‘Vile’: Quran-burning protest could further delay Sweden’s NATO membership

Key PointsA man burned a Quran outside Stockholm’s central mosque, aggravating tensions between Sweden and Türkiye.The man was arrested and charged with agitation against an ethnic or national group.The incident risks tensions with Muslim-majority country Türkiye as Sweden pursues NATO membership.

A man has torn up and burned a Quran outside Stockholm’s central mosque, an event that risks angering Türkiye as Sweden bids to join NATO, after Swedish police granted permission for the protest to take place.

Police later arrested and charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group.

A series of demonstrations in Sweden against Islam and for Kurdish rights have offended Türkiye,

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Sweden

following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

But alliance member Türkiye has held up the process, accusing Sweden of harbouring people it considers terrorists and demanding their extradition.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan condemned the act as “vile” and “despicable” in a tweet, adding that it was unacceptable to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression.

“Turning a blind eye to such atrocious acts is to be complicit,” he wrote on Twitter.

Burning of religious texts is “disrespectful and hurtful,” the deputy spokesman for the United States State Department told reporters in a daily briefing.

“What might be legal is certainly not necessarily appropriate,” Vedant Patel said.

But he continued to urge Türkiye and Hungary to ratify the NATO accession protocol of Sweden without delay.

“We believe Sweden has fulfilled its commitments under the trilateral memorandum.”

About 200 onlookers witnessed one of the two protesters 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, while the other 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 protest shouted “let it burn” as the holy book caught fire.

While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Quran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference on Wednesday 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 Quran burnings.

Representatives of the mosque 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 Eid celebrations every year, according to Khalfi.

Türkiye in late January suspended talks with Sweden on its NATO application after a Danish politician burned a copy of the Quran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

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