Reacting To Quran Burning In Stockholm, Al-Qaeda In The Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) Calls For Beheadings, Al-Qaeda Supporter Asserts Killing Insulters Of Islam Would End The Phenomenon

The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. 

On June 28, 2023, the first day of the Islamic holiday of Eid Al-Adha, an Iraqi refugee, Salwan Momika, tore up a copy of the Quran and lit it on fire outside the Stockholm Central Mosque, while standing behind a police cordon. The Muslim worshippers largely ignored the incident, although a man who approached the barrier with three rocks was arrested.

The incident drew condemnation from Muslim-majority countries as well as from Salafi-jihadis and Iran-backed militias in multiple countries. Some jihadis, particularly those affiliated with Al-Qaeda, called for the killing of Momika.[1]

Al-Qaeda In The Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) Calls To Behead Those Who Insult Islam, Accuses Sweden, Europe, And U.S. Of Continuing Crusades And Waging War On Islam

Reacting to the burning of the Quran, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) issued a statement on July 2 via its official media outlet, Al-Sahab Media Subcontinent, titled "So, Behead Them; It Is a Duty Prescribed by [the] Quran!"[2] The one-page statement, released in Urdu and English versions, begins by condemning the "heinous act" which "outraged the feelings of all then Muslims worldwide." It asserts that "in the modern world's 'New World Order'," freedom of expression has become a "farce and empty idea" whose true purpose is to legitimize a "verbal war" on Islam.

The statement further claims that the "atrocious" burning of the Quran has exposed Sweden, together with all of Europe and America, which "have masked their ugly crusader faces with secularism," revealing that they are continuing the "centuries-old crusades to which once the Popes of Rome used to call."  This act, according to AQIS, is part of a war between two faiths, the "only true and divine revelation, Islam," and the "practice of deitifying [sic] all except Allah" in the name of false religions and ideologies or pursuing human lusts. The statement adds that "whether this war is waged by some American Terry Jones[3] or by some Iraqi atheist Salwan Momika, this war is actually the war of the whole infidel world against Islam."

Calling to kill Momika and others like him, the statement declares that "it is an Islamic obligation to behead those among the infidels and atheists who directly engage in such accursed and heinous acts." It is also obligatory to wage jihad against "the governments and the international organizations who support and cooperate in such evil acts." Those who cannot personally wage jihad against "the secular and crusader enemy" should "inspire and call others to this end," while those who cannot even do that must at least know that "the only way forward to stop these crimes is jihad and qital [warfare] and to behead such devils." The "only effectual condemnation of such evil acts" is for them to pray for the downfall of those "criminals" and the success of the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda Supporter: If Muslims Killed Those Who Insult Their Religion, No One Would Do It Again

An Al-Qaeda supporter published a one-page essay on June 30 containing similar calls to kill those who burn the Quran, titled "O People of the Quran, Adorn the Quran with Your Actions!"[4]

Noting that Allah sent the Prophet Muhammad "with the sword to all those who disbelieve in Him [Allah], mock the true religion, or defame it by word or deed," the essay states that the "horrible crime" of burning the Quran outside a Swedish mosque on Eid Al-Adha angered all sincere Muslims. The author argues that the "vile slave of the accursed Satan," Momika, only dared to commit this act because previous insults to Islam went unpunished, leaving their perpetrators "alive, free, and unharmed." He claims that if Muslims "killed and stabbed those criminals," no one would even consider burning the Quran publicly, and praises the Kouachi brothers who perpetrated the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks, thereby making Westerners think twice before insulting the Prophet Muhammad.  The author calls on Muslims to "take swift, just retribution" from Momika and others like him, and to "lie in wait for them wherever they are and wherever they stay, and kill them unawares." 

He then warns those who insult the Quran that they will be humiliated in their lifetimes and burn in Hell after their deaths. He prays for Allah to punish those who insult Islam at the hands of His "soldiers and close ones" and to provide the Muslim nation with proper guidance under which those who worship Allah will be glorified, those who disobey Him humiliated, virtue enjoined and vice forbidden, and jihad waged.