Edwin Wagensveld (born 1969) [1] is a Dutch anti-Islam activist and leader of Pegida Netherlands. [2] [3] [4] He has managed to "create a spectacle generating broad media coverage" with his anti-Islam protests and Quran desecrations. [5]
Edwin Wagensveld (born 1969) [1] is a Dutch anti-Islam activist and leader of Pegida Netherlands. [2] [3] [4] He has managed to "create a spectacle generating broad media coverage" with his anti-Islam protests and Quran desecrations. [5]
Wagensveld has been the leader of Pegida Netherlands since November 2014, at a time when he owned a small internet-based business selling non-lethal weapons, self-defence articles and outdoors products. [1] [6] He had previously that year participated in a Hogesa demonstration. [1] He lives in Germany close to the Dutch border, and commutes to the Netherlands to stage demonstrations, and is a staunch supporter of Geert Wilders. [1] In 2016, he was revealed to have been patrolling for refugees on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey with Tatjana Festerling. [7] [8]
In April 2018, Wagensveld was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for tax evasion. [8]
He was investigated by Dutch police for tearing out pages of the Quran and calling it a "fascist book" in January 2023 in front of the Dutch parliament building. [3] His desecrations of the Quran contributed to the diplomatic Quran crisis that year. [3] In August, he trampled on and tore up a Quran outside the Turkish embassy in The Hague. [9] During his subsequent trial in November, he tore apart another copy of the Quran. [4] He was sentenced to forty hours of community service. [10] In January 2024, he was violently attacked during a demonstration in Arnhem after he tried to burn a Quran. [11] In March, he was arrested in Arnhem for pulling a Quran on a dog leash. [12]
Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who has led the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) since he founded it in 2006. He is also the party's leader in the House of Representatives, having held a parliamentary seat since 1998. In the 2010 formation of the first Rutte cabinet, a minority government of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) – which he left in 2004 – and Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), Wilders actively participated in the negotiations, resulting in a "tolerance agreement" between the PVV and these parties. He withdrew his party's parliamentary support in 2012, citing disagreements with the cabinet over proposed budget cuts. Wilders is best known for his right-wing populism, anti-immigration, opposition to Islam and Euroscepticism, and for his relations with Russia. His views have made him a controversial figure in the Netherlands and abroad. Since 2004, he has been protected at all times by armed police.
The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of the Quran. A week later, The New Yorker reported the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Quran." This incident caused upset in parts of the Muslim world.
Quran desecration is the treatment of the Quran in a way that might be considered insulting.
The Dutch People's Union is a Dutch far-right political party. The party espouses ethnic nationalism, advocates for the preservation of "Germanic Christian culture" in the Netherlands, and is a proponent of a Greater Netherlands.
Swedish–Turkish relations are foreign relations between Sweden and Turkey. Both countries are full members of the Council of Europe, NATO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Union for the Mediterranean.
Dove World Outreach Center is a 50-member non-denominational charismatic Christian church led by pastor Terry Jones and his wife, Sylvia. After spending more than 25 years in Gainesville, Florida, the church sold its 20 acres of property in July 2013 and plans to relocate to Tampa. The church first gained notice during the late 2000s for its public displays and criticism of Islam and gay people, and was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It became widely known for its pastor's controversial plan to burn Qur'ans on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Terry Jones is an American anti-Islamic right-wing activist and the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, a small nondenominational Christian church located, until July 2013, in Gainesville, Florida. He is the president of a political group, Stand Up America Now. He first gained national and international attention in 2010 for his plan to burn Qurans, the scripture of the Islamic religion, on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and for burning the Koran afterward.
Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, is a British anti-Islam campaigner, convicted criminal, and one of the UK’s most prominent far-right activists. He was a political advisor to former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Gerard Batten.
The 2012 Afghanistan Quran burning protests were a series of protests of varying levels of violence which took place early in 2012 in response to the burning of Islamic religious material by soldiers from the United States Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. On 22 February 2012, U.S. troops at Bagram Base disposed of copies of the Quran that had been used by Taliban prisoners to write messages to each other. As part of the disposal, parts of the books were burned. Afghan forces working at the base reported this, resulting in outraged Afghans besieging Bagram AFB, raining it with molotov cocktails and stones. After five days of protest, 30 people had been killed, including four Americans. Over 200 people were wounded. International condemnation followed the burning of copies of the Quran, on 22 February 2012, from the library that is used by inmates at the base's detention facility. The protests included domestic riots which caused at least 41 deaths and at least 270 injuries.
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, abbreviated Pegida, is a pan-European, anti-Islam, far-right extremist political movement. German Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicised and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.
Lutz Bachmann is the founder and leader of the Pegida movement, a far-right German political organisation linked to the anti-Muslim counter-jihad ideology. As leader of Pegida, Bachmann has led marches of tens of thousands of people against Muslim immigration. Bachmann has a long history of criminal convictions, and was banned from entering the United Kingdom in 2018.
Anne Marie Dorothy Waters is a far-right politician and activist in the United Kingdom. She founded and led the anti-Islam party For Britain until its dissolution in 2022. She is also the director of Sharia Watch UK, an organisation launched in April 2014. In January 2016, Waters launched Pegida UK in conjunction with activist Tommy Robinson and far-right politician Paul Weston.
Pegida Netherlands is the Dutch branch of the German anti-Islamic political movement Pegida. The organisation is led by Edwin Wagensveld.
Stram Kurs is a nationalist, Anti-Islamic political party in Denmark and Sweden founded in 2017 by Danish-Swedish lawyer Rasmus Paludan. The party is almost exclusively associated with its founder and his anti-Islam activism and demonstrations. It is considered a radical far right fringe party by political scientists and news media.
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Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP) is a Dutch organization that campaigns against the Zwarte Piet character in the culture of the Low Countries. Zwarte Piet is traditionally part of the annual Christian feast of Sinterklaasavond in the Netherlands, Belgium, some territories of the former Dutch Empire and the Dutch diaspora on the evening of 5 December in the Netherlands and 6 December in Belgium. Saint Nicholas Day is also celebrated in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Central Europe and the Middle East. In the folklore of the Low Countries, Zwarte Piet is portrayed as the dark-skinned Spanish Moor companion to Sinterklaas.
On 29 August 2020, riots broke out in the Swedish cities of Malmö and Ronneby. After Swedish police prevented Rasmus Paludan, a Danish politician, from entering the country, far-right anti-immigration activists held protests and burned a Quran. In response, a mob of 300 migrants, mostly Muslims gathered in counter-protest, burned tires, threw rocks and chunks of concrete at the police and smashed bus shelters.
Riots occurred in several Swedish cities in April 2022, primarily against police who were stationed to protect events planned by Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan. The motivation for the violence was ostensibly Paludan's plan to burn a Quran; however, the police suspect that the event was used by criminal groups to target police. Two-thirds of those injured were police officers.
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