{"id":1217,"date":"2023-01-23T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T12:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2025-06-20T11:02:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:02:54","slug":"russian-ufc-fighter-weighs-in-on-koran-burning-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/23\/russian-ufc-fighter-weighs-in-on-koran-burning-row\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian UFC fighter weighs in on Koran-burning row"},"content":{"rendered":"

Khamzat Chimaev said Muslims in Sweden should be shown respect after far-right figure Rasmus Paludan publicly burned a copy of the holy book<\/strong><\/p>\n

Russian-born UFC fighter Khamzat Chimaev has said Muslims cannot look the other way after a far-right politician was permitted to publicly burn a copy of the Koran in Chimaev\u2019s adopted homeland of Sweden.<\/p>\n

Danish-Swedish lawyer Rasmus Paludan, who leads the right-wing \u2018Stram Kurs\u2019 (Hard Line) party in Denmark, set fire to the book on Saturday<\/a> near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Police had permitted Paludan to carry out the desecration of the Muslim holy book, despite an outcry from Turkish officials and criticism from among the Swedish political elite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chimaev, 28 made his feelings clear in an Instagram post to his 4.7 million followers on Sunday. \u201cHe is a terrorist for us,\u201d<\/em> wrote the fighter in Swedish, sharing an image of Paludan holding a copy of the Koran. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n Chimaev signaled his fury online.<\/p>\n


\n \u00a9\u00a0 Instagram \/ Khamzat Chimaev <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI am Muslim but have never been against anybody\u2019s religion and have never done what he\u2019s done to anybody\u2019s religion. Why do you let him do this Sweden?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0added the MMA star, along with a series of \u2018thumbs-down\u2019 emojis. \u201cWe all shouldn\u2019t keep quiet, you call us brothers so show us some respect.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Chimaev was born in Chechnya but moved to Sweden in his late teens and fights out of the Allstars Gym in Stockholm. Throughout his rise in the UFC \u2013 where he has won all six of his fights to date \u2013 Chimaev has maintained close contact with his Chechen birthplace and is often seen alongside local leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his family.<\/p>\n

\n
\n READ MORE: <\/span>Rivals all running scared, says feared Chechen UFC sensation
\n <\/a>\n <\/p>\n

Chimaev was far from the only figure to be angered by the actions of Paludan. Protesters set a Swedish flag ablaze in Istanbul later on Saturday<\/a> in response to the actions of the far-right figure. The row also comes as Sweden and Finland bid to join military alliance NATO \u2013 of which T\u00fcrkiye is already a member. NATO members must give unanimous consent before any new nations are admitted into the alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Khamzat Chimaev said Muslims in Sweden should be shown respect after far-right figure Rasmus Paludan publicly burned a copy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marinemalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}