The man at the centre of the controversial Quran burnings in Sweden was shot on the night of 29 January in Södertälje, near Stockholm, police said.

Salwan Momika, a 38-year-old Iraqi known for his radical anti-Islam activism, was killed hours before the Stockholm District Court verdict in his case was due to be announced, on 30 January.

The court announced is was postponing the announcement of the verdict against Momika and an associate, who had been investigated for “inciting hatred against an ethnic group”. He had defended his freedom of speech under Swedish laws, claiming that his criticism was against Islam as a religion, not against Muslims.

In 2023, his repeated burning of Qurans in public places caused virulent protests in several Muslim-majority countries for what was seen as a provocation. Muslims regard their holy book as a sacred object. Sweden’s government faced an international diplomatic crisis that year.

Police has arrested five people for the murder. Local media say Momika was broadcasting live on social media from an apartment when he was shot.

Evangelical representative: “We should not give away our rights”

Reacting to the news, Olof Edsinger, a cultural analyst and secretary general of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance, told Evangelical Focus that “it is always a tragedy when someone is brutally murdered, as Salwan Momika now has been”.

“It is not the first time, and certainly not the last, that the life of a person criticising Islam ends this way”, he continued. “To all of us, it is a reminder that Islamists often play according to other rules than those we are used to”.

“We still need to be cautious not to give away our democratic rights”, the evangelical representative in Sweden said. “I certainly don’t think that the burning of the Quran is a good way to express your opinion, but as I have previously stated I don’t think these kinds of manifestations should be prohibited by law. That would be a slippery slope, basically re-introducing blasphemy laws in a European context”.

Despite strong reprisals such as the attacks on the Swedish embassy in Baghdad (Iraq) and the expulsion of its ambassador, the government decided to grant Salwan Momika permission to organise his protests. Later the authorities looked at ways of banning such actions.

A debate around freedom of speech

In August 2023, SÄPO (Sweden’s Security Force) had to raise its alert level to 4 (of a maximum of 5), after Islamist terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, al-Shabab or Hezbollah called on their followers to attack Sweden in revenge.

Already then, Christians in Sweden underlined that a Christian ethic excludes gratuitously attacking or mocking other people’s convictions, but that the solution was not to “legislate against blasphemy”.

Restricting people’s right to express criticism of Islam would entail banning debate on religion in general terms, thus infringing on fundamental rights, including freedom of expression.