News - World: Muslim civil society organizations, at a major security and human rights conference held in Poland on Thursday, warned about the alarming surge of state-sponsored Islamophobia in Europe.

Addressing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw, Lamies Nassri, project manager of the Danish Muslim Rights Center, said Islamophobia was spreading throughout Europe.

She called on governments to protect Muslims in their respective countries from this toxic wave.

“It is your responsibility as member states to see to it that citizens in these member states are protected from state racism, surveillance, stigmatization and violence both symbolically and physically," Nassri told the delegates.

Pointing to the situation in Denmark, she said Islamophobia was being “enabled directly through state policy and participation” and was “no longer a far-right issue but is shared across the political spectrum”.

She said that many Muslims in Denmark faced discrimination due to the country’s categorization of people from non-western backgrounds, which took precedence over their rights as Danish citizens.

Nassri further cited the impact of so-called “ghetto laws” on Muslim communities.

The laws, which have been widely criticized, aim to reduce the number of people of “non-Western origin” in designated “vulnerable areas” to less than 30 percent, through evictions, double punishment, over-policing, and compulsory daycare.

Nassri termed the laws "discriminatory" against Muslims and ethnic minorities, which deprive them of their rights and label them as “enemies within the state, who live in parallel societies that must be fought".

Source: Press TV