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.
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.
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.
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/
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/12/13/thomas-mann-franklin-freeman-revisited-244293
I haven’t read the Quran or Mein Kampf, but even the old testament is plenty hateful.
Your kid makes fun of some bald dude? Death penalty, mauled by bear.
Add to that (I’ve heard second hand, correct me if I’m wrong) that there is some pedofilia/child marriage in the Quran, so I see how someone could have strong feelings about it.
The amount of people liking a book shouldn’t be an argument to judge its hatrfulness.
I am an atheist/agnostic, I won’t be caught dead saying these books aren’t deeply problematic, that wasn’t my point, my point is that despite all that there is also some good to these books and exploration however fraught of morals and philosophy.
Mein Kampf is just pathetic, lame trash and as I said before it is an insult to those religious works to compare them with a document solely designed to rationalize genocide and hate.