Iraqi Man Burns Quran Outside a Stockholm Mosque Enraging Turkey
An Iraqi man filled a Quran with bacon and burned it in Stockholm on Wednesday, an event that has angered Turkey as Sweden bids to join NATO. The inflammatory stunt was carried out by two men outside the city’s main mosque on the first day of the Muslim three-day Eid al-Adha holiday.
Some 200 onlookers witnessed one of the two organisers – Salwan Momika – tearing up pages of a copy of the Quran and wiping his shoes with it before putting bacon in it and setting the book on fire, whilst the other protester spoke into a megaphone.
Some of those present shouted ‘God is great’ in Arabic to protest against the burning, and one man was detained by police after he attempted to throw a rock. A supporter of the demonstration shouted ‘Let it burn’ as the holy book caught on fire.
It came after police approved a request to allow the man to go ahead with the action, two weeks after a Swedish appeals court rejected a police ban on Quran-burning protests which have caused anger among Muslims in Sweden and abroad.
A series of demonstrations in Sweden against Islam and for Kurdish rights have offended Ankara, whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Sweden sought NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. But Turkey – a Muslim-majority country – has said Sweden harbours members of what it considers terrorist groups – a charge Sweden denies – and has demanded their extradition as a step toward ratifying Swedish membership.
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan condemned the act in a tweet on Wednesday, writing: ‘I condemn the vile protest against our holy book in Sweden.’ In its permit for Wednesday’s demonstration, the police wrote that while it ‘may have foreign policy consequences’, the security risks and consequences linked to a Koran burning were not of such a nature that the application should be rejected.
Ahead of the stunt, police said they expected only two people to take part, including the organiser, Momika, who in a recent newspaper interview described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Koran.
There were fears that the burning could spark unrest, with police saying they had called in reinforcements from across the country to maintain order. Journalists said several police cars were already parked near the mosque early on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Wednesday that Sweden still wanted to join NATO before or at its summit in Vilnius next month although it was not certain it would be able to do so by then.
He said at a press conference he would not speculate about how the protest could affect Sweden’s NATO process. ‘It’s legal but not appropriate,’ he said, adding that it was up to the police to make decisions on Koran burnings.
Wednesday is not the first time a Quran has been burned in a public protest this year. In January, far-right Danish political party politician Stram Kurs Rasmus Paludan burned the religious book outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
Police then banned two subsequent requests for protests involving Quran burnings – one by a private individual and one by an organisation, outside the Turkish and Iraqi embassies in Stockholm in February. The appeals court in mid-June ruled that police were wrong to ban those, saying ‘the order and security problems’ referenced by the police did not have ‘a sufficiently clear connection to the planned event or its immediate vicinity.’
The request for the Wednesday demonstration was made by the same private individual who had his previous request blocked. ‘I want to protest in front of the large mosque in Stockholm, and I want to express my opinion about the Quran … I will tear up the Quran and burn it,’ Momika, 37, wrote in the application, a copy of which was obtained by AFP news agency.
According to Aftonbladet, Momika said that he ‘does not want my demonstration to be negative to Sweden’s request to join NATO’. Paludan was not expected to take part in Wednesday’s demonstration. Swedish politicians have criticised Quran burnings, but have also adamantly defended the right to freedom of expression.
Sweden has said freedom of speech is firmly enshrined in its constitution and that it has lived up to all the requirements set out in an agreement with Turkey and Finland struck in Madrid a year ago.
In addition to Turkey, several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait also denounced the January Quran burning.
Representatives of the mosque said they were disappointed by the police decision to grant permission for the protest on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, mosque director and Imam Mahmoud Khalfi said on Wednesday.
‘The mosque suggested to the police to at least divert the demonstration to another location, which is possible by law, but they chose not to do so,’ Khalfi said in a statement. Up to 10,000 visitors attend Stockholm’s mosque for the Eid celebrations every year, according to Khalfi.
Swedish and Turkish officials met on June 14 for what Sweden’s chief negotiator characterised as good talks, and are due to hold another high-level meeting in Brussels organised by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
This meeting is set to be held before the Vilnius summit. Sweden and Finland abandoned decades of military non-alignment in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, seeking greater security by joining NATO. Finland became an alliance member in April but the process has been slower for Sweden.
Sweden has set its sights on joining at the alliance’s July 11-12 summit and while it has strong support from other members including the United States, both Turkey and Hungary have so far held back from ratification.
‘Sweden will become a NATO member,’ Kristersson said in an interview with public service broadcaster SVT. ‘Nobody can promise it will happen specifically in Vilnius or right ahead of Vilnius, even if that has been our ambition all along. And that is an ambition we share with every other NATO country as well.’
