Sweden charges activist with hate crime over 2022 Quran burning
Rasmus Paludan, head of far-right Hard Line party in Denmark, is charged with ‘agitation against an ethnic group’; Sweden says Quran burnings can be protected, depending on context
Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Swedish-Danish right-wing activist with inciting ethnic hatred by desecrating a Quran in 2022.
Rasmus Paludan, who founded and leads the far-right Hard Line party in Denmark, has long provoked controversy over his anti-immigration and anti-Islam activities, and has been convicted for racist abuse in the past.
In 2020, a group of Muslims in Malmo, Sweden rioted in response to Paludan’s plans to burn a Quran, and ten protesters were arrested in violent demonstrations that included antisemitic chants.
Rioting again ensued in 2022 when Paludan went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of the Quran.
Prosecutors charged him with “agitation against an ethnic group” over a protest in the city of Malmo in April 2022 where he desecrated and set fire to the Muslim holy book, while making disparaging comments about Muslims, according to the charge sheet.
They also charged him with a second count of the same offense over another incident in which he allegedly made derogatory remarks about Arabs and Africans.
Paludan later stoked international controversy when he set fire to a Quran outside Turkey’s embassy in the Swedish capital in January 2023. The incident strained relations between the countries at a time when Turkey was holding up Sweden’s NATO bid, and prompted fears of retaliatory terrorism.
Relations between Sweden and several Middle Eastern countries were further strained by a slew of protests staged by Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika — which also included desecrations of the Quran — over the summer of 2023.
Iraqi protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad twice in July of that year, starting fires within the compound on the second occasion.
In August last year, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after the Quran burnings had made it a “prioritized target.”
The Swedish government condemned the desecrations while noting the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws.
In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Quran burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam’s holy book.
The man published the video on social media platforms Twitter, now known as X, and YouTube, and placed the burnt Quran with bacon outside the mosque in the city of Linkoping.
The video featured a song the court said was “strongly associated with the attack in Christchurch,” New Zealand, in 2019 in which an Australian white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques.
Prosecutors have told Swedish media that under Swedish law the burning of a Quran can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion and thus be protected under free speech.
However, depending on the context and what statements are made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group.”
In neighboring Denmark, where Paludan is also politically active, the parliament passed a law in December 2023 banning the “inappropriate treatment” of religious books in public, after a series of incidents sparked by Quran-burnings.
Danes can now face a fine or up to two years in jail for the offense.
