London, April 06: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the repeated desecration of the holy Qur’an in a US church amid an explosion of anger among Muslims in the region.
“Such actions cannot be condoned by any religion,” Xinhua quoted Ban as saying on Tuesday in a statement issued after his meeting with a group of ambassadors representing countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
He went on to say that such actions contradict the efforts of the United Nations and many people around the world to promote tolerance, intercultural understanding and mutual respect between cultures and religions.
On March 20, Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Florida, stirred outrage worldwide by burning a copy of Islam’s holy book after holding a mock trial at his fringe church.
Jones had first planned to burn the holy book last year on the anniversary of September 11, 2001 incidents but changed his mind due to a massive international condemnation of the move.
The sacrilegious move, endorsed by US authorities as “freedom of expression” unleashed a wave of deadly protests in Afghanistan in early April and gained momentum last week.
Ten UN foreign workers were killed after a small number of furious protesters stormed the UN headquarters in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif against a background of anti-Western sentiments in the country.
At least ten Afghans were killed and 83 others wounded in the southern city of Kandahar on Saturday in a second day of violent protests over the desecration of the holy Qur’an.
Ban’s remarks come as the extremist American pastor has reportedly announced plans to defiantly spearhead another anti-Islam rally outside a Michigan mosque on April 22.
The brazen act of Qur’an burning comes at a time when Washington has expelled or detained individual Muslims in America merely for expressing views critical of the US support for Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and its selective policy in waging a global “war on terror.”
——–Agencies