Parliament shoots down Arnhem mayor’s ban on Quran desecration

Parliament shoots down Arnhem mayor’s ban on Quran desecration

A majority in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, is against Arnhem mayor Ahmed Marcouch’s call for a national ban on Quran desecration. According to the parliamentarians, an attempted Quran burning by anti-Islam movement Pegida did get severely out of hand earlier this year, but a ban is unnecessary, the Volkskrant reports.

The first debate of the parliamentary year on Tuesday was about Pegida and a ban on burning religious texts. Early this year, Pegida leader Edwin Wagensveld announced he would burn a Quran in Arnhem. A crowd stormed the Wagensveld and the police in an attempt to prevent the desecration. Arnhem mayor Marcouch then banned a new action by Wagensveld and called for a national ban on such burnings.

DENK MP Ismail el Abassi requested this debate in January. He still supports a ban. According to him, burning religious texts like the Quran is “an extreme expression” of the “humiliation and dehumanization” of population groups. “This is not freedom of expression, but hatred of Muslims,” the parliamentarian said.

All other speakers spoke out strongly against the desecration of religious texts, but only GroenLinks-PvdA supported the ban. “Controversial and uncomfortable” opinions also fall under freedom of expression, but there’s a line “when an opinion deliberately incites hatred,” GL-PvdA MP Songül Mutluer said. There are “numerous other ways” to criticize a religion, she added.

SP parliamentarian Michiel van Nispen pointed out that hate speech and violence are already prohibited and can be acted against. He does not see why “religion is of greater importance” than other things people can be offended by.

The VVD used the opportunity to again discuss “the limits of the right to demonstrate.” Pegida’s action showed that a distinction is needed between demonstrations and “deliberate public order disturbances,” VVD MP Ingrid Michon-Derkzen said. “Precisely in order to cherish the right to demonstrate, we must dare to set limits to it.”

Over the summer break, VVD Minister David van Weel of Justice and Security said he wanted to “set limits within the right to demonstrate.” He said the point will be included in the government program that’s currently being written.

The debate made clear that the opposition was not impressed with Van Weel’s plan. The right to demonstrate cannot be restricted because we find some protests “irritating,” said SP MP Van Nispen. “That we cannot use the road, that the police capacity is being deployed: all super irritating,” he said. “But that cannot be the reason to restrict something so important.”

Van Weel is determined to continue, he said in the Tweede Kamer on Tuesday. “The right to demonstrate is not a carte blanche to break the law,” the Minister said. He added that no decisions have been made yet, and he first wants to enter into a “dialogue” with “demonstrators, the Public Prosecution Service, police officers, and citizens.”