partiality of the report was apparent Kendal wrote, where Diene cited the Crusaders as an example of early Isamophobia without mentioning jihads, Dhimmitude (laws governing non-Muslims minority), and the fact that the unsuccessful Crusaders to the Holy Land were counterinsurgencies in response to imperialistic Islamic jihads.
Diene blamed the perpetuation of the 'clash of civilisations and religions' theory derived from the Cold-War mindset that caused contemporary Isalmophobia, rather than, as Kendal pointed out, Islamic imperialism, repression and terrorism.
This report written by Diene was submitted to the sixth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in late August, which invited the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to report on all manifestations of defamation of religions and in particular on the serious implications of Islamophobia on the enjoyment of all rights at its sixth session.
Kendal gave a grim warning to everyone concluding that if the forces of liberty do not have the number to defeat Diene's recommendation to amend the covenants, then the "Islamisation of international human rights will have begun."