However, in both Denmark and Sweden, insulting Islam is treated differently. Last month, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi asylum seeker living in Sweden, was awaiting trial for a series of public burnings of the Quran. The 38-year-old anti-Islam activist did not attend court because, on January 29th, Momika was shot dead in what appears to be a retaliatory attack.

Although Momika’s protest is supposedly protected under Swedish law—the country scrapped its blasphemy laws in 1970—exceptions are made if the protest is viewed as incitement. He was awaiting a verdict on a charge of ‘agitation against an ethnic group.’ The protest sparked outrage in muslim-Majority countries. The Scandinavian Quran burnings were cited by Turkey as why they delayed Sweden’s NATO membership for months. The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was attacked and its ambassador was expelled. 

Denmark was once a shining example of Enlightenment rationalism. When the government abolished all types of censorship in 1770, it asserted its citizens’ right to free speech. This was demonstrated when it vigorously defended Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that published a dozen satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. Despite the potential backlash and the threat to life, the administration remained steadfast in its protection of journalistic freedom.

Things have changed, and it appears that certain accommodations have been made for Islam. In response to a series of book burnings, the country introduced what is widely referred to as  “the Quran law” in December 2023. Those who burn or defile holy texts face a fine and a maximum sentence of two years in prison. In January, two Danish citizens were the first to be charged under the new law. Both were accused of ‘inappropriate treatment of a Quran’ at a political festival in June of last year.

Despite the European Court of Human Rights having stressed on numerous occasions that freedom of expression constitutes “one of the essential foundations of a democratic society”, and that “it is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population,” there are still  several EU members states that still punish  ‘insult to religion,’ as noted on the website of End Blasphemy Laws.