The Pakistani community in Athens demonstrated outside the Indian embassy on Sunday over the Kashmir issue.
Alarmingly though, seen among the three or four dozen protesting was the flag of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) Islamist party, known for its protests in opposition to any change to Pakistan’s blasphemy law and demands that Sharia be established as law.
According to Islam, death is mandatory in cases of blasphemy, for both Muslim men and women.
In 2018, when the Dutch politician Geert Wilders announced that he was planning to hold a contest to draw caricatures of Muhammad, there were large protests in Pakistan against it.
It was in this context that TLP leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi declared in front of media that he would order nuclear bomb strikes on the Netherlands to destroy the entire country and “wipe them off the map” he was given the chance to or if he became Pakistan’s leader.
He is quoted to have said at a press conference in Karachi: “If they give me the atom bomb, I would remove Holland from the face of the earth before they can hold a competition of caricatures… I will wipe them off the face of this earth.”
Eventually Geert Wilders cancelled his proposed cartoon contest citing fears of security risks.
In late October 2020, just after the killing of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty in a suburb of Paris by an 18-year old Chechen refugee, TLP published an article on their official website where they commended the killing.
They labelled the killer as a “Shaheed” and “Mujahid”, and posted a photo of the bloodied severed head of Samuel Paty in the same article on which the killer initially posted to Twitter just after the killing.
The post was deleted by Twitter soon afterwards.
The display of the TLP flag in Athens one that should certainly raise concern and catch the attention of the police.
READ MORE: Greece expresses "heartfelt condolences" and "solidarity" to India following Morbi bridge collapse.
