Summary

Salwan Momika, the Iraqi man who staged several Quran burnings in Sweden in 2023, was shot and killed in Sodertalje, near Stockholm.

His actions had sparked international outrage, riots, and diplomatic tensions. Swedish police confirmed a murder investigation is underway, and several arrests have been made.

Momika, who sought asylum in Sweden in 2018, faced charges of incitement to hatred, with a verdict scheduled for the day after his death.

His protests were permitted under free speech laws but led to legal action against him.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      1 year ago

      momika did it specifically to spark outrage among immigrants. don’t do that.

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      the man wanted to incite hatred, show him middlefinger by doing the opposite

      • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        How do we know he wanted that?

        I see the post that says he was being charged with inciting hatred, but also says his act was protected under free speech.

        I think it’s dumb to be burning books as the only people who are going to be pissed are the fundamentalists and they’re always pissed off anyway, but I respect his right to free expression.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
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          so, momika has been in sweden a few years. he converted to christianity in his home country, started shouting loudly about freedom of speech there, got told to stop, then filed for asylum in sweden. once here he kept doing the same thing, which of course jeopardises his asylum claim. only he wasn’t first. rasmus paludan has been burning qurans here for a while, always doing it in neighbourhoods with a majority muslim population. as a demonstration of the problem with religion, it’s effective. once. but both of them did it for years, and the things they have been saying during their book burning made it clear that it was not actually about freedom of speech, but about hatred of muslims. not islam, muslims. and they were both in court for the crime of hets mot folkgrupp (“incitement of hatred against a population group”). they clearly overstepped the law of the country they were in.

        • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          What other possible reason would someone have to burn a book that is to some more important than their life. Either people dont care about it or become enraged. And just because you have right to do something doesnt mean you should. His actions have caused a lot of harm, also most likely his own death too.

          For argument’s sake, lets assume he had some positive reason for his actions. Has there been a single positive thing that has come from this? If you want to do good you need to think the consequences through and if you dont then you shouldnt do anything at all.

          • 0x0@infosec.pub
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            1 year ago

            This is such a bullshit take with some not so subtle apoligism and blame shifting.

            If burning a book causes a lot of harm in any way besides burn damage, the burner is hardly to blame but something else is fundamentally wrong, and he tried to make that very obvious to everyone with his own life at risk.

            • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              So how long have you sided with the Nazis and fundamentalist Christians?

              Because now you’re excusing their book burning.

                • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.works
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                  Yes, it’s so much better when one group of bigots burn books than a larger group of bigots burn more books.

                  I guess this is the lesser evil you guys keep voting for, just a little book burning and hate speech, as a compromise.

                  Just a pro tip, if you are ever on the side of people burning books, you’re in the wrong.

      • Shezzagrad@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Because that’s be antisemetic and how dare you to anything against the Jewish people, don’t you know European persecuted them so the entire world now can’t anything to them due to white guilt

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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        Toss in a torah to complete the Abrahamic trifecta and top it with dianetics because fuck scientology in particular.

    • FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com
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      Thanks, while we’re at it let’s burn some books by Jewish authors too.

      See what I did there? Burning books is never a good look on you.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        There’s burning all the copies of a book from the local library so no one has a chance to read them, and there’s burning one copy of a book which as an estimated 100 million copies printed per year as a protest.

        To some the Quran is as hateful as Mein Kampf, and you know what people say about tolerance of intolerance. You may not agree, and you may think books should never be burned. I am on the fence on that. But I do know people who burn books shouldn’t be assassinated. And people shouldn’t live in fear of reprisals for speaking out against any religion and its teachings.

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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          To some the Quran is as hateful as _Mein Kampf

          I am atheist/agnostic but it is downright offensive to compare any major religious work from a major world religion (let’s arbitrarily define that as more than 1 billion followers I don’t intend this as a category of judgement just size) to that shitbook from a genocidal maniac.

          The Bible, the Quran, Hindu texts like the Vegas or Upanishads… to say I know more than a passing knowledge about these works would be a lie but I know enough to understand there is real good in those books mixed up with problematic aspects, subject to a constant conversation and study by practicioners that attempts to reconcile and interpret the best parts of those things into a way forward.

          Even if you are a staunch atheist there is real meat on the bone in the religious texts I listed above to read critically and consider.

          Mein Kampf is just hateful trash, it isn’t worth reading, just go read The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (Woods translation) or listen to the superb audio book, it came out of Germany at basically the same moment and it is vastly superior in every respect as a work of intellectual and political introspection and it is actually fun.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Mountain

          https://campuspress.yale.edu/modernismlab/the-magic-mountain/

          https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/12/13/thomas-mann-franklin-freeman-revisited-244293

        • FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com
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          Yeah I have read both the Quran and some exempts from Mein Kampf. Cannot recommend the latter.

          My favorite part from Mein Kampf was the one about the fox, the goose and the tiger who are all assumed to be hostile towards each other. Because of this „Arians“ shouldn’t mingle with Jews. If you’re troubled with following the soundness of the argument that’s because there is none.

          Let’s ignore for a second that it’s just outright offensive to compare the books of any world religion to Mein Kampf. Even if you don’t believe in the whole God thing, then the Quran would still be a brilliant collection of verses spoken by some illiterate orphan without any education somewhere in the Arabian desert. And I can tell you that because I‘m a native speaker and even the hardcore atheist Arabs agree with me on that.

          I think no one should be assassinated and capital punishment shouldn’t exist. And believe me when I tell you that I want freedom of speech. But there’s freedom of speech and hate speech. I don’t want freedom of hate speech and I don’t care who it is targeting.

          I still don’t think anyone deserves capital punishment for anything, but to use this to generalize against all Muslims and our religious books is rightfully being called out as what it is, Islamophobia. Say the exact same things you said just about burning the Torah and we wouldn’t even have to argue about that being antisemitic.

    • Khuda@lemmy.worldBanned
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      look i hate netanyahoo and his party but i don’t think this iraqi guy deserved it, i belive in freedom of religion and expression

      and i think based on my experience (due to coming from sunni family) islam is something more than a religion

      • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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        His schtick was grifting and being as racist as possible against brown people. This blatant racism is unacceptable in any way. We do not see Muslims mass burning Torah’s because they hate Israel either nor should they be doing that.

        This is straight up Nazi rhetoric. but because it is against Islam it is accepted in most Western countries. Even part of the more liberal establishment will defend it.

        This man will be slightly more missed than the United Healthcare CEO.

        • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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          I dont know, the Swedish police’s slowness to charge Paludan and Momika with hate speech doesn’t really justify some random vigilante (or Turkish spy) going and giving him the death penalty. Kinda outside the paradox of tolerance here.

        • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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          Is this accepted in most Western countries? It might he legal in the USA but most would think ypu are a weird asshole for burning a holy book.

          • stephen01king@lemmy.zip
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            Seems pretty accepted by some Lemmy commenters and certain vocal minorities in the western countries.

        • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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          His schtick was grifting and being as racist as possible against brown people.

          Fucking what? He WAS “brown” aswell. He was a Christian from Iraq, ostracized for being Christian, by Muslims. I would have been all for him burning all of the religious texts in protest, but alas, he was one of them.

          • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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            He was the leader of a Christian militia group too, supplied by Iran. You are leaving quite a few details out. I’d compare him to the Phalange in Lebanon who committed Sabra and Shatilla.

            Waving the flag of the white Apartheid can imply little else than racism. If anything he should be burning American and Israeli flags for destroying his country.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        Hate speech is an exception to the freedom of speech in Sweden. (Same as in EU countries).

        You are allowed to practice your religion and express yourself, but hate speech is off the table.

        So if he was not jailed or fined for these book burnings, the law has failed and somebody could have taken matters in their own hands.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      I’m not for the death penalty or killing people generally (very rare exceptions, maybe).

      That said, he did it to rile up millions of people with hate speech (for them it is I bet), so like don’t do that or you might face consequences.

      Free speech isn’t about the right to hate speeching. What a douchebag.

      Edit: idiot below trying to frame it I think you shouldn’t “blasphemy”. No lol go ahead and blasphemy all you want, that’s free speech IMO.

      • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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        Blasting religion for its cruelty is always appreciated.

        Too bad he was a raging hypocrite who targeted Muslims due to himself being targeted as a Christian. Religion is gonna religion until they all stop believing the nonsense or everyone gets converted (alive or dead).

        • Saleh@feddit.org
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          Publicly burning symbols of a minority group or a world view is an incitement to violence against that group or people holding that world view.

          It has nothing to do with constructive criticism. It is symbolizing a violent act, with the goal to incite more violence.

          • Malek061@lemmy.world
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            It is more offensive to kill someone rather than destroying a book. Any group of people that kills over offense is a danger to their society and the world.

            • Saleh@feddit.org
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              Any group of people that kills over offense is a danger to their society and the world.

              Which group? How do you define that group? Do you think groups of people should be collectively punished for the actions of individuals of that group?

              Also i fail to see why incitement to kill people, which is the ultimate goal of the book burning becomes acceptable, because killing people is worse? Is every lesser crime acceptable? is every hate speech acceptable? Is everything acceptable that falls short of killing someone?

              I think it should be obvious that lesser crimes are still crimes and i think it should be obvious, that hate speech against minorities is particular problematic, as it leads to killing people of that minority, which as you point out is the most severe crime.

              • Malek061@lemmy.world
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                If a group of people collectively is outraged enough to kill over a certain value system, they should be mocked, ridiculed, and ostracized for that belief. In the united states we have radicals that will kill over abortion. They are mocked and ridiculed. If Muslims get offended, they should be mocked and ridiculed for being soft.

                Burning a book is not a “lesser crime.” It is speech. If you are offended, how about you put your big boy pants on and act like a man and get over it.

                Im against hate speech but it should not be criminalized. Violent speech can be. “This person should be killed” then a overt act made towards violence should be criminal.

                But if Muslims get so upset about a book buring and kill, then Muslims are in the wrong and need to realize this is the real world and people don’t bow down to babies that cry about offense.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          Where the hell do you see me saying killing is okay? I say literally the opposite.

          Also, he did hate speech, he was on trial for it, read the article!

          Are you one of the bigots trying to stir things up or what the hell is your agenda?

          • Malek061@lemmy.world
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            No agenda. Free speech absolutist. Criticism of a topic no matter how offensive must be allowed.

  • 58008@lemmy.world
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    raised anger and criticism in several Muslim nations

    I don’t think there are many non-Muslims who were onboard with this stupid shit either, to be fair. Besides the spittle-flecked gammon who were already bigots to begin with, of course.

    The only Quran burning I’d support would be if Elon Musk did it as part of his whole white identitarian shtick. I’d send ISIS the airfare myself.

  • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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    killed? someone who’s runover by a train is killed, the guy in this article was murdered for someone else’s invisible friend.

    it’s murder.

  • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldBanned
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    Liberals really hate Nazis.

    Unless the Nazi is being Nazi against Muslims instead of Jews. Then they love free speech.

    As the saying goes, the only good Nazi

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.caBanned
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      So wanting freedom from religious persecution is the same as being a Nazi now?

      Interesting, I did not know that

      • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldBanned
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        He was free from religious persecution. Turns out he was the person who was doing the religious persecution and wanted to keep doing it.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.caBanned
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          ?

          He was murdered. I’m assuming for a second that it’s because of his actions prior, and with that assumption he will literally have been religiously persecuted.

          Turns out you’re full of it

      • stephen01king@lemmy.zip
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        No? He’s saying it triggers plenty of Islamophobia. If you actually follow the logic, it sounds more like he’s adding more arguments against this kind of killing.

    • FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com
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      Yeah tbh as a Muslim it’s pretty tiring and offensive to read all of that shit when most of us are just busy living our lives like everyone else. And we’re here on the supposedly progressive and liberal Lemmy…

      • MothmanDelorian@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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        Wait, are you suggesting that its a bad idea to generalize what a billion plus people living in vastly different places and situations believe? /s

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        It’s also super tiring to read all the ahmadullilah comments under the TRT post on YouTube about this. Kind of offensive too, you know.

        I’m with you 100% combatting islamophobia everywhere, but I don’t see much in terms of combatting …islamic-supremacy(?), see I don’t even know what to call it. We don’t even name it. It’s not “Islamism” because that means anything and nothing, it’s not “Islamic extremism” because that’s like the maniacs. What do we call the low key thing? The one that feeds into the culture war on the muslim side?

        • FantasticDonkey@reddthat.com
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          Idk man YouTube, TikTok, Meta, doesn’t matter all social media platforms are anyway just feeding on rage bait and I’m pretty sure they have significantly radicalized millions if not hundreds of millions at this point.

          To them it doesn’t matter if you’re cheering for ISIS or Hitler or Israel, they just care about more engagement so that some product teams can show some engagement & add KPIs going up during performance review season.

          Idk I think some kind of supremacy is accurate here indeed? Some seek white supremacy, other ethnic supremacy, religious supremacy, it’s all the same poison to me.