NEW YORK (Press TV) -- Iran's Foreign Minister has criticized the phenomenon of Islamophobia and the systematic discrimination against Muslims in the West.

“The U.S. and Europe have turned into symbols of religious intolerance and the violation of minorities' rights,” said Manuchehr Mottaki during a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Conference at the UN headquarters in New York, Friday.
He said that issuing provoking statements and the distribution of false claims against Muslim sanctities including the Prophet Mohammad and Qur'an aim to reverse the reality that Islam is a religion of tolerance, peace and love.
According to a European Union report, Islamophobia is on the rise across Europe, where many Muslims are menaced and misunderstood.
The report says that Muslims routinely suffer problems ranging from physical attacks to discrimination on the job and in the housing market.
In 2005 and 2006, cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were published in several European newspapers and caused outrage among Muslims across the world.
More recently, on September 20, under surveillance by Germany's domestic Verfassungsschutz intelligence agency, a group known as “Pro Koln” invited around 1,000 right-wing extremists from across Europe to protest against a project to build a new mosque in Cologne.
The group used the green-lighting of construction plans for the Mosque to rally together far-right groups in Europe who share its view that Germany and Europe are becoming increasingly ""Islamicized.""
“Islamophobia is a threat that the Islamic Ummah faces now,” Mottaki said, adding that countering this threat needs more awareness in all Muslim countries.
The Iranian Foreign Minister also called on the U.S. and Europe to pass much needed legislation to stop the insult of other nations' beliefs and sanctities, and to introduce that legislation as a boundary for other freedoms.