A Swedish court pronounced a man guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, marking the first instance of the legal system prosecuting the desecration of the Holy Quran.
The conviction comes on the heels of multiple incidents involving the burning of the Holy Quran earlier this year. These acts ignited global outrage and compelled Sweden’s intelligence agency to raise the nation’s terror alert level, subsequently branding Sweden as a “prioritised target”. Yet, while decrying these actions, Sweden’s government staunchly defended the nation’s robust freedom of expression laws.
In a detailed judgment from the Linkoping district court in central Sweden, the 27-year-old accused was deemed guilty of “agitation against an ethnic group”. The court highlighted that his act seemed more aimed at “targeting Muslims” rather than “criticizing Islam as a religion”, emphasizing that such actions scarcely fostered “an objective and responsible debate”.
Link to Far-right Sentiments and Christchurch Attack
The accused’s September 2020 video showcased a Holy Quran and bacon being incinerated outside the Linkoping mosque and also displayed a derogatory comment about the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). Uploaded to platforms like Twitter (now X) and YouTube, the video further exhibited the burnt artefacts outside the mosque.
Adding to the video’s inflammatory nature, the soundtrack, “Remove Kebab”, has affiliations with far-right circles and advocates the expulsion of Muslims. The court remarked on the song’s association with the heinous Christchurch attack in New Zealand in 2019, where a white supremacist broadcasted his massacre of 51 individuals across two mosques.
Dismissing the man’s defence—that his actions were merely critiques of Islam—the court opined: “The film’s content and manner of release unmistakably indicate that the defendant’s primary motive was evidently to issue threats and display disdain.”
