“There is this constant view that international human rights law doesn’t really allow you to look at concerns raised by Muslims, which I think is a fallacy,” says Prof Ahmed Shaheed who in 2021 submitted the first and only report by the UN dedicated to Islamophobia.
Shaheed served as the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion from 2016 to 2022. He serves as an adviser on ‘hate speech’ to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention. He is a member of the Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief convened by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The international human rights law professor tells Maktoob’s Shaheen Abdulla about debates around Islamophobia and his engagements with India.