Riots rock Malmö after far-right Swedish
activists burn Qur'an
Leading imam condemns violence after police battle more
than 300 on streets of the city
Richard
Orange
Sat 29 Aug
2020 16.29 BSTLast modified on Sat 29 Aug 2020 18.55 BST
The
disorderly phalanx of young men and teenagers, many wearing face masks and
hooded tops, started to accelerate, excitement rising, as it neared the row of
police vans blocking off the troubled district of Rosengård in Malmö.
“We’re
gonna fuck this system up because they want to let a man burn the Qur’an,” one
of them yelled, as the group starts hurling jagged chunks of concrete paving
towards the armoured riot police sheltering behind the vans. “And we’re gonna
fuck the police.”
More than
300 rioters threw stones at police and burned tyres in the southern Swedish
city on Friday night after a video circulated of followers of the far-right
Danish politician Rasmus Paludan burning a copy of the Qur’an near one of the
city’s mosques.
Crowds of
young men wielded bars taken from street signs and metal barriers, and threw
stones and fireworks after smashing up bus shelters. Further up the road, cars,
tyres, pallets and rubbish bins were set ablaze.
Police in
Malmö had vacillated for two weeks over whether to give Rasmus Paludan, the
leader of Denmark’s extremist Hard Line party permission to hold an
anti-Islamic protest. Permission was denied on Wednesday, Paludan was stopped
in a car on Friday afternoon as he left the Öresund bridge, deported and banned
from entering Sweden for two years.
But this
did not stop his supporters from filming themselves burning one copy of the
Qur’an, and kicking another around Malmö’s main square like a football, for
which three of them were arrested on suspicion of hate crimes.
During the
riot, Samir Muric, a prominent Malmö imam, paced up and down in the space
between the police and the rioters, imploring the rioters to stop and accusing
them of shaming their own religion. Muric, who was dressed in a jubbah, has
also condemned the rioters on his Facebook page. “Those who are acting in this
way have nothing to do with Islam,” he wrote. “Their shouts filled with ‘la
ilaha ill Allah’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’, are just outbursts that they do not mean,
because if they really meant them, they wouldn’t have acted like this.”
A maximum of five of them are Muslim. You know
why? Because a real Muslim doesn’t do this
Bystander
Among the
spectators, it was clear that many of the Muslims and Arabs among them opposed
the riot. “I don’t like this, because the Arabs, they’re fucking things up for
our community here in Sweden, because one Danish man burned a Qur’an,”
complained one man, who grew up in Malmö to Lebanese parents. “And this is what
he wants. They want us to be like this. I’ve never seen this ever in my life.
I’m shocked.”
Another
young man, blocked from returning to his home in Rosengård at the end of a
10-hour shift, struggled to contain his frustration:“A maximum of five of them
are Muslim. You know why? Because a real Muslim doesn’t do this. All religions,
not only Islam, are about peace.”
Throughout
the night, police held their position at the crossroads marking the dividing
line between Rosengård and central Malmö, pushing the rioters back with a
series of charges.
“Look at
them, they can’t fight back fire with fire, that doesn’t work!” a young man,
who called himself “the Somali pirate of Rosengård”, hooted in a strong north
London accent. “They’re violating our civil rights by letting other people burn
the Qur’an that we believe in and now we have to show that they can’t do that.
It’s against us, so we’re against them. That’s how simple it is.”
Police
officers tried to control the situation by explaining their earlier arrests.
“The police did not give them [the far-right activists] permission to do
anything,” one officer assured a small but angry crowd gathered around him. “We
arrested him as soon as a film came out on the internet showing they had burnt
a Qur’an, and we arrested several of the others.”
According
to Patric Fors, a press spokesman for the Malmö police, calm had not returned
to the area until about 3am on Saturday: “A few policemen have been slightly
injured, and I don’t have any reports of any members of the public being
injured. We currently have 13 suspects wanted for rioting, five of them have
been arrested, but they have all now been released.” The Sydsvenskan newspaper
reported that 15 people were held overnight on Friday.
Many
witnesses expressed their worries about how the Qur’an-burning and the angry
reaction to it might change the city.
Amar
Mohsen, an 18-year-old whose mother is Russian and whose father is Iraqi, said
politicians in the city should have done more to condemn the plans to burn the
Qur’an. “The politicians in Sweden say: ‘It’s a human right. Do what you want.
You live in a free country. You can burn a Qur’an in front of a mosque’. It’s
not like that. It will affect many people and I think we will be more divided.”
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