World

Quran-Burnings Amplify Islamist Threat, Danish Security Service Warns

Denmark has already had several run-ins with Islamist extremism. Since the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, several terrorist attacks have been attempted - and averted - against the headquarters of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that published them.
Sputnik
Quran burnings in Denmark have led to "a greater number of threats" from militant Islamists, the country's Police Intelligence Service (PET) has confirmed.

"Some cases never receive attention in the militant Islamist environments in Denmark and abroad. Other cases, meanwhile, receive significant negative publicity, which leads to the planning and execution of militant Islamist terrorist attacks directed at targets in the West," PET said in its recent report.

Daesh* and other militant Islamist movements have called for and plotted retaliatory attacks against specific targets in selected countries and capitals, the recent Pentagon leak has shown. The list features a possible response to the Quran burning staged by Danish-Swedish activist and fringe Hard Line party leader Rasmus Paludan in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, in January.
Quran-burnings and other ways of defacing Islam's holy book have long become a staple of Paludan's political repertoire. Paludan argues that Muslim culture cannot coexist with Western European mores and justifies the Quran-burnings with the need to stand up for free speech, which he believes is threatened. His party advocates a ban on Islam because of its oppression of women and an end to all non-Western immigration to Denmark and Sweden.
Paludan's incendiary actions and rhetoric have led to several assassination attempts, placing him under expensive 24/7 police protection, which costs the Danish state millions of kroner. Around-the-clock police protection was also the fate of the late Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who made international headlines with his grotesque pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.
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According to PET, the Quran-burnings may become a definite "point of reference" for Islamist movements, as was the case with the controversy over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.
The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, known for satirizing Islam and Muhammad, suffered a much grimmer fate when a terrorist attack in January 2015 against its headquarters by armed Islamic militants in Paris left 12 dead and 11 injured.
Earlier this year, Sweden's Security Police detained five men on suspicion of plotting terrorist crimes in response to one of Paludan's Quran-burning protests in Stockholm. The five men were arrested during coordinated raids in three different cities and are believed to have international links to violent extremism.
Threat assessments and political implications have led to Quran-burning protests being banned in Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the authorities admitting restrictions to free speech.
* Daesh (ISIS/ISIL/"Islamic State") is a terrorist organization banned in Russia and other countries
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