The parade of international dignitaries has left New York City. The various leaders from the free and non-free world came to speak at the United Nations General Assembly as they do every September.
They left behind the smell of an organism rotting.
The global agency has long had a history of inept bureaucracy. That is, and likely will always be, a defining characteristic of thousands of politicians and diplomats from so many cultures and philosophies convening together. Arguably, its inability to do anything should be viewed as a protective relief, not failure.
The problem I see is well beyond the simmering war between the Global South and the Global North, where regions are competing for a greater share of economic and political power. That is politics on a grand scale.
The rot is stemming from an institution that is increasingly dividing the world between Muslims and “non-Muslims.”
- Azerbaijan has Muslim and “non-Muslim” communities
- The UN presses whether Kuwait is “abolishing all legal provisions that discriminate against non-Muslim women”
- Iraq law states clearly that “No Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man.”
- The UN notes how Malaysia has different laws for non-Muslims
- The UN asked the Maldives whether it has repealed laws preventing non-Muslims from becoming citizens
- Pakistan sets laws for non-Muslims
- The UN questions whether Qatar continues to have different laws for non-Muslims
- UN report on Somalia: “Non-Muslims report that they cannot practise their religions openly.”
- United Arab Emirates has a federal law “regulating places of worship for non-Muslims”
The list goes on.

Leaders of the United Nations agencies similarly use the divide:
- “growing level of violent extremism are endangering Muslims and non-Muslims alike” – UNSG Ban Ki Moon October 2015
- “This generous treatment is the same for Muslims and non-Muslims” – UNHCR Antonio Guterres March 2015
- “Israeli authorities prohibited non-Muslim visits to the site for the last days of Ramadan” – Tor Wennesland report to UN Security Council April 2023
No other religion has such frequent use at the United Nations. Try to find “non-Christian”, “non-Hindu” or any other division of people and law and you will find barely a handful.

RAMIFICATIONS
The prevalence of the term “non-Muslims” does several things at once. It places Muslims at the center of the religious world, elevates Islam as the dominant religious reference point, and erases everyone else into a single category of “other.” Christians, Baha’is, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and countless other religious communities lose their distinct identities, histories and belief systems. They become defined solely by what they are not: Muslim.
This linguistic centering of Islam is a subtle form of Islamic supremacy. The steady repetition of “non-Muslim” is a form of colonizing the mind, conditioning people to see Islam as the standard against which all other faiths are measured. Language shapes assumptions, and repetition makes those assumptions seem natural. Eventually, a religious hierarchy becomes so embedded in everyday vocabulary that people cease to notice it.
The distance between the polite bureaucratic term “non-Muslim” and the radical Islamist characterization of others as “infidels” is smaller than it first appears. The words carry different meanings and implications, but both can frame humanity around a single religious dividing line: those who belong to Islam and those who do not. For radicals who seek Islamic domination, that division is foundational.
The United Nations was established to recognize the equal dignity of all peoples. Yet its own vocabulary repeatedly places one religion at the center and relegates the rest of humanity to the margins.
The United Nations is subtly surrendering the world’s religions to Islam. Right in front of us.


























