FM Cohen urges Swedish counterpart to prevent Torah burning outside embassy
Top diplomat says he’s ‘horrified’ by approval of event in Stockholm; Billström reportedly replies he’ll look into constitutional amendments to stop acts
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Friday warned his Swedish counterpart Tobias Billström that a planned burning of a Torah book outside of Israel’s embassy in Stockholm will harm relations between the two countries.
Swedish officials have come under criticism in recent weeks for repeatedly approving various protest events at which holy books have been defiled — particularly Qurans. The latter acts have sparked an angry backlash across the Muslim world. Sweden has said that while it does not approve of the actions, it holds freedom of expression and protest as sacrosanct.
In a statement Friday, Cohen said he was “horrified by the additional threat to burn a Torah book in Sweden,” urging an end to the threats to damage holy books.
“I talked with my friend the Swedish foreign minister and made it clear to him that we expect the Swedish government to prevent events like this, which are liable to harm relations between our countries,” he added.
Billström told Cohen that such acts contravened Swedish values and that he would look into constitutional changes that could prevent such incidents, the Ynet news site reported.
Swedish police on Thursday approved a request by a 50-year-old woman to set alight a Torah book outside the embassy in Stockholm the next day at noon, apparently to protest violations of children’s rights. It was unclear why the protest was directed at the Old Testament.
Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer also slammed the “disgraceful event that cheapens the value of the holiest of books, and mortally wounds Jews of the entire world.”
A previous plan earlier this month was approved by cops, and also attracted backlash from Israel and European Jewry.
However, the activist behind the stunt did not go through with it, telling gathered reporters on the day that it had never been his intention to burn Jewish or Christian holy books, only to protest the recent burning of the Quran.
“It is against the Quran to burn and I will not burn. No one should do that,” said Ahmad Alush, 32.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, earlier this month, senior Swedish officials told their Israeli counterparts they were working to outlaw the burning of religious texts but stressed any such change would take a while to implement.
In June, Swedish police allowed a Quran burning in front of a mosque in Stockholm to go ahead, citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on Quran burning.
Sweden’s government condemned the burning, calling it an “Islamophobic” act after a call for collective measures to avoid future Quran burnings was issued by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The 57-member body met at its Jeddah headquarters to respond to the incident, during which an Iraqi citizen living in Sweden, Salwan Momika, 37, stomped on the Islamic holy book, filled some pages with bacon and set several others alight.
“The burning of the Quran, or any other holy text, is an offensive and disrespectful act and a clear provocation. Expressions of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance have no place in Sweden or in Europe,” the Swedish foreign ministry said.
At the same time, the ministry added that Sweden has a “constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration.”
Authorities later said they had opened an investigation over “agitation against an ethnic group,” noting that Momika had burnt pages from the Islamic holy book very close to Stockholm’s largest mosque.
