Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry summoned on Sunday the Swedish ambassador to the Kingdom to inform her of its categorical rejection of Al-Qur’an burning incident that recently took place in Sweden.
On June 28, Salwan Momika, 37, a refugee from Iraq, desecrated the Qur’an and set fire to its pages in front of the Central Mosque in Stockholm, prompting widespread outrage and condemnation of the act across the Muslim and Arab world.
The Kingdom’s foreign ministry condemned and denounced the burning of a copy of the holy book on June 29 and summoned Swedish envoy Petra Menander on Sunday.
The ministry calls upon the Swedish government to stop all acts that directly contradict international efforts to spread the values of tolerance, moderation and rejection of extremism, and that undermine mutual respect necessary for relations between peoples and countries.
The executive committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation also held a meeting in Jeddah on Sunday to discuss the consequences arising from the incident.
The OIC firmly denounced the act, which it said undermines mutual respect among people and global efforts to foster tolerance and moderation.
Iran holds off sending ambassador to Sweden in protest over Al-Qur’an incident
Iran will refrain from sending a new ambassador to Sweden in protest over the burning of a Qur'an outside a mosque in Stockholm, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday.
A man tore up and burned a Qur'an outside Stockholm’s central mosque on Wednesday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al Adha holidays.
Swedish police charged the man who burned the holy book with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban it.
Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Sweden’s charge d’affaires on Thursday to condemn what it said was an insult to the most sacred Islamic sanctities.
“Although administrative procedures to appoint a new ambassador to Sweden have ended, the process of dispatching them has been held off due to the Swedish government’s issuing of a permit to desecrate the Holy Qur'an,” Amirabdollahian said on Twitter on Sunday. He did not specify how long Iran would refrain from sending an ambassador to Sweden.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Qur'an demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed freedom of speech.
In its permit for Wednesday’s demonstration, Swedish police said that while it “may have foreign policy consequences,” the security risks and consequences linked to a Qur'an burning were not of such a nature that the application should be rejected.
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