Sweden\u2019s government has condemned the burning of a Quran outside Stockholm\u2019s main mosque, calling it an \u201cIslamophobic\u201d act, after an international Islamic body called for measures to avoid future desecration of the Muslim holy book.
\u201cThe Swedish Government fully understands that the Islamophobic acts committed by individuals at demonstrations in Sweden can be offensive to Muslims,\u201d the foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
\u201cWe strongly condemn these acts, which in no way reflect the views of the Swedish government,\u201d it added.
The condemnation came in response to a call for collective measures to avoid future Quran destruction from the Saudi-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The 57-member body met at its Jeddah headquarters to respond to Wednesday\u2019s incident in which an Iraqi citizen living in Sweden, Salwan Momika, 37, stomped on the holy book and set several pages alight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018No place in Sweden\u2019 Sweden\u2019s government has condemned the burning of a Quran outside Stockholm\u2019s main mosque, calling it an \u201cIslamophobic\u201d act…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>The OIC urged member states to \u201ctake unified and collective measures to prevent the recurrence of incidents of desecration of copies of the Quran\u201d, according to a statement released after the \u201cextraordinary\u201d meeting.
\u201cThe burning of the Quran, or any other holy 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,\u201d the Swedish foreign ministry said.
At the same time, the ministry added that Sweden has a \u201cconstitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration\u201d.
Countries including Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have summoned Swedish ambassadors in protest at the Quran burning incident.
Swedish police had granted Momika a permit in line with free speech protections, but authorities later said they had opened an investigation over \u201cagitation against and ethnic group\u201d, noting that Momika had burned pages from the Islamic holy book very close to the mosque.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"