The truth about Islamophobia...

Anne Bayefsky is one of the better UN-watchers out there...

Muslim extremists are branding opponents "Islamophobes" in an effort to paint themselves as the victim and silence dissent and opposition to their political and religious beliefs, according to a panel convened in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

"'Islamophobia' has become ... the new battleground in this war" on terrorism, Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, said at the panel discussion.

She said the term "inverts victim and perpetrator" by portraying Islamic fanatics as the victim, thus allowing them to label dissent as a violation of human rights and, in effect, silence dissent.

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) at the United Nations has been lobbying hard for bans against "Islamaphobia, which are "tantamount to blasphemy strictures that have been used to curtail freedoms of expression, press, and religion by some of the OIC's most repressive member states," noted the Hudson Institute in its preview to the panel discussion.

The term "Islamaphobia" will be a major focus of the 2009 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Bayefsky said the goal of conference organizers, including Libya, Cuba and Iran, is to "deflect attention from the human rights abuses" and "to circle the wagons, to invoke mass hysteria, to suggest to people that they are under threat, which is in fact imaginary."

She said that by labeling themselves victims of Islamophobia, leaders of Islamic regimes can justify harsh crackdowns on internal dissent and legitimize calls for similar crackdowns on outside criticism - such as calls for the punishment of cartoonists who depict the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

"If you can claim the other guy is the human rights violator," Bayefsky said, "if you become the victim of racism and Islamophobia, then you justify the so-called struggle against the enemy of human rights."