Burning the Qur’an is an Aggression Against Every Muslim
(Translated)

Some spiteful people planned to burn and abuse copies of the Holy Quran in a disgusting, ugly way outside a mosque in Malmö last Friday. The police allowed them to do so at first, but not in front of the mosque. On Wednesday, several media sites reported that the police had withdrawn the license for that work for security reasons. But in spite of that, on Friday, many pictures and videos appeared, showing a parade in which copies of the Qur’an were kicked under the feet and thrown on the ground, in a square that the police had closed to the public in order for the spiteful people to carry out their work without being confronted by anyone. The question that arises here is, did the police deceive Muslims by spreading the news of the withdrawal of the license, or did it allow the Qur'an to be abused without a license?! In both cases, the matter is serious enough to cause concern.

This is not the first time that Islam has been attacked. We remember well the insulting of our noble Messenger (saw) in 2007 through offensive cartoons under the pretext of freedom of expression. And in 2017 a politician declared that Muslims are, in fact, not human beings. In the same year, Swedish Justice and Interior Minister Morgan Johansson equated Muslims with the Nazis and right-wing extremists, blaming them for spreading anti-Semitism.

For a long time, Islamic sanctities have been abused and Islamic rituals criminalized in order to force Muslims to assimilate into the culture of the West, adopt secular ideas, and abandon their Islamic values. The demonstrations last Friday night showed that Islam is dear in the hearts of Muslims, that they will never accept their sanctities to be insulted, and that they will not give up their Islamic identity. Therefore, the West will not succeed in dissolving Muslims in its ruined society.

That is why the West, including Sweden, is resorting to methods of threat and coercion to pressure Muslims to abandon their religion. In a report by the Military Academy in 2009, the report considered that growing beards and frequenting mosques are a manifestation of extremism. Since 2019, anyone who wants to work in the municipality of Trelleborg has been required to shake hands with the opposite sex, and in the same year wearing the Khimar (headscarf) was prohibited in schools in two Swedish municipalities. In 2018, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch Thor called for banning the Adhan (call to prayer), and in 2017 the municipality of Ronneby tried to ban fasting in schools. The municipality of Bromölla has also tried to ban prayers at work. All these examples clearly demonstrate the responsibility of politicians for repeated provocations against Islam and Muslims.

The extreme right did not emerge from a vacuum. Rather, it is a natural result of the dominant policies in the West in general, including Sweden. Anti-Islam and anti-Muslim media campaigns in the Western world feed the extreme right, which has become a tool for terrorizing Muslims and pushing them into forced and complete integration out of fear of the right and its growing power. It tells Muslims that you are faced with two options, either to abandon your religion, your identity and your loyalty to your creed, adopt secularism and dissolve into society, and show your loyalty to the regime, so it embraces and protects you, or you have nothing but a wild right that will devour you.

O Muslims:

It is not permissible in any way to be silent when our religion, our Messenger (saw), and our Book are insulted. It is our duty to oppose every attempt to undermine our sanctities, and if we do not, then this is considered a betrayal of Allah (swt) and His Messenger (saw), and a position of weakness and cowardice even if some try to dress it a mask of wisdom and sobriety. We should not kill our feelings towards the most sacred of what we love. We must fight this confrontation well, away from improvisation, reactions and acts of violence that are not sanctioned by Islam. Rather, the West benefits from them in distorting the image of our religion and in justifying its war against us. The correct confrontation is to carry Islam as an ideology, as the correct message from the Creator, to challenge the West with it and present it in an influential political and intellectual manner.

Secularism is collapsing and there is no alternative to it but the message of Islam. Let us have strong confidence in our great religion and present it as a solution to the world's problems. Here in the West, we are not a minority struggling for survival or gains.

Rather, we are an extension of an ancient nation that ruled the world with justice for more than a thousand years, and only the application of Islam will reunite the nation and restores its dignity. We are strong in our religion and we can achieve and accomplish a lot if we organize ourselves and follow the right path without resorting to what Allah has forbidden.

(وَلَا تَهِنُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا وَأَنتُمُ الْأَعْلَوْنَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِين)

“So do not weaken and do not grieve, and you will be superior if you are [true] believers.” [Al-i-Imran: 139]