A Danish court on Friday for the first time meted out a verdict in the first criminal case using the country’s new law prohibiting “improper treatment of a religious text,” The European Conservative reported on Friday.
The court sentenced anti-Islam leader Rasmus Paludan and one of his associates to each pay a fine of DKK10,000 (just over €1,300) for destroying copies of the Quran at Folkemødet, a civic festival aimed at fostering open debate, in Allinge, Bornholm, last summer.
In the tent of Paludan’s migration-critical political party, Stram Kurs, the two tore pages out of copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, put the book on a grill, and let it drop into puddles on the ground.
Paludan – well-known for his Quran burnings in Sweden, and who was earlier this week denied entry to Italy – said their actions constituted an “artistic performance.”
This is the first case under Denmark’s new “Quran law,” introduced in December 2023 after a series of Quran burnings in other countries were criticised internationally and used as a pretext for demonstrations and rioting in several Muslim countries. The law criminalises improper treatment of religious texts, including the Bible, Quran, Torah, and Vedas.
At the time, the law received heavy criticism from defenders of freedom of expression, with a petition signed by more than 500 Danish artists and intellectuals calling it “an attack on art, political expression, and freedom of the press” as well as “a free and democratic society.”
Prosecutor Mads Larsen acknowledged the law limits free expression but said the law targets only physical acts, not speech or writing.
