Burning the Quran and the “Great Reset”

For the second time in less than two months, an immigrant of Iraqi origin, burned a copy of the Quran on July 31 in front of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, under the protection of Swedish police.

Also in Sweden, over the last three years, starting in 2020, Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish extremist, burned copies of the Quran several times on camera.

These are not the only examples. In October 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron stated: “Muslims may form a parallel society within France” and talked about the need to admit there being a radical Islamist trend leading to denial of the republic. He also added that “Islam is a religion that is experiencing a crisis across the world”. Macron also noted that the ban on hijab will include all service providers in France.

It is worth reminding that France is also where the infamous satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is based, which more than once published cartoons insulting to the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.

Returning to the most recent issue, the UN Human Rights Council adopted in mid-July a resolution submitted (through member states) by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 members. The resolution calls on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to publish a report on religious intolerance and distribute it to states, encouraging them to review their laws to provide measures and legal channels that combat and prosecute religious intolerance. Despite adoption of the resolution, we should not neglect the fact that the US and EU states in the Council voted against and strongly opposed the resolution under the pretext that it contradicts “human rights and freedom of expression”.

These and other facts indicate that the Western ruling elites, at official and unofficial levels, have a particular policy that allows and encourages phenomena such as Quran burning.

Before further analyzing and understanding the phenomenon, it is necessary to set aside Western countries’ pretext that they stand for “human rights” and “freedom of expression”. This stance is extremely selective. For example, the West, which tolerates phenomena such as Quran burning and insulting the Prophet Muhammad, takes a firm, even dictatorial and repressive, stance against what it considers “anti-Semitism” and “violation of LGBTQ rights”.

Thus, what is the law that governs this phenomenon? Or, in other words, what is the Western elites’ interest in encouraging and enabling this phenomenon?
The issue can be summed up in the following three points:

First: Over the past 50 years, Western peoples have lived in relative prosperity. One reason was the dominance of economic colonialism and unequal exchange, using the dollar and its financial system, and in the framework of competing with the Soviet model at the time. Since adopting neoliberal policies in the early 1980s in the UK and US, then in all Western countries, the process of revoking social gains began. This process accelerated with the Sino-Russian rise, which began to mark the end of the economic colonialism era.

Thus, Western peoples’ return to political activity with a clear economic angle is inevitable, from the Western elites’ perspective. The best way to disperse peoples’ struggle is to get them into cycles of violence and hatred towards each other at the state level and internally. In Western countries, creating a sharp fissure between “immigrants” and “natives” is an important tool elites try to use to protect themselves and to turn the energy of people’s anger against each other.

Within these coordinates, it becomes understandable why extremist trends are being reinforced in the West, whether neo-Nazism or radical Islam, because they need and serve each other. In this sense, Western governments’ encouragement of intolerance policies is a preemptive process aimed at aborting the Western peoples’ search for their rights in the face of the ruling elites with whom power and wealth are centralized in a historically unprecedented and extremely dictatorial manner.

Second: The West’s need to summon and encourage extremism is not limited to the borders of its countries, but rather extends worldwide. For example, the African peoples and many African governments and leaders have shown, in recent years, a clear inclination towards independence from subordination to the West. They are also working to build respectful and equal relations with China, Russia, and other rising powers. To impede this, extremist and terrorist movements are being used against those trying to become independent from the West. Policies of intolerance, especially religious ones, are an important tool in inciting and expanding extremism.

Third: More broadly and strategically, the Western elites’ attempts to perpetuate their hegemony globally, require completion of the neoliberal scheme best expressed by Klaus Schwab, President of the Davos Forum, in his book “The Great Rest”. Perpetuating dominance requires the destruction of state apparatuses worldwide, whether its civil side through ending any social role of the state, or its military side through armed conflicts and privatization of the security sector and transforming it into mercenary militias. However, completing this process cannot take place without destroying the cultural nucleus of societies in which traditions and religions occupy an essential position, leading to destruction of the family institution, which is being carried out in several ways, including attempts to impose LGBTQ policies on different countries, with the aim of atomization of societies and terminating any ability for them to collectively resist Western policies.

In conclusion, portraying insults to religions and their symbols as a “progressive” and “liberal” matter is, in fact, quite the opposite. It is intended to stimulate and deepen extremism of all kinds, especially fascist and terrorist ones. Likewise, what is intended is to get peoples against each other, in the West (by pushing immigrants and original people against each other), and in the rest of the world by pushing sects, religions, and peoples against each other. Above all, these offensive acts do not aim to liberate societies from “old beliefs” but rather, in fact, aim to destroy the cultural structure of societies all over the world, including destroying the institution of the family, to reach a state of absolute individualism where the entire humanity turns into isolated individuals unable to form any organized collective activity against the global and local plundering elites.

(النسخة العربية)