This is the man who started burning Korans in Sweden Tony Bennett was the last of his kind, he has now passed away at the age of 96

The reports of the burning of the Koran in Sweden are currently causing heated emotions around the world. Last Thursday, a demonstration with Koran burning was planned in Stockholm – this was even approved by the Swedish police.

Angered by the announcement, an angry mob stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad. Although the Qur’an burning ultimately failed, Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador as a result of the incident.

But how did this escalation on the international stage come about? Behind it is the far-right Rasmus Paludan. He is the man who brought the questionable form of protest – which was popular in the US between 2011 and 2012 – to Scandinavia.

The political beginnings of Paludan

Rasmus Paludan was born in 1982 in Nordsjælland, Denmark. In 2001 he started his law studies at the University of Copenhagen, nowadays he works as a freelance lawyer.

During his studies, Paludan started to become politically active. In 2003 he joined the youth wing of the social-liberal party Radikale Venstre (Radical Left). In 2009 he tried to get into the European Parliament as a member of a eurosceptic voter association, but failed.

After the failure, he joined the right-liberal party Venstre. This party is popular in Denmark and has 23 of the 179 seats in parliament. Only the Social Democrats currently have more influence in Denmark, with 50 seats in parliament.

Thus, Paludan became an extremist

In September 2016, Paludan switched to the then newly founded anti-immigrant, nationally conservative and right-wing populist party Nye Borgerlige (New Bourgeois). It currently occupies only three of the 179 parliamentary seats and therefore has little influence.

His start in the party was promising – in January 2017 he was nominated for the Copenhagen City Council. However, in February he had to leave the party because the wording of a speech he gave in October 2016 became known.

He gave the speech to the organization For Frihed (For Freedom, formerly known as PEDIGA Denmark), which claims to fight against the fundamentalist Islamization of Denmark.

During the fire speech Among other things, he said things like: “As we stand here today, hundreds of thousands of Danes are at home preparing their weapons and practicing shooting”. He also spoke of a possible civil war against “foreign enemies”. He added: “Our roads and paths will turn into rivers of blood. And the blood of the foreign enemies ends up in the sewers where the foreign enemies belong.”

The Nye Borgerlige party was shocked by Paludan’s statements and demanded an explanation from Paludan. Then he left the party.

This is the party “Stram Kurs” (tough job)

Soon after, Paludan founded Dansk Samling (Danish Collection), which he renamed in 2017 to Stram Kurs (Hard Course). What kind of party is this whose leader burns Qurans?

One whose party program, according to Danish legal scholars, violates the Danish Basic Law and international conventions. The program consists almost exclusively of the themes of migration and Islam policy.

The party is demanding, among other things, that Denmark withdraw from all international refugee treaties and will no longer process asylum applications. People who do not have a Western migration background should be deported, even if they have Danish nationality.

In 2019, the party narrowly missed the Danish parliament. The party representative who would have represented Stram Kurs in parliament would have been none other than Paludan himself.

Although the party failed to make it to parliament, concerns about Stram Kurs’ potential influence on Danish politics ahead of the 2019 election were high, The Guardian writes. At the time, the leader of the social-liberal party “Radikale Venstre”, Morten Østergaard, called on the established parties to exclude Stram’s participation in a future governing coalition.

Østergaard further warned:

That is why Paludan burns Qurans

An incident in 2017 may have motivated Paludan for his subsequent Quran burnings. At the time, he was the lawyer of a 42-year-old Dane who was charged with blasphemy for allegedly burning the Quran. However, the blasphemy clause in Danish law was abolished soon after and there was never a conviction.

Explosive: Paludan himself had to serve short prison sentences several times in 2019 and 2020 for racist statements.

According to various media reports, Paludan has not only made racist statements during his political career, he has also burned several Qurans before 2023. However, these actions received no attention in the international news coverage.

Paludan’s burning of the Qur’an, the first to cause a global sensation, took place on January 21, 2023 in Sweden. That day, a dozen people gathered in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. In the middle of the meeting, Paludan decided to set fire to a Quran.

The reason Paludan gave for the burning: Turkish President Recep Erdoğan valued Sweden’s NATO membership, but not Finland’s. Erdoğan made several demands for Sweden, including the country to extradite several PKK members, opposition members and Kurdish activists to Turkey.

Paludan’s actions are popular in extremist circles and there are imitators – much to the outrage of many Islamic countries.

For example, in Pakistan, after Paludan burned the Quran, some protesters burned the Swiss flag, mistaking it for the Swedish flag.

The international outcry seemed to motivate Paludan: on January 27, 2023, he set fire to another Quran in front of a mosque in Copenhagen.

On June 28, 2023, on the first day of the Islamic festival of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha, another Quran was burned in Stockholm. But this time it wasn’t Paludan who tried to burn the scriptures: an Iraqi who had fled to Sweden wanted the Quran banned.

(jub)