Muslim world slams Quran desecration in Sweden

Many Muslim and Arab countries have condemned the desecration of a copy of Islam's holy book, the Quran, in front of a mosque in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

The head of Türkiye’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbas, condemned the approval of the desecration of the Quran by Swedish authorities on Wednesday.

"I strongly condemn the approval of the despicable act against our holy book, the Quran, in Sweden during Eid al Adha," Erbas wrote in a statement on social media. "I invite Sweden and Western countries to stop protecting this diseased mentality that is hostile to Muslims, social peace and humanity.”

"We expect concrete sanctions against the perpetrators of the incidents to be implemented," he added.

'Hostile acts'

Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, called the Quran burning a "disgraceful act provoking the feelings of Muslims" as they mark Eid.

The Cairo-based Arab League branded the Quran desecration an "assault on the core of our Islamic faith".

Kuwait called for perpetrators of such "hostile acts" to be brought to justice "prevented from using the principle of freedoms as a ploy to justify hostility against Islam or any holy faith".

The Quran burning was also condemned by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and Morocco, which recalled its ambassador to Stockholm.

On June 12, a Swedish appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to overturn a ban on Quran burning, ruling that police had no legal grounds to prevent two Quran desecration protests earlier this year.

Dangerous hate

The Saudi Foreign Ministry slammed the incident, saying "these hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification, and they clearly incite hatred, exclusion and racism."

For its part, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry also said "burning the Holy Quran is an act of dangerous hate, and a manifestation of Islamophobia that incites violence and insulting religions, and it cannot be considered a form of freedom of expression at all."

Iraq has condemned as "racist" and "irresponsible" the burning of a copy of the Quran by Salwan Momika an Iraqi man living in Sweden.

The Iraqi government in a statement issued late Wednesday strongly condemned "the repeated acts of burning copies of the holy Quran by individuals with extremist and disturbed minds".

Provocation

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said "the attack on the Holy Quran by a hateful extremist is an expression of hatred and racism and a flagrant attack on the values of tolerance, acceptance of the other, democracy, and peaceful coexistence among followers of all religions."

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement condemned the desecration of the Quran, in Stockholm.

"The burning of the holy Quran in Sweden on the first day of Eid Al Adha is a provocation to the feelings of Muslims around the world and an aggression on their beliefs," Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas figure, said on Twitter.

Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed movement Hezbollah charged the Swedish authorities were "complicit in the crime".

Hezbollah called on Sweden to put an end to such acts "rather than hiding behind freedom of speech".

'This is racism, not freedom'

Also, the Arab Parliament said in a statement that what happened was "an act of incitement that would inflame the feelings of Muslims around the world," denouncing the continuation of the Swedish authorities in these "provocations."

A group of Muslim scholars strongly condemned the Swedish authorities for allowing an extremist to burn a copy of the Quran.

The extremist's provocative act was deliberately planned to coincide with Muslims around the world celebrating Eid Al Adha, one of the major Islamic religious festivals.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) described the act in a statement as "racism and savagery backed by (Swedish) official bodies."

"This is racism, not freedom, and this individual savagery backed by the official bodies must not be passed over in silence," the IUMS stated.

Russian, US condemnations

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that desecration of the Quran is not seen as a crime in some countries but it is penalised in Russia.

"In our country, this is a crime both according to the Constitution and the penal code," he said.

Putin was in Derbent in the Dagestan Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation where he visited the historical mosque of Derbent and met Muslim representa tives from Dagestan.

The US said it is “disrespectful’ to burn religious texts after the Quran was burned in Sweden on the first day of a major Muslim festival.

"We've said consistently that the burning of religious texts is disrespectful and hurtful, and what might be legal is certainly not necessarily appropriate," State Department Deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said when asked about the provocative action.