The Swedish government on Sunday condemned the burning of a Koran outside the main mosque in Stockholm, calling it an “Islamophobic” act, after the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called for such an incident to be avoided. reproduce.
The government “fully understands that Islamophobic acts committed by individuals during protests in Sweden can be offensive to Muslims,” ??the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We strongly condemn these acts, which in no way reflect the views of the Swedish government,” he added.
This position came shortly after the OIC, an international organization bringing together 57 countries, called for preventing copies of the Koran from being burned again.
It urged its member states to “take collective measures to prevent the desecration of copies (of the Koran) from happening again”, according to a statement issued after the organization’s “extraordinary” meeting, at its headquarters in Jeddah (west) in Saudi Arabia.
“Burning a Quran, or any other sacred text, is an offensive and disrespectful act and a clear provocation. Related expressions of racism, xenophobia and intolerance have no place in Sweden or Sweden. Europe,” the Swedish Foreign Ministry continued. While also stressing that Sweden has a “constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration”.
After the book burning, Muslim-majority countries such as Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco summoned the Swedish ambassadors in protest.
Swedish police had authorized the rally during which pages of the Koran were burned, but later opened an investigation for “agitation against an ethnic group”, on the grounds that the burning took place in front of a mosque.
02/07/2023 19:17:40 – Stockholm (AFP) © 2023 AFP
