A group of international Islamist organizations led by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, recently held a two-day conference on countering "Islamophobia" in which it recommends imposing Islamic blasphemy laws on the media worldwide.

Under Islamic law, it is considered a serious offense to criticize Allah, Muhammad or Islam. In countries like Pakistan, a Muslim can take a non-Muslim to court and claim he was "offended" by something that was said, resulting in a trial and jail time, even death, for the non-Muslim.

Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan and other Muslim-dominated countries with significant Christian minorities have been the targets of brutal persecution, with the blasphemy laws often serving as the catalyst for their incarceration. Christians have been jailed, stoned, beheaded, and even had acid thrown in their faces for violating the blasphemy laws.

Read the story of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother in Pakistan who has been on death row for eight years, accused by a co-worker of insulting Islam during an argument over a drinking glass.

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But the OIC, which consists of 57 Muslim-majority countries and boasts the largest voting bloc at the United Nations, is not satisfied with its own people living under threat of arrest for offending Islam by something that is said, written or posted on the Internet.

Despite all of its efforts dating back to 2005 [see timeline in this article], the OIC believes there is still too much anti-Muslim "Islamophobia" available on the Internet.

The July 15-16 symposium, held at London's Central Mosque Trust and Islamic Cultural Center, was designed to come up with a new plan to eliminate this persistent "Islamophobia." The conference was attended by lawyers, media leaders, politicians including Lord Sheikh of Britain, academics from European universities and diplomats from various embassies. The conference was titled: "Mechanisms to challenge Islamophobia legally and through the media."

Organizers spoke of the need for a new media strategy, citing there is usually a surge in "hate crimes" against Muslims following terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslims, such as the London Bridge attack and Manchester concert attack earlier this year.

But, as noted by the Barnabas Aid Fund, a group that advocates for persecuted Christians, the conference organizers' reference to "Islamophobia" should not be confused with actual crimes of violence against Muslim people.

One of the three central themes of the conference was the legal status of "defamation of religion." This is a term the OIC has previously used as part of its decade-long campaign to make criticism of Islam a criminal offense – even in Western democracies where free speech is a staunch tradition.

In fact, the section on "Islamophobia" in the OIC’s "10-year strategic action plan" published in 2005 only uses the word in this sense and makes no reference to countering hatred of Muslims as people.

So, when the London conference organizers spoke of looking at countering Islamophobia from a “legal perspective,” this should be taken as a serious threat. In fact, only last December the OIC met in Saudi Arabia and launched a new media strategy, part of which aimed “to tackle Islamophobic discourse in the U.S., U.K., and European media."

"Barnabas Aid strongly condemns all forms of anti-Muslim hatred," the Christian-aid agency said in a statement Monday. "However, we also condemn the attempt to use the suffering that has resulted from recent terrorist attacks to advocate the introduction of what is, in effect, a backdoor Islamic blasphemy law."

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As Barnabas Aid has previously reported, there are attempts being made by Pakistan, and 27 other governments who are OIC members, to introduce global Islamic blasphemy laws. In fact, as Barnabas Aid points out, the Palestinian Authority recently enacted just such a law.

"These actions represent a serious threat not only to Christians in the world's 57 Muslim-majority countries, but also to Christians in the West, particularly those who have fled persecution in Islamic countries and found sanctuary in Western countries," Barnabas Aid stated.

It is particularly disturbing that the proposals from the Pakistan government seek to criminalize social media posts critical of Islam that are uploaded in Western countries.

So, although Dr. Mahjoub Bensaid of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization spoke at the conference of “the real and true image of Islam as a religion of peace which advocates tolerance,” what he appears to have meant is that non-Muslims should "tolerate" the introduction of an Islamic blasphemy law that prohibit any criticism of Islam by the media, and anyone who does not tolerate the blasphemy laws is labeled "Islamophobic."

Philip Haney, co-author of the whistleblower book "See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," says the OIC's recent "recommendation" should not be viewed in a vacuum but as the latest in a series of moves by the international community aimed at criminalizing all criticism of Islam, which is being positioned as the global elites' most favored religion. The end result will be the implementation of Islamic blasphemy laws worldwide.

Here is the timeline for the international effort to criminalize anti-Islam speech in accordance with Shariah law:

"The OIC has put a lot of effort into criminalizing speech critical of Islam, along with solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Haney said. "Those two issues have been at the top of their agenda for the last 10 years, and I'd say they've made plenty of progress."

Pamela Geller, a free-speech advocate and activist against global Shariah, said the OIC has been extremely successful in cowing Western governments to voluntarily submit to Islamic blasphemy laws, proving Islam does not need to conquer a country militarily, all it needs to do is envelop its leaders into the culture of extreme political correctness with regard to Islam.

"The West is already adopting Islamic blasphemy laws, willingly and voluntarily," Geller said. "The stigma that is attached immediately to any critic of jihad terror, the unwillingness to stand for free speech and print the Muhammad cartoons, and the criticism I received after jihadists attacked my free speech event in Garland, Texas, in 2015, as if I was the villain for offending Islam, all testify to how much the Western elites have already internalized the Shariah prohibition on criticism of Islam."

Nahren Anweya, a native of Dohuk, Iraq, who now lives in the Detroit area and works as an activist on behalf of persecuted Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, said it's ironic that in an age of unspeakable Christian persecution around the world, much of it at the hands of Muslims, the United Nations and other international bodies are concerned about "Islamophobia."

It's an effort to turn the tables on Christians, she said, and make their persecutors out to be the victims.

"This type of strategy is another form of jihad by infiltrating and influencing our government," Anweya told WND. "Christians are being persecuted and slaughtered in almost every Islamic dominated country. We don't even have equal rights in my birth country of Iraq but yet they want to create laws to increase terrorism by removing sources which are spreading awareness? Christianity is attacked through schools, the government and even on the streets of numerous countries in the world but yet where are the laws to protect Christians from being slaughtered like cattle?"

Christianity is not welcome in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, India and many other countries, she said.

And unlike most cases of "Islamophobia," the Christians in these countries face actual physical violence, not merely "mean words" posted on a Facebook site.

"In many countries in the Middle East, Christians are being crucified, beheaded, raped, sold into sex slavery markets, drowned and tortured in so many other strategies," she said. "We are decreasing by the day, we are the indigenous people in many of these countries tracing back to the cradle of civilization. In my home country of Iraq, the native Assyrians trace back almost 7,000 years but we have been drastically decrease since the rise of Islam."

That, she said, goes beyond any "phobia." It is genocide.