Ógra Fianna Fail Rep Speaks at Dublin anti-Quran Burning Protest at Swedish Embassy

Last Saturday the 29th of July saw a protest organised by a group called “Pakistani Oversees Community Ireland” outside the Swedish Embassy on Fitzwilliam Street. The motivation for the protest was multiple incidents of Quran burning in Sweden, causing outrage throughout the Islamic world as well as in migrant communities in Europe. 

For the past 18 months, Islamists have directed their fury at Sweden and Denmark for allowing the public desecration of the Quran by free speech and Islam-critical activists, with the affair complicating Sweden’s NATO membership bid and leading to violence against western embassies in the Middle East. 

One of those speaking at the Dublin protest over the weekend was Ammar Ali, a Fianna Fáil Local Area Representative for the South Inner City of Pakistani heritage and former chair of the youth wing for the party in IT Tallaght.

Responding to media inquiries from The Burkean Mr Ali said he attended the event as an individual and not on behalf of his party, and that he condemns the recent wave of Islamist violence in response to the Quran burnings. Swedish embassies in the Middle East have faced a wave of attacks from marauding Islamists the past month, as Stockholm itself witnesses intense rioting from Muslim communities over the issue.

Among those speaking outside the Swedish embassy were imams and members of the Pakistani community giving speeches peppered with Islamic scripture, stating their belief that insults to Islam constituted hate speech.

Ali also emphasised the peaceful nature of the protest and the speeches when talking to The Burkean, adding that he is a strong believer in freedom of speech, but believes it does not apply to attacking people’s “beliefs, sentiments, or choice of who they are”.

His presence at the protest takes place within the context of the incoming Hate Speech Bill, and the current debate around what constitutes “hate”, with many warning that the Bill could become a de facto blasphemy law by the backdoor ripe for abuse by Islamists.

Fianna Fáil is a government party who have backed and defended the Bill throughout its legislative journey, bar some recent scepticism from the likes of Lisa Chambers on account of recent public pressure.

An example of how cloudy the working definition of hate speech is, Uruemu Adejinmi, another up-and-coming ethnic minority in Fianna Fail, recently tweeted that hate was anything that an offended member of a minority group said it was. Were that definition of hate applied here, Secularism itself would have to be abolished, due to the offence it would be causing to this “marginalised group”.

While Ireland has thankfully thus far avoided the worst results of the clash between “Western values” and the Islamist tendencies of Muslim migrant communities seen in other European countries such as France, England and Sweden, this is mostly due to Ireland only recently becoming a net-immigration country, and not having as large a Muslim population at present compared to its European neighbours.

Events like these show an Ireland undergoing rapid cultural transformation due to immigration, and our political class ignoring any possibe negative consequences of this. As the Muslim population continues to grow in Ireland, we can only expect more of these events in the future. As a crude reminder, another sign of this transformation is the recent Census, which showed the most popular boy’s name in Galway was Muhammad.