Condemnations kept coming in from Muslims, Christians and Jews in Türkiye and across the globe in a religious show of solidarity over the weekend over the burning of a copy of the Quran by a Swedish-Danish far-right politician in Stockholm.
The leader of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) Party Rasmus Paludan, under police protection, was permitted to set fire to a copy of Islam’s holy book in front of the Turkish Embassy in the Swedish capital while delivering an anti-Islam speech on Saturday.
Paludan’s act aroused a harsh backlash worldwide, with Türkiye, the target of the hate crime, pulling the lead in denouncing the incident and Swedish authorities for enabling him.
Some 250 people were gathered outside the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul late Sunday to decry what has been broadly dubbed as an “Islamophobic hate crime."
The protestors set on fire a photo of Paludan and carried green flags featuring an Islamic proclamation of faith and a banner that said, “We condemn Sweden’s state-supported Islamophobia.”
The broader Muslim world, countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and many others “strongly condemned and rejected” the extremist act, as well, with Kuwait’s Foreign Minister calling on the international community “to shoulder responsibility by stopping such unacceptable acts and denouncing all forms of hatred and extremism and bringing the perpetrators to accountability.”
Russian Muslims and Christians, Türkiye's Armenian Patriarchate, and the Jewish community were among those slamming the incident, too.
The Armenian Patriarchate said the "heinous act" not only offended the religious feelings of those who belong to the religion of Islam but that there were also movements “aimed at inciting feelings of enmity among people of different faiths.”
"It is certain that this act, incompatible with democracy, freedom and human rights, will not be accepted by those who share these feelings," it added.
The statement underlined that the Armenian Turkish patriarch, Sahak Mashalian, especially "regretfully condemned this outdated act," along with the Spiritual Assembly of the Church, the clergy, foundation boards and the Armenian Turkish community.
Stressing the "need for love and peace" as the world struggles with a multitude of problems, the patriarchate said, "We remind that it would be better for people to refrain from acts that would add problems to the (existing) problems of our world, regardless of religion, language and race, and to serve with all their might to provide the desired environment of peace."
The Spiritual Administration of Muslims in Russia described the burning session as “barbarity” and expressed that all Russian Muslims “strongly condemn” it.
“The perpetrators of this act are trying to politically incite a group of certain people by stoking the fire of hatred between religions,” the administration warned and called on European authorities to “show the courage to accept that faith in the hearts of most people is a guiding force.”
Vladimir Legoyda, chairperson of the Synodal Department for the Russian Church’s Relations with Society and Mass Media, took to Twitter to denounce the incident as “an unacceptable act of vandalism.”
“Humanitarian limits cannot be crossed, and religious sanctity cannot be hurt in political struggles,” Legoyda said.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also condemned the Quran burning as a provocative action that "targets Muslims, insults their sacred values, and serves as a further example of the alarming level reached by Islamophobia" and asked Sweden to punish those behind the "hate crime."
Azerbaijan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) were also in the chorus of condemnations.
"We call on the Swedish government to bring the perpetrators of this hate crime to justice as soon as possible," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said. At the same time, TRNC President Ersin Tatar stated, "Such outdated approaches are a threat to all humanity and they threaten world peace."
Turkish minority organizations in Western Thrace also slammed the attack on the Quran. "It is unacceptable for the Swedish authorities to consider the attack on the Quran as freedom of thought," the mufti (Muslim cleric) of the Turkish minority in the city of Xanthi (Iskeçe) said in a statement.
Paludan’s Quran burning is not the only incident straining bilateral ties between Türkiye and Sweden.
The leeway Swedish authorities grant anti-Türkiye provocateurs, like the supporters of terrorist organizations including the PKK, its Syrian offshoot YPG, and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), has been a major source of conflict, too, especially over the past year amid the Nordic country’s bid to join NATO, which is likely to hit a dead-end following this turbulent weekend.
Stockholm has been courting Ankara to secure a green light for its application since last year when it, alongside Finland, threw away its military nonalignment in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war. Ankara, however, has been firm in its demands that its security concerns about the terrorists Sweden is harboring and tolerating be addressed.
As per a tripartite memorandum the sides inked in June last year, Stockholm has vowed to meet the said demands, including extraditing and increasing its crackdown on terrorist groups. For the previous month, however, public support in Sweden for the terrorist groups from their sympathizers has been raising the tensions between the two countries, which Ankara has repeatedly warned would jeopardize Stockholm’s NATO membership process.
A scandalous protest in Stockholm in mid-January in which an effigy of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was hanged from its feet in front of the city hall has particularly impaired negotiations. Still, the boiling point became Saturday’s Quran-burning session.
