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| - Fact Check: Sweden Quran burning leads to far-right leader's car getting rammed? Nope, this video is old
Social media users shared an old video of a woman ramming into Lars Thorsen's car after he burnt a copy of the Quran in Norway as a video from Sweden.
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India Today Fact Check
While this video does show violence following a Quran burning, it’s neither from Sweden nor recent. This incident took place in July 2022 in Oslo, Norway.
Rasmus Paludan, a far-right politician, staged a Quran burning in Sweden on January 21. Days later, he repeated the act in front of a mosque and the Turkish embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark, promising to continue doing this every Friday until Sweden was admitted into Nato. Paludan’s stunt has led to a global backlash, including protests in many places.
A video of a Muslim woman allegedly ramming into Paludan’s car in Sweden following the book burning is now being widely shared on social media.
The video shows a man in a car setting fire to a book. As the jeep moves, he stretches his hand out of the car window while holding the burning book. The video then fast-forwards a bit before we see a woman in green shouting something. Overlaid text in the video reads, “They have burned the Quran,” and “Name, let's get them.” Next, we see a car chase that ends with the vehicle ramming into a jeep, making it overturn. The archived version of this video can be seen here.
AFWA found that while this video shows a Quran burning and consequent assault, it’s neither from Sweden nor recent.
AFWA Probe
We reverse-searched keyframes from the viral video and that led us to the same clip shared by many on Twitter in July 2022. One such post claimed this video showed how two Muslim women chased a man called Lars Thorsen who burnt a copy of the Quran in Norway.
Subsequent searches led us to a Daily Mail report published on July 5, 2022, that said that Thorsen, the leader of the far-right organisation “Stop the Islamisation of Norway” or SIAN, burned copies of the Quran in the Mortensrud neighbourhood of Oslo, Norway. Following this stunt, two women chased his jeep and rammed into it, making it overturn. Both of them were arrested by the police.
Five people in the jeep, including Thorsen, reportedly suffered injuries. One was hospitalised, though police said that nobody was seriously hurt. The footage of the overturning of the jeep was taken by anti-immigration activists from Alternativ Media.
Many other news outlets reported the incident at that time.
Thus, it’s clear that while this video does show violence following a Quran burning, it’s neither from Sweden nor did it take place recently.
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