Stockholm, June 29: Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned an extremist in Sweden who burnt copies of the Quran outside the Stockholm Central Mosque following Eid al-Adha prayers. According to media reports, the man wiped his shoes with the pages of the torn Quran before putting bacon in it and setting it on fire.
‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s strong condemnation and denunciation of the burning of a copy of the Holy Qur’an by an extremist at Stockholm Central Mosque in Sweden following Eid al-Adha prayer,’ the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Thursday.’These hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification, as they clearly incite hatred, exclusion, and racism, and directly contradict international efforts seeking to spread the values of tolerance, moderation, and rejection of extremism, and undermine the necessary mutual respect for relations between peoples and states,’ the statement added.
About 200 people who were present during the scene shouted ‘God is Great’ in Arabic to protest against the burning, the media reports said.A man was arrested and charged with agitation against an ethnic or national group on Wednesday after he tore up and burned a Quran outside the mosque, Reuters reported.
Police also detained another person, an onlooker at the scene, after he attempted to throw a rock at the extremist, according to the report. Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Quran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech, Reuters reported.
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