In the Name of Allah, the All-Beneficent, the All-Merciful.
May Allah bless Muhammad and his Family and damn their enemies.
There is no doubt that any acts that defile the sanctity of the Quran are intolerable to a believer, and that such acts will lead to much anger and resentment towards the perpetrators of such lowly acts. That said, it is sometimes wiser for believers to instead withhold their anger, maintain their composure, and ignore those who are seeking to provoke them by targeting what they hold sacred. This is especially true if the perpetrator is an unknown, foolish individual who is buried beneath the masses and barely seen, like the Iraqi who recently burnt a copy of the Honourable Quran in Sweden. These types of people are lowlives who seek fame on media platforms, regardless of the means.
He is neither a known academic figure, nor does he have any intellectual or political value that deserves any attention, so the widespread reactions we have seen in response to the crime he had perpetrated can only be described as stupid. These reactions do not benefit the Quran nor do they benefit Islam; they can only benefit this lowlife criminal, who, from being an unknown with no value, will be transformed into an infamous figure whose statements will be saught after by media platforms, and from being a homeless immigrant into an individual cared for and protected by the authorities because his life is “in danger”. As a result, he will live like kings and will continue to provoke Muslims with his heinous acts, while reaping the benefits.
If Muslims were wiser and had better levels of comprehension, they would have realised that they cannot respond to transgressions such as these in the west as they would in the east. In the east, a strong and furious response, which also acts as a deterrent, is usually required. However, reality is different in the west, and the best way for you to respond is to not respond at all: completely ignore those who are trying to provoke you so that they gain no enjoyment nor benefit from their attempts and find no supporters who would sympathise with them.
Ignoring these acts would have been a far more suitable reaction as it would have shown that the Quran and Islam are bigger than to be threatened or insulted by lowlives like this individual and his ilk. All they would have gained would be no more than a few clips on YouTube and Tiktok, that will soon be forgotten and ignored as time passes, like hundreds of other offensive material out there. But Muslims, with their stupidity, insist on exaggerated responses that run contrary to Allah’s instructions to us: “… and ignore the ignorant”. Instead you see them today with their governments, committees, and activists escalating the situation, making it seem as if a nation worth 2 billion individuals is needed to face a lone, unknown, and foolish boy. And some, due to their excessive ignorance, assumed that this was Swedish government policy which meant that the escalation was appropriate. Of course, this is not the case. The Swedish government – despite all its negatives – did not want this crime to take place, and its police prevented this idiot from burning the Quran, but he then sought the intervention of the courts. Furthermore, he was still charged by police for making racial and hateful remarks while carrying out his crime.
In the west, decision-making is not exclusive to a single entity or a select group. Governmental organisations are often at odds with each other when it comes to making decisions, so when will Muslims realise that an unwarranted, exaggerated response will not act as a deterrent to these acts? When will they realise that their behaviour causes such incidents to occur more often?
Surely this is not the first such incident; many similar incidents took place in the past. Many copies of the Quran were burnt, and each time the Muslims escalated to no avail. Muslims must be wiser than this.
Sheikh al-Habib
