Stockholm: After Swedish police authorised the demonstration, a man tore up and burned a Quran in front of Stockholm's main mosque, a move that would enrage Turkey as Sweden applied to join NATO.
Police later charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group. A series of demonstrations in Sweden against Islam and for Kurdish rights have offended Ankara, whose backing Sweden needs to gain entry to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, Sweden applied to join NATO. However, alliance participant Turkey has slowed down the process by alleging that Sweden is harbouring individuals it regards as terrorists and requesting their extradition.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan condemned the act in a tweet, adding that it was unacceptable to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression. Burning of religious texts is "disrespectful and hurtful", the deputy spokesperson for the US State Department told reporters in a daily briefing. "What might be legal is certainly not necessarily appropriate," Vedant Patel said.
But he continued to urge Turkey and Hungary to ratify the NATO accession protocol of Sweden without delay. "We believe Sweden has fulfilled its commitments under the trilateral memorandum."
Nerly 200 spectators watched as one of the two protestors tore up pages of a Quran, used them to wipe his shoes, then put bacon inside before igniting the book on fire.