Earlier this month I posted about PEGIDA, the anti-Islamization group that has chapters in several European countries. I had thought that the organization was mostly inactive, but now comes word from the Netherlands that PEGIDA is alive and kicking. Last Friday in The Hague there was a PEGIDA Koran demonstration in which a Koran was torn up, after which Muslims reacted in a predictable fashion.
Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from Algemeen Dagblad:
Turkey calls the Netherlands on the carpet after a Koran is torn up
The Dutch deputy ambassador in the Turkish capital of Ankara has been called on the carpet by Turkey. That is confirmed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Turkey summoned the diplomat after Pegida leader Edwin Wagensveld tore up a Koran near the Turkish embassy in the Hague.
The deputy ambassador was told that Turkey is “troubled” by the continuing violations of the Koran and “strongly condemns” such actions, CNN Turk earlier reported. The top Danish diplomat also had to show up after incidents with the Koran in Denmark, according to Turkish media.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the deputy ambassador explained that the Netherlands considers the tearing up of the Koran a “completely tasteless and deliberately provocative act.” But the diplomat also stresses that freedom of expression is an important fundamental right in the Netherlands. “Ultimately, in the Netherlands, it is up to the courts to determine if the law has been violated, and not up to the government.”
Turkey has repeatedly expressed its disapproval of public violations of the Koran in Western lands. At the end of July, Ankara expressed its anger over a Koran burning in Sweden. That country wants to join NATO and therefore needs the approval of Turkey.
Counter-demonstrators also came to Pegida leader Edwin Wagensveld’s event on Friday. They shouted, among other things, “Shame on you,” and rocks were thrown. Wagensveld, in turn, said in the direction of the Turkish embassy, “You don’t belong here.”
Pakistan also has condemned the incident as “very offensive”. The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the deliberate damage to the Holy Book as hurtful for all Muslims in the world. Pakistan is asking the Netherlands to ensure that such “hateful and Islamophobic acts” cannot take place. The Pakistani ministry says that nations are obliged under international law to prevent “incitement to hate”. The deliberate damage to a Koran, according to Pakistan, does not fall under freedom of expression.
Great outrage
Similar incidents in other European countries have caused great outrage in Muslim countries. Sweden saw the recent need to raise the terror threat level after Koran burnings. Justice Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz said last week she would take into account that the denigrating or burning of a Koran, also in the Netherlands, can lead to a heightened terror threat.
Wagensveld has previously torn up a Koran, which led to protests. The Koran is the holy book for Muslims. The leader of the anti-Islam movement Pegida has to appear in court for insulting an ethnic group because, during the tearing up of the Koran, he said among other things that the Koran “is a fascist book”.
See below the images recorded during the Pegida event on Friday.
For links to previous articles about PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) and related movements, see the PEGIDA Archives.
Perhaps the Netherlands can take Turkey to take for its ongoing policy of turning historic churches into mosques.
That’s a good point.
I think that any public destruction of a copy of the Koran serves no useful purpose but causes a lot of harm. Every time it happens, Muslims all over the world start rioting, especially in third world countries, destroying churches and killing Christians, often in a most sadistic way.
Thus, burning or tearing up the Koran does nothing to stop the spread of Islam – on the contrary, it stirs up Muslims’ religious feelings, especially their hatred of ‘infidels’ – but it causes enormous harm to Christians living in Muslim dominated areas.
This is so obvious that you don’t have to be clever to figure it out.
I do wonder whether people destroying copies of the Koran are incapable of understanding the consequences of what they do or do they really want to provoke anti-Christian pogroms?
“Similar incidents ….have caused great outrage”.
Not quite.
Similar incidents have been used as pretexts in the mosques for instructing mass shows of intimidation and criminal damage.
Islam means Submission.
Muslims have to submit.
Let’s ban the Koran. It is filled with hate.. or does censorship only work for Islam?
The Koran and Mein Kampf should perhaps be torn up/burned together, to show that this is about opposing violent, intolerant, supremacist ideologies.
Much better would be reading them together. It’s a real eye-opener and an even more powerful message.
Your points are well taken. It also endangers Swedish and Dutch cops and their diplomats. I think the chief motivation of the Koran burners is to cause Muslims to overreact and make the point that they are less than civilized and that Islam is a violent ideology.
I agree with Robert Spencer when he says, “Don’t burn the Koran-read the Koran”. That means that people should educate themselves about the Koran and learn to interpret the conflicting verses (principle of abrogation) and how it mirrors the life of Mohammad.)
In my view, Islamist terror and violence will continue whether Korans are burned or not. This massive Islamic immigration into the West is a catastrophe. Not all Muslims are evil people, but the actions of the Islamists make them irrelevant. The bottom line is that Islam is incompatible with Western values.
More bloody appeasement that only gets worse because the devils children are not confronted.
Why hasn’t someone like PEGIDA hasn’t started a fax service that faxes a offensive cartoon of Mohammed to every fax machine in major Muslim countries?
If you are willing to jump up and light your hair on fire every time you see a cartoon of Mohammed, PEGIDA ought to be willing to send the fax.
It is a stupid idea. It will not do any harm to Islam, but it will fuel Muslims’ hatred for the West and for Christians. Lots of Christians in Muslim countries will be killed, maimed, raped, their homes and businesses will be burnt, their churches desecrated and destroyed.
Do you want this to happen?
It’s already happening in the west, keep being sheep and cower in fear against the devil’s own, I haven’t and never will. Appeasement never works. Stand up and sound off that shows you have a spine unlike the current jellyfish we see today.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment, and mind you, this is, of course, just a hypothetical example. I would, of course, never suggest that anyone try to do this. That would be against the law.
Let’s say someone wanted to overthrow a government because they were of the opinion that this government no longer represented the majority population’s best interests. Let’s also assume that they wanted someone else to do the groundwork for them, i.e., they didn’t want to get their hands dirty, or they simply wanted to reserve their strength and strike when the time was right.
One way to achieve this would be through deception. They would use their enemies and their enemies’ friends to achieve this. It is, of course, a tried-and-tested method that has proven to be remarkably effective throughout history. It has many names: divide and conquer, propaganda, manipulation, false flag operation, black ops, etc.
So let’s assume that their enemies and their enemies’ friends were devout religious people who, shall we say, revered a certain holy book or used such a book as a pretext to achieve their goals, which was total submission of the majority population.
One way to get these devout people to do the dirty work, to destabilise the government to the point that it was ripe to be overthrown, would be to spread rumours, perhaps with the help of AI-generated deep fakes, purportedly showing senior government ministers tearing up these devout people’s holy books and, in general, mocking their religion in numerous ways.
These senior ministers and officials could, for instance, use the holy books’ pages as toilet paper every time they had to empty their bowels, or perhaps use them to light a fire, use them as cigarette paper for their joints, etc. Only one’s imagination would set the limit. Then, when the government was finally on its knees after prolonged widespread civil disobedience from the adherents of this religion, the individuals behind it all would act and seize control.
This is, of course, very similar to the tactics that the Marxists are currently employing with great success. Just look at how BLM has been able to weaken the police in the US and how the various pro-open border groups have been able to destabilise the country (mind you, these groups are for the most part Marxist). The open border crowd has, of course, not just been able to destabilise the US; they have in fact been able to successfully destabilise the entire western world.
And it’s not necessary to limit the focus on devout religious people belonging to an anointed minority who care greatly about their holy book. Similar tactics could be used to antagonise various Marxist indoctrinated groups who care greatly about their gender ideology, their global warming religion, radical racial theories, etc.
It’s worth noting that politicians rely heavily on similar methods to control the population, and they have done so throughout history.
A recent example from the US is the January 6th investigation, the massive election fraud in 2020, and the political persecution of former President Trump. These are direct provocations meant to get the right/conservatives to react in a violent manner, which would then “justify” a severe clampdown and usurpation of even more power for the Marxists/the radical left. It’s all theatre, and it’s all meant to give the manipulators a veneer of legitimacy.
The great Chinese general Sun Tzu mentions this basic strategy in his book ‘The Art of War’. If village A suspects that village B is going to attack them, village A should then contact village C and convince village C that village B is going to attack village C. If everything goes according to plan, village C will then attack village B, and village A will have averted disaster without any bloodshed.
Anyway, it’s an interesting thought experiment. History has shown us that it is very advantageous to get other people to carry out one’s dirty work. History has also shown us that it is the victors who write the history books and who determine what is moral and what’s not. And last but not least, history has shown us that it is those who are willing to manipulate who normally end up with the longest straw.
“I’ll see your jihad and raise you one Crusade.” —Anonymous