Anger is rising in the Middle East. Since Salwan Momika set fire to a copy of the Koran last June, condemnations from Muslim countries have multiplied. After Iraq, the country of origin of the profaner, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey hastened to sanction Sweden. This wave of protests is far from unprecedented. These countries frequently react to such European “anti-Muslim” events.
Expulsion of Swedish ambassadors, suspension of commercial licenses, calls to demonstrate… For several weeks, all means have been used to denounce the profanations authorized in Sweden.
This Friday, July 21, like the day before, several hundred people took to the streets in the four corners of the Middle East. In Iraq, residents of Baghdad responded to the call of influential religious leader Moqtada Sadr. After the weekly prayer, hundreds of people chanted, “No, no to Sweden. Yes, yes to the Koran”.
In Tehran, hundreds of protesters waving Iranian flags and copies of the Koran shouted “Down with the US, UK, Israel and Sweden”, while some set fire to the blue and yellow Swedish flag.
This is not the first time that Middle Eastern countries have risen up after this type of European “anti-Muslim” events. Since January, several Koran burnings in Sweden have aroused anger. On January 21, the far-right Swedish-Danish, Rasmus Paludan, burned a Koran near the Turkish embassy, to denounce the Swedish negotiations with Ankara on NATO.
This event had sparked strong protests from Ankara and several capitals of the Muslim world, as well as demonstrations in several countries, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. In Karachi, Pakistan, activists had notably created a scarecrow bearing the image of Rasmus Paludan presenting him with traces of blood, in January 2023.
This Swedish-Danish politician had already been talked about by burning sacred books. In this way, he intends to create incidents to demonstrate that immigration causes delinquency, because he considers that Muslims are by nature violent. His gesture sparked riots in Sweden in April 2022 in neighborhoods with a large Muslim population. He then repeated the operation on January 27 in Denmark, in front of a mosque in Copenhagen, then in front of the Turkish embassy.
Denmark is also the country of the first controversy over the cartoons of Muhammad. On September 30, 2005, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons in response to a writer complaining that no one dared illustrate his book on Muhammad. One of the sketches concentrates all the criticism. It represents the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban, with a lit wick.
Two weeks after the publication of the cartoons, several thousand Muslims demonstrated. Eleven ambassadors from Muslim countries then asked to be received by the Danish Prime Minister, who refused their requests. After the tour of a delegation of Danish imams in the Middle East, the case takes on an international dimension. Several major European press titles then took up the drawings as a pledge of support.
Among these newspapers, Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons in 2006. This act and other publications of articles and cartoons criticizing the Salafist ideology and the political positions of certain countries in the Arab world motivated the Kouachi brothers to commit the attack on the satirical newspaper on January 7, 2015, in which 12 people were murdered, including the most emblematic cartoonists of the newspaper: Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinsky.
Shortly after the attack and the publication of texts and drawings “I am Charlie” and “All is forgiven” which represent a caricature of Muhammad, different Arab countries demonstrate. Gatherings are sometimes enamelled with violence. In Algiers, for example, between 2,000 and 3,000 people gathered to denounce the latest caricature of the prophet.
More recently, another anti-Islam extremist, Lars Thoren, leader of the radical group Stop the Islamization of Norway (Sian), burned a Koran in Mortensrud, a suburb of Oslo where a large Muslim community lives, on July 2, 2022.
A few minutes after his act, he was the target of a spectacular car attack. A woman voluntarily rammed the activist’s 4×4, causing him to overturn on the roof. The five passengers were slightly injured and one of them had to be taken to hospital, according to the police.
The scene quickly sparked a small crowd and protests, including a woman grabbing the ash book while jeering at anti-Islam activists, before getting into the passenger seat of a gray Mercedes.