Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Malaysia yesterday called for an end to widespread “Islamophobia”, saying stereotyping and prejudice against Muslims risked sparking off large-scale conflicts.
“Worldwide, the image of Islam...has suffered primarily as a result of a perception of association with extremism, radicalism and poverty,” Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told a seminar.
“Islamophobia is a problem. I think we need to handle and tackle it appropriately,” he said, adding it needed to be “stopped dead in its tracks” to ensure “large-scale conflagration among and within societies does not occur.”
Syed Hamid said Islam continues to be distorted in the international media, and that more cross-cultural dialogues should be held to “foster deeper understanding and bridge the gap between the East and West.”
“There is a fear that the world will be divided according to civilization, religion. So all efforts are being undertaken to get rid of prejudices and phobia about certain ethnic groups,” he said.
The minister also said that the Muslim world needed a mechanism to regulate fatwas, or religious decrees, to prevent differences of interpretation that make Muslims vulnerable to outside propaganda and attacks.
“There may be a need to establish a mechanism to have a common fatwa on certain contentious issues rather than each giving his own interpretation which can create divisions within the Muslim community,” he said.
Syed Hamid said that the world remained unstable in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“The threat of international terror is as real today as it was then,” he said, adding that acts of terrorism were now occurring in places which were not points of terror prior to Sept. 11.
“I think we are living in a world that is full of fear and doubts about security.”
Mainly-Muslim Malaysia has always maintained that the root cause of terrorism must be understood in order to come up with a long-term solution, he said.
“Military solution is not the answer. You have to win the hearts and minds of the people.”
As the current chair of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s biggest grouping of Islamic nations, Malaysia is driving a campaign to lift the Muslim world out of poverty by focusing on economic development.
This week it is hosting a range of meetings on business, finance and the information technology sector in the Islamic world, on the sidelines of the annual board meeting of the Islamic Development Bank, the OIC’s investment arm.
Malaysia’s government promotes a moderate version of Islamic in this multicultural nation, which is also home to large Indian and Chinese minorities, but there is a constant battle with religious hardliners.