The Grotesque Irony of Salwan Momika’s Persecution

Salwan Momika, who was murdered on Wednesday 29^th January in a Sharia-style execution in his own home, deserved better. His final days were consumed by anxious anticipation: he was set to be handed a verdict in his ongoing trial for ‘incitement to racial hatred’ in Sweden. His crime? Burning a Quran in protest against Islam in Stockholm in 2023. Momika was born a Syriac Catholic in Iraq who knew all too well the persecution faced by non-Muslims in the Middle East, having been subjected to years of persecution before and during the Iraqi Civil War. He was among the best-placed people in Europe to protest against the horrors of Islamic jihad. But in August 2023, the Swedish government responded to his protest with a criminal charge of ‘agitation against an ethnic group’, despite the glaring facts that Momika himself was ethnically Iraqi, Islam is not an ethnicity, and his ‘agitation’ against the scriptural basis of a terroristic regime – ISIS – was an act of resistance. After seeking asylum in Norway in 2024, having been persecuted by the Swedish regime, Momika was arrested and deported back to Sweden. The entire situation is worse than Kafkaesque.