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.
Fuck it, now I kind of want to burn a Quran or Bible for funsies.
momika did it specifically to spark outrage among immigrants. don’t do that.
Nah fuck that, If muslims cant handle it they should look the other way like they do when women are stoned to death for showing their hair.
Thanks for generalizing 1.5bn people, Ben Affleck
Wasn’t that Sam Harris who was being islamophobic and Affleck was defending them?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zsecVLjabzY
Just a stupid joke and I mixed up Ben Affleck with Ethan Hawke
Oh, so not a small minority. Good to have that cleared up. Show me a liberal, free muslim country, then i can show you all of them that are not.
Iran… Oh wait destroyed and overthrown by Liberals in 1953
Show me a Muslim country which has not been invaded, colonized and destroyed by Liberals first.
Below is the working list of nations that still criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults
- Algeria
- Afghanistan
- Bangladesh
- Brunei
- Egypt
- Eritrea
- Marocco
- Libya
- Lebanon
- Palestine
- Iran
- Iraq
- Tunisia
- Oman
- Saudi arabia
- Pakistan
- Mauretania
- Mali
And on and on we go.
The only countries that comes close to being reasonably secular are Malaysia and Turkey.
The question was
Show me a Muslim country which has not been invaded, colonized and destroyed by Liberals first.
And literally the first two countries already have been invaded, colonized and destroyed by liberals. And let’s move on, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Marocco, Libya, Libanon, Palestine, Iraq, Tunisia, Pakistan, Mauretania, Mali, all former colonies, brutally ransacked, exploited, people enslaved, the very core of each of their societies absolutely destroyed. Make the list longer and the list of ex-colonies gets longer. Ah and then except of course the already mentioned Palestine, which is still an apartheid colony where the liberal west is committing genocide.
You talk about queer rights but you don’t give a single fuck about the fates of the hundreds of millions, if not billions that have been brutalized in the most horrifying ways by the “civilized west“.
Please do us a favor and GTFO with your phony concern for human rights. You just want to shit on brown people. I honestly feel sorry for you, you must be really unhappy carrying around so much hatred with you.
Cool list. That is a lot of countries colonized and destroyed by liberals indeed.
Below is a list of countries currently committing or complicit in genocide:
-
America
-
Germany
-
UK
-
Israel
-
Netherlands
-
France
-
Canada
-
The entire rest of the liberal world
-
Arabia went from being under Ottoman rule to being under the house of Al Saud, it’s never been colonized by a western “liberal” country.
Their rules are still insane.
Where do they get all those weapons from to surpress their population?
Let me pull up the map of American military bases in the middle ea… Wow that is a lot of American military bases in Saudi. Must be a coincidence.
I don’t understand the point of your comment.
No, i guess that would be too much to ask.
Care to elaborate? You’re just kind of asking a loaded question, but you don’t make any actual argument.
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Care to elaborate? They’re just kind of asking a loaded question, but don’t make any actual argument.
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Good one. Throw in another joke in about Jews owning all the banks, newspapers and an elite pedo sex ring cabal. Haha. Aren’t these racist jokes funny?
One of them is true and one is racist. Guess which is which
There are at least 8 countries that apply sharia as their modus in criminal and family law.
Yemen, Saudi arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, mauretania and Ethiopia.
You think that’s funny?
And thats not even mentioning the backwards ass Christian countries that also apply the Bible to criminal law.
Great list of countries colonized by the West. America implement that Sharia law for them? That freedom and liberalism really inspired them.
Oh, right. I forgot that everything is Americas fault. Especially the islamic theocracy. Has nothing to do with the fact that every sovereign power in the middle east funds fundamentalist insurgents in each others countries to destabalize them.
Pakistan, i’m looking at you.
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he wasn’t allowed to before either. we have laws against that.
the man wanted to incite hatred, show him middlefinger by doing the opposite
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.
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.
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what do you mean?
They’re just being an ass about your writing.
i thought it would be about run-on sentences, but i can’t find one. there should probably be a line break though.
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.
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.
You know that the Nazis in Germany burned a lot of books?
Your general statement would absolve them from their actions and intentions and instead shifts the blame onto the people who got persecuted by having their books burnt. Which later escalated to more than “just” burning books.
You cannot reduce it to the action itself and ignore all the context around it, especially not the intentions of the perpetrators.
And “other people shouldn’t get offended if i insult and attack them constantly” is hardly acceptable in any other social context. E.g. i hope you would oppose insulting LGBTQ, Women, Ethnic minorities, disabled people…
And it should be obvious from these examples, that “it is just a joke” or “it is just an insult and i should be allowed to insult, because muuh free speech” is not a sincere argument, by the people spreading the hate. And their intention is never to keep the hate at verbal abuse, but to escalate it to physical violence.
Its not about the PHYSICAL book. Go ask any muslim if there is ANY situation where they would find it acceptable to burn their holy book in such way that guy did. And if he did it to “make it obvious there is something fundamendally wrong” why didnt he then MAKE IT OBVIOUS WHAT IS WRONG? Lets say that was his goal, then he failed so spectacularly words fail me.
I truly dont know what else to say about this if you still dont see what I mean.
And its not nice trying to frame what I said as apoligism or blame shifting. But if you TRULY think so then maybe you should back your arguments with facts instead of throwing words and hoping they stick. I know I can make mistakes and how else can I learn from them than if other people correct me. But i’m pretty sure i’m not wrong about this, but its not good to be blinded by your own surety.
So how long have you sided with the Nazis and fundamentalist Christians?
Because now you’re excusing their book burning.
The scale makes all the difference here.
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.
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Just because you are allowed to do something doesnt mean you should.
why not both?
Toss in a torah to complete the Abrahamic trifecta and top it with dianetics because fuck scientology in particular.
Why no Torah?
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
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.
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.
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/
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.
not sure what you think the bible is
Basically fanfic commissioned by King James VI/I
Your point being?
THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL
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Obviously I am not talking about the ME.
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Isn’t that basically like burning newspaper? Both would work I guess
He was a asshole, but he sound have been free and safe to be an asshole.
Fuck religion
If this was a Swedish-born guy, I would jump on the bandwagon of calling him an asshole.
But this guy was an Iraqi. I cannot outright condemn someone who gets so tired of the shit of the majority of their own country that ends up overreacting the moment they find themselves somewhere where they can express themselves freely.
Like, turban knocking in a Western city is (rightly) a hate crime. Turban knocking in Tehran? That’s fucking righteous.
Middle eastern Christians, atheists, etc very often end up being “wrong” wherever they find themselves. Wrong in their home countries for being the kuffar Other, wrong in the West as “islamophobes” when they speak out about their othering.
Yeah because the actions of one “religious” person represent the bunch right?
On social media? Yes.
Replace “religious” with “police” as an example.
This guy?
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
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.
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.
do you have any proof of him being racist?
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.
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.
Christian militia group – supplied by Iran?
How much kool-aid have you been drinking? No, Iran, the violently islamic theocracy does not support Christian groups. Unless it is for undermining their religious opponents, such as sunni Muslims. There is a common theme about religious wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kataib_Rouh_Allah_Issa_Ibn_Miriam
A sub group of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata'ib_al-Imam_Ali
There is blurry footage online of a guy who is alleged to be him burning people.
Oh look! More religious violence!
It’s almost like you make my point for me. And look who the opposition is that you want me to sympathize with. FUCKING ISIS.
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.
Seems pretty accepted by some Lemmy commenters and certain vocal minorities in the western countries.
That’s different as those are very niche.
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.
This is, as a matter of fact, incorrect. There is only one law regarding what in english might be called “hate speech”. It refers to “agitation against a population group”, and is the only exception to freedom of expression relevant in this context, mentioned in “brottsbalken”, our criminal law.
Brottsbalken, Kap. 16, 8 § Den som i ett uttalande eller i ett annat meddelande som sprids uppmanar till våld mot, hotar eller uttrycker missaktning för en folkgrupp, en annan sådan grupp av personer eller en enskild i någon av dessa grupper med anspelning på ras, hudfärg, nationellt eller etniskt ursprung, trosbekännelse, sexuell läggning eller könsöverskridande identitet eller uttryck, döms för hets mot folkgrupp till fängelse i högst två år.
Criticism of religion however is raised in other, more important parts of law, namely the Swedish form of Government (our constitution). It is there, specifically and repeatedly, mentioned as a kind of speech and expression that is protected. As such, in the case of Salwan Momika it’d have been necessary to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to target muslims by burning quran books, rather than (as he himself claimed) to openly criticize islam. Nobody has as of the posting of this comment been deemed guilty of agitation for burning any religious texts in Sweden under the current law.
This is part of why the trial of him and his companion ended up taking so long. It was one of the first high-profile cases of its kind and likely to set precedent on the topic. As such, I consider his assassination on the night before the verdict of his trial to be not only a barbaric act of violence, but also an explicit attack on the Swedish legal system, our constitution and our freedom of expression.
I’m an American mechanical engineer that’s been considering working and living in Sweden for a long time, with recent events pushing me to pursue it with more vigor. Do you know of any culture/law/history primers that may be accessible for an English speaker? Or similar subject but in Swedish with children’s book-style vocab/grammar? Cultural integration for kindergartners would be excellent. I’d just like to not make a fool of myself!
I’ll get back to you on that. If you like you can contact me via email Iceblade02@proton.me.
What exactly more than a religion is it?
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Well that checks out.
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For some context, when one scratches a bit the back-story of this guy, some interesting facts pop up:
Momika came from Qaraqosh, a town in the Al-Hamdaniya district in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh[5]. He was an ethnic Assyrian and raised as a Syriac Catholic.[6][7] During the Iraqi civil war, when Christians became persecuted by the Islamic State of Iraq (the precursor of ISIS), Momika joined the Assyrian Patriotic Party and worked as a security guard for the party’s headquarters in Mosul. According to Iraqi government sources, Momika fled his hometown in 2012 after the local court found him guilty of causing a wrongful death during a car accident and sentenced him to three years of imprisonment in Badush.[8][9]
After the fall of Mosul to ISIS militants in June 2014, Momika joined the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to fight against ISIS.[10] Specifically, he has appeared in videos in military uniform, as a part of the Christian unit “Spirit of God Jesus Son of Mary Battalion” (Kataib Rouh Allah Issa Ibn Miriam) brandishing firearms and pledging allegiance to the Imam Ali Brigades (to which the Christian unit is a part of), which are a PMF faction and part of the Islamic Movement of Iraq.[11] The Imam Ali Brigades are known to have close connections to Iran and is considered to be an Iranian proxy.[12] The brigades were also accused of committing war crimes and engaging in sectarian violence.[13] It’s said that Momika was also affiliated with the Syriac Assembly Movement, a political party that received support from the Government of the Kurdistan Region.[14]
Momika also founded the Syriac Democratic Union and the Falcons of the Syriac Forces in 2014, an armed militia which was affiliated with the Christian militia Babylon Brigade, the armed wing of the Babylon Movement.[12] In 2017, Momika was involved in an internal power struggle with fellow Babylon Movement leader Rayan al-Kildani, which he lost. He fled the country as a result.[15]
In 2017, Momika fled to Germany with a Schengen visa, where he announced his atheism and apostasy from Christianity.
The rest of the article also describes multiple instances of him behaving erratically (e.g. threatening someone with a knife etc).
So before we go to the standard «western right wing troll» stereotyping, we must acknowledge that this is a veteran of the fight against ISIS who experienced persecution of his community during the Iraqi civil war and who probably was suffering from all sorts of trauma.
Does this excuse his behaviour, no. But it does explain it, way better than simplistic caricatures putting him in some «western racist» pigeonhole. He definitely did not deserve to die and he probably had some very legitimate reasons to hate Islam, a religion that he personally experienced in a really fucked up and extreme form in an extremely fucked up and extreme situation. Sadness all around.
Quite a lose-lose situation indeed. People who hate each others guts. I hope they can find the perpetrators soon.
He was being charged for doing this? I had completely missed that. Was Sweden always like this?
No, people haven’t been killed over a religious text for a very, very long time. Then we imported the religious issue.
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Chill there baby.
There is a murder investigation. So yes they are. Unless you’re one of the troglodytes that wants to grab a pitchfork; i much prefer to let the police do their job.
Just because your American police is a joke, doesn’t mean ours is.
You can burn as many books as you want, thats not why salwan was under investigation.
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There are no such laws. you bought it, you burn it.
There are laws about religious, racial or ethnical discrimination though.
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Because you can try someone for a crime if the prosecutor finds a reason to do so.
I don’t pretend to know exactly what his indigtment was, but i recon i could ask for the papers since its public. What I do know is that he had to ask permission from the police to have his demonstrations and all except one was granted. The one that wasn’t allowed was because of the security issue due to muslim protestors. Don’t remember exactly how many allowed demonstrations there was. So i guess the answer is, people don’t know what they are talking about when they say what he was doing was “illegal”.
Are you saying his killing was justified?
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.
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…
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
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?
People with different views will say similar things. People were happy about what Luigi did, or at least unsympathetic to the CEO. Many here, espoused how they wished the trump assassination was successful. The point is, people can still disagree about the action but be happy that someone they didn’t like died.
Plus, he was a part of a brigade that killed people in Iraq and a zionist who called Palestinians rats.
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.
Well said. ✌️
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.
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.
I have mixed thoughts on it really, like you should be allowed to do it but its just pointless and stupid so why the fuck would you?
To me, it’s more about the goal he was trying to achieve. He clearly did it to taunt and insult. In that context, I can see how this should be a punishable offense (not death though).
It would be a similar thing if you had learned that the prime minister of Sweden likes to create art at home. Then buying one of his art pieces and burn it in front of his house. Sure, burning art is not a punishable offense, but the goal of intimidating someone with such a symbol could/should be.
Its doing so outside of their house that could be intimidation at that point though. So if you burnt the art in your own home surely it would be fine? Essentially the burning isn’t the problem.
A more reasonable response is Muslims call the guy a cunt and move on.
I agree on the “reasonable response” aspect.
I think for the first question it should revolve around “public” or “private”. if you do something at home and record it to share the video on the internet, it is still public, with the goal to be public.
So in regards to incitement or hate speech it is also different if your racist uncle spurts his ideas at the family reunion, or if he broadcasts them on twitter.
I wasn’t so much thinking of public/private, but doing it outside someones house has a bit of an “I know where you live” vibe to it.
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
He wasn’t a nazi.
This isn’t justification for what happened but people should know he was a part of a brigade in Iraq that killed people.
Oh and also, he’s an Israeli supporter who called Palestinians “rats”
As I understand, he was part of a brigade that killed people in the context of a civil war where his brigade was fighting against ISIS
Quite an important footnote.
As I understand, he was part of a brigade that killed unarmed civillians in the context of a civil war where his brigade was fighting against ISIS
His brigade also killed innocent people who had nothing to do with that.
Seems like he got what he wanted.
He died for destroying a book, for burning paper, no human was hurt and he died because some religious extremist can’t control themselves.
Great example of how religion needs to be properly regulated.
He was absolutely trying to get a reaction. I’m not saying that it’s good that he got the one he did, I’m just saying it was predictable.
It’s predictable because the religious are mentally ill and dangerous
Very brave sentiment, and I applaud you for it!
You knew what you were saying and how you were saying it.
We’re past the point where the avg person is ignorant to dog whistles.
Read it again, dopey.
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Who is that?
this is some weird fediverse scam bot?
Would seem so, sent me a DM to day follow me on Friendica and PeerTube. Day old account, maybe trying to do the same thing Facebook did with the AI profiles.
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Yes I’m quite confused. Got the same dm…
RIP
Guess he didn’t read the crowd.
