The Swedish government’s Islamophobic actions have once again come to the forefront with the decision to deport an imam and cut funding to a Muslim congregation. Minister for Social Affairs Jakob Forssmed (KD) has justified these measures by citing unsubstantiated claims from the Security Service that Iran allegedly used the mosque for “intelligence and other security-threatening activities against Sweden and individuals in the Iranian diaspora.”

Forssmed escalated the rhetoric by calling the situation “extremely serious” in a post on X. On Thursday, January 30, Swedish authorities decided to deport the imam, who is now being held in a Migration Agency detention center, awaiting expulsion—an action that appears to be part of a broader pattern of targeting Muslim religious leaders.

The minister also confirmed that the Agency for Support to Faith Communities (SST), working in tandem with the Security Service, will ensure that no financial support reaches the congregation. Forssmed invoked Sweden’s so-called “democracy requirement” for faith communities, a regulation increasingly weaponized against Muslim institutions.

“State funds should not go to activities that contradict fundamental democratic values. Period,” Forssmed declared on X—despite the lack of any formal investigation against the imam, as acknowledged by the Security Service itself.

This move is the latest in Sweden’s growing trend of marginalizing Muslim communities under the guise of national security, further deepening concerns about institutional Islamophobia in the country.

Source: Sweden Herald

Rasmus Paludan, the founder of a small political party, was sentenced to four months in prison for agitation against Muslims, the Malmo district court said.

A citizen of both Denmark and Sweden, Paludan has several times set Islam’s holy book on fire in public, on occasion also draping it in bacon, causing outrage among Muslims at home and abroad.

While burning religious texts in itself is permitted under Sweden’s far-reaching freedom of speech legislation, agitation against an ethnic or national group, such as insulting and offending Muslims, can be a violation of the law.

Paludan was charged with making lewd remarks about Islam and Muslims as well as about counter-demonstrators.

“The court makes the assessment that at the gatherings (Paludan) expressed disrespect towards, among others, Muslims, and that his actions can’t be excused as criticism of Islam or as political campaigning,” the ruling said.

Paludan, 42, who was also convicted in Denmark on similar charges in 2020, had pleaded not guilty. His lawyer said he would appeal.

The Swedish government, fearing that Koran burnings by Paludan and others could trigger attacks by Islamist extremists, is considering making it possible for police to deny permission for public gatherings if they threaten national security.

Denmark last year tightened legislation to ban public Koran burnings outright.

Paludan’s political party has failed to win any seats in elections in either Denmark or Sweden.

Source: Reuters

Rasmus Paludan, a far-right Danish-Swedish politician known for burning copies of the Quran in Sweden, went on trial Monday, charged with incitement against an ethnic group, according to local media.

Paludan, leader of the Danish political party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), is the first person to face trial in Sweden for Quran burning in the country. The trial took place at a district court in Malmo, but the 42-year-old declined to appear in person, citing safety concerns if he traveled to the southern Swedish city. Instead, he participated via video link from an undisclosed location in Sweden.

According to national broadcaster SVT Nyheter, Paludan is facing two counts of incitement against an ethnic group and one count of insult, related to public gatherings held in Sweden in 2022. In April of that year, Paludan held a rally where he burned copies of the Quran, which led to riots in several cities, including Malmo, Landskrona, Linkoping, and Orebro. Prosecutors allege that statements he made during these gatherings constitute incitement against an ethnic group.

Paludan is also accused of racially motivated verbal attacks against Arabs and Africans at another public event in 2022, for which he faces a charge of insult. If convicted, he could serve up to six months in prison. Paludan denies all charges.

The Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark, carried out in 2023 under the pretext of free speech, have provoked widespread protests in Muslim-majority countries, including attacks on diplomatic missions.

In response, Denmark passed a law in December making it illegal to burn copies of the Quran in public. Sweden, however, is still evaluating potential legal measures to empower police to deny demonstration permits on national security grounds.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has urged its member states to consider political and economic actions against Sweden, Denmark, and other countries where the Quran is permitted to be burned. The OIC characterized such acts as “aggressive actions that spread hatred and contempt for religions, threatening global peace, security, and harmony.”

Source: Anadolu Agency

Swedish prosecutors have charged Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem with “offenses of agitation against an ethnic or national group” for burning copies of the Quran during protests in the summer of 2023.

The incidents, which occurred on four separate occasions, sparked widespread outrage in Muslim countries and strained Sweden’s relations with nations in the Middle East.

According to Senior Prosecutor Anna Hankkio, the two men desecrated the Quran by burning it and making derogatory remarks about Muslims, with one incident taking place outside a mosque in Stockholm.

“Both men are prosecuted for having on these four occasions made statements and treated the Quran in a manner intended to express contempt for Muslims because of their faith,” Hankkio said in a statement.

“In my opinion, the men’s statements and actions fall under the provisions on agitation against an ethnic or national group, and it is important that this matter is tried in court,” she added.

Evidence against the men primarily consists of video recordings of the events. Najem, through his lawyer Mark Safaryan, denied any wrongdoing, claiming that his actions were protected by the Swedish Constitution and the permit granted for the demonstration.

Momika, a Christian refugee from Iraq, had previously stated that he wanted to protest against the institution of Islam and ban its holy book.

The Quran burnings led to increased security measures in Sweden, with the country’s intelligence service Sapo raising the threat level after the incidents made Sweden a “prioritized target” for terror attacks.

The events also prompted Denmark to pass legislation in December 2023, making it illegal to burn copies of the Quran in public places. Sweden is currently considering legal options that would allow police to reject demonstration permits due to national security concerns.

The Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called on its member states to take appropriate political and economic measures against Sweden, Denmark, and other countries that allow the burning of the Muslim holy book.

The OIC warned that this act, described as an “act of aggression that spreads hatred and contempt for religions and threatens global peace, security, and harmony,” must be stopped.

As a result of the Quran burnings, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved a resolution on religious hatred and bigotry with only the United States and the European Union abstaining due to a conflict with their positions on freedom of expression.

The Swedish government has also condemned the Quran burnings while attempting to uphold the country’s constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly laws.

Earlier this month, prosecutors charged Swedish-Danish right-wing activist Rasmus Paludan with the same crime over a 2022 protest in the southern city of Malmo, which also included burning the Quran.

In October 2023, a Swedish court convicted a man of inciting ethnic hatred with a 2020 Quran burning, the first time the country’s court system had tried the charge for desecrating Islam’s holy book.

Prosecutors have previously said that under Swedish law, the burning of a Quran can be seen as a critique of the book and the religion, and thus be protected under free speech.

However, depending on the context and statements made at the time, it can also be considered “agitation against an ethnic group.”

Source: Morocco World News

The Swedish authorities have granted permission to yet another protest involving the burning of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Police in southern Sweden’s Malmo issued the permit for the controversial protest to take place at the city’s Gustavs Adolfs Torg public square Friday, national broadcaster SVT Nyheter said Thursday.

The authorities, meanwhile, were yet to decide on two more applications for similar protests this week, one in central Malmo on Saturday and another in Rosengard on Sunday, according to the broadcaster.

Quran-burning protests in Sweden have strained Stockholm’s diplomatic relations with several countries.

The Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), for instance, called on members to take political and economic measures against Sweden, Denmark, and other countries that allowed the burning and desecration of the Muslim holy book.

Such demonstrations in Sweden and Denmark, under the pretext of free speech, have also sparked angry protests and attacks on diplomatic missions in Muslim-majority countries.

In response, Denmark adopted a law last December that makes it illegal to burn copies of the Quran in public places.

Sweden is also considering legal options that would allow police to bar similar protests over national security concerns.

The OIC has warned that it is necessary to stop acts that can be characterized as “aggression that spreads hatred and contempt for religions and threatens global peace, security, and harmony.”

Meanwhile, Friday’s controversial protest comes just as Malmo prepares to host the Eurovision Song Contest week.

“Right now, we are in a situation where we need, as a precautionary measure, to ensure that we have the skills and tools close at hand in the event of a serious incident,” head of Malmo Police Petra Stenkula said last month at a press conference on the security situation during Eurovision.

Security has also been heightened amid Israel’s participation in the contest, despite calls to ban the country over its war on Gaza which has killed over 34,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, with tens of thousands of others wounded.

Swedish authorities have requested extra measures, including heavily armed police and reinforcements from two other Nordic countries, Denmark and Norway.

Over 20,000 people from various European countries will reportedly descend on Malmo to protest Israel’s participation in the song contest that begins on May 7.

Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, has a diverse population of over 360,000 people of 186 different nationalities, including a large Muslim community.

In 2022, the city saw large demonstrations and riots after a Quran-burning protest by Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Muslim civil society groups from Europe warned of the growing level of Islamophobia spreading across the continent at a major security and human rights conference in Poland.

Seven Muslim groups from Austria, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands spoke out against the climate of “state-sponsored” Islamophobia facing them in their countries.

Their address to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw came days after Polish authorities banned Cage’s international director, Muhammad Rabbani, from entering Poland after his name appeared on the Schengen Information System, which lets any Schengen member-state place an individual on a no-entry list to the Schengen zone.

Adil El-Kanfoudi, spokesperson for Muslim Rights Watch in the Netherlands, told the OSCE conference that he was due to meet Rabbani alongside other European Muslim civil society groups.

“This incident, among many others, is a perfect example of a broader pattern, where key figures from the Muslim community are unjustly placed on blacklists,” said Adil El-Kanfoudi. “Muslims are systematically targeted, a blatant violation of their constitutional rights.”

Commenting on his own country’s situation, Kanfoudi spoke of the hundreds of Dutch Muslims who approached his organization and said they had been wrongly placed on the terror list by the Dutch authorities, leading some to lose their livelihoods, face banking and travel restrictions and being treated like “second class citizens.”

Nehal Abdalla, Cage’s researcher in Austria, condemned the Austrian government’s Operation Luxor, which led to Austrian police raiding the homes of 70 Muslim households and the arrest of 30 Muslim academics in 2020.

Campaigners from France also spoke at the OSCE session and said the ban on the abaya in schools and recent police killings of young North African men had further heightened tensions.

“Undressed, harassed, humiliated. The young girls in France suffer, yet no one reacts,” said Elias d’Imzalene, from Perspective Musulmanes. “All my respect goes to these young Muslim girls who continue to fight for their freedom to remain Muslim even though the French state does everything it can to prevent them from remaining Muslim.”

The OSCE describes itself as “the world’s largest regional security organization”, drawing together 57 member states from Europe, Central Asia, and North America.

Source: Middle East Eye

The Danish government has said it will explore legal means of stopping protests involving the burning of holy texts in certain circumstances, citing security concerns after a backlash over such incidents that saw the Qur’an desecrated in Denmark and Sweden.

Noting that such protests played into the hands of extremists, the government wants to “explore” intervening in situations where “other countries, cultures and religions are being insulted, and where this could have significant negative consequences for Denmark, not least with regard to security”, it said in a statement from the foreign ministry.

The Danish government noted that the protests had “reached a level where Denmark, in many parts of the world across continents, is being viewed as a country that facilitates insult and denigration of the cultures, religions and traditions of other countries.”

Several recent protests involving desecrations of the Muslim holy book have raised diplomatic tensions throughout the Middle East and the two Nordic countries.

Source: The Guardian

A deeply divided UN  Human  Rights  Council has approved a controversial resolution that urges countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred”, after incidents of Qur’an-burning in Sweden.

The resolution was strongly opposed by the US, EU and other western countries, which argued that it conflicted with laws on free speech. On Wednesday, the resolution was passed, with 28 countries voting in favour, 12 voting against and seven abstaining.

While strongly condemning the burnings, however, western countries defended free speech. The German envoy called them a “dreadful provocation” but said free speech also meant “hearing opinions that may seem almost unbearable”.

Pakistan’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Khalil Hashmi, said the resolution did not seek to curtail free speech but was instead aimed at striking a balance.

The resolution condemns all manifestations of religious hatred including “public and premeditated acts of desecration of the holy Qur’an” and urges that those responsible be held to account.

Source: The Guardian

The police denied several applications earlier this year for protests that were set to include burning the Quran, citing security concerns, but courts have since overturned the police decisions, saying such acts are protected by Sweden’s far-reaching freedom of speech laws.

Sweden’s Minister of Justice said that the government is analyzing the situation and whether the law needs to be changed to allow the police to deny such requests.

We have to ask ourselves whether the current order is good or whether there is reason to reconsider it,” Strommer told Aftonbladet.

He added that Sweden had become a “prioritized target” for attacks.

“We can see that the Quran burning has generated threats to our internal security,” he said.

The incident has also damaged Sweden’s bid to join NATO, with Turkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan saying his country cannot ratify Sweden’s application before Quran burnings are stopped.

Source: Middle East Monitor

The rallies, which were organized by the Danish Right-Wing Party Stram Kurs, had further substantiated the Muslim World’s concerns of the alarming trend of Islamophobia perpetuated by extreme right supporters.

The Secretary-General said that the event was a clear manifestation of the racist and xenophobic mindset of the organizers and that their action went against all accepted norms and values of civilized society.

The Secretary-General reiterated his conviction that the provocative event does not reflect the views of the majority of Swedish and European citizens.

He stressed that these abhorrent and repugnant behaviors express racism against Islam which he stressed will lead to the incitement of a spiral of hatred and violence among people and push toward a state of chaos and tension.

He renewed his call to the countries of the world and the United Nations to pass a law prohibiting insults against religions and their symbols and criminalizing and punishing anyone who does so.

Source: Organization of Islamic Cooperation