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.
Fuck all religions, not just the popular cults.
The best response to a quran burning free speech troll is to copy their free speech, burn a bible etc. who cares? It’s all nonsense anyways, and people need to get over it. There’s no need for violence or bloodshed
Note that the Qur’an burnings is not what they were on trial for, but for what was said during the events.
Also, Tingsrätten is filled with laymen and almost always appealed in these kind of cases.Criticism: Bundling together
Freedom of expression expert Nils Funcke believes that there are still question marks about how far freedom of expression extends.
– If you look at what Momika and Najem say in the transcription found in the preliminary investigation, I would say that Najem speaks about the Koran, about Muhammad and about the religion of Islam, and I think that falls within a broad freedom of expression.
I think that Najem and Momika’s statements are lumped together and thus Najem is blamed for what Momika said.According to Mark Safaryan, Salwan Najem’s lawyer, the verdict will be appealed.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/nu-faller-domen-efter-koranbranningar-i-stockholm
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…
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.
