Sweden Sees Days of Riots over Qur’an-Burning Danish Politician

We live in a democratic society and one of the most important tasks of the police is to ensure that people can use their constitutionally protected rights to demonstrate and express their opinion.  The police should not choose who has that right but always intervene if a crime occurs. Targeting police and police equipment is an attack on both the rule of law and democracy,” Thornberg added.

On Friday, Paludan and his group burned a copy of the Islamic Qur’an in the no-go Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby and violence soon broke out. Police were attacked with stones and rocks, leading to one officer becoming injured.

“At first I had information that one was injured, then I got information that no one was injured. There are two police officers who have been hit by something and suffered pain, but have not been so badly injured that they have had to seek medical attention. They could continue to work after this,” Daniel Wikdahl of the Stockholm police said.

The riots are not the first in Sweden in reaction to the actions of Paludan and Stram Kurs. In August of 2020, around 300 residents of the multicultural city of Malmo took part in riots that saw violence against police and cars set on fire after activists had burned a Qur’an.

Later that year, a group of fifteen Muslim congregations called on the Swedish government to outlaw the burning of religious texts like the Qur’an.

“We do not want it to be legal in Sweden to burn holy scriptures such as the Qur’an, the Bible, and the Jewish scriptures and at the same time for it to be forbidden to mock the different religions,” Rinkeby’s Imam Hussein Farah Warsame said.

Following an investigation into the Qur’an burning by Paludan and his followers, a Swedish prosecutor determined that burning copies of the book was not in itself illegal and did not levy any criminal charges against the Dane 0r Stram Kurs activists.