A/61/335 with regard to Islam, which translates into suspicion and monitoring of Muslim places of worship, culture and congregations, as well as efforts to control Muslim education. 15. The Special Rapporteur has devoted a significant part of the report to the issue of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. He sees the motivations, handling and ramifications of this affair as being revelatory of the historical, cultural and political roots of Islamophobia. It illustrates the worrying trends underpinning the resurgence of Islamophobia, including the politicization and trivialization of the defamation of religions owing primarily to the increasing prominence of far-right racist and xenophobic platforms in the political programmes of traditionally democratic parties and the conflation of Islam with violence and terrorism. Based on a chronological analysis, the Special Rapporteur claims that the crisis over the Danish cartoons cannot be reduced to a conflict between religions and civilizations. Some Danish leaders and certain Western media outlets reduce the crisis to a basic, insurmountable conflict between “them and us”, between Western civilization, incarnating irreducible freedom of expression, and the Islamic world, motivated purely by religious dogma — an ideological and Manichaean interpretation inherited from the Cold War. This interpretation has been radically disproved, though, by the diversity of reactions to the crisis in political, religious and media circles, whether in Europe, the Americas or the Islamic world. 16. Among his recommendations, the Special Rapporteur stresses the importance of calling upon Member States to demonstrate a firm and determined political commitment to combating all forms of defamation of religions, to recognize the deep historical and cultural roots of Islamophobia and to combat it, together with all forms and manifestations of racism and discrimination, through the recognition, respect and promotion in depth and over time, of the ethnic and religious multiculturalism which structures their societies. To that end, and in the context of reconstructing plural identities, he recommends two parallel strategies: the promotion — through education, information and communication — of in-depth knowledge of each other’s communities, especially their cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, and the adoption of political, economic, social and cultural initiatives to encourage interaction and cross-fertilization between different national communities. He also draws the Commission’s attention to a particularly alarming climate of defamation of religions: the upsurge, in some societies, of intolerance towards religion and religious practices. Finally, he invites all religious and spiritual traditions to engage in critical introspection of domestic sources of the defamation of religions arising from their own religious dogmas and practices and their perspectives and interrelations. He recommends that the Commission should invite Member States to combat and sanction the conflation of Islam with violence and terrorism, an essential element of the Danish cartoons, in the spirit of articles 18, 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. With regard to the main issue raised by the cartoon controversy, namely the adequacy of international law in the matter of religion, particularly in respect of the balance between freedom of expression and religious freedom, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Commission should remind Member States of their commitments and obligations under international human rights instruments and encourage all relevant treaty bodies to examine the issue of the interpretation of existing norms relating to freedom of expression, religious freedom and non- 06-51904 7