Danish politician burns Quran outside mosque, Turkish Embassy

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AA) – A far-right Danish politician torched copies of the Holy Quran near a mosque Friday and outside the premises of the Turkish Embassy in Copenhagen.

Rasmus Paludan, known for his Islamophobic extremism, staged a similar stunt Jan. 21 and announced he would burn the holy book of the Muslims every Friday until Sweden is included in the NATO alliance.

Paludan, a lawyer by profession, failed to secure a single seat in national, regional or municipal elections through his far-right parties established in Denmark and Sweden. His party received 156 votes in the 2022 parliamentary elections in Sweden.

Denmark maintained that the incident would not deteriorate its “good relationship” with Türkiye. “Our task now is to talk to Türkiye about how the conditions are in Denmark with our open democracy, and that there is a difference between Denmark as a country – and our people as such – and then about individual people who have strongly divergent views,” Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen told the media in a statement.

Global condemnations have poured in with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemning Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful,” while the US called it “repugnant.”

The US State Department maintained that the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Türkiye and Sweden.”

The desecration of the Quran prompted strong protests in the Muslim world, with Türkiye calling Paludan an “Islam-hating charlatan” and strongly condemned the permission given by the authorities for the provocative act which it said “clearly constitutes a hate crime.”