The Muslims in Europe and Southeast Asia continued to condemn the recent desecrations of the Quran and Islamophobia in Europe as a group of Muslims staged a protest in The Hague and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) denounced the incidents over the weekend.
Hundreds of Muslims marched toward Koekamp square as part of the "stop anti-Muslim hatred" protest organized by the Federation of Islamic Organizations (FIO) and the Haaglanden Region Islamic Organizations Association (SIORH).
Gathering in the square, they chanted slogans against the desecration of Islam's holy book, condemning such Islamophobic acts.
They also performed a prayer and recited verses from the Quran.
Speaking at the demonstration, Tahsin Çetinkaya, the head of the Turkish Islamic Culture Foundation, said Islamophobia has risen to "a new level" in the Netherlands.
"Muslims, mosques and other Islamic institutions have faced various Islamophobic acts over the years, including the sending of threatening letters to mosques, the hanging of pigs' heads on mosque doors and arson," he added.
Çetinkaya noted that the perpetrators of these acts are encouraged by the silence of government officials.
"Enough is enough. Stop holding grudges against Muslims and Islam," he said, stressing that Muslims living in the Netherlands are also part of the country.
Rasmus Paludan, an extremist Danish Swedish politician and the leader of the far-right Hard Line party, torched a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on Jan. 21 with both police protection and permission from Swedish authorities.
The following week, he burned a copy of Islam's holy book in front of a mosque in Denmark and said he would repeat the act every Friday until Sweden is included in NATO.
Meanwhile, far-right Dutch politician Edwin Wagensveld, leader of the anti-Islam party PEGIDA, tore apart a Quran before setting it on fire at a demonstration in Enschede, the Netherlands in late January.
Türkiye had already expressed concerns that Sweden was not sufficiently committed to fighting terrorists of organizations like the PKK, its Syrian affiliate YPG and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), as well as their sympathizers.
Since the two Nordic countries officially applied to join NATO in May last year, Hungary and Türkiye have been withholding their accession, which requires all 30 members to agree to new entrants. Ankara has been demanding tougher anti-terror laws and terrorist extraditions from Stockholm besides the lifting of an arms embargo.
A trilateral pact inked on the margins of a NATO summit in Madrid in June 2022 bound Sweden and Finland to a series of commitments aimed at assuaging Ankara’s security concerns while Türkiye has warned the process would a hit dead end if promises were not kept.
Unfortunately for Sweden, those concerns have not dwindled as demonstrations by PKK supporters targeting Türkiye and Erdoğan, as well as the desecration of the Quran under government authorization in recent weeks, have brought tensions to a boiling point and already slow NATO talks have come to a halt altogether.
Türkiye says the two countries, particularly Sweden, need to do more to fulfill their promises, especially in the wake of recent demonstrations by supporters of the PKK terrorist group and the burning of the Quran in Stockholm.
Foreign ministers from ASEAN members also slammed the incidents in Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark as “blasphemy.”
"We condemned in the strongest terms the acts by extremist, far-right politicians in certain countries of burning and desecrating the Holy Quran last month," they said in a statement published on the bloc's website on Saturday.
"This act of blasphemy has hurt and tarnished religious tolerance. Freedom of expression must be exercised in a responsible manner. We reaffirmed ASEAN's commitment to continue encouraging dialogue and understanding and promoting the spirit of peaceful coexistence to achieve peace and harmony in a diverse global community," it added.
The ministers met in Jakarta and Indonesia to discuss regional issues in the first significant get-together by the regional bloc since Indonesia took over chairpersonship for 2023.
