A Swedish court issued a decision to cancel the ban on burning the Holy Quran during public demonstrations, after the police of this country had objected on the eighth of last February to demonstrators burning a copy of the Holy Quran during demonstrations in the capital, Stockholm.
The police justified their decision at the time on the grounds that they feared that violence might accompany this provocative act of Muslims.
The ban was also issued after a demonstration on 21 January 2023 near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm during which the far-right Swedish-Danish activist Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Holy Quran.
Paludan, 41, claimed he wanted to fight Sweden's "Islamization" and claimed he was defending freedom of expression, having previously burned copies of the Holy Quran in Sweden and Denmark.
On Tuesday, an administrative appeals court in Sweden ruled that the police "did not provide a sufficient basis for their decision" and that the security threats "were not sufficiently tangible or linked to the demonstrations in question".
The burning of a copy of the Holy Quran on January 21 has provoked strong reactions in the Islamic world, as well as a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Sweden, the Swedish ambassador in Ankara has been summoned, and Turkey canceled a visit to the minister of this country that was scheduled to take place the following week, within the framework of Sweden's accession negotiations to NATO, and the incident had stopped these talks, then Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that Stockholm can no longer count on the "support" of his country to join. to NATO.
After Tuesday's ruling, Paul Levin, director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Stockholm University, said further protests aimed at burning copies of the Holy Quran "could create additional problems for Sweden's NATO membership."
Turkey opposes the Scandinavian country's accession to NATO because it accuses it of harboring PKK terrorists, and Ankara has demanded that Sweden extradite dozens of these people, and Stockholm hopes that the situation with Turkey will ease in the coming months so that it can join NATO before its next summit in Vilnius next July.