It was Salwan Momika, a 38-year-old Iraqi refugee, in Sweden. Last night, in his apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm, he was ‘ruthlessly gunned down’. He was taking part in a livestream on TikTok when the shooter barged in and put a bullet in him. It is being reported that his killing might have been captured on camera. We face the very real prospect that a ‘blasphemer’ was just publicly executed in 21st-century Europe.
There seems to be little doubt as to why Mr Momika may have been targeted for assassination: he was a stinging critic of Islam. He was raised as a Syriac Catholic in the Nineveh province of Iraq, and later became an atheist. He witnessed the savage persecution of Iraqi Christians by ISIS. He reportedly joined the Imam Ali Battalions, a militant outfit that battled ISIS. In 2017 he fled to Germany and later sought asylum in Sweden.
It was in Sweden that he perfected his craft of anti-Islam agitation. He really didn’t like that religion, which was surely his inalienable right. He even took to burning copies of the Koran in public. In June 2023 he set fire to a Koran outside Stockholm Central Mosque and then stomped on its ashen remains. This provoked fury in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco and the UAE raged against Sweden for letting its inhabitants carry out such ‘disrespectful and hurtful’ actions. The Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson, thinks a ‘foreign power’ might be linked to Momika’s murder.
That a man appears to have been put to death for expressing his dislike of a religion is exceptionally serious. It is an outrage against liberty, against Enlightenment itself. It matters not one iota whether you approve or disapprove of setting fire to books. It is immaterial whether you consider it fine or crass to put a match to a holy text. All that matters here is that a man was slain, it seems, for giving voice to his irreligious beliefs. For exercising that hard-won and essential liberty to demur from ‘holy’ orthodoxy. If Mr Momika was indeed executed for his ‘profanities’, it is as repulsive, as shaming to humanity’s moral conscience, as when ‘deniers’ of Christ were strapped to the stake in the Inquisition.
For when he burned the Koran, Momika was not engaging in censorship. He was not seeking to destroy every copy of that book, forever, like the state’s and the church’s tyrannical book-burners of old sought to do with whatever texts offended them. No, he was engaging in expression. He was giving voice, through the spectacle of fire, to his deeply held conviction that Islam is a dangerous religion. We can agree or disagree with that. But we should defend to the death – which he seems literally to have done – the right of every individual to freely convey such beliefs, regardless of who takes offence at them. Momika’s destruction of the Koran was as much an act of expression as was the writing of the Koran in the first place. Freedom of speech surely means having both the right to read the Koran and to burn it.
There will be much official condemnation of the killing of Momika, both in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. And yet the harsh truth is that there is often an interplay, a sick interplay, between officialdom’s own censorious attitude towards Islam’s critics and the determination of extremists to harm or kill Islam’s critics. The former might call criticism of Islam ‘Islamophobia’, and the latter might call it ‘blasphemy’, but they are as one in their belief that ridiculing this religion is a uniquely wicked thing to do. The state punishes it with fines, the extremists punish it with violence. Both punish it, though. Both exist on the same spectrum of intolerance, the same plane of agitation with any arrogant mortal who dares to belittle this religion.
Indeed, a Stockholm court was due to pass judgment on Momika and another man today over their Koran burnings. They were charged with ‘agitation against an ethnic or national group’. Perhaps the killer thought he would pass his judgement first: death. The twisted truth is that the key difference between the Swedish state and Momika’s killer is one of severity, not morality. Both believed he should be punished for his ‘blasphemy’, they just disagreed on how severe the punishment should be. Morally, they concur: ridiculing Islam is a speechcrime of intolerable proportions.
Sweden, in the name of liberty, ought to have defended Momika’s right to express his furious dislike of Islam. Instead it arrested him. We need to ask how alien the Islamist tormentors of ‘blasphemers’ really are. Because to me, they look more like the militant wing of an utterly mainstream idea, the brute enforcers of a censorious diktat that has been fully embraced by the opinion-formers of modern Europe. Namely, that criticising Islam is immoral and reckless. A continent on which you can be arrested, fined and suspended from work for joking about Islam, and even ritually humiliated for ‘scuffing’ its holy book, is a continent on which some will feel emboldened to go that bit further and physically reprimand the mockers of their religion. It seems to me that the moral cowardice of the cultural elite, their mad crusade to crush criticism of Islam in order to maintain ‘community relations’, is effectively hanging a target sign around the necks of Islam’s critics. It says, ‘Yes, you’re right: they are bad people’.
It is time to get serious about freedom of speech – which, yes, includes the inviolable right of ‘blasphemy’. Too many people in Europe are suffering persecution and even violence for their criticism of Islam. From the massacre at Charlie Hebdo to the beheading of Samuel Paty, from the hounding into hiding of the Batley Grammar schoolteacher to this vile attack on Mr Momika, a wave of Islamo-tyranny has swept our continent and too few liberals are speaking out against it. Enough is enough. Sweden and every other nation in Europe must now say that no god, prophet, book or ideology is beyond criticism. And that the easily hurt feelings of fundamentalists count for precisely nothing against the freedom of the individual to say whatever he wants. Liberty must trump sensitivity, every single time.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
There seems to be little doubt as to why Mr Momika may have been targeted for assassination: he was a stinging critic of Islam. He was raised as a Syriac Catholic in the Nineveh province of Iraq, and later became an atheist. He witnessed the savage persecution of Iraqi Christians by ISIS. He reportedly joined the Imam Ali Battalions, a militant outfit that battled ISIS. In 2017 he fled to Germany and later sought asylum in Sweden.
It was in Sweden that he perfected his craft of anti-Islam agitation. He really didn’t like that religion, which was surely his inalienable right. He even took to burning copies of the Koran in public. In June 2023 he set fire to a Koran outside Stockholm Central Mosque and then stomped on its ashen remains. This provoked fury in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco and the UAE raged against Sweden for letting its inhabitants carry out such ‘disrespectful and hurtful’ actions. The Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson, thinks a ‘foreign power’ might be linked to Momika’s murder.
That a man appears to have been put to death for expressing his dislike of a religion is exceptionally serious. It is an outrage against liberty, against Enlightenment itself. It matters not one iota whether you approve or disapprove of setting fire to books. It is immaterial whether you consider it fine or crass to put a match to a holy text. All that matters here is that a man was slain, it seems, for giving voice to his irreligious beliefs. For exercising that hard-won and essential liberty to demur from ‘holy’ orthodoxy. If Mr Momika was indeed executed for his ‘profanities’, it is as repulsive, as shaming to humanity’s moral conscience, as when ‘deniers’ of Christ were strapped to the stake in the Inquisition.
For when he burned the Koran, Momika was not engaging in censorship. He was not seeking to destroy every copy of that book, forever, like the state’s and the church’s tyrannical book-burners of old sought to do with whatever texts offended them. No, he was engaging in expression. He was giving voice, through the spectacle of fire, to his deeply held conviction that Islam is a dangerous religion. We can agree or disagree with that. But we should defend to the death – which he seems literally to have done – the right of every individual to freely convey such beliefs, regardless of who takes offence at them. Momika’s destruction of the Koran was as much an act of expression as was the writing of the Koran in the first place. Freedom of speech surely means having both the right to read the Koran and to burn it.
There will be much official condemnation of the killing of Momika, both in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. And yet the harsh truth is that there is often an interplay, a sick interplay, between officialdom’s own censorious attitude towards Islam’s critics and the determination of extremists to harm or kill Islam’s critics. The former might call criticism of Islam ‘Islamophobia’, and the latter might call it ‘blasphemy’, but they are as one in their belief that ridiculing this religion is a uniquely wicked thing to do. The state punishes it with fines, the extremists punish it with violence. Both punish it, though. Both exist on the same spectrum of intolerance, the same plane of agitation with any arrogant mortal who dares to belittle this religion.
Indeed, a Stockholm court was due to pass judgment on Momika and another man today over their Koran burnings. They were charged with ‘agitation against an ethnic or national group’. Perhaps the killer thought he would pass his judgement first: death. The twisted truth is that the key difference between the Swedish state and Momika’s killer is one of severity, not morality. Both believed he should be punished for his ‘blasphemy’, they just disagreed on how severe the punishment should be. Morally, they concur: ridiculing Islam is a speechcrime of intolerable proportions.
Sweden, in the name of liberty, ought to have defended Momika’s right to express his furious dislike of Islam. Instead it arrested him. We need to ask how alien the Islamist tormentors of ‘blasphemers’ really are. Because to me, they look more like the militant wing of an utterly mainstream idea, the brute enforcers of a censorious diktat that has been fully embraced by the opinion-formers of modern Europe. Namely, that criticising Islam is immoral and reckless. A continent on which you can be arrested, fined and suspended from work for joking about Islam, and even ritually humiliated for ‘scuffing’ its holy book, is a continent on which some will feel emboldened to go that bit further and physically reprimand the mockers of their religion. It seems to me that the moral cowardice of the cultural elite, their mad crusade to crush criticism of Islam in order to maintain ‘community relations’, is effectively hanging a target sign around the necks of Islam’s critics. It says, ‘Yes, you’re right: they are bad people’.
It is time to get serious about freedom of speech – which, yes, includes the inviolable right of ‘blasphemy’. Too many people in Europe are suffering persecution and even violence for their criticism of Islam. From the massacre at Charlie Hebdo to the beheading of Samuel Paty, from the hounding into hiding of the Batley Grammar schoolteacher to this vile attack on Mr Momika, a wave of Islamo-tyranny has swept our continent and too few liberals are speaking out against it. Enough is enough. Sweden and every other nation in Europe must now say that no god, prophet, book or ideology is beyond criticism. And that the easily hurt feelings of fundamentalists count for precisely nothing against the freedom of the individual to say whatever he wants. Liberty must trump sensitivity, every single time.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
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