What would happen to you if you tore up and burned a copy of the Holy Bible on the steps of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan? What would happen to you if you dropped a Crucifix into a jar of urine, and photographed it, claiming it to be art?
There would be people claiming that you were a religious bigot, who ought to be thrown in jail, but you’d actually face no legal charges. Some people might think you were headed straight to Hell, but no one would actually try to send you there.
What would happen to you if you participated in, or perhaps even led, a protest March in support of Hamas or the Palestinians in New York or Washington or foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia? As long as the protest march was peaceable, there might be some hecklers shouting from the sidewalks as the protest march passed, but you’d not be facing any charges. If you were in the country illegally, now that Donald Trump is President — it wouldn’t have happened under our previous President or Kamala Harris Emhoff, had she been elected — you might get sent back home, but that’s it. And if you are young and pretty, NBC News might even publish a celebratory glamour photo of you!
But, if you lived in Sweden, legally, you could be charged with a crime. Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee legally granted protection there, was charged with incitement against an ethnic group over the 2023 burning of a Quran, and was due to be sentenced Thursday morning.
Another man in Sweden, Rasmus Paludan, was recently sentenced to four months in prison for “incitement against an ethnic group”:
According to the court, Paludan is said to have “wrapped bacon in and around a Koran and then set fire to, kicked and spat on the Qur’an” during the April demonstration. He is also accused of disrespecting different ethnic groups.
He was accused of saying “that Muslims like to use violence”, “that Muslims create unrest and disharmony,” and “that Arabs, Muslims and Africans are not intelligent”.
At the September protest, Paludan is said to have told a man to “go home to Africa” and that “Africans do not belong in Sweden”.
Would any of that have gotten someone sent to prison in the United States? Remember: at some pro-Hamas protests, Jews have been yelled at, telling them to “go back to Poland.”
Man Who Burned Quran in Stockholm Is Killed
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant in Sweden, set off large protests when he burned a Quran in 2023. He had been scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.
By Christina Anderson and Amelia Nierenberg | Thursday, January 30, 2025 | 9:19 AM EST
Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant who set off enormous protests when he burned a Quran in Stockholm in 2023, has been killed, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said Thursday morning.
The police said that they had arrested five people and that a murder investigation had been launched. Mr. Momika had been set to appear in Stockholm District Court on Thursday on charges related to the 2023 incident, which resulted in protests in Sweden and across the Muslim world.
The Stockholm police, who declined to confirm that Mr. Momika had been killed, said that there had been a shooting late on Wednesday in Sodertalje, a city near Stockholm, and that a man had died. The prosecution authority then confirmed that Mr. Momika was that man.
Further down:
Mr. Momika, a Christian, had set the Quran ablaze during Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic holiday, outside a mosque in Stockholm. He said that he was trying to raise awareness about the mistreatment and killing of Christian minorities by Islamists in some parts of the Muslim world.
“I am warning the Swedish people about the dangers of this book,” Mr. Momika had said through a megaphone outside the mosque.
Judging by the fact he was killed for his protests, I’d say he was right.
The response from the Muslim world was swift and furious, with much of the criticism aimed at the Swedish authorities for not stopping the burning.
In Iraq, several hundred people stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad and set parts of it ablaze. Iraq expelled Sweden’s ambassador and directed its ambassador to Sweden to withdraw from its embassy in Stockholm.
The New York Times’ story lists other demonstrations and government protests over Mr Momika’s actions, and blamed Sweden for allowing it to happen. Mr Momika had a permit from the local police to stage his demonstrations, but those permits did not include burning and tearing and stomping on the book.
The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.
To me, the important part of all of this is our First Amendment. The democratic Europeans claim to have Freedom of Speech, but very liberal Sweden certainly does not: they restrict the ways in which people are allowed to speak, telling speakers that they can’t hurt the precious little feelings of other people. In France, a gynecologist was suspended for refusing to treat a ‘transgender woman’, a male pretending to be female, and hurting his feelings by stating that he only treated « vraies femmes », “real women”.
Of course, with our system of lawfare, such a gynecologist might nevertheless get sued, and juries in the more whacko states, states which, roughly defined, were carried by Mrs Emhoff, might just side with the plaintiff.
Our political left were very, very upset when Elon Musk bought Twitter, because Mr Musk promised to restore far greater freedom of speech by reinstating then former President Trump’s account, and the stifling rules of that social media platform, rules which tried to force people to go along with left-wing thought and ideas, were greatly reduced. Given another chance, the left would criminalize ‘hate speech’ in the United States.
The left were telling us that the 2024 election was about ‘saving democracy,’ but the left also wanted to bar then-former President Trump from being able to run, despite the fact that he was the clear choice of the Republican Party, because they were deathly afraid of the choice the voters might make in a free and democratic election. After he won the election, there was a groundswell from the left that Congress should refuse to certify his election, claiming that he was ineligible under the 14th Amendment to be President as an ‘insurrectionist,’ even though he’d never been either charged or convicted of such. Whatever the left tell you, believe the opposite!