Swedish court rejects ban on desecration of Holy Quran

  A court in Sweden has said that there is no legal basis to prohibit desecration of the Holy Quran. A Swedish appeals court has said police had no legal basis to stop two gatherings where protesters planned to burn Korans earlier this year. Following the burning of copies of Islamic scripture, Swedish police refused to comply with two more requests (one from an individual, the other from an organization) to carry out a similar act near the Turkish and Iraqi embassies in Stockholm in February 2023. According to police, the January protests made Sweden a priority target for terrorist attacks. Following appeals by both protest organizers, the Stockholm administrative court overturned the decisions, saying the security concerns in question were not sufficient to restrict the rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, but the police appealed. In both decisions - on two separate applications - the appeal court said the law enforcement issues cited by police did not have a clear enough connection or proximity to the planned event. Swedish police issued a permit for a January demonstration organized by Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish-Danish activist previously convicted of racial slurs. Last year, he went to Sweden and burned several copies of the Muslim holy book, which led to protests in Sweden.