TEHRAN – The Danish government will be proposing a bill that would prohibit the desecration of holy books, including the Quran. 

Denmark's justice minister said on Friday that the law would “prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious importance to a religious community".

"The proposal will thus make it punishable to, for example, in public burn a Quran, Bible or Torah. I fundamentally believe there are more civilized ways to express one's views than burning things,” Peter Hummelgaard told reporters. 

The decision comes after a string of public desecrations of the Holy Quran in Denmark and Sweden over the past two months. The acts drew scathing criticism from Muslim countries with angry protesters raiding the embassy of Sweden in Iraq. Protests were also staged in other Islamic countries including Iran as demonstrators accused the governments of the two Scandinavian countries of fueling terrorism and extremism under the pretext of freedom of speech. 

The man who sparked the slew of sacrilegious acts is named Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, who burned a copy of the Quran outside Stockholm's central mosque on June 28. He repeated his acts multiple times but the Swedish government has not yet decided to stop him. The man has also tried to burn a picture of the Leader of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as well as a picture of Qasem Soleimani, a renowned Iranian general assassinated by the U.S. in 2020. 

Iranian intelligence revealed in July that Momika is a member of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, and was hired by the regime in 2019. 

According to a statement by Iran’s intelligence ministry, The Iraqi-born was granted a Swedish residency through Israel after successfully spying on resistance forces in his home country. His most recent mission is meant to deflect attention from Israeli crimes in the West Bank, especially Jenin.