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UN Warns Against "Ever-Growing Scourge" of Religious Extremism
Religious extremism is an "ever-growing scourge" that falls primarily on women and minorities, according to a UN report released Thursday.
The report, focusing on 25 countries, said the epitome of extremism was Afghanistan, where the Taliban Islamic militia, "using religion as a political tool in the interests of power, have taken an entire society hostage."
Extremism, it said, was "also manifested with varying degrees of intensity in Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka."
"No single religion has a monopoly on religious extremism," the report said.
The 30-page report was written by Abdelfattah Amor, special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has transmitted the report to 189 members of the General Assembly.
In the report, the special rapporteur complained that time limits imposed by the U.N. General Assembly had allowed him to cover "a maximum period of three months" from May to July, and prevented him from doing high-quality work.
The report documented examples of intolerance ranging from the prosecution of blasphemy of a woman writer in Kuwait to the deaths of hundreds of people in religious clashes in Nigeria and Uganda.
Amor urged the General Assembly "to devote the fullest attention to religious extremism" and said that governments must "condemn the phenomenon unequivocally and combat it relentlessly in order to preserve the human right to peace."
He noted that an international conference is due to be held in Madrid, capital of Spain, in November this year on school education in relation to religion and belief, and he urged all states to contribute to it.
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