Dutch Jews revile desecration of Quran in Hague

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands

Dutch Jews decried the recent desecration of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, in the Hague by Edwin Wagensveld, a far-right politician and leader of the Islamophobic group Pegida.

Speaking to Anadolu, Rabbi Lody van de Kamp said Wagensveld’s act was an insult not only to Muslims in the country but also to anyone who held religious belief.

He underscored that insulting religious belief was no longer a crime according to the country’s penal code, adding that this encouraged those who would commit such vile acts.

“Whichever religious belief and philosophy of life (one adheres to), all are about respecting a supreme authority. If you can’t insult a person but can freely offend religious beliefs, then this means no progress has been made in understanding what belief and philosophy mean to human beings,” van de Kamp said.

He emphasized that the Quran burning was obviously a hate crime targeting Muslims and argued that not preventing such an attack risked more offenses toward other religious beliefs.

Insulting the Quran should be opposed by all religious communities together, van de Kamp added.

Also speaking to Anadolu, liberal Rabbi Albert Ringer called the attack “a cowardly act.”

Pointing out that far-right tendencies were gathering pace in the Netherlands, he said they threatened Muslims, Jews, and different ethnicities – and consequently peace in the country.

Jaap Hamburger, a Jewish community leader, stressed that the attack was clearly meant to provoke and that freedom of thought had its limits too.

​​​​​​​A video on social media on Monday showed Wagensveld tearing out pages from a copy of the Quran in The Hague. The video then showed the politician burning the torn-out pages of the holy book in a pan.

The provocation came on the heels of a similar incident last Saturday in which Rasmus Paludan, an extremist Swedish-Danish politician, burned a copy of the Holy Quran near the Turkish Embassy in Sweden’s capital Stockholm, triggering outrage both in Türkiye and worldwide.

• Dutch Jews
• Far-right in Europe
• Islamophobia
• Netherlands