The UN Human Rights Council Turns Its Back on Free Speech

In the tumultuous realm of international diplomacy, a storm had been brewing. The epicenter was the United Nations Human Rights Council, a stage of clashing ideologies where countries often grappled with the ideas of free speech.

The controversy was a ripple effect from an incident that occurred thousands of miles away, in the calm and crisp air of Stockholm, Sweden. It was during the revered Eid al-Adha holiday when an Iraqi-born protester, in a defiant act of religious disrespect, desecrated the Qur'an. He tore the sacred pages, wiped his shoes with them, and then set them ablaze, right outside a mosque. His actions were a shockwave that rippled through the Muslim world.

It was not the first such incident. Similar protests had unfurled like wildfire across Stockholm and Malmö, with applications flooding the Swedish police from individuals intent on burning religious texts, including the Qur'an, the Bible, and the Torah.

The immediate reaction was swift and global. The Swedish embassy in Baghdad found itself in the eye of the storm, briefly overrun by outraged locals. Iran paused its diplomatic maneuvering, holding off from sending a new ambassador to Stockholm. The Organization for Islamic Cooperation expressed its censure and urged the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to deliberate on the matter.

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