Approximately 200 Muslim protestors gathered outside the European Parliament Wednesday, July 19th, as Islamic groups in Brussels rallied against the controversial burning of the Quran in Sweden.
Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard right outside the Parliament as an almost exclusively male crowd gathered at Place du Luxembourg at 4:00 p.m. organised by a group calling itself the ‘Muslim Community of Brussels.’
Sweden has been embroiled in a diplomatic dispute with the Islamic world the past year following multiple high-profile incidents of the Quran being burnt or desecrated by counterjihad activist Rasmus Paludan and Iraqi-born Christian asylum seeker Salwan Momika. Just last week, the Swedish embassy was stormed by an angry mob of Islamists in Baghdad last week.
Led by the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, protestors burned the Swedish and LGBT flags as Stockholm confirmed that they were withdrawing all diplomatic personnel on security grounds.
Saturday night, July 22nd, saw further clashes outside the Baghdad Green Zone after reports that a Danish right-wing group, Danske Patrioter, had burnt a Quran in Copenhagen as Hezbollah led a similar protest in Beirut.
The religious and political schism has complicated Sweden’s membership bid for NATO as Turkey utilised the issue as leverage for its foreign policy interests.
There is some confusion as to whether the desecration of the Quran constitutes hate speech under Swedish law as the country’s Minister for Justice contemplates altering existing legislation to ban future burnings.
Despite the majority of Belgium’s Muslim community originating from the Maghreb, the assembled crowd in Brussels were predominantly of Pakistani extraction with some holding signs relating to the disputed status of Kashmir. The Parliament was largely empty at the time, barring a handful of committees in session.
Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco have all recalled their ambassadors from Sweden indefinitely in protest at the decision by Swedish authorities to sanction the desecration of the Quran.
The debacle has drawn comparisons to the 2005 Danish cartoon controversy and has coincided with Swedish politics moving to the right, with the populist Swedish Democrats becoming the nation’s third-largest party after elections last year.
