After a man burned a Koran in Stockholm last week, Swedish police stations have received three more requests for public gatherings where scriptures are to be burned. A woman wants to set fire to a Koran in front of a Stockholm mosque “as soon as possible,” and a man wants to burn a Bible and the Torah in front of the Israeli embassy on July 15. And in the center of Helsingborg, religious texts are to be burned, but the motion did not specify what kind. The Stockholm police are currently reviewing the applications.
On Wednesday last week, a man of Iraqi origin burned a Koran in front of Stockholm’s largest mosque. Like a very similar action in February, this led to major protests in the Muslim world.
The Swedish police can only ban demos if there are security risks
Morocco withdrew its ambassador, the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was stormed, and Iran does not want to send a new ambassador for the time being. An initiative to boycott Swedish goods has been gaining momentum on the internet, and in Pakistan the prime minister has called for nationwide Friday demonstrations to send “a message to the bad guys”. And then there is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has so far refused to ratify Sweden’s NATO proposal. Erdoğan said the country was categorically excluded from NATO membership as long as the burning of the Koran was allowed there.
The outrage against Sweden is accompanied by a call to boycott Swedish products: a rally in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
(Photo: Aamir Qureshi/AFP)
The Swedish Foreign Ministry condemned the burning of the Koran as an “act against Islam” and as an expression of racism and xenophobia. The problem for the government: it cannot ban the burning itself. Only the police can authorize demonstrations. After the Koran was burned in February, they tried to ban such actions, but this was overturned by two Stockholm courts, arguing that the security problems cited by the police were not sufficient and that the burning sites could ultimately be secured.
There is a very far-reaching free speech law in Sweden, the one in the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet recently called a “source of national pride”. In principle, the right to an assembly can only be denied if this is necessary for the safety of the assembly itself or as its immediate consequence.
In Mosul, Iraq, supporters of the radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr used children to protest.
(Photo: Ismael Adnan/Imago/Zuma Wire)
However, the burning and the resulting large protests have sparked a debate in Sweden as to whether this paragraph on freedom of expression should be changed. Jonas Trolle, head of the Swedish Center for the Prevention of Violent Extremism, called for the law to be amended so that threats to national security could also be a reason for rejecting applications. He referred to a constitutional clause that allows restrictions on the right to freedom of expression for reasons of national security. Trolle suggested including such wording in the law governing public gatherings. Justice Minister Gunnar Strömme announced the next day that his ministry was examining a change, after all, due to the burns, Sweden had “become a ‘priority’ target for terrorist threats,” as the Swedish state security agency Säpo put it.
Supporters of the radical Islamic party Tehreek-e-Labiak in Lahore are demanding that Pakistan sever relations with Sweden.
(Photo: Arif Ali/AFP)
In Pakistan, after Friday prayers, nationwide protests erupted, with citizens expressing their anger at the “desecration of the Koran,” as Prime Minister Sharif put it – he himself had called for a “Day of Koran Holiness.” . Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday calling on Sweden to take “reasonable steps” against the perpetrators.
In the capital, Islamabad, lawyers protested in front of the Supreme Court with copies of the Koran, while believers held smaller rallies in front of mosques and called for diplomatic relations with Sweden to be severed. The largest demonstrations also took place in Karachi, one of the largest cities in the world with around 15 million inhabitants, and traffic in the city center was partially at a standstill. In Lahore, an opposition politician called on the government to convene a meeting of the “Organization for Islamic Cooperation” and expel the Swedish envoy from the country.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s supporters held separate rallies across the country. The radical Islamic party Tehreek-e-Labiak called for diplomatic relations to be broken off until the man responsible for burning the Koran is punished.
“When it comes to the Koran, the whole nation is in agreement” – Christians also protest
Even Christian communities, which make up just two percent of Pakistan’s population, protested. More than 95 percent are Muslims. “When it comes to the Koran, the whole nation is united. The entire Muslim community is dismayed by what happened in Sweden,” Prime Minister Sharif tweeted. He pointed out that Sweden had condemned the incident but demanded that the country clarify why it happened in the first place. He spoke of a “conspiracy to create rifts between Christians and Muslims”.
Angry demonstrators in Quetta, Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
(Photo: Banaras Khan/AFP)
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also tweeted about the burnings in Sweden, saying the desecration was “another example of the rising Islamophobic mentality aimed at dehumanizing and denigrating our faith.” He plans to raise the issue on July 11 at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s urgent debate in Geneva. Even if one can suspect that the government also wants to divert attention from the domestic political problems: If Korans are set on fire again in Sweden, there could be a fire in Pakistan.