In Copenhagen, Reaction to an Anti-Muslim Event Turns Violent

COPENHAGEN — After an anti-Muslim provocateur publicly desecrated the Quran in Copenhagen, demonstrations against him on Sunday and early Monday descended into violent clashes between protesters, who set about 70 fires in the streets, and the police, who made 23 arrests.

The unrest in the Norrebro district of the Danish capital began on Sunday after Rasmus Paludan, the founder of a tiny far-right party, tossed a book he claimed was the Quran into the air and let it fall to the ground.

Mr. Paludan has spent the past months touring Denmark and staging offensive protests against Muslims and immigrants, often in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations. Until recently, he had largely been ignored by mainstream Danish news outlets, but the riots have propelled him to the center of national attention.

Protesters shouted at Mr. Paludan on Sunday, pressing against the lines of police officers who were protecting him. Violence then broke out and spread into surrounding streets, much of it shown live on television.

Some of the demonstrators threw fireworks and rocks and set fire to cars and garbage cans. No serious injuries were reported, but residents woke on Monday to a coat of ash and the stench of burning still hanging over the area.

Mr. Paludan, a lawyer, had gained some small notoriety through a series of online videos in which he insults Islam and its adherents, as well as black people, and goes into immigrant-heavy neighborhoods to confront people with his views.

He has acknowledged that adolescents and young adults make up a large part of his online audience. Last year, YouTube shut down a channel used by Mr. Paludan and his party after repeated violations of the platform’s rules.

Mr. Paludan has previously set fire to a book he said was the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, and streamed the event live on Facebook. Two years ago, he defended a man against a criminal charge of committing a similar act — brought under a blasphemy law that has since been repealed — by calling the book’s destruction an act of self-defense. Two weeks ago, Mr. Paludan received a suspended jail sentence for racist remarks about black South Africans.

Before last weekend, the Danish authorities had said that providing police protection to Mr. Paludan at 17 public events this year had cost about $900,000 — a figure that made headlines in the Danish news media.

Claus Oxfeldt, chairman of the Danish Police Union, said in a statement on Facebook that at a time when the service is short of resources, it is hard to justify using them to protect someone whose purpose is to create “negative attention, hate and confrontation.”

Attitudes toward immigrants have hardened in Denmark since the migration crisis of 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people from Africa and the Middle East fled to Europe, with thousands arriving in Denmark.

Anti-immigrant laws enacted since then have made the country less welcoming, but attitudes like Mr. Paludan’s remain outside the mainstream. On Sunday, Mr. Paludan was joined by just one supporter: the videographer who filmed him throwing the book into the air and letting it fall to the ground, an intensely offensive act to Muslims.

On Monday, pundits carefully articulated both their disgust at Mr. Paludan’s actions and their concerns to protect freedom of expression.

“Yes, it’s costing both money and resources, and yes, it’s bitter to the people living in Norrebro,” the newspaper Politiken said in an editorial on Monday. “But that’s the cost of living in a democracy, and that cannot and should not be qualified.”

In 2005, the Danish government defended a newspaper’s right to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Responses to the cartoons included arson attacks on Danish embassies in Muslim countries and a thwarted assault on the newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

On Sunday, Soren Pape Poulsen, the Danish justice minister, likened Mr. Paludan’s events to “a circus” and suggested on Twitter that he be ignored.

Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen wrote on Twitter that Mr. Paludan’s actions were “senseless provocations.” He urged Danes to counter them “with arguments — not with violence.”

Norrebro has long been a haven for students, artists, immigrants, left-leaning activists and young families, a district where residents can stroll through a historic cemetery, shop for artisanal beer or buy kebabs from the several Turkish or Middle Eastern grills there.

Despite the gentrification, the district also has a lengthy history of violent civil unrest. In 1993, protests in Norrebro against closer integration with the European Union turned into rioting. Since the 1980s, there have been many clashes between the police and squatters, the worst of them in 2006 and 2007.

Mr. Paludan has vowed to continue his public events, and he said he would return to Norrebro on Tuesday.

On Monday, Danish police, citing concerns about public order, said that they were banning a demonstration organized by Mr. Paludan later that evening in Albertslund, west of Copenhagen.