Sheikh Dr Ahmed Turki appreciates criminalizing improper handling of religious text by the Danish Parliament

Mohanad AboArafe

Sheikh Ahmed Turki, Secretary of the Secretariat of Central Religious Affairs of the Humat Watan Party of the Fatherland, welcomes the issuance by the Danish Parliament of new legislation criminalizing inappropriate dealing with religious texts

In order to confront the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which prompted some Westerners to insult, desecrate and burn the Holy Quran, especially in Scandinavia.

His Eminence also valued a statement that the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed this legislation, in which it said: “Egypt expressed its aspiration that the application of this legislation will lead to confront these unfortunate phenomena to avoid the recommendation of intolerance, extremism and hate speech, and to face the very negative effects of it on efforts to uphold the culture of civilized dialogue between countries and peoples, which is based on accepting cultural diversity and seeking to bring different human values and customs closer.

In this regard, the Arab Republic of Egypt also reiterated its firm position on condemning the insult of all beliefs and religions, which are not in any way a manifestation of freedom of opinion, and called on the rest of the European countries in which such events were repeated to follow Denmark’s example.”

The phenomenon of Islamophobia or intimidation of Islam is one of the phenomena that has become a great threat to global societal peace in general, and to Muslims in the West in particular.

This term appeared at the end of the twentieth century and spread among the corridors of scientific research in the squares of Western universities, as this phenomenon is a violent social phenomenon that prompts the commission of crimes, and they mean this term: fear and intimidation of Islam and everything related to it, such as mosques, veil, the Qur’an and the manifestations of Islamic religion in general.

This phenomenon has grown frighteningly in Western society, and has even become Muslim victims in several European countries because of the entrenchment of this panic in the Western collective mind, especially on March 15, 2019 when Australian Brenton Tarrant opened fire on two mosques in New Zealand and killed 51 Muslims and injured others, in a massacre that shook the whole world, prompting the United Nations to declare March 15 of each year as the Day against Islamophobia.