After multiple instances of the blasphemous act occurred in Denmark with the government’s consent in recent weeks, the diplomatic mission made the comments in a statement on Sunday.

“The embassy is shocked by the lack of action by the Danish authorities to prevent the continuous promotion of violence in the form of hateful and xenophobic speeches and insults to the Quran,” the statement noted.

It made note of the fact that despite the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) request to Copenhagen on behalf of 57 Muslim nations to put an end to this flagrant insult to Muslims worldwide, the Quran is still being desecrated in the Nordic country.

The embassy also reaffirmed its great concern over the increasingly frequent attacks on Muslim faith throughout the world and urged the Danish government to take action in accordance with its international commitments.

Additionally, it asked Denmark to stop this “ridiculous show under the guise of defending freedom of speech” and stop additional insults to the Quran.

Extremist groups have desecrated the sacred Muslim book several times during the past month in Sweden and Denmark, whose governments have authorized and defended such abuses as “freedom of expression.”

The whole Muslim community throughout the world is furious about the sacrilegious deeds. The embassies of Sweden and Denmark have been summoned or expelled by a number of nations.

Despite their condemnation of the burning of the Quran, the Nordic nations claimed they were unable to stop it because freedom of expression is enshrined in their constitution.

The OIC has already urged its members to intervene appropriately—politically or economically—in nations where the Muslim holy book is being defiled.

Additionally, it has asked the world community to unify in opposition to these aggressive actions.

Also on July 29, the Iranian embassy in Copenhagen issued a similar statement condemning the insult to holy books, including the Quran.

“The Iranian embassy in Copenhagen strongly condemns the insulting action against religious books and national symbols in Copenhagen and believes that such actions are planned and implemented by extremists with seditious goals and motives,” the embassy said.

The embassy also condemned any continuation of such criminal actions and lack of a decisive move to prevent such defamatory actions.

While highlighting that freedom of speech is a fundamental human rights principle, the embassy said it should not be used as an excuse to insult religions, holy books, or symbols and national values of nations.

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Speaking at the parliament open session in Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf remarked that Sweden’s recent desecration of the Quran has broken the hearts of all Muslims worldwide.

The parliament also welcomed a Russian delegation on Monday, the speaker said in his comments, underscoring the importance of collaboration with Russia owing to their proximity to one another across the Caspian Sea and their shared interests in international and regional affairs.

The expansion of collaboration should be the main goal for the Iranian and Russian parliaments, according to Qalibaf, who also urged regular meetings between the two countries.

The promotion of links in the fields of oil, gas, investment, transportation, and agriculture took precedence at the meeting of the parliamentary committee between Moscow and Tehran.

Qalibaf went on to add that the need for reducing barriers, including visa issuance, was also stressed between both officials.

He continued by saying that the two parliamentary delegations met to discuss a variety of topics, including using national currencies in bilateral trade.

Ties between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran have improved considerably.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the Russian State Duma, led a parliamentary team that landed in Tehran on Sunday for a two-day official visit.

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While many countries in the world were marking the martyrdom anniversary of the third imam of Shiites, Imam Hussein (AS), some people desecrated the Holy Quran in front of the Islamic Centre of Hamburg on Sunday.

German police forces, who were present in the place, did not take any action to prevent the blasphemous act, which is prohibited under Germany’s law, nor reacted to those who committed it.

This blasphemous act is a clear example of sedition and spreading hatred and is categorically condemned by all Muslims, monotheists …and those who believe in coexistence and interfaith dialogue.

This is not the first time that Holy Quran and Islam suffers desecration and this time it happened while the Zionists had launched a savage attack against the Palestinians and Shiites worldwide were commemorating the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (AS). It seems this blasphemous act has been committed intentionally to provoke Muslims in order to distract them from what was happening in Gaza Strip by the Zionists. Of course this type of insult is committed under the name of freedom of expression in order to silence those who react to such insults.

In recent years, the number of such blasphemous acts against Muslims and their beliefs has been on the rise in Europe, and racist attitude of Westerners should be blamed for such acts. Each time European judiciary or security officials ignore punishing the offenders and this attitude emboldens anti-Islam acts.

The Zionists and their lackeys should be mainly blamed for such anti-Islam acts because they fear about spread of Islamic values and religion in the world as the number of the Islam believers is on the rise and this is what enemies of Islam do not like it.

The enthusiasm for Islam and Islamic values has gained momentum worldwide especially since the emergence of the Islamic Revolution of Iran and this new phenomenon has encouraged other nations to pursue the valuable principles of the Islamic Revolution which are based on Islamic rules.

In April 2022, city of Norrkoping in Sweden witnessed one of the deadliest clashes and protests which was ignited by insulting the Holy Quran. More than 40 people were arrested in the clashes while three people were injured when police forces fired warning shots at rioters.

The violence was sparked by a series of rallies organized by the Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan. Sweden’s national police chief, Anders Thornberg, said he had never seen such violent riots following Sunday’s clashes in Norrkoping, which is about 160km (99 miles) south-west of Stockholm, and nearby Linkoping.

The two cities also witnessed riots, along with the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby and the western city of Orebro. There was also a riot in the southern city of Malmo because of such provokation. Such insults against Islam have been seen in Europe especially in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany and France through offensive remarks and drawing caricatures of Islamic figures like Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). We have not yet forgotten French Magazine Charlie Hebdo’s insulting caricature about Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) under the title of freedom of expression which caused protests in France and in the world but the offenders escaped unpunished.

Such passiveness or support of offenders emboldens them to continue insulting Islam and make Muslims resort to violent actions, and later Muslims will be blamed and Islam will be shown as the violent religion while Islam is religion of mercy and friendship but it does not mean that everybody is allowed to insult Islam and offender should be blamed and punished.

So Muslims in the world in the current era should be vigilant because enemies of Islam are trying to provoke them for creating rifts and violence and any moment we should expect such a blasphemy to enrage Muslims because enemies are angry over spread of Islam as the savior religion in the world and Muslims should deal with such offences with wise and calculated response and unity among Muslims is the winning card for them against any plot as Islam has always called on Muslims for unity and urged them to avoid division and sparseness .

Iranians have categorically condemned the desecration of the Holy Quran and Islamic sanctities in Germany, urging the country to put an end to such moves, as they have called on Muslims to have proper response to it.

So desecration is a weapon which is used against Islam and Muslims, and Muslims need its own weapons to thwart effect of desecration that unity will be one of them.

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As politicians groom this section of voters, Muslims say they have not done enough to tackle anti-muslim hate crime. According to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), during the last five years, the country has suffered more mass killings motivated by Islamophobia than any other nation in the G7.

The NCCM says that while the current Liberal government has acted to address Islamophobia by taking a stance with a view to dismantling white supremacist groups, there are still wide gaps that have not been addressed.

The council noted that none of the federal leaders in the run-up to elections has committed to fighting Quebec’s Bill 21 in court.

Quebec’s Bill 21 was adopted in 2019 and bans civil servants including teachers, police officers, and government lawyers, from wearing religious symbols at work such as the hijab.

Since 2017, 11 Canadian Muslims have been killed in three deadly attacks driven by Islamophobia.
In 2017, a terrorist stormed a mosque in Quebec City, killing six Muslim worshippers and injuring several others, the worst anti-Muslim terror arrack in Canadian and United States history.

In September 2020, an alleged neo-Nazi terrorist fatally stabbed Mohamed-Aslim Zafis, 58, in an unprovoked attack outside of a Toronto mosque where he volunteered as a caretaker.

Mosques such as al-Rashid have been met with vandalism and threats. Earlier this month, the Langley Islamic Centre in British Columbia received an anonymous note, threatening the mosque to shut down within two months, or else a Christchurch-inspired terror attack would ensue.

Noor al-Henedy, the director of communications and public relations at al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Alberta told al-Jazeera that while federal party leaders have all been verbally supportive, especially after Islamophobic attacks, “Not a lot of work is happening on the ground.”

Al-Henedy says the government of Alberta did provide the Mosque with some support but it was “more on a grassroots organization scale, not on a national or provincial scale”

“I don’t want to say that words no longer matter, but they’re no longer powerful enough. We need changes on the ground. We need this problem to be taken seriously because we can’t afford to lose any more lives.”

Statistics and surveys show that reported hate crimes against Muslims surged in Canada after the September 2001 attacks in United States, along with negative attitudes toward those of Islamic faith. And while the number of reports ebbed and flowed over the past 20 years, it never went back down to pre-9/11 levels.

A 2003 report from the Canadian Islamic Congress cited by researchers showed how quickly anti-Muslim hate crimes increased just a year after the 9/11 attacks.

Over 170 hate crimes were reported to the group in 2002, according to the report. In the year 2000, there were only 11 such reports, marking a nearly 1,500 per cent increase in just two years.

In 2002, the Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations, now the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), found nearly two-thirds of Canadian Muslims it surveyed had experienced “bias or discrimination” in the year since the 9/11 attacks. One-third told the group that their lives had gotten worse since that day, and felt Canadians disliked them.

The NCCM says “it’s become systemic since then and what we’re seeing now is that not only is it growing, but it’s also evolving.”

Statistics Canada data on police-reported hate crimes between 2009 and 2020, the most complete data available, shows a slow but steady increase of anti-Muslim incidents across Canada for the first half of the 2010s, from 36 reports in 2009 to 99 in 2014.

An official with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network says “there’s always what I’m going to call a ‘flavor of the month’ when it comes to who’s being targeted” by hate crimes and abuse”

During that time, The Canadian Anti-Hate Network says the seeds of the modern Islamophobic movement were being sown. “The first real rallying cry was the opposition to Motion 103” it said, referring to the non-binding motion in Parliament denouncing Islamophobia that was introduced in late 2016 and passed the following year.

“Everything we’ve sort of seen since then has grown out of that: the anti-government, anti-leftist elite opposition that evolved into the Yellow Vests and all these activist groups… that are based, when it comes to the racist right, in anti-Muslim hate.”

Critics also point to other flashpoints like the Stephen Harper-led Conservative government vowing to establish a “barbaric cultural practices hotline” during the 2015 election, which was criticized for feeding anti-Islamic sentiment.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network also says “the prevailing narrative of all this sentiment was this vast conspiracy that Muslims were trying to infiltrate and take over the West and commit a white genocide, or at least change the culture… and some politicians fed into that.”

The mid-2010s also saw some of the worst attacks on Muslims and their places of worship in Canada’s history: the attack on Muslim students at Queen’s University in 2014; the Peterborough, Ontario mosque arson in 2015.

It all culminated in the 2017 shooting at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City, where six Muslims were killed and 19 more were injured.

Throughout this period, Muslim women, a visible target due to the wearing of Hijabs, were attacked in cities across the country, with many attackers tearing off or attempting to remove the victims’ headscarves.

The NCCM says the rise of social media has allowed hate groups to form, grow and plot attacks much more easily while radicalizing new recruits, helping to explain the more recent rise in hate crimes.

“That’s why we’ve called for action against online hate, particularly when we found that social media and online forums were key motivators for the Quebec City mosque shooting,” the group says “and we’ve seen some progress, but it’s even more critical now.”

A spree of attacks on Muslim women has been reported in cities like Edmonton, while mosques are still being threatened. Last week, a Langley mosque received a letter threatening a mass shooting similar to the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed 51 Muslim worshippers in 2019.

The sustained level of anti-Muslim crimes was brought into stark relief this past June, when four family members, including a 15-year-old daughter, were hit by a truck in London, Ontario. Police later said the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith.

The London attack sparked national outcry, leading the federal government to hold a national summit on Islamophobia with several Muslim organizations.

While the summit led to pledges by the Canadian government, including tackling online hate and more outreach and education, experts say much more work needs to be done.

Ms Thobani, a University of British Columbia professor argues “until we have an honest reckoning about why we went to war in Afghanistan, how our heightened border policies are aligned with anti-immigrant sentiment, we will still see these kinds of attacks and threats… It’s all tied back to the war on terror.”

Not long after what police called a targeted hate crime against a Muslim family in London, Ontario left four members dead and a nine-year-old boy orphaned, the cries of grief morphed into calls for action.

Community advocates called for steps to be taken to tackle rising Islamophobia. Because while there has been some progress, advocates say the government needs to do much more.

Experts also say there’s a lot of work work to be done within communities to address the roughly “two-thirds” of hate crimes that go unreported, according to Statistics Canada.

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“Muslims feel offended and hurt in the aftermath of this attack,” the statement read, adding that the prayer room allowed Muslims receiving medical treatment at the hospital to receive psychological support and pray.

“The fact that the perpetrators damaged a room where patients receive psychological support shows how much hatred these people have,” the statement said.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident and footage from security cameras at the facility is being examined.

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