SÖDERTÄLJE, Sweden (LifeSiteNews) — An Iraqi anti-Islam activist who publicly burned the Koran was shot dead while livestreaming.
The 38-year-old Salwan Momika was reportedly killed on Wednesday night in a flat in the Swedish city of Södertälje. The activist was known for publicly burning the Koran, Islam’s religious text, enraging Muslims worldwide and leading to widespread protests.
Momika was facing a conviction in Sweden for “inciting ethnic hatred” because of his actions, and the Stockholm court was scheduled to rule on the matter on Thursday. He and co-protester Salwan Najem were being charged with desecrating and burning the Koran and for making “derogatory remarks about Muslims,” according to the Daily Mail.
The court postponed the ruling to February 3 due to Momika’s death.
The police said they found Momika suffering from gunshot wounds and that he was rushed to the hospital, where he was eventually confirmed dead.
The assassination was caught on video, according to media reports, as Momika was on a TikTok livestream shortly before the shooting.
Swedish prosecutor Rasmus Ohman said that five people have been arrested in relation to Momika’s death.
Salwan Najem said, “I am next,” on X after the news of his companion’s death broke, implying that he would be a target for assassination as well.
“Has the murder of Salwan Momika killed freedom of expression and human rights in Sweden and Europe?” Najem wrote in another post.
Momika, a refugee from Iraq, garnered global attention when he publicly set a Koran ablaze and stomped on the book outside a prominent mosque in Stockholm in June 2023. Several Muslim countries condemned the act and Sweden for allowing the man to perform it. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department called the action “disrespectful and hurtful” and said that “what might be legal is certainly not necessarily appropriate.”
Large protests were sparked by the Koran burning all over the Islamic world. A group of Iraqi protestors stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in July 2023 and set the building on fire. The Iraqi prime minister then expelled the Swedish ambassador from the country and suspended the working permit for the Swedish telecom company Ericsson in Iraq.
Momika was born into a Catholic Assyrian family in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province. However, after moving to Germany in 2017, he announced his apostasy and said that he was an atheist. In 2018, he applied for asylum in Sweden and received refugee status. He was given a temporary resident allowance in 2021 but was rejected for permanent residency due to inconsistencies in his application relating to his activity in a paramilitary group that was fighting the Islamic State between 2014 and 2017.
He sought asylum in Norway in 2024 but was deported shortly after to Sweden, where he was then granted a temporary one-year permit because he risked being tortured and killed in his home country of Iraq.