Muslim leaders in a speech to the UN on Tuesday scolded the West for burning the Koran.
United Nations:
Muslim leaders in a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday blasted the West over the burning of the Koran and labeled the acts protected as free speech as discriminatory.
Sweden has seen a series of burnings of the Islamic holy book, with the government condemning it but saying it cannot stop acts protected by free speech laws.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who has been pressuring Sweden for months over welcoming Kurdish activists whom Turkey considers terrorists – said Western countries were seeing “a plague” of racism, including Islamophobia.
“It has reached an unbearable level,” he told the UN General Assembly.
“Unfortunately, populist politicians in many countries continue to play with fire by encouraging such dangerous trends,” he said.
“The mentality that encourages the heinous attacks on the Holy Quran in Europe, by allowing them under the guise of freedom of expression, is actually darkening Europe’s own future at its own hands.”
Protests in Sweden involving Quran burnings have been organized by refugee Salwan Momika, sparking outrage across the Middle East, including his native Iraq.
Erdogan said in July he would lift the blockade on Sweden’s attempt to join NATO, but the Turkish parliament has not yet ratified the country’s membership.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric representing the Shiite theocratic state, held up a Quran at the UN podium.
“The fire of disrespect will not overcome divine truth,” Raisi said, accusing the West of “diverting attention with the instrument of freedom of expression.”
“Islamophobia and cultural apartheid that we are witnessing in Western countries – evident in actions ranging from the desecration of the Holy Quran to the ban on the hijab in schools – and countless other deplorable discriminations are not worthy of human dignity,” Raisi said.
He was referring to France, which has controversially banned Muslim girls from wearing hijabs in schools.
His action comes a year after Iran’s clerical state violently cracked down on women-led protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old held by vice police for allegedly failing to had violated the obligation to wear the hijab.
The emir of Qatar, the wealthy kingdom with close ties to both the West and the rest of the Islamic world, said in his speech that “deliberately endangering the sanctity of others” should not be seen as freedom of expression.
“I would like to say to my Muslim brothers that we are unlikely to be distracted by an idiot or a prejudiced person when it occurs to him to provoke us by burning the Holy Quran or by other forms of triviality,” the Emir said , Sheikh. Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
“The Qur’an is too holy to be desecrated by a senseless person.”
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