All the elements of an Islamophobic provocation are present. A rally was authorized on Wednesday outside Stockholm’s largest mosque, where an organizer plans to burn a copy of the Koran, on the first day of the most important holiday in the Muslim calendar, Eid al-Adha. The Swedish police nevertheless considers that “the security risks (…) are not such as to prohibit it”. The rally will take place from midday in front of the great mosque in Stockholm, where the police are monitoring the area, noted an AFP journalist.
The subject is sensitive in Sweden, where a demonstration in January, during which a Koran had been burned in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, had aroused the anger of Ankara, which is blocking the candidacy of the Scandinavian country. NATO.
“I will tear up the Quran and burn it”
In his request for a demonstration consulted by AFP, the organizer of Wednesday’s rally, Salwan Momika, 37, said he wanted to “express [son] opinion about the Quran. “I will tear up the Koran and burn it,” he wrote.
The holding of two similar gatherings on February 6 and 9, which were to see copies of the holy book of Islam being burned, had been refused by the Stockholm police, who had invoked the risk of disturbing public order. The demonstrators appealed the decision and an administrative tribunal ruled in their favor in early April.
In mid-June, the administrative court of appeal confirmed the first instance judgment, indicating that the security risks put forward by the police “did not have a sufficiently clear link” with the gatherings in question. It is on this basis that the Swedish police took their decision on Wednesday, just a few days before the Vilnius summit, on July 11 and 12, where Stockholm hopes for progress for its entry into NATO.