Burning of Quran in Stockholm sparks outrage in Muslim world
The burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Sweden on one of the holiest days in Islam on Wednesday sparked outrage in many Muslim countries and widespread condemnation from Swedish authorities.
In Iraq, several hundred people protested outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad at the urging of Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist cleric who called on the Iraqi government to sever diplomatic relations with Sweden, which he called “hostile” to Islam.
Increasingly angry, the mob scaled the wall surrounding the site and forced its way through an external gate. There was no sign of Iraqi diplomatic police trying to stop them. The protesters did not enter the embassy itself, which was closed for the Muslim holiday, and eventually left. Mr Sadr called for larger protests after prayers on Friday.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry also condemned Sweden “for allowing an extremist to burn a copy of the holy Quran”.
In the Stockholm incident on Wednesday, two men, watched by a crowd of people, ripped pages from a Quran and burned them outside a mosque.
In an application for the permit, one of the men, Salwan Momika, identified by Swedish media as an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, said he wanted to express his views on the Quran by tearing it up and burning it. Police had issued a permit for the demonstration after a Swedish court ruled that a ban would undermine the right to freedom of expression.
However, the permit states that protesters in Stockholm are not allowed to burn objects.
The timing of the burning of Islam’s holy book, during the important Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, further angered and anguished Muslims in many countries, who celebrated the holiday, which honors the end of the Hajj pilgrimage .
Morocco summoned Sweden’s representative in Rabat to ask him to condemn the act and recalled its own ambassador to Sweden This is reported by the Moroccan state press agency. Jordan also said it had expressed its displeasure to the Swedish ambassador the state press agencywho called it “a racist act of grave hatred”.
Egypt mentioned burning the Quran “a disgraceful actand Saudi Arabia said so “Hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification.“Malaysia Minister of Foreign Affairs said the desecration of a holy book while Muslims were celebrating such an important holiday was “offensive to Muslims worldwide”.
And Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Thursday that the country would never bow to “the policy of provocation,” referring to the incident in Sweden, state news agency Anadolu reported. Insulting things sacred to Muslims, he said, was “not freedom of thought”.
His conviction came because diplomatic ties between Turkey and Sweden are already strained, with the Turkish government blocking a Swedish bid to join NATO. Turkey wants Sweden to crack down on pro-Kurdish activists and members of a banned religious group it considers terrorists living in Sweden.
The burning of the Koran in Stockholm on Wednesday followed a similar incident in January in which a far-right Danish-Swedish figure burned a copy of the holy book outside the Turkish embassy in the Swedish capital, also exacerbating tensions with Turkey.
Since then, police in Stockholm said they had rejected two other requests to protest by burning Qurans and that the Swedish security apparatus had expressed fears that such acts would cause security problems and threaten embassies abroad.
A Swedish court in April overturned the police decision, saying police did not have sufficient evidence to ban the protests. Sweden has long struggled over allowing such demonstrations, with the implications they have for freedom of expression and religious inclusiveness.
Stockholm police said they were investigating Mr Momika for violating the ban on burning and for incitement against a group of people.
The Koran burning in Stockholm was particularly disturbing to many Iraqis as it was widely reported to have been committed by an Iraqi immigrant, Mr Momika. Calls to Mr. Momika on Thursday went unanswered.
Mr Sadr, the Iraqi cleric, called on the Iraqi government to strip Mr Momika of his citizenship and Sweden to repatriate him for prosecution. If Sweden does not, he said, he should be tried in absentia in Iraq.
There are more than 140,000 Iraqi-born immigrants in Sweden, the second largest immigrant group in the country after Swedish Finns.