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RELIGION

Man with axe stuns Stockholm congregation

Worshippers at the All Saints Church in Stockholm panicked on Sunday when a man wielding an axe and a can full of gasoline interrupted the pastor during services.

“Everyone was scared and as many people ran out the church as they could,” said witness Mathias Bridfeldt to the Aftonbladet newspaper.

The pastor was in the middle of his sermon when the man walked slowly toward the altar.

It was only after people noticed the man was holding an axe and a large gasoline canister that the congregation became gripped with fear.

The man then began speaking out load and interrupted the pastor, instructing everyone to remain calm.

“It was a unbelievably strange situation, like a shock that slowly spread,” said Bridfeldt.

“The man was really calm, he didn’t behave violently. But it was still really scary when you thought about what he had in his hands.”

A few members of the church decided to confront the man and were able to convince him to put down the axe and gas can.

He was then taken from the church and police were called.

Police took the man to St. Göran’s Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation while the pastor did his best to continue with his sermon.

“But many were still shaken and a few were crying, so the pastor had to revisit the incident one more time,” said Bridfeldt.

RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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