(Stockholm) The Swedish government on Sunday condemned the burning of a Koran outside the main mosque in Stockholm, calling it an “Islamophobic” act, after the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called for preventing a such an incident happens again.
The government “fully understands that Islamophobic acts committed by individuals during protests in Sweden can be offensive to Muslims,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We strongly condemn these acts, which in no way reflect the views of the Swedish government,” he added.
This position came shortly after the OIC, an international organization of 57 countries, called for preventing copies of the Koran from being burned again.
It urged its Member States to “take collective action to prevent the desecration of copies [du Coran] do not happen again”, according to a press release published at the end of the “extraordinary” meeting of the organization, at its headquarters in Jeddah (west) in Saudi Arabia.
“Burning a Quran, or any other sacred text, is an offensive and disrespectful act and a clear provocation. Expressions of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance have no place in Sweden or in Europe,” the Swedish Foreign Ministry continued. While also emphasizing that Sweden has a “constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration”.
After the burning, Muslim-majority countries such as Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates or Morocco summoned the Swedish ambassadors in protest.
Swedish police had authorized the rally during which pages of the Koran were burned, but later opened an investigation for “agitation against an ethnic group”, on the grounds that the burning took place in front of a mosque.