THE HAGUE – At a demonstration outside the Turkish consulate in The Hague on Friday, a Dutch far-right activist stepped on and tore up a copy of the Qur’an, infuriating hundreds of counter-protesters.
The Dutch government had officially criticized the demonstration before of time, but stated it lacked the legal authority to halt it.
According to AFP correspondents, Edwin Wagensveld, leader of the Dutch branch of the far-right party Pegida, smashed a copy of the Qur’an. He was accompanied by two other individuals.
Access to the street where the Turkish embassy is located had been blocked by police, and there were perhaps fifty counter-protesters there.
When Wagensveld tore up pages from the Qur’an, Islam’s sacred book, some of them began throwing stones at him.
When part of the mob tried to track him down as he left, some 20 police officers with shields and batons interfered.
On Friday, the Netherlands’ Turkish-born justice minister, Dilan Yesilgoz, condemned the attempt to destroy the holy book as “fairly primitive and pathetic.”
However, she emphasized that the country’s rules permitted such a demonstration.
Nonetheless, Wagensveld stands trial for remarks he made during a similar demonstration in January, when he tore up a copy of the Qur’an outside parliament and compared it to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”
A T-shirt he wore to the event on Friday made a similar assertion.
Geert Wilders, the leader of another far-right party, the PVV, supported Pegida’s march on Friday.
Similar attacks on the Qur’an have recently occurred in several European countries.
Two guys set fire to a copy of the Qur’an in front of the Swedish parliament in late July, and similar instances have occurred in Denmark this year.
Such protests have sparked outrage and, in some cases, instability in a number of Muslim countries.
Sweden’s intelligence service raised its terror alert level to four on a scale of five on Thursday in response to the Muslim world’s outrage over Qur’an burnings.