Stockholm: On Wednesday, the first day of the three-day Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, Stockholm's main mosque will host a protest where the organiser plans to burn a copy of the Qur'an. Swedish police said they have approved the permit.
In their written decision, the police stated that the security risks posed by the burning "were not of a nature that could justify, under current laws, a decision to reject the request."
The go-ahead came two weeks after a Swedish appeals court overturned the Stockholm police's decision to refuse permits for two demonstrations that included Qur'an burnings.
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Following the burning of the Quran outside Turkey's embassy in January, which sparked weeks of protests, calls for a boycott of Swedish goods, and further stalled Sweden's NATO membership bid, police at the time cited security concerns.
Turkiye, which blocked the bid because it believed Stockholm was failing to take action against Kurdish organisations it deemed to be "terrorists," took particular offence to the fact that police had permitted the January demonstration.
Police subsequently turned down two requests for protests involving the burning of the Qur'an made by organisations and private citizens in February outside the Turkish and Iraqi embassies in Stockholm.
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In mid-June, the appeals court declared that the police had erred in banning those, finding that "the order and security problems" they had mentioned had not "a sufficiently clear connection to the planned event or its immediate vicinity."
The same private individual whose prior request was denied made the request for the demonstration on Wednesday.
I want to demonstrate in front of Stockholm's large mosque and voice my disagreement with the Qur'an. Salwan Momika, 37, wrote in the application—a copy of which AFP was able to obtain—"I will rip the Qur'an apart and burn it.
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On Wednesday, police announced that they had requested additional help from across the nation to keep the peace. Early on Wednesday, according to an AFP correspondent, several police vehicles were already parked close to the mosque.
Politicians in Sweden have denounced Qur'an burnings but have also vehemently defended the freedom of speech