Since the despicable act of desecration of the Holy Quran at the hands of a bigot in Sweden, the hearts of Muslims around the world are deeply saddened. They have expressed grief and anger in different ways to condemn the hateful incident.
Unfortunately, the enemies of Islam are making any efforts to end these absurdities. When they cannot compete with Islam and Muslims in argument and evidence, they resort to insulting their beliefs and sacred items to take revenge. This has been going on for a long time but ever since ‘democracy’ became the way of the world, it seems like a safe haven for rude attitudes and uncivilized actions against Islam.
Freedom of expression is one of the ideological pillars of democracy and the West as if it is part of their belief system. Freedom of expression has been made an important tool to express the malice and hatred against Islam. Any obnoxious and spiteful person can insult Islam and the West provides him protection under the garb of so-called freedom of expression.
This hypocritical attitude of the so-called pioneers of democracy and humanity in the West has justified these despicable actions. These bigots insult and commits vile acts of insolence and tension spreads across the world. The deep-rooted affection and feelings of more than a billion Muslims are hurt by such hate incidents.
This is not the first incident of burning the Holy Quran in Sweden. A similar act was committed in January this year but there is a slight difference between the two incidents. In January, the act of burning a copy of the Holy Quran was carried out by a racist far-right social activist from Denmark, Rasmus Paludan. He chose to burn a copy of the Holy Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm for political as well as anti-Islam reasons.
Sweden has applied to join the military alliance NATO. The membership of NATO requires the approval of all countries who are part of the alliance. Turkey is a member of NATO and has some serious grievances with Sweden. Thus, Sweden’s accession to NATO has been put on hold. There was immense resentment against Turkey in the entire Scandinavian region (which consists of Denmark, Norway and Sweden), including Sweden. Global protests were also held against this incident and there was a strong wave of anger
The recent incident occurred when Muslims of Sweden were performing Eid prayer in a mosque in Stockholm. An Iraqi-origin atheist and his companion set fire to a copy of the Holy Quran in pure hostility to Islam. Before this vile act, there was live broadcast for about half an hour. He trampled the sacred book by playing football and wrapped bacon before setting it on fire. The video of this worst desecration is viral on the internet, which no believer of Islam can watch.
The Muslim Ummah should be deeply hurt and should make efforts to prevent the rising trend of such incident. Even if the European Union has condemned this act, Sweden’s traditions and brutal government is still sticking with ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of expression’. Maybe Sweden doesn’t realize faith and Holy Quran are dearer to Muslims than this ‘freedom of expression’.
The question is whether freedom of expression is devoid of all principles. Is there no respect for the religion, values and feelings in a democracy? Where their interests are affected, these pioneers of democracy do not hesitate to cut down on freedom of expression and make it binding through various restrictions, but when it comes to Islam, the West defends under the garb of freedom of expression.
The OIC has to make efforts to put forward the pain, sorrow and anger of Muslims in front of the West in the right way and pay attention to the measures to permanently stop this barbaric culture in the name of freedom of expression.
