Quran Desecration Rallies in Scandinavia and the Netherlands: The Formation and Transnational Diffusion of an Anti-Muslim Protest Tactic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2019, Quran desecration rallies have proliferated across Northern Europe, leading to geopolitical tensions with Muslim-majority countries and domestic debates about freedom of speech. This article traces the diffusion trajectories of Quran desecration acts from their initiation in 2019 until November 2023 across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Combining protest event analysis and process tracing based on mainstream media reporting and far-right social media, it shows how the desecration tactic spread from Denmark to remnants of the transnational Counter-Jihad Movement through a within-movement diffusion process involving both indirect and direct channels. Following Rasmus Paludan’s Quran-burning outside Turkey’s Embassy in Stockholm in January 2023, the tactic attracted massive international media attention. In Denmark and Sweden, the tactics’ repurposing toward geopolitical issues led to a spillover to actors unaffiliated with the far right, while in Norway and the Netherlands, the tactic hardly diffused beyond the anti-Islam activists. Drawing on far-right transnational diffusion literature, the article provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed mapping of the recent wave of Quran desecration rallies, showing the various ways the same tactic spread throughout and into different domestic settings.