Noor-ul-Huda Raja
The act of Quran burning is narrow minded thought, not a freedom of expression. The burning of Holy Quran is clearly showing the extremist mind set of bigots against Muslims backed by their governments. For atleast the past two decades, a recurring episodes of Islamophobia has taken place in Europe generating controversy and rising hostility among billions of Muslims across the globe. When Muslims from all over the world raise voice against hate speeches on Islam, the extremist and islamophobic groups immediately shows the freedom of expression card. The exact blatant and disgraceful act done by Danish-Swedish far-right politician by burning sacred book of Muslims “Quran” refers to Allah as the Lord of the worlds. After a couple of days another far-right European politician done such scandalous act. It has sparked anger in Muslim majority nations. The Iranian government has refused to send a new ambassador to Sweden after a protester burned a Quran outside a mosque in the capital, Stockholm and blamed the government for granting him the protest permit. Iraq’s foreign ministry also asked its Swedish counterpart to extradite the man who burned the Quran. They argued that since he still holds an Iraqi citizenship, he should face trial in Baghdad. Similarly Morocco, Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates – among other countries – have recalled their ambassadors to Stockholm following the incident. On the other hand Turkey – a Nato member which has a say over whether Sweden also gains membership. Turkey’s foreign minister tweeted that it was “unacceptable to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression”. The question is that why only Quran? Why only Islamophobia? Why they only choose Islam to target of their hate speeches? Their actual fear of these racist people is that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. A large population of the world including their families, friends, and relatives are rapidly converting to Islam. As we recently saw a huge example where a priest converted to Islam with his hundred thousand companions. In order to combat this issue, it is the responsibility of Organisation of Islamic cooperation (OIC) to stop the persistent abuse against Islam and the distortion of its image and symbols perpetuates the conflict between West and the Muslim world. It also plays into hands of extremists in Muslim societies who encourages innocent Muslims to violence on the plea to defend Islam this tarnishing the image of Muslim countries.