The Iraqi who burned pages of a Koran outside Stockholm’s largest mosque on Wednesday, sparking the ire of the Muslim world, said Thursday he would renew his gesture within ten days. “Within ten days, I will burn the Iraqi flag and the Koran in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm,” Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old Iraqi who fled his country for Sweden, told Swedish daily Expressen.
He said he was aware of the impact of his action and had already received “thousands of death threats”. Demonstrators briefly entered the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on Thursday in protest over an act condemned by many Muslim countries. On Wednesday, Salwan Momika trampled on a copy of the Koran before burning several pages outside Stockholm’s largest mosque on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the great festival of sacrifice celebrated by Muslims around the world.
Earlier in the day the police had announced that they were authorizing “the gathering”, saying that “the security risks” associated with burning the Quran were “not such as to prohibit it”. But at the end of the day, she announced that she was filing a complaint against the organizer, in particular for incitement to hatred.
