The stage was set last Saturday on the waterfront before the fenced-in embassy of Israel in Stockholm.
Television cameras and photographers waited in a tight cluster for Ahmad Alloush to arrive. The 32-year-old man had last week applied for – and was granted – a permit to burn the Torah in public, prompting loud protests and demonstrations in Israel. But something unexpected happened on Saturday.
The bearded Syrian man waved a bound copy of the first five books of the Hebrew bible in one hand and, with the other, tossed his lighter towards the waiting journalists. This was not a Torah-burning, he announced alternately in Swedish and Arabic, but a protest against a series of Koran-burnings in Sweden, most recently two weeks ago by Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi refugee and comedian. Images of that and other Koran burnings, backed by Swedish courts, have gone around the world.
Turning the tables on Saturday, Alloush said he would never burn holy books – nor should anyone else. “If you want to criticise Islam, that is okay,” he said. Burning the Koran, however, was “not freedom of expression – but an act”, he added, “and freedom of speech has its limits.”
Originally from Syria, Alloush has lived in Sweden for eight years and lives in the southwestern Borås municipality. His one-man protest on Saturday threw down the gauntlet to the Swedish government. It has condemned the Koran-burning as Islamaphobic but has yet to act, citing the independence of police and courts.
Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson said his government “regrets deeply when extremists and provocateurs try to sow division in our society, even when they are exercising constitutionally protected acts” and that it “understands fully” the offence caused.
Koran-burnings have taken hold in Sweden and Denmark in the last three years largely thanks to Rasmus Paladan, a politician with joint Swedish and Danish citizenship. His latest burnings of the Islamic holy scriptures last January before a Stockholm mosque complicated Sweden’s tricky accession to Nato amid Turkish reservations. In January Ankara attacked Paludan as an “Islam-hating charlatan” and condemned Sweden for “showing tolerance” that “offends the sensitivities of millions of people living in Europe” and risked provoking “racist, xenophobic and anti-Muslim attacks”.
Sweden has strong public demonstration laws, protected by the constitution, and blasphemy laws were abandoned in the 1970s. Local police in Sweden issue – or withhold – licences for demonstrations based on public order concerns. However police refusal to issue permits for Koran-burnings in Stockholm were overturned by city courts.
They framed the right to burn books under Sweden’s liberal freedom of expression, assembly and demonstration laws. After the most recent Koran burning, during the Eid al-Adha holiday, Sweden’s justice minister Gunnar Strommer said the government was reconsidering changing the law. Fearing a repeat of Denmark’s 2005 controversy over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, the justice minister said the Koran burnings had “generated threats to our internal security”.
The last burning saw Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad stormed briefly while Iraq has delayed sending a new ambassador to Stockholm. Last Wednesday the UN human rights council approved a resolution urging countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred”. The resolution was passed with the support of 28 countries and opposition of 12 countries including the US, EU and other western countries on freedom of speech grounds.
In Sweden, the heated debate has hinged on how to define the burning of the Koran and other religious texts. Liberal commentators have largely defended the right to criticise religion, regardless of offence caused, while more conservative voices have demanded the burnings be classified as a political action and hate speech. A poll by public broadcaster SVT showed a majority of Swedes in favour of a ban on the public burning of religious texts.
