Swedish police handed three applications made to burn religious texts including Bible and Torah outside Israeli embassy

 

Wednesday July 5, 2023 – Three new applications to burn religious books have been handed to police in Sweden amid the ongoing row over the country’s freedom of speech laws risks among religious groups.

The applications come after the burning of a Koran late last month sparked massive outrage across the Muslim world, and even prompted a UN meeting.

One of the three new applications would involve the burning of the Islamic holy text outside a mosque in Stockholm.

The organiser, a woman in her 50s, has said in her application she wants to be given permission to carry out the protest ‘as soon as possible.’

Another application concerns the burning of the Torah and the Bible outside Stockholm’s Israeli embassy, with the organiser requesting July 15 as the date.

The 30-year-old behind the application has written in his request that it is in response to last week’s Koran burning, and called it ‘a symbolic gathering for the sake of freedom of expression’.

The third application to burn ‘religious texts’ on July 12 has been made in Helsingborg by someone the police called a ‘private person’.

News of the three applications came after the United Nations expressed its concern over the burning of a Koran outside the Swedish capital’s main mosque on June 28, triggering a diplomatic backlash and resulting in the Swedish embassy in Baghdad being stormed by furious Iraqi protesters.

An urgent session will be held by the UN’s Human Rights Council to address the incident, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

Anger was also expressed by other Muslim-majority nations, including Turkey, which is currently holding up Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance.

Meanwhile, Pakistan and other nations called for a discussion of ‘the alarming rise in premeditated and public acts of religious hatred as manifested by the recurrent desecration of the Holy Koran in some European and other countries.’

The 50-year-old woman who has made the application to burn a Koran outside a mosque in Stockholm said protests around the world are unfair on Sweden, Swedish news broadcaster SVT Nyheter reported on Wednesday.