The Swedish government took a stand this Sunday, July 2, against the burning of a copy of the Koran in front of the main mosque in Stockholm. The ministers condemned the move, calling it an “Islamophobic” act, after the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called for such an incident not to happen again.
The government “fully understands that Islamophobic acts committed by individuals during protests in Sweden can be offensive to Muslims,” ??the Foreign Office 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 action to prevent further desecration of copies (of the Quran)”, 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 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 continued. While also emphasizing 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 or Morocco summoned the Swedish ambassadors in protest.
Swedish police, who had authorized the rally in which pages of the Koran were burned, opened an investigation for “agitation against an ethnic group”, on the grounds that the burning took place in front of a mosque.
