A balancing act on religious dignity
As its Muslim population has grown in recent decades, Europe has sought to defend its core democratic principles – such as freedom of speech and religious liberty – while embracing its expanding cultural diversity. That challenge is once more vividly on display.
On Friday, the Danish government introduced a bill in parliament to ban public desecration of religious objects. The measure follows summer protests that involved burning the Quran, Islam’s most sacred text. A similar action provoked street clashes on Sunday in Sweden. In France, meanwhile, hundreds of schoolgirls were sent home on the first day of fall classes today for wearing abayas, a form of Muslim clothing banned last month under the country’s code of secularism.
These incidents have underscored the difficulty that Europe’s democratic societies and most deeply religious communities face in adapting to one another. But they may also be revealing that preserving liberal norms while accommodating new observances may in fact be mutually reinforcing.
Scores of Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark in recent months, for example, have borne different messages. Some burnings were done by right-wing groups protesting what they see as an erosion of Western values. Others were carried out by immigrants from Iraq and Iran to highlight persecution in their home countries.
These acts have sharpened debate about so-called anti-blasphemy laws. The Danish proposal to make burning scriptural texts a crime sparked criticism from newspapers across Europe worried about free speech. Yet at least two recent opinion polls show that as far-right rhetoric against immigrants has become more inflammatory, support for protecting the Quran has grown among Swedish citizens. The government has pledged to draft a bill like Denmark’s by next summer.
In a July summit on hate crimes, Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, noted that acts of desecration are often “manufactured to express contempt and inflame anger; to drive wedges between people; and to provoke, transforming differences of perspective into hatred and, perhaps, violence.”
The Quran burnings have, in fact, inflamed protests and drawn official condemnation in a swath of Muslim countries. But their greater effect may rest on the conscience of ordinary people – in their quiet defense of dignity and respect.
In July, a Swede of Syrian descent applied for a permit to burn a Torah outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm. On the day, however, he arrived with a Quran instead. “I want to show that we have to respect each other, we live in the same society,” Ahmad Alush said. “If I burn the Torah, another the Bible, another the Quran, there will be war here.” At a Quran burning a few weeks later, Husam El Gomati, a Libyan entrepreneur living in Sweden, walked among protesters while handing out chocolates. Kindness is stronger than hatred, he said.
Individual responses like those reflect broader unifying responses. An organization founded by a Swedish imam and rabbi works to build trust by jointly defusing discrimination against their distinct communities.
The debates in Europe over balancing the protection of rights and individual dignity are gaining new resonance at a time when people in many Muslim societies are seeking similar transformations, and discussions may hold useful lessons.
“To oppose anti-Muslim bigotry, we need also to oppose restrictions on blasphemy,” wrote Kenan Malik, a British columnist, in response to Denmark’s new legislation. “In defending free speech, we must also stand against bigotry whenever it reveals itself. To do one but not the other is not to be serious about either.”
