Stockholm: A district court in Sweden Thursday October 12, 2023 convicted a man who had burnt Holy Qur’an in 2020, pronouncing him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred.
This is the first instance of a Swedish court trying the charge for desecrating Quran - the sacred and holy book of Islam.
The conviction comes after a series of cases involving desecration and burning of Holy Qur’an earlier this year that stoked international outrage and made Sweden a “prioritized target,” prompting the country’s intelligence agency to heighten its terror alert level.
The Swedish government condemned the desecrations but repeatedly upheld the country’s extensive freedom of expression laws, according to news agency AFP.
The Linkoping district court in central Sweden found the 27-year-old man guilty of “agitation against an ethnic group,” saying his action had “targeted Muslims and not Islam as a religion”, and “can hardly be said to have encouraged an objective and responsible debate.”
In September 2020, the man had recorded a video clip outside the Linkoping cathedral showing a Qur’an and bacon being burned on a barbecue, with a derogatory remark about Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) written on a sign under the barbecue.
The man published the video on social media platforms Twitter, now known as X, and YouTube, and placed the burnt Qur’an and bacon outside the Linkoping mosque.
The song “Remove Kebab” was used in the video, a song popular among far-right groups and which calls for the religious cleansing of Muslims.
The court said “the music is strongly associated with the attack in Christchurch” in New Zealand where an Australian white supremacist had in 2019 killed 51 people at two mosques.
“The court finds that the chosen music to a film with such content cannot be interpreted any other way than as a threat against Muslims with an allusion to their faith,” the court wrote in a statement.
“The film’s content and the form of its publication are such that it is clear that the defendant’s primary purpose could not have been other than to express threats and contempt,” AFP reported citing the court’s statement.
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