The Danish parliament on Thursday banned Quran burnings over security concerns, after hundreds of incidents this year roiled the country.
“This is about the security of Danes and Denmark,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said after the parliament passed the law.
Since July, there have been more than 500 reported demonstrations “with the burning of Qurans or flags,” Hummelgaard said Thursday, according to Danish media. “There is no doubt that they have only been held to generate very negative reactions against Denmark,” he added.
Under the new law, burning the Quran becomes a criminal offense, subject to a penalty of up to two years in prison, Danish media reported. 94 parliamentarians backed the law and 77 opposed it.
Rasmus Paludan, from the Danish far-right political party Hard Line, has been at the forefront of the controversies. The anti-Islam politician has repeatedly burned the Quran in Copenhagen and Stockholm.
In January, Swedish media revealed that Russian-linked Chang Frick, a journalist from the Kremlin-backed channel RT, paid demonstration costs for Paludan to burn the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
This week, the Finnish Security Intelligence Service said Russia had incited anti-Islam protests to disrupt Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession, according to Finnish media.
Quran burnings were condemned by the EU over the summer, after the incidents caused violent backlash in Muslim-majority countries, including in Iraq, where hundreds stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in protest to a planned Quran burning in July.
Sweden has been on the front line of blowback from hard-line Islamists, due to the repeated Quran burnings. In October, two Swedish tourists were killed in an Islamist terror attack in Brussels. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the shooter “targeted specifically Swedish football supporters” in town for an international football match.
