Abhorrent act of Holy Quran’s desecration hurt religious sentiments of Muslims globally: Ashrafi

ISLAMABAD (APP): Prime Minister’s Special Representative for Interfaith Harmony and Middle East Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi on Sunday said the abhorrent act of the Holy Quran’s desecration in Sweden badly hurt the religious sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims on the globe.
Condemning the incident in the strongest terms while talking to APP, Ashrafi who is also the Chairman of Pakistan Ulema Council said it could be a plot to fuel the anti-Muslim violence under the pretext of advocating freedom of speech in the world.
He urged the Swedish government to adopt the measures to prevent recurrence of such disgraceful incidents in the future and should not allow extremists and radical elements to spread hatred against Islamic sanctities and values. He said such actions had nothing to do with freedom of expression and under the international human rights law, nobody was allowed to carry out hate speech and incite people to violence.
He also urged the United Nations, Organization of Islamic Cooperation and United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to take punitive action against the far-right politician in Sweden for desecrating the divine command.
Ashrafi said that Islam was a religion of peace and Muslims, including in Pakistan, believed in respecting all the religions, adding that this code of conduct must be followed by all to create religious pluralism in the world.