A Torah and a Bible were to be burned in front of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm – apparently in response to a Koran burning at the end of June. In the end, however, the action approved by the police did not take place.
At a protest in Stockholm, a demonstrator refrained from burning a Jewish Torah. The police confirmed corresponding media reports on request. According to Swedish radio station SVT, the man threw a lighter on the ground in front of the Israeli embassy and said he had no intention of burning the books. Instead, as a Muslim, he wanted to set an example for mutual respect.
The announcement and approval of his protest action had previously made headlines. The Stockholm police had approved the rally, at which a Torah and a Bible should have been burned.
The protest was apparently intended to be a reaction to the burning of the Koran in front of a Stockholm mosque at the end of June. According to the applicant, the aim was “to expose the Swedish hypocrisy”. The burning of the Holy Scriptures of Islam had caused anger and protests among Muslims both abroad and within Sweden.
debate about freedom of speech
The protest action announced by the man in Stockholm had in turn caused outrage in Israel. Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen had urged the Swedish authorities to prevent a burn. “Allowing the defacement of sacred texts is not an exercise of freedom of expression, but an obvious incitement and an act of pure hatred,” Israeli President Izchak Herzog said on Friday.
“As President of the State of Israel, I have condemned the burning of the Koran, sacred to Muslims around the world, and it breaks my heart now that the same fate awaits a Jewish Bible, the eternal book of the Jewish people,” so duke. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter: “The State of Israel takes this shameful decision, which harms the Holy of Holies of the Jewish people, very seriously.”
Police spokeswoman Carina Skagerlind had told the AFP news agency in the run-up to the action that the approval did not refer to an official request to be allowed to burn the Torah and the Bible in public. Rather, the police authorized a meeting at which an “opinion” was to be expressed. This is “an important difference”.
Iraqis burned Koran
At the end of June, the Swedish authorities approved an action by an Iraqi who had fled to Sweden, which triggered violent protests in the Muslim world. On the first day of the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice, 37-year-old Salwan Momika stepped on a copy of the Koran several times in front of the main mosque in Stockholm, while waving the Swedish flag. He then stuck strips of ham, which Muslims consider unclean, into the book and burned a few pages from it.
The police justified their approval of this action with freedom of expression. However, she later launched an investigation into “incitement against an ethnic group” because Momika carried out the cremation so close to the mosque. Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco summoned the Swedish ambassadors.