Burning & Tearing the Qur’an: Why Are the Extremists’ Provocative Actions Increasing Against Muslims in Europe?

A new provocative step against Muslims, days after a Danish extremist burned the Holy Qur’an in Sweden. This time the hate incident came from the Dutch anti-Islam extremist Edwin Wagensveld, leader of the extremist PEGIDA group, who tore up a copy of the Holy Qur’an in the Dutch administrative capital, The Hague.

The extremist shared via Twitter on Monday, January 23, 2023, a video clip that conveyed his provocative act that took place in front of the parliament building in The Hague, according to what was reported by the Anadolu Agency, which indicated that the local police granted him permission for this act, provided that he does not burn the Holy Book of Muslims.

However, he later, as the video showed, burned the torn pages of the Qur’an. The video showed members of the Dutch police standing behind the right-wing extremist, without moving a finger, as he was tearing the pages of the Holy Qur’an and stepping on them.

 

Appalling Provocations

Last October, the Dutch police arrested the extremist leader while he was about to burn a copy of the Qur’an during a rally attended by a group of supporters of his group in Rotterdam.

The incident comes after the far-right Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish Hard Line party, burned a copy of the Qur’an near the Turkish embassy in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, amid tight police protection that prevented anyone from approaching him while he was committing his act.

The incident of burning a copy of the Holy Qur’an sparked anger among Muslims and condemnations from Arab and Islamic countries, which considered it a provocative act against the feelings of a billion and a half Muslims.

The Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) published a report entitled Islamophobia in Europe stressing the reality of Islamophobia in 25 European countries. The report emphasized that the media plays a major role in the emergence and spread of Islamophobia in countries where there have been almost no manifestations of Islamophobia, such as Lithuania. It is also the main responsible for the spread of prejudices and triggering the incidents of Islamophobia.

 

Lack of Preventive Interventions

Based on 15 in-depth interviews with figures from the Muslim community and a theoretical survey of 102 participants from 8 mosques, it was found that preventive interventions were unfavorable because of their misunderstandings inherent to the living experience of Muslims.

Respondents saw widespread negative ratings, and the results were: The policies were not only ineffective but promoted Islamophobia. Indeed, Dutch Muslims faced the challenges of radicalization based on their current levels of social and cultural belief systems.

On May 25, 2019, a group of scholars and lawyers drew attention to the growing trend of Islamophobia in the Netherlands. In a book titled Target Mosque (Mikpunt Moskee), 12 academics and legal experts document the Muslim community’s concerns about aggressive actions against mosques. Freedom of religion for Muslims in the Netherlands is under great pressure, said Ineke van der Valk, a researcher at Leiden University and one of the authors.

The European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies stated that it seems that there is a wide growth of the extreme right in the Netherlands. The problem is that the growth of the extreme right is unrestricted, as there is more cooperation, coordination, and joint action between the extreme right groups. Governments also bear the greatest responsibility.

The center stressed that it requires the government to disclose immigration numbers, and reveal the positive face of immigrant Muslims and their contributions to building society in parallel with limiting the activities of the extreme right, which always exploits the position of immigration, organizes many propaganda campaigns, promotes hatred and organizes rallies.

What should be done is to review the school curricula, and there will be an observatory for reporting cases of racism, hatred, and Islamophobia since there are practices by individuals within institutions or the general public that require immediate reporting and the application of the Penal Code and financial fines, according to legislation.

 

Double Standards

The writer and political analyst Yasser Saed said that it is not the first time, and of course it will not be the last, that the sanctities of Islam are attacked and violated in a provocative and brazen manner that is far from human morals and civilized behavior.

The burning of the Holy Qur’an, and the issuance of an official decision by the Swedish authorities to allow and protect it, hold the government fully responsible for this disgraceful act.

He said: “Would the official government of Sweden dare allow the burning of the Torah (which we as Muslims totally reject) in front of the embassy of the Hebrew state for example, let alone offer protection for such behavior? Will the Stockholm government give the Swedes permission to burn the gay flag and slogan in a public square?”

The Swedish official attack on the Muslims’ Qur’an comes months after the official authorities attacked Muslim families and kidnapped their children in a decadent Nazi manner under false and flimsy excuses. The attack began against the hijab and the morals of Muslims, their centers, and mosques, and then escalated with the official Arab and Islamic abandonment to insults against the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) and at the level of the French presidency.

The researcher explained that despite the intent of such actions to attack and detract from Islam, many Muslims, even those who are not observant, find such reckless behavior a provocation that pushes them to redraw their relations with Islam in a more close and more practical way. Indeed, such actions and previous attacks prompted many Westerners to study Islam and embrace it with conviction and desire.

Even those who were at the forefront of leading the campaigns of abuse, such as Arnoud van Doorn, a former politician in the extremist Dutch Party for Freedom and one of the participants in the production of the film Fitnah, which insults Islam, converted to Islam and declared his repentance and remorse for his role in the attack on the Islamic religion.