Iranian-Tied UK Human Rights Group Holds Annual Islamophobia Conference- Claims “Police States” Rising In Europe

The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) has announced its annu­al Islam­o­pho­bia Con­fer­ence, titled “The Attacks on Civ­il, Human and Polit­i­cal Rights for Mus­lims in Europe,” and sched­uled to have been held on Decem­ber 13. The con­fer­ence announce­ment states:

All across Europe there are increased attacks on the civ­il and human rights of Mus­lims by gov­ern­ments and are indi­ca­tions of the rise of police states in Europe.

The announce­ment cites alleged exam­ples in Britain, France, and Aus­tria, com­par­ing a pur­port­ed pro­pos­al in France to what Hitler did to the Jews in Ger­many. The con­fer­ence was held in coop­er­a­tion with two oth­er groups:

• Scot­land Against Crim­i­nal­iz­ing Com­mu­ni­ties (SACC) – A group which on its web­site (cur­rent­ly unavail­able) says it cam­paigns against laws and poli­cies whose effect is to crim­i­nal­ize polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ty, focus­ing on Britain’s anti-ter­ror­ism laws, said to be unjust and racist and shaped by for­eign policy.

• Decolo­nial Inter­na­tion­al Net­work (DIN) – A net­work which, accord­ing to its web­site, was formed based on the Lenin­ist con­cept of the van­guard par­ty, bring­ing togeth­er orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als in dif­fer­ent Euro­pean coun­tries which on the same themes along the same lines with­out know­ing of each other’s exis­tence, and is head­quar­tered in Holland.

Speak­ers included:

• Mohamed Al-Asi – A UK-based, U.S.-born imam, which, accord­ing to an Israeli NGO, has a his­to­ry of mak­ing accusato­ry state­ments against the U.S., Israel, and Jews. Accord­ing to a trans­la­tion, he said on Iran­ian TV in 2006 that “The events of 9/11 were planned by the Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion, to be used as a pre­text and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to fight terrorism”.

• Houria Bouteld­ja – A French-Alger­ian polit­i­cal activist and writer, said to be focus­ing on anti-racism, anti-impe­ri­al­ism, and Islamophobia

• Abed Choud­hury – IHRC, who wrote an arti­cle on the Decolo­nial Inter­na­tion­al Network’s (DIN) web­site, in which he stat­ed that Britain was a police state

• Ramón Gros­foguel – A Pro­fes­sor of Chicano/Latino Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Berkley, who was among the founders of the Decolo­nial Inter­na­tion­al Net­work (DIN)

• Mas­soud Shad­jareh – IHRC Chairman

The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) is a UK based NGO found­ed in 1997. Since 2007, it has had Spe­cial Con­sul­ta­tive Sta­tus with the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil (ECOSOC) of the Unit­ed Nations.  Its web­site says it works with dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions from Mus­lim and non-Mus­lim back­grounds “to cam­paign for jus­tice for all peo­ples regard­less of their racial, con­fes­sion­al, or polit­i­cal back­ground.” The IHRC is con­sid­ered sup­port­ive of the Iran­ian regime, and for many years has been cen­tral to orga­niz­ing the events of the annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Quds Day, ini­ti­at­ed by the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary regime. The IHRC’s chair­man is Mas­soud Shad­jareh, who is close to the anti-Israel web­site inminds.com and served as a direc­tor in the now inac­tive Mus­lim Chan­nel; his wife Arzu Mer­ali is a co-founder, writer, and researcher at the IHRC. Anoth­er Mus­lim Chan­nel direc­tor Shab­bir Has­s­analy, a schol­ar and web devel­op­er, is said by the UK Times to have been “one of a num­ber of indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions in the UK…whose views and activ­i­ties are close­ly aligned to the reli­gious ide­ol­o­gy of the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment.” He devel­oped appli­ca­tions for oth­er pro-Iran­ian orga­ni­za­tions such as the Iran­ian TV chan­nel Press TV and Ahlul­Bayt Islam­ic Mis­sion (AIM). In Octo­ber 2019, the Times report­ed that since 2013, the IHRC has also been receiv­ing dona­tions through the UK tax­pay­er-fund­ed Gift Aid scheme for char­i­ta­ble organizations.

Pre­vi­ous report­ing by the Glob­al Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) on the IHRC has included:

• A report ear­li­er today on an IHRC webi­nar held in ear­ly Novem­ber 2020 on the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions (BDS) Cam­paign against Israel, describ­ing Israel’s regime in terms of set­tler colo­nial­ism and apartheid.

• An Octo­ber 2020 report on a book launch in Tehran, which was pub­lished by the IHRC, and ana­lyzes the work of three lead­ing Amer­i­can think-tanks, accus­ing them of help­ing to frame U.S. poli­cies against the Islam­ic world and Islam­ic resis­tance [muqawamah] movements.

• An Octo­ber 2020 report on a webi­nar the IHRC held on the ‘One state solu­tion’ for the Palestine/Israeli con­flict with British and Israeli speakers.