Swedish Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party planned to set on fire the holiest book in Islam in a district, where many Muslims are residing; therefore, Muslims held protest, condemning such an insulting move scheduled for April 15 at 15:30 local time.
Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan, who has Sweden’s citizenship, formed the Stram Kurs party in 2017, aiming to fight against migration and Islam.
In 2018, he described Muslims as the enemies of the world and called for disappearing of the Muslims.
Repeating such insults in different cities in Sweden caused outrage among Muslim minority, who poured into streets to condemn these offensive acts, but police engagement turned the protests into violent scenes.
Governments in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt has so far issued separate statements slamming the insulting action.
In another occasion, Sweden’s police prevented the party leader from entering this country, but his followers committed the insult in 2020. At that time, Muslims held protest rallies, which was turned into a chaos. However, this year the police allowed him to take part in a desecrating Quran-burning event. Despite all objections from Muslims to stop such an insult in a Muslim-populated area, the Swedish police allowed him to go ahead with his plan.
Paludan has carried out similar insulting acts in Copenhagen, capital city of Denmark, as well as other cities of the European country, which faced protests by Muslims.
The Swedish police’s move in supporting this far-right politician’s insulting action against the Islamic tenets is problematic, while he tried to implement such a behavior in Germany and France, but police forces there stopped him.
A police spokesman in southern Sweden claimed that the police will not annul far-right preplanned demonstration, because people of the country have high tolerance threshold, and that the police gives importance to freedom of speech.
In the first days of protests against the insult, peaceful demonstrations were held, but certain rioters misused the calm situation and paved the ground for police to suppress other calm protestors.
It seems that the limits for freedom of speech in Western societies and the difference between freedom and desecration of sanctities of other religions would be forgotten, which can pave the ground for an opportunist individual to insult Islamic sanctities and create another crisis.
1424
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