“When we speak about tolerance we speak about something very minimalist, very negative and very passive,” said Abul Magd.

Abul Magd further said he finds the word “tolerance” derogatory of Islam.

“When we speak about tolerance we speak about something very minimalist, very negative and very passive,” he said in an impromptu speech before the seminar, which is part of a UN-sponsored series on “Unlearning Intolerance.”

“What we are aiming at is such more positive (sic) than the mere tolerance. Usually you don’t tolerate something you admire or like but you tolerate something you are going to live with although you do not like.”

Abul Magd added peoples of the world need to act in unison to “make life on this planet more peaceful and more enjoyable. So we need each other to join hands in a common effort.”

“We need to use other terms other than tolerance and the same goes for co-existence.”

Abul Magd further regretted that the West “all of a sudden” has forgotten the remarkable contributions and cooperation Islam has made to the humankind.

“Now we are faced with depicting Islam as a threat to the march of progress, democracy, modernism and peace…The sadness in this irony or paradox is that we are made to forget a long history of cooperation not only in past ages but also in the last century…the last half century.

“How could we forget, for example, during the World War II all Muslim countries and the Arab world sided with allied forces against [then Nazi] Germany and helping the so-called free world to curb the growing influence of communism and Marxism?” He wondered.

“How could we forget the role played by Islam as a faith, a system of law, a code of values and a code of ethics?” (’Click here to listen to Abul Magads speech on the UN News Center).

Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University in Washington, DC, also questioned the use today of the suffix “phobia,” saying that when Islam rose and covered land from France to China within one century, the Christian West had a fear of Islam that was both religious and political, according to the UN web site.

“By contrast, the non-Islamic world today was very powerful from many points of view. Unfortunately, the reservoir of historical consciousness had been resurrected and Islamophobia was not only a question of fear, but also a matter of hatred,” he said in his keynote speech posted by the UN News Center.

Muslims were not trying to be aggressive, they were trying to be themselves, he added, but in many areas that effort had led to fanaticism and the fanaticism on one side was feeding the fanaticism on the other side.

“In analyzing Islamophobia, therefore, it was important to take into account not only the role of extremism in Islam, but also the role of extremism among Christians and Jews,” Nasr said.

Prof. Nasr also questioned the use today of the suffix “phobia”.

Opening the seminar, Annan said that seeing Islam as a “monolith,” and distorting its tenets are among the many practices that now make up the term “Islamophobia”.

“Islam's tenets are frequently distorted and taken out of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or to symbolize a rich and complex faith,” he told the seminar.

“Some claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, or irrevocably hostile to modernity and the rights of women. And in too many circles, disparaging remarks about Muslims are allowed to pass without censure, with the result that prejudice acquires a veneer of acceptability.”

He said that no one should underestimate the resentment and sense of injustice that “members of one of the world's great religions, cultures and civilizations felt as they looked at unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, the situation in Chechnya and the atrocities against Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.”

“Like other religions, the Islamic world grouped together modernizers and traditionalists and the most populous Muslim countries are not Arab, but are located in non-Arab Asia, from Indonesia to part-Asian, part-European Turkey,” Annan said. (’Click here to read Annan's speech in full).