A man tore up and burned Koran outside Stockholm’s Central Mosque on the Eid holiday after Swedish police granted permission for the protest, an event that risks angering Turkey as Sweden bids to join NATO, according to a report published by Reuters.
A series of protests against Islam and for Kurdish rights have offended Ankara in Sweden, the country which needs Ankara’s back to gain entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Sweden sought NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. However, its alliance member Turkey has held up the process and accused the European country of harboring people it considers terrorists and demanding their extradition.
In a tweet, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan condemned the act and said it was ‘unacceptable’ to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression.
“Burning of religious texts is disrespectful and hurtful. What might be legal is certainly not necessarily appropriate. We believe Sweden has fulfilled its commitments under the trilateral memorandum,” the deputy spokesperson for the US State Department told reporters in a daily briefing.
Police officials later charged the man who burned Koran with agitation against an ethnic or national group, Reuters reported.
Around 200 onlookers witnessed one of the two protesters tearing up pages of a copy of the Koran and wiping his shoes with it before putting bacon in it and setting the book on fire, while the other spoke into a megaphone.
Some of those present shouted “God is Great” in Arabic to protest against the burning, and one man was detained by police after he attempted to throw a rock. One of the supporters also shouted ‘let it burn’ as the holy book caught fire.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference on Wednesday he would not speculate about how the protest could affect Sweden’s NATO process.
“It’s legal but not appropriate,” he said, adding that it was up to the police to make decisions on Koran burnings, as per Reuters reports.
Representatives of the mosque were disappointed by the police decision to grant permission for the protest on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, mosque director and Imam Mahmoud Khalfi said on Wednesday.
Up to 10,000 visitors attend Stockholm’s mosque for Eid celebrations every year, according to Khalfi. Turkey in late January suspended talks with Sweden on its NATO application after a Danish far-right politician burned a copy of the Koran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.