Burning a copy of the Holy Quran has nothing to do with freedom of speech (CORNER PAPER)

Burning a copy of the Holy Quran has nothing to do with “freedom of expression”. The Kingdom of Morocco, whose Sovereign is Amir Al Mouminine, has always been indignant at irreverent acts, wherever they come from, which violate the Muslim faith and offend the feelings of Muslims everywhere in the world.

The Kingdom condemned with all the more vigor the burning of the Holy Quran on Wednesday June 28, 2023 in Stockholm, because it constitutes not only a violation of human rights, but also an inadmissible recidivism, perpetrated in front of the gaze passive and permissive of the Swedish authorities weighed down by a controversial decision of the Supreme Court, which had ruled against the prohibition of demonstrations to burn the Koran.

However, placing the desecration of the Holy Book of Islam under the umbrella of “freedom of expression” or “manifestation” is a nonsense that is more iniquity than justice. The burning of the Koran, especially on these holy days when the Muslim world celebrates Eid Al Adha, is a supreme offense and an ultimate mark of disrespect, intolerance and discrimination against all Muslims.

The act of burning the Quran is neither a freedom nor an expression; nor would insult, defamation or threat be an expression. How to explain to Muslims in Sweden – and in the world – that these fundamental freedoms are thus misguided and diverted from their essence, to accommodate some – even if it means offending others?

The facts are serious, and the times are no less so. The burning of the Koran is a heinous act, which is part of a context of rising Islamophobia in Europe, the progression of xenophobia and incitement to hatred against Muslims.

There are many expressions of this: the rise of xenophobic fringes; the dissemination of Islamophobic narratives; political and populist recoveries; the stigmatization of Islam and Muslims; the making of the scapegoat and the instrumentalization of the migration issue which essentializes Muslims and pours into conspiracy theories cultivating an imaginary of the threat and demonization of the “Other”.

Wednesday in Stockholm, a copy of the Koran is burned; a day before in Nanterre, a 17-year-old boy came under fire from a public authority officer. This violence – physical, emotional or symbolic – must have no future under the rule of law. Between communitarianism and Islamophobia, there is only one step to cross, which can be fatal. Islamophobia is not only a violation of human rights; it is a call to violence, when it does not kill purely and simply. It should not be tolerated anywhere.

In His Royal Message to participants in the Parliamentary Conference on “Interfaith Dialogue” on June 13 in Marrakech, His Majesty the King, recalling that “our world is confronted with the ideologies of extremism, egocentrism, hatred, withdrawal into oneself”, underlined that “we must understand that the fear of a religion – or rather the phobia intentionally aroused around it, ends up being transformed into a form of hatred towards all aspects of that religion, or the civilization associated with it. Then comes the incitement to take a stand against the belief in question, the acts of discrimination against it and the violence that targets it”.

Source: Burkina Information Agency