Kuwait summons Swedish envoy over Quran burning

AFP | Kuwait City   

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The Kuwaiti foreign ministry said Friday it had summoned Sweden's ambassador to protest against a Quran burning outside a Stockholm mosque that sparked a diplomatic backlash across the Muslim world.

Under a heavy police presence on Wednesday, Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old Iraqi who fled to Sweden several years ago, stomped on the Quran before setting several pages alight in front of Stockholm's largest mosque.

Swedish police had granted him a permit in line with free speech protections, but authorities later said they had opened an investigation over "agitation".

On Friday, Kuwait summoned Sweden's envoy, based in the United Arab Emirates, over the incident, after the UAE, Morocco and Iraq also called in the country's diplomatic representatives.

"The deputy minister of foreign affairs handed the Swedish ambassador an official protest note containing the condemnation and denunciation of the State of Kuwait for the burning of a copy of the Holy Quran by an extremist," the foreign ministry said.

The note also denounced Sweden for repeatedly permitting Quran burnings, the foreign ministry said, after a Swedish-Danish right-wing extremist also burned a copy of the Quran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm in January.

The latest incident, coinciding with the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday and the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, sparked anger across the Muslim world.