Prosecutors again seek conviction of Rasmus Paludan over Quran law violation

Rasmus Paludan, the founder of the Stram Kurs party, is again facing prosecution over alleged violations of Denmark’s Quran law. The indictment, obtained by Ritzau through an access-to-documents request, concerns five incidents in 2025 outside the Indonesian, Turkish and Pakistani embassies in Copenhagen.

Paludan denies guilt. He told Ritzau that prosecutors appeared to be seeking a prison sentence, which he said would conflict with European Court of Human Rights practice in other blasphemy cases. According to Paludan, that practice calls for fines rather than imprisonment. The Copenhagen Police indictment itself says only that prosecutors are seeking a “punishment.”

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It was not a Quran or a book that appeared to be a Quran that was burned in these cases.

Paludan disputes the description of the incidents. “It was not a Quran or a book that appeared to be a Quran that was burned in these cases,” he said. He added that prosecutors might argue in court that his statements implied the books were made to look like Qurans.

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I guess that the court will argue that in my statements I insinuated that these were books made to look like Qurans.

The 44-year-old lawyer became the first person in Denmark convicted under the controversial law, receiving 10 day-fines of 1,000 kroner each in May last year. The court found that he and an associate had treated the religious text improperly during the 2024 People’s Meeting in Allinge. Pages were torn from the book, which the associate eventually dropped into a puddle.

Paludan later received permission to appeal to the Eastern High Court because of the case’s legal importance. That appeal is expected to be heard on December 3, before the Copenhagen City Court is scheduled to consider the new indictment in January. The provision was introduced after a large number of Quran burnings. The government said in July 2023 that 15 countries had condemned Denmark and argued that intervention against religious insults was necessary. The measure sparked an intense free-speech debate. Former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen later called the law “a genuflection to theological autocrats.”

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a genuflection to theological autocrats