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

Quran desecration rallies have proliferated across Northern Europe, leading to geopolitical tensions with Muslim-majority countries and domestic debates about freedom of speech. This paper traces the diffusion trajectories of such events 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 first-hand far-right social media accounts, it shows the desecration tactic spreading from Denmark through indirect and direct ties with remnants of the transnational Counter-Jihad Movement. Following Rasmus Paludan’s burning of a Quran outside Turkey’s Embassy in Stockholm in January 2023, the tactic attracted massive international media attention. In Denmark and Sweden, the repurposing toward geopolitical issues led to a spillover to actors unaffiliated with the far right. In Norway, the lack of resonant domestic issues and the initiators’ focus on government repression instead led to a continuation within the original movement, without spillover. In the Netherlands, the central actor’s weakness, and the domestic authorities’ opposition limited diffusion altogether. The paper provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed mapping of the current wave of Quran desecration rallies, showing the various ways the same tactic spread throughout and into different domestic settings.