The Saudi Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador on Sunday to urge Sweden "to stop all actions that 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," official Saudi media reported.
Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have also summoned Swedish ambassadors in protest, while the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), based in Saudi Arabia, called on Sunday for collective measures to prevent copies of the Quran from being burnt again.
Meanwhile, the man at the centre of the controversary said on Thursday that he would repeat the gesture within 10 days. “Within 10 days, I will burn the Iraqi flag and the Quran in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm,” Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old Iraqi resident in Sweden, told Swedish daily Expressen.
He said he was aware of the impact of his action and had already received “thousands of death threats.”
On Wednesday last, Salwan Momika trampled on a copy of the Holy Quran before burning several pages during a rally in front of Stockholm’s largest mosque,
Earlier in the day, the police had announced that they were authorising “the gathering,” believing that “the security risks” associated with burning the Quran were “not such as to prohibit it.” However, at the end of the day, the police announced that they would be pressing charges against the organiser, notably for incitement to hatred.
On Thursday, demonstrators briefly entered the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in protest at Momika’s act, which has been widely condemned, including by Pope Francis.
Quran burnings have taken place in Sweden and other European countries in the past, sometimes at the initiative of far-right movements, fuelling demonstrations and diplomatic tensions.
A demonstration in January, during which a copy of the Quran was burnt in Stockholm in front of the Turkish embassy, had also provoked anger throughout the Muslim world, leading to demonstrations and calls for a boycott of Swedish products.
