Protests were held in several predominantly Muslim countries on Friday to denounce the recent desecration of Islam’s holy book by far-right activists in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Protests in countries like Pakistan, Iraq and Lebanon ended with the peaceful dispersal of people. In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, police officers detained some protesters who were trying to march on the Swedish embassy.
Some 12,000 Islamists from the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party demonstrated in Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, to denounce the desecration of the Koran in the two European countries. In his speech to the protesters, Saad Rizvi, head of the TLP, called on the government to present a strong protest to Sweden and the Netherlands so that incidents like this do not happen again.
Similar rallies were also held in the southern city of Karachi and in the north-west.
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The demonstrations on Friday dispersed peacefully. However, Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan has staged violent protests in recent years over the publication of caricatures of the prophet of Islam in France and other parts of the world.
In Beirut, some 200 angry protesters burned the Swedish and Dutch flags in front of the blue-domed Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque in central Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square.
Protesters chant slogans against the burning of the Koran, a Muslim holy book, by a Danish anti-Islam activist, in Peshawar, Pakistan, on January 27, 2023.
(AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)
Earlier this month, a far-right activist in Denmark was given permission by police to stage a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, where he burned the Koran, Islam’s holy book. Days later, Edwin Wagensveld, the Dutch leader of the far-right Pegida movement in the Netherlands, ripped pages from a copy of the Koran near the Dutch Parliament and stomped on them.
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The moves angered millions of Muslims around the world and sparked protests.
The Swedish authorities have underlined that freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Swedish Constitution and gives people extensive rights to express their views publicly, although incitement to violence or hate speech is not allowed. Protesters must apply to the police for a permit for a public assembly. The police can deny such permits only for exceptional reasons, such as risks to public safety.
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Iraq’s powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr asked in comments posted Friday whether freedom of expression means offending other people’s beliefs. He asked why “the burning of the gay rainbow flag does not represent freedom of expression.”
The cleric added that burning the Koran “will bring divine wrath.” Hundreds of his followers gathered outside a Baghdad mosque waving copies of the Koran.
