Summary
A Swedish court sentenced far-right activist Rasmus Paludan to four months in jail for inciting hatred against Muslims after he burned a Quran at two protests in Malmo in 2022.
The court ruled that Paludan’s remarks and actions went beyond permissible criticism of Islam, aiming instead to insult and defame Muslims, Arabs, and Africans. Paludan, a dual citizen of Sweden and Denmark, plans to appeal the verdict.
His Quran burnings previously strained Sweden’s relations with Turkey, complicating Sweden’s bid to join NATO.
No, it’s definitely not. You have to look at the social context of the act, not just the act itself.
To use the most obvious examples, burning an american flag in protest of the vietnam war is clearly an expression of political speech, whereas burning a cross on the lawn of an african-american family’s house is an incitement to violence.
A fascist burning the koran is clearly an incitement to violence and hatred, and not legitimate political speech worth protecting.
I would elaborate a bit more, and I think you have a good analogy with “burning a cross in a black family’s yard”.
Just like burning a cross to protest the church is different from burning it in someone’s yard to threaten them, burning a Quran in the context of protesting against (for example) the Iranian regime is different from burning the same Quran while simultaneously encouraging violence towards Muslims.
If you were to protest the Iranian regime, you should use a flag of the current regime. Burning Quran to protest one specific Muslim country is like burning Torah to protest Israel. The symbol is specific to the entire religion and not some country or administration or so. So it is always an attack on the religion as a whole.
Also Islam and (afaik) Judaism don’t have a central religious authority like the catholic church does. So attacking the religion to criticize a certain institution works even less.
I used Iran as an example because they specifically have a religious leadership that uses exactly the Quran to justify their laws.
There are plenty of non-Muslim Iranians that have burned Qurans in anti-regime protests, specifically to separate the religious regime (symbolised by the Quran in that context) from the country and its culture as a whole. That is: They are specifically protesting the religious regime, and therefore don’t burn the flag, which they don’t associate with the regime.
which is a bit ironic, as the flag reads “Allah” in a stylized version.