Rasmus Paludan

Rasmus Paludan (born 2 January 1982) is a Danish-Swedish politician and lawyer, who is the founder and leader of the far-right nationalist Danish political party Stram Kurs. Paludan has become known for his extremist views, including that Islam should be banned and that immigrants of non-Western background should be deported from Denmark. He is considered by political scientists and media to be far-right and a right-wing extremist.

Paludan is known for his Islamophobic and "Islam-critical" events and demonstrations, which are often held in urban areas with many Muslim immigrants, initially in Denmark. During the demonstrations, he has called the Quran "the big book of whores" and Islam "gay Islam", just as he has burned, spat on and thrown the Quran and encouraged people to urinate on it. Paludan has particularly attracted attention by recording videos of his demonstrations and uploading them to the Stram Kurs party's YouTube channel. In 2020, the channel was shut down by YouTube, citing that their guidelines prohibit harassment and hate speech directed at individuals or groups based on race or religion. His burnings of the Quran led to rioting in Sweden in 2022, and burnings in 2023 were said to have started what caused "an enormous global controversy".

As a lawyer, Paludan has been a defence attorney in several cases with the press's attention. Paludan has also been involved in and subject to a number of lawsuits, legal disputes, and criminal charges. In 2019, he was sentenced to 14 days conditional imprisonment for violating the Danish racism clause. In 2021, he was found guilty of racist and derogatory statements, and received a conditional sentence of 3 months in prison and had to pay compensation to the offended, a Somali woman.

As of 2020, Paludan was under constant police protection due to threats against him for his activity.