In July 2023, an Iranian man burned copies of the Bible and Torah outside the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen. The Danish authorities granted Medhi Zaman permission, and the demonstration was mostly disregarded by the general public.
However, in both Denmark and Sweden, insulting Islam is treated differently. Last month, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi asylum seeker living in Sweden, was awaiting trial for a series of public burnings of the Quran. The 38-year-old anti-Islam activist did not attend court because, on January 29th, Momika was shot dead in what appears to be a retaliatory attack.
Although Momika’s protest is supposedly protected under Swedish law—the country scrapped its blasphemy laws in 1970—exceptions are made if the protest is viewed as incitement. He was awaiting a verdict on a charge of ‘agitation against an ethnic group.’ The protest sparked outrage in muslim-Majority countries. The Scandinavian Quran burnings were cited by Turkey as why they delayed Sweden’s NATO membership for months. The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was attacked and its ambassador was expelled.
Denmark was once a shining example of Enlightenment rationalism. When the government abolished all types of censorship in 1770, it asserted its citizens’ right to free speech. This was demonstrated when it vigorously defended Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that published a dozen satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. Despite the potential backlash and the threat to life, the administration remained steadfast in its protection of journalistic freedom.Things have changed, and it appears that certain accommodations have been made for Islam. In response to a series of book burnings, the country introduced what is widely referred to as “the Quran law” in December 2023. Those who burn or defile holy texts face a fine and a maximum sentence of two years in prison. In January, two Danish citizens were the first to be charged under the new law. Both were accused of ‘inappropriate treatment of a Quran’ at a political festival in June of last year.
Despite the European Court of Human Rights having stressed on numerous occasions that freedom of expression constitutes “one of the essential foundations of a democratic society”, and that “it is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population,” there are still several EU members states that still punish ‘insult to religion,’ as noted on the website of End Blasphemy Laws.
Britain has also formally abolished its blasphemy laws. However, the police’s attitude towards those who ridicule Islam’s holy book has remained mostly unchanged since 2008, when blasphemy was removed from the statute books. Last month, a man in Manchester was arrested on suspicion of a ‘racially aggravated public order offence’ after live-streaming himself burning a Quran. Then, just a few days ago, Metropolitan police charged a man with the same offence after a Quran was allegedly burned outside the Turkish consulate in central London, despite the activist being attacked by a man wielding a knife who objected to his protest and reportedly spat on him.
In 2023, an autistic 14-year-old boy was suspended from a school in West Yorkshire when a copy of the Quran was scuffed. So great was the anger in the local Muslim community that the boy’s mother appeared at a local mosque begging for forgiveness after his life was threatened. To compound the humiliation, her ‘sinful’ hair was covered to avoid any offending worshippers. The Batley Grammar School teacher who drew the wrath of Muslims in 2021 for displaying his students an illustration of the prophet Mohammed is allegedly still in hiding.
When Labour MP Tahir Ali urged Sir Keir Starmer to prohibit the desecration of the Quran and other Abrahamic religious texts during Prime Minister’s questions, it was obvious which faith he was talking about. Ali is ideologically captured by the electorate—57.5% of Ali’s Birmingham constituency of Hall Green and Moseley are Muslim. Between 2011 and 2021, the Muslim population of England and Wales increased by more than a million, reaching almost 4 million, or approximately 6.5% of the population, and is estimated to rise to 17.2% by 2050.
In response to Ali’s proposal for a law to safeguard Islam from mockery, Prime Minister Starmer stated: “I agree that desecration is awful and should be condemned across the House. We are … committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including Islamophobia in all its forms.”
Our ruling class’s support for state-mandated multiculturalism has culminated in the creation of a new de facto blasphemy law: Islamophobia. During its time in opposition, the Labour Party adopted the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (APPG) definition of Islamophobia, a version of which looks likely to be implemented by the government, according to the Sunday Telegraph. An APPG report defined it thus: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
Following a string of Quran burnings in Scandinavia, the Guardian described the stunts as evidence of a ‘racism crisis.’ One of the Muslim women interviewed called book burning an example of ‘Islamophobia.’
However, Islam is a belief system, not a race. There are nearly two billion Muslims in the world, many of whom come from different ethnicities. When you criticise Islam, you are criticising an ideology, not a specific racial group: conflating race and ideas is an efficient technique to silence opposition.
The real problem for Europe is definitely not imaginary Islamophobia, but Islam itself. Many convincingly argue that Islam is a religion that is inherently opposed to Western values. This was also evidenced by a survey done in March of last year: 52% of Muslims in the United Kingdom support legislation outlawing the display of images of the Prophet Mohammed within the next twenty years.
If you live in the West, you must adhere to its laws and values. If this means tolerating somebody burning a religious text, then so be it. Living in a free society demands a trade-off.
However, European countries, once the foundation of enlightenment thinking, have opened their borders and collectively accepted the censorious demands of Islam. Britain—the birthplace of liberty philosopher and advocate John Milton—has a long history of liberty, free expression, and the right to blaspheme. But after importing large numbers of people from countries with dictatorships or theocratic regimes, we seem to be forced to give up on these historically European principles.