ISLAMABAD       -      Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday called upon the civilized world to strongly condemn the highly offensive acts of desecration of the Holy Quran.

On his Twitter handle, the prime minister said, “The highly offensive desecration of the Holy Quran by a Danish politician is the third such incident in a row that should be strongly condemned by the civilized world.”

He said the need for global unity to fight Islamophobia couldn’t be more urgent than it is now. He also said, “We are deeply hurt over this incident.” Last week, the Holy Quran was desecrated in Netherlands. On Monday last, a far-right Dutch politician and leader of the Islamophobic group Pegida, Edwin Wagensveld, had torn out pages from a copy of the Quran in The Hague.“It is undoubtedly a provocative Islamophobic hate crime committed under the guise of freedom of expression. Such offensive acts deeply hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world and can create disharmony among the international community,” the Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement. On Janurary 21, a Danish-Swedish far-right extremist known for spreading anti-Muslim hatred burned a copy of the Holy Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm under the protection of Swedish police. Protests were also held in several Muslim countries to denounce the repeated desecration of Quran.