News

The World Muslim Communities Council calls on the Fiqh Councils, religious institutions, and legislative bodies to accelerate the criminalization of hate speech, contempt for religions and beliefs, and incitement against them, through atonement of the other, and delegitimizing the presence of their followers. The Council recalls what the UAE did in 2015,  where the President issued a decree by law No. 2, criminalizing hate speech, discrimination and contempt for religions, and stipulated that it is not permissible to use and employ freedom of expression or opinion to justify contempt for religions, incitement against their followers, or spreading hate speech and discrimination.

 The World Muslim Communities Council's warning comes after a new wave of religious exploitation to mobilize young people for violence and terrorism. It is similar to that wave that preceded the events of September 11, 2001, in which a religious discourse prevailed, employing religious texts for political agendas, using the loyalty and disavowal out of their individual religious content for a political ideology related to relations between religions, states and societies. This led to the emergence of a generation of young people engaging in violence led to major international events such as the September events that had disastrous consequences for the Islamic world.

 The Council affirms that the new wave of rhetoric justify violence and terrorism under the slogan of loyalty and disavowal, and the misconception of religion that denies the previous messengers and beliefs, and makes the People of the Book a legitimate target for terrorism and murder under arguments and pretexts that have no basis in the Holy Qur’an which said explicitly and clearly "Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." (Al-Baqarah: 62). This verse put four rules: faith in God, judgment day, good deeds, and previous messengers, which gathered believers of three religions. Therefore, Allah commands us to believe in books and Messengers without distinction or discrimination "The Messenger believeth in what hath been revealed to him from his Lord, as do the men of faith. Each one (of them) believeth in Allah, His angels, His books, and His messengers. "We make no distinction (they say) between one and another of His messengers." And they say: "We hear, and we obey: (We seek) Thy forgiveness, our Lord, and to Thee is the end of all journeys." (Al-Baqarah: 285)

 The World Muslim Communities Council calls on the major religious institutions in the Islamic world to confront this wave of hate speech that based on distorting religious texts to achieve political agendas, before the situation worsens in light of the state of intellectual and cultural fluidity that the world suffers from, with the use of social media for mass mobilization. The Council also calls on the representative and legislative councils to work on issuing national and international laws that criminalize exaggeration and atonement, and prosecute their theorists and the countries that support them.