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.
I firmly believe everyone should have the right to burn whatever symbol they want, be it religious, national, or otherwise.
After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a friend and I burned an American flag to express our anger at being lied to and our disagreement with going to war in general. People we knew well came by and called us traitors, which we expected, though it was still intense. To us, burning the flag did exactly what we wanted it to. It shocked people into actively coming up to us and asking us why we were doing something so extreme. Our answer was “because it’s often the only way we can get people like you to pay attention and engage with us. You need to be shocked into realizing what we’re doing is actually patriotic.” We would then often get into a serious discussion about 9/11, Saddam Hussein, and WMDs and people would leave more or less agreeing with us, but still angry about the flag. Mission accomplished.
I can understand that the Quran might be a bit different, but it’s still just a book that holds significance for some people and not for others. If someone’s faith can be that shaken by such a simple thing, then I think they might have larger issues.
Fuck all religions, not just the popular cults.
I condone burning books in general. But I disagree that this should be punished. Yeah, people feel strongly about the qur’an. Others feel strongly about the bible and others feel strongly about Harry Potter. Just because it has some sentimental value to some as long as it is his own copy I don’t see an issue.
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
The US has a lot of beliefs about free speech that have been shown by actual history to not be accurate.
The US has an extremely broad definition of free speech. Even hate speech is legal. In fact, you can actually openly run for high office on an explicit campaign of literal genocide. You could run for president openly promising as a campaign platform that you are going to open up death camps and kill millions of people. US free speech laws are so broad that unless you are threatening to commit an act of violence outside of the state apparatus, you are completely free to do so.
The theory behind this is always some hand wringing about, “well, if we ban hate speech, who is to define what hate speech is?” Yet, history has shown that this is a slippery slope fallacy. Plenty of advanced democracies, (the US is a primitive democracy), have shown that these fears are unfounded. The same hand wringing that applies to restrictions on hate speech could be applied to any number of crimes we already outlaw. You could equally lament that we can’t possibly fairly define fraud, false advertising, harassment, or any number of crimes that involve a speech component.
The correct response to Koran burning is not simply to burn Bibles, because the Nazis burning Korans clearly know that you’re just trolling them. They’re doing it as an actual attempt at hate and intimidation; you are just doing it for the luls. No one is going to seriously fear that you’re going to start rounding up and putting Christians in camps. But burning Korans is intended to send just that message.
Is it possible that Nazis, if they get power, will wield anti hate speech laws against their adversaries? Sure. But they don’t need anti hate speech laws to do that. Our current Nazi president is already gaining control of the media. For those outlets and platforms he and his allies don’t own outright, he’s getting numerous press outfits to settle spurious lawsuits with no legal basis behind them. Trump, our Nazi president, is already restricting free speech. He didn’t need anti-hate speech laws to do so. Because ultimately Nazis do not care about laws. They’ll simply use threats, intimidation, and blatantly corrupt courts to enact their will regardless of law.
Anti-hate speech laws do not give Nazis any abilities they wouldn’t already possess once in power. Anti-hate speech laws can however greatly assist in preventing Nazis from gaining power in the first place. There is a reason the German constitution, a constitution written by Americans themselves, has anti-hate speech provisions within it.
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
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.
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.
But you’re not burning somone’s personal book or photo. It’s your own copy. If you have an emotional investment in a copy of a book I bought, you need mental help.
It is not about ownership of copies it is about respect for significance. If I print a photograph of a member of your family I will own that print, can I then deface it in front of you and will you remain passive and unaffected.
How about the respect of not murdering people because your feelings got hurt?
But it’s not a picture of your mother (also qUaRaN forbids depictions of people) it’s a book of random bullshit made by a warlord thousand years ago. And noone defaced nothing in front of anyone their point was that muslims allowed to ignore laws and try to use some savage “laws” to punish people that disagree with them.
Yeah but he didn’t burn a picture of anyone’s family. He burned a fiction book written over a thousand years ago
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.
Islam fanatics’ violent response is probably part of their point, it’s going to be a bit hard to prove that point by burning a bible or torah in Sweden. I agree that they were counterproductive, though.
Islam fanatics’ violent response is probably part of their point, it’s going to be a bit hard to prove that point by burning a bible or torah in Sweden.
Islam has billions of followers, millions of extremists are a tiny tiny percentage.
And if you think burning a bible or Torah wouldn’t also draw out millions of extremists…
Gestures to current geopolitics
Have you tried looking at anything that’s been going on?
The global population doesn’t really matter for this, homicidal fanatical christians or jews aren’t known to travel halfway across the globe to murder people who insult their religion. They’re quite rare in Sweden, and with the Swedes’ penchant for extreme metal and general lack of religiousness, there are a lot of potential targets in that country - shouldn’t be that hard to find someone who burned a bible on stage in Sweden in the last 10 years.
