The Shia Muslim Community, Ghana led by his eminence Sheikh Abubakar Kamaludeen has strongly condemned the desecration of the Holy Qur`an sanctioned by the Swedish Government over the week.

The Shia Muslim Community regards the Holy Qur`an as a Revealed Scripture that remains undistorted despite series of attempts to distort it by the enemies of Islam. No civilized state or individual will authorize such a hateful, racist, and despicable campaign against the religion of Islam on the pretext of freedom of expression.

The issuing of permit for demonstrators to desecrate the scripture of any revealed religion in the name of free expression is a clear endorsement of organized hate and bigotry, and must therefore be addressed devoid of propaganda and prejudice.

We strongly condemn this reckless move and urge the Swedish government to be civil, responsible and consider the potential ramifications of hurting the feelings of over a billion people on Earth.

Without a slight doubt, every society needs development. Development comes with ideas. Ideas must be expressed for societal transformation. It is certainly from the free exchange of ideas that knowledge or truth emerges leading to development.

However, expressions that threaten social harm, incite chaos or fan national or global disunity must never be allowed by any thinking and civilized people. For peace and security to prevail, human rights and freedom must be surrounded by restrictions. Interfering with the sensibilities, fundamental rights and freedom of others causes nothing but anarchy.

Free expression must not be used to satisfy the inordinate ambitions of individuals, governments, and others whose intention is to consciously create dissension, sow seeds of discord, spread venoms of blasphemy and chaos between and among civilizations or religions.

The Holy Qur`an which we believe to be the only undistorted Revealed Book is our Red Line. The endorsement of Islamophobia under the rules of protecting free speech is highly hypocritical. Likewise, deploring hate campaigns and at the same time failing to prevent it is indeed duplicitous.

We, therefore, call on the Swedish government to be responsible and behave like a civilized state, to punish the perpetrators of this criminal act or hand them over for prosecution and render an unqualified apology to the Muslim world.

The world appears to be a scaremongering time, and it is only the right application of the message of peace, rule of law, good governance, fundamental human administrative justice that peace and security can prevail.

The Holy Qur`an states:

“They desire to extinguish the Light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will perfect His Light, although the infidels hate it” Qur`an 61:8

It is our resolute responsibility to protect the sanctity of the Holy Qur`an from the agents of hate, racism, chaos, and hypocrisy.

Long live the religion of Islam, long live the Holy Qur`an, and long live the agents of Peace and Civilization.