Sweden jails activist over Quran desecration

STOCKHOLM: A Swedish court on Tuesday sentenced a Swedish-Danish right-wing activist to four months in jail for inciting ethnic hatred at two 2022 protests that included the burning of Holy Qurans.

Rasmus Paludan provoked rioting in Sweden in 2022 when he went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of the Holy Quran. In August, prosecutors charged him with “agitation against an ethnic group” over a protest in the southern city of Malmo in April 2022, where he desecrated and set fire to the Muslim holy book while making disparaging comments about Muslims.

They also charged him with a second count of the same offence over another incident where he made derogatory remarks about Arabs and Africans. The Malmo district court said it had found that Paludan “expressed contempt for Muslims, among others, at the gatherings and that his actions could not be excused as criticism of Islam or as political campaigning.”

“It is permissible to publicly criticise, for example, Islam and even Muslims, but the contempt for a group of people must clearly not exceed the limits of a relevant and responsible discourse,” judge Nicklas Soderberg said in a statement. “In these cases, there was no such discourse. Instead, the statements were merely intended to defame and insult Muslims,” he added.