Swedish law does not allow for only the Quran to be burned

By: Nikolaj Kristensen
July 5 2023

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Context

Several posts on social media claim that while burning the Quran is protected under the right to freedom of speech in Sweden, burning the Bible or the Torah is considered an act of violence or terrorism. Similar claims state that the Torah is given special protection in Sweden.  

The claims surfaced after Swedish courts ruled against the police, who had previously disallowed demonstrations where Qurans were to be burned, a decision that led to new Quran burnings. 

However, the claims about the Bible and the Torah enjoying special protection under Swedish law are false. No matter what holy book one chooses to set aflame, the same rules apply.  

In Fact

Swedish law does not differentiate between religions in this matter, Anna Jonsson Cornell, a professor in comparative constitutional law at Uppsala University in Sweden, told Logically Facts. “Neither the Torah nor the Bible would be granted any different legal protection than the Quran. The same rules apply,“ she said.

As is always the case in legal matters, the context would have to be considered in each individual case, stressed Cornell, who further pointed out that rules on hate crimes might apply in certain cases. “But in any case, Swedish law, regarding both freedom of expression and hate crimes, does not make any distinction between religions or holy scripts,” she said. 

This is seconded by Martin Sunnqvist, a professor in the history of constitutional law at Lund University. What might be applied in these cases, he says, is "hets mot folkgrupp" - which roughly translates to ‘incitement to hatred against a group of people’. The applicability of this is much discussed among Swedish lawyers, says Sunnqvist. “But nothing indicates that the Bible or the Torah has a better protection than the Quran,” he says. 

The claims about the Quran being less protected by Swedish law comes after Salwan Momika, an Iraqi citizen living in Stockholm, burned a Quran outside Stockholm’s main mosque on June 28, 2023, leading to protests outside the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. Momika had been granted a permit to demonstrate in front of the mosque by the Swedish police in line with free speech protections. 

For months, the police had denied similar requests for assemblies where Qurans were to be burned due to an assessment by the Swedish Security Police of an increased threat of attacks against Sweden and Swedish interests. The assessment followed a Quran burning in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on January 21, 2023, which had caused violent reactions. 

But on June 12, 2023, the Swedish Court of Appeal decided the Police were wrong in denying the demonstrations. The court agreed with an Administrative Court decision that the posed security threat wasn’t sufficiently concrete to warrant infringement of the rights to freedom of assembly and demonstration. 

​​In late January, a man had applied for permission to burn the Torah outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, but backed out of his plans due to the accompanying bureaucracy, as told to the Swedish national broadcaster SVT.

On June 30, Swedish Psychological Defence Agency told SVT that a new disinformation campaign had begun in response to the burning of the Quran.

The Verdict

Neither the Torah nor the Bible would be granted any different legal protection than the Quran. On matters of freedom of expression and hate crimes, Swedish law does not make distinctions between religions or holy scripts. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.