Bahraini Activist Urges Formation of ‘Alliance of Civil Societies against Islamophobia’
Baqer Darwish, director of the Bahrain Forum for Human Rights, made the proposal in an address to an online conference held to discuss the desecration of the Holy Quran from the human rights viewpoint.
The International Quran News Agency (IQNA) staged the webinar, titled “Looking at Quran Desecration from International Human Rights Viewpoint,” on Sunday.
Mohsen Ghanei, an Iranian expert on international affairs, Khalil Hassan, a Sweden-based Bahraini analyst, and Sheikh Yusuf Qarut, a representative of Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Shia Council in Sweden, were among other speakers at the online conference.
In his address, Darwish described the recent desecrations of the Quran in Sweden and Denmark as awful crimes against a divine book
He said Sweden justifies allowing such acts of sacrilege by saying they are within the framework of freedom of expression, whereas this justification only allows extremists to spread Islamophobia and sectarian sedition.
No international law, including those related to human rights, justify allowing these crimes to happen, he stressed.
Darwish stated that acts such as burning the Quran undermine the stability of the society and, therefore, rights groups and international bodies, in addition to Muslim countries, must take a stand against them.
They should push for a document at the United Nations that bans desecrating Islamic sanctities, he stressed.
There are different ways to confront these acts of desecration, such as condemning them, boycotting the countries that allow them to happen, and holding peaceful protests, the activist said.
He added that one suggestion is to form an alliance of civil society institutions in Muslim and non-Muslim countries that will work to confront Islamophobia and desecration of Islamic sanctities.
The conference came as a new wave of Islamophobic acts of Quran desecration have started in Sweden and Denmark since late last month.
The Nordic countries allow the blasphemies to happen under the guise of the so-called freedom of speech despite wide condemnations from Muslim and non-Muslim states and even in the face of a UN Human Rights Council resolution adopted earlier this month.
