These days, there is anger across the Muslim world against Sweden. Large protests against the small Scandinavian nation have taken place in Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. In some places Swedish flags were burnt, and some even chanted, “Death to the Swedish government.”

All this is a reaction against an act of one man: far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan, who also happens to be a Swedish citizen. On Jan 21, he publicly burnt a copy of the Qur’an in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Turkish authorities responded with strong statements, followed by other Muslim leaders, for such a brazen insult against their faith.

Such anger was understandable — as long as expressed nonviolently — but why was it directed not just against Paludan and his marginal Danish party called “Hard Line,” which wins less than two percent of the votes, but Sweden as a country?

The answer is that many Muslims also blame Swedish authorities for having “allowed” this protest. They are also not convinced by Swedish prime minister’s condemnation of the act as “deeply disrespectful.”

Why is that?

One reason is a political culture which assumes that any decent government should ban anything that it deems indecent — which is what the current Turkish government, for example, proudly does. Many Turks, and many others in most Muslim-majority nations, are just not used to a liberal political culture where expressions are legally allowed although they may be morally disapproved. So, that is a part of the disconnect here.

There is also a second argument against Sweden: its championship of free speech is all too biased — against Muslims. In recent days, the internet has seen many Muslim articles, tweets or memes which basically argue that “they” allow all anti-Islam expressions, while banning anti-Semitic or anti-gay ones.

Is there some truth to this double-standard accusation?

In some Western nations, such as France, yes. It is a country where blasphemy against religion (any religion) is not only free but also cherished, while “contempt of public officials” can be criminalized, and religious expressions (such as veils, crosses, or kippas) can be banned. These double standards are obviously wrong, as they are also self-defeating. In other words, free speech should be upheld systematically in the West, not just because it is right in itself, but also because it would send an important message to the Muslim world that this is really about universal human rights, and not just a cover for anti-Muslim bigotry.

But Sweden is not France. Almost like the United States, it has high standards of free speech. It has a proud history, implementing the world’s first freedom of the press statute as early as 1766. Even though hate speech laws have recently been implemented, banning vaguely defined incitement to hatred of minorities, you are free to attack the beliefs, ideas and behaviors of others. Hence, a Swedish pastor was cleared by higher courts of a conviction for hate speech after having preached that homosexuals were “a cancerous tumor on the body of society,” and responsible for HIV/AIDS and pedophilia.

For the same reason, neo-Nazis are allowed to march on Sweden’s streets with police protection. “Demonstrations such as this one have a very strong protection in the Swedish constitution,” said a spokesperson of the second-largest city of Gothenburg, when neo-Nazis got permission to march through the city on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. “Therefore, the march in and of itself cannot be stopped.”

That is also why a recent plea by an Egyptian writer living in Sweden to burn a copy of the Torah in front of the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm was not banned by the Swedish authorities, as some Muslim commentators have suggested. Instead, the Egyptian writer had received approval from Swedish authorities for his planned protest, but he was dissuaded by “the leadership of the Muslim community in Sweden,” as a Swedish rabbi told the press. (For which the Swedish Muslim community should be commended: they realized that the right response to an offense by a racist is not another offense to a sister religion and a fellow minority.)

Moreover, there is a political aspect of the recent Qur’an burning incident that many Muslims may be missing: It is the work of not typical Western free-speech advocates, but rather far-right figures whose political sympathies often lie with Putin’s Russia, which has long tried to create cracks in the Western alliance, by supporting Western far-right groups. As recently reported, the demonstration permit for the Qur’an-burning incident was paid for by a former contributor to the Kremlin-backed channel Russia Today. While this fact does not necessarily prove a Kremlin conspiracy, it does raise questions, as Finland’s foreign minister suggested recently.

No wonder the political outcome of the Qur’an burning incident has been Turkey’s refusal to “ratify Sweden’s NATO membership” — bad news for Sweden, and good news for Moscow.

Meanwhile, the most important lesson in this controversy was that freedom of speech was used by not only a far-right Islamophobe, but also Muslims who stood up for their scripture peacefully. One example was a demonstration by a group of Turks in Stockholm, including diplomats and imams, on the exact spot of Qur’an burning, where the Islamic scripture was beautifully recited, followed by a message of “respect,” and even flowers. In London, another group of Muslims demonstrated in front the Swedish embassy, even turning it into a “masjid,” or a prayer ground.

So, that is all free speech. Some people can use it to insult a religion, while the believers of that religion can use it to defend and proclaim their faith. And those who are more mature and articulate often win.