Summary
A Stockholm court convicted Salwan Najem of incitement against an ethnic group for his role in Qur’an burnings in 2023, sentencing him to a fine and suspended sentence.
His co-defendant, Salwan Momika, was shot dead last week, sparking concerns of foreign involvement.
The protests strained Sweden’s relations with Muslim countries and fueled debate over free speech limits.
The government had considered banning Qur’an burnings but is no longer planning immediate action. Sweden joined NATO in March 2024, partly fearing diplomatic fallout over the burnings could affect its bid.
This is a difficult thing because in theory burning books is not illegal, a person is allowed to buy a book and burn it. So making it illegal to burn this specific book sends signals of Islamification of the law but context is important here. This book means very much to Muslims, not just in the obvious religious way but personally, individuals will remember their grandfather teaching it to them when they were a child. This makes burning it very emotional, it is like someone burning a photograph of your mother outside your house just after she died. It is true that burning pictures is not illegal but the context here is emotive to the point of incitement. It is not Islamification to view this book as a special case, it is about honouring beliefs you do not share and respecting other people.
individuals will remember their grandfather teaching it to them when they were a child. This makes burning it very emotional, it is like someone burning a photograph of your mother outside your house just after she died.
But you’re not burning somone’s personal book or photo. It’s your own copy. If you have an emotional investment in a copy of a book I bought, you need mental help.
It is not about ownership of copies it is about respect for significance. If I print a photograph of a member of your family I will own that print, can I then deface it in front of you and will you remain passive and unaffected.
How about the respect of not murdering people because your feelings got hurt?
Who’s talking about murdering people? We’re talking about what is considered hate speech.
Yeah but he didn’t burn a picture of anyone’s family. He burned a fiction book written over a thousand years ago
But it’s not a picture of your mother (also qUaRaN forbids depictions of people) it’s a book of random bullshit made by a warlord thousand years ago. And noone defaced nothing in front of anyone their point was that muslims allowed to ignore laws and try to use some savage “laws” to punish people that disagree with them.
Fuck all religions, not just the popular cults.
Some more contact from a Swedish perspective:
These “Islam critics” often are critical of immigration and hold their demonstrations in immigrant-majority neighborhoods.
“incitement against an ethnic group” is the legal term for hate speech.
Weren’t these two people immigrants themselves?
I really don’t understand how anyone could think burning religious texts would help de-escalate any religious conflict…
But I have a good idea why the “free speech folks” only want to use one single religion to “prove a point” about free speech.
Never see them go after anything besides Islam…
Islam fanatics’ violent response is probably part of their point, it’s going to be a bit hard to prove that point by burning a bible or torah in Sweden. I agree that they were counterproductive, though.
Islam fanatics’ violent response is probably part of their point, it’s going to be a bit hard to prove that point by burning a bible or torah in Sweden.
Islam has billions of followers, millions of extremists are a tiny tiny percentage.
And if you think burning a bible or Torah wouldn’t also draw out millions of extremists…
Gestures to current geopolitics
Have you tried looking at anything that’s been going on?
The global population doesn’t really matter for this, homicidal fanatical christians or jews aren’t known to travel halfway across the globe to murder people who insult their religion. They’re quite rare in Sweden, and with the Swedes’ penchant for extreme metal and general lack of religiousness, there are a lot of potential targets in that country - shouldn’t be that hard to find someone who burned a bible on stage in Sweden in the last 10 years.
That’s because lslam’s next. Europe has a thousand year history of literature challenging, parodying, mocking Christianity. Today you can put on a play suggesting Christ was a promiscuous homosexual (if that’s your thing) without anyone raising an eyebrow. You think that just “happened”? A thousand years ago you’d risk execution for being sightly out of line with Catholic doctrine. Look how far we’ve come. And it was because we stood up to religious bullies who want to dictate how you live your life and what you enjoy and who you love. Islam’s growing in the West and its essential that liberalism doesn’t buckle under the insipid pleas of religious exceptionalism. It wants to control you.
Today you can put on a play suggesting Christ was a promiscuous homosexual (if that’s your thing) without anyone raising an eyebrow.
What?!
Where do you live? Because it sounds a lot better than America.
Europe / UK / Australia you would have no difficulty doing this
The point is we can’t compare it directly, because no one is burning bibles or torahs…
And certainly not with widespread international news coverage.
I feel like you either didn’t read or didn’t understand my original comment
We have to compare the apples to oranges because no one is burning bibles and torahs…
Because it’s never about testing free speech
If you still don’t understand, I don’t think I’m going to be able to help, I honestly don’t even understand what you’re having trouble with.
You said “never see them go after anything besides Islam”.
That’s because the cultural war against Christianity has been fought and won. I can guarantee if it was never fought in the first place you’d be in trouble right now unless you professed whatever Catholicism wanted you to (or whatever authoritarian Christianity was in place in your part of the world).
Women were executed en masse for being witches and you don’t think that hasn’t been fought against over and over for hundreds of years? Liberalism won.
Put on whatever blasphemous play you want to in a major Western city and people don’t care (I’m not talking about that US). Christianity is no longer sending the inquisition. It used to.
And that’s why I’m comparing apples with apples. It just that what conservative Islam aspires to is what Christianity was 300 years ago.
It begins with religious fascists asserting they have the right to tell you what to do. And that need to be resisted on principal.
Christians used to think they had the right to ban stories and films with gay people in. That needed resisting on principle.
Zionists think Israel should be a special case immune from criticism. That should be resisted on principle.
Conservative Islamists think you should be compelled to give special treatment to the Qur’an. That should be resisted on principal.
