• Police later charged a man with agitation against an ethnic or national group

STOCKHOLM: A man tore up and burned a Qur’an outside Stockholm’s central mosque on Wednesday, an event that risks angering Turkiye as Sweden bids to join NATO, after Swedish police granted permission for the protest to take place.

Police later charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group.

A series of demonstrations in Sweden against Islam and for Kurdish rights have offended Ankara, whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Sweden sought NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. But alliance member Turkiye has held up the process, accusing Sweden of harboring people it considers terrorists and demanding their extradition.

Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan condemned the act in a tweet, adding that it was unacceptable to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression.

Some 200 onlookers witnessed one of the two organizers tearing up pages of a copy of the Qur’an and wiping his shoes with it before putting bacon in it and setting the book on fire, whilst the other protester 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.

A supporter of the demonstration shouted “let it burn” as the holy book caught on fire.

After the burning, police charged the man who set fire to the Qur’an with agitation against an ethnic or national group and with a violation of a ban on fires that has been in place in Stockholm since mid-June.

While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Qur’an demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said at 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 Qur’an burnings.

One of the two people who took part is Salwan Momika, who in a recent newspaper interview described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban the Qur’an.

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.

“The mosque suggested to the police to at least divert the demonstration to another location, which is possible by law, but they chose not to do so,” Khalfi said in a statement.

Up to 10,000 visitors attend Stockholm’s mosque for the Eid celebrations every year, according to Khalfi.

Turkiye in late January suspended talks with Sweden on its NATO application after a Danish far-right politician burned a copy of the Qur’an near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

Reuters