London: Muslims protest outside the Swedish Embassy today

Steve told me about this when we met this afternoon but the Swedish Embassy was a little too far from Trafalgar Square for me to do justice to both events. So I stayed in Trafalgar Square and have brought together information about the demonstration against the burning of the Koran in Sweden from various on-line sources.

I don’t know in what order these events occurred.  But the mass prayer in the street and the recitation of the Koran looked peaceful enough from the pictures. Although there are laws about blocking the King’s Highway.

Steve believed that coaches were bringing Muslims down from the Midlands as well as London resident men. Note that in none of these photographs do there appear to be any women.

From their clothing alone I would say that the protestors included both Shia and Sunni Muslims.

This pair below do have an air of the veiled threat about them

T0mmy R0binson turned up to observe and the Daily Mail made more of his presence than they did the burning of national flags.

News flare and T0mmy both have bits of video of the burning of a red and white flag which one commentator took to be the Canadian flag (which it does resemble, although there is no reason to burn it) but most sources are describing as the Danish flag, except it doesn’t look quite like the usual Dannebrot to me.  The paper Swedish flags burnt later in the Newsflare video are the usual flag.  I screenshot two stills and put them adjacent to show two angles.

Note that the chap burning the cloth red and white flag is using some sort of aerosol accelerant to make a flame thrower. And he is doing this right in front of a couple of police officers who let him do it. There are laws about using that sort of stuff in public; it’s dangerous. But the usual laws don’t apply to some people.

I assume they dispersed in good order eventually.  I have not heard anything to the contrary.