A Swedish court convicted a man on Thursday for inciting hatred after he burned a copy of the Holy Koran in 2020. This is the first judgment for this type of act.
In September 2020, the 27-year-old man had recorded a video in which he showed a Koran and bacon being burnt on a barbecue in front of the cathedral in Linköping, a town in central Sweden.
A sign with a derogatory remark about the Prophet Mohammed appeared under the barbecue. He then posted the video on social networks and placed the book, along with the meat, in front of the town’s mosque.
On Thursday, the Linköping court found the man guilty of “agitation against an ethnic group,” specifying that his act had “targeted Muslims and not Islam as a religion.”
“He could not be said to have encouraged objective and responsible debate," added the court, which gave him a suspended prison sentence.
Another factor noted by the court was that 'Remove Kebab,' the song used in the video, is popular among far-right groups and calls for the eradication of Muslims. “The music is strongly associated with the Christchurch attack” in New Zealand in 2019, when an Australian white supremacist stormed two mosques and killed 51 Muslim worshippers.
In his remarks to the court, the man defended himself by arguing that his video was a criticism of Islam as a religion, but the court rejected his argument.
“The court considers that the music chosen for a video of such content cannot be interpreted otherwise than as a threat against Muslims with an allusion to their faith,” wrote the court. The other elements of the film, placed in context, cannot be perceived as anything other than an expression of contempt, it added.
In recent months, Sweden has been the scene of several Koran burnings, provoking outrage in the Muslim world and making Sweden a “prime target,” according to the Scandinavian country’s intelligence services.
The Swedish government has condemned the burning of the holy book on its soil, but stresses the predominance of freedom of expression and assembly.
