Stockholm: A protestor tore up and burned pages of a copy of the Holy Quran at a small protest outside Stockholm’s Grand Mosque in Sweden with police permission on Wednesday, after the Eid Al Adha prayers.
Thirty-seven-old Salwan Momika, an Iraqi origin living in Sweden, had asked the police for permission to commit the act “to express his opinion about the Quran”.
In a written decision, police said they had given permission for a protest “whose organizer tried to burn a copy of the Koran in front of Stockholm’s main mosque,” according to Anadolu Agency.
The decision comes two weeks after Sweden’s appeals court rejected a police ban on Quran burning protests after the burning of copies of Muslim holy book outside Turkey’s embassy in January led to weeks of protests and calls for a boycott of Swedish goods and a further suspension of Sweden’s membership bid in NATO.
Under heavy police escort on Wednesday, Momika addressed a crowd of several dozen people on a microphone.
With white AirPods in his ears and a cigarette hung nonchalantly from his mouth, he began stamping on the Quran with his foot, kicking it like a soccer ball and burning a few pages on fire while waving Swedish flags.
It was a scene that shocked and upset the Muslim community celebrating Eid Al Adha.
As per media reports, the police later arrested the man and charged him with agitation against an ethnic or national group.
It is noteworthy that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan condemned the “despicable act” that targeted the Quran in Sweden on the first day of Eid Al Adha.
He said in a tweet that allowing these anti-Islamic acts under the pretext of freedom of expression “is unacceptable, and that turning a blind eye to such heinous acts means complicity with them.”
