Reflections on the Special Issue: Burning of the Qur’an

Abstract

The following three short texts are the outcome of a roundtable discussion at the European Association for the Study of Religion (EASR) conference held on 19 August 2024 in Gothenburg. The focus of the roundtable was the special issue, Burning of the Qur’an, which was edited by Göran Larsson, Iselin Frydenlund, and Torkel Brekke and published in Temenos, Vol. 60, No. 1 (2024). The special issue contained articles on the development in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland and a meta reflection on the burning of the Qur’an from a British and South Asian perspective. At the EASR conference the editors invited Assistant Professor Verena Meyer from Leiden University and Professor Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen from the University of Copenhagen to comment on and discuss the special issue. This section of Temenos publishes Meyer’s and Skovgaard-Petersen’s responses, with a short reply from Iselin Frydenlund and Göran Larsson. The discussion focuses on research ethics (‘why study a controversial topic’), legal frameworks, and the lack of ‘Muslim voices’ in the study of controversial topics.

Keywords

• Qur’an burnings
• Sweden
• Rasmus Paludan
• Denmark
• Middle East
• research ethics