The Baku Initiative in the Fight Against Islamophobia

BAKU

We are in Baku on the occasion of the international conference titled "Embracing Diversity: Countering Islamophobia in 2024," organized in the name of combating Islamophobia. This is the second conference on Islamophobia held in Baku since the United Nations declared 15 March the International Day to Combat Islamophobia in 2022. The conference, held for the first time last year, was titled "Islamophobia as a Specific Form of Racism and Discrimination: New Global and Transnational Challenges."

Of course, it is not possible to say that there has been any improvement since last year in the display of Islamophobic crimes or symptoms of the disease. On the contrary, perhaps many more examples of the crimes or diseases on display have emerged. The burning of the Holy Qur'an in the middle of Europe, flagrantly, as a kind of ritual, with prior permission from the official authorities; the attacks and discrimination against Muslims in India, which are increasingly tied to an official discourse and policy, are rapidly moving to turn the vast country of India into an apartheid state in which Muslims are discriminated against as Muslims. The same regime has for many years been applied in its harshest form in East Turkestan to people for no reason other than that they are Muslims.

The matter has long since ceased to be merely a manifestation of some people's perceptions and feelings about Islam. In many places it has become a matter of a well-thought-out, designed policy.

The Islamophobia meeting in Baku is taking place at the very time when Israel is committing its genocidal crimes against Gaza in the most savage manner and under the witness of the "international" community. Frankly, this part adds a rather ironic dimension to the work being done and to all the words and speeches uttered. For this year's theme is "Embracing Diversity," and on this the world is rapidly going backwards. In a sense, precisely for this reason this title is like a bell of danger. For example, the unparalleled brutality to which people in Gaza are subjected, and the world's non-reaction to it, stem solely from their being Muslim.

If we set side by side the attitudes that Europe and the United States have displayed regarding Ukraine in the very recent past, the double standard on show is rubbed in our faces. The non-reaction displayed to the Gazans being made, step by step, victims of genocide cannot be attributed to any reason other than their being Muslim. Islamophobia is thus displayed as the de facto stance of all of Europe

as such.

The Western discourse that tries to justify Israeli aggression by pointing to the 7 October Hamas operation regards the occupying aggression displayed until now (for a hundred years) as a natural right in this form, and therefore regards resistance to this occupation as an injustice, meaningless and a terrorist crime. It is a strange paternalism, a form of racism, that does not recognize the right to refuse to be a victim. When you dig beneath European civilization, even beneath its Enlightenment, you see nothing other than this racism, which ties colonialism and occupations to a natural right.

Islamophobia too is, at root, a matter related to this racism. There is no such place as Palestine. Those who live in Palestine are not considered human anyway; at best they are animal-like beings, and their feelings, pains and sufferings have no meaningful significance. What has been done in these lands for a century is to make a land without people a homeland for the Jews, who are real human beings. And this logic is not limited to the Judaism that founded Israel, as we might suppose. The whole history of colonialism consisted in making lands inhabited by beings not considered human, and therefore lands without people, belong to Europeans, who are real human beings.

Sandew Hira, who attended the conference from the Netherlands and is the author of the recently published book Decolonizing the Mind, explained with rich examples how the racism that had found a place first of all in Judeo-Christian theological discourses in Europe took on a philosophical and scientific form with the Enlightenment. One reason why Europeans today do not raise their voices against the genocide that Zionism is committing against the Gazans is that they find nothing strange in this act against the Palestinians.

A Palestinian is not a Ukrainian, after all.

The 2nd Islamophobia Conference, organized jointly by the Baku International Multiculturalism Center, the International Relations Analysis Center and the Baku Initiative Group in partnership with the G20 Interfaith Forum, saw, as last year, very broad participation from all over the world. Within the framework of this year's theme, the aim is said to be to bring together professionals, academics and government officials to investigate the global, historical, theological and political dimensions that drive Islamophobia, and thus to address the intellectual roots of prejudice against Muslims and Islam. The goal is stated as creating an environment in which people of all faiths live together in harmony, diversity is celebrated, and the principles of justice and equality prevail. To this end, the aim is to hold this conference every year on the same dates as an activity with continuity.

Undoubtedly, in our first assessment of last year's conference, we said that the fact that such a conference was being held in Azerbaijan for the first time made it important in itself. After all, no one can say that the fact that Nagorno-Karabakh was kept under occupation for 30 years, under the watch of Western countries as well, has nothing to do with Azerbaijan's being Muslim. This Armenian occupation and the Western support or silence inevitably has an effect on Azerbaijanis that reminds them of their Islamic identity and brings the opposing feelings (phobias) to the side of their Muslim aspect.

The date on which we find ourselves in Azerbaijan coincides with a time when many important events recall themselves one on top of another: Gaza, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, developments that recall the importance of Islamic unity, and in particular the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of Nuri Pasha, the commander of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, which liberated Baku from enemy occupation, as a result of the blowing up of his weapons factory. Reading in Baku, at this time, the reminder on the subject by Selahaddin Eş of the Star newspaper takes on a different meaning.

And of course, welcoming the blessed month of Ramadan in Baku. On the eve of Ramadan, together with people who have come from all over the world, we are touring Shusha, the Islamic land liberated from Armenian occupation. We say may Gaza and all the occupied lands be next, and I hope that the blessed month of Ramadan, in which the Qur'an was revealed, brings good to all Muslims and becomes an occasion for them to be equipped with a mind and morality more intimate with the Qur'an.