BAGHDAD: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and different Center Jap nations on Thursday condemned the burning of the Quran by an Iraqi residing in Sweden, warning such acts “inflame” the emotions of Muslims all over the world.
Below a heavy police presence, Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old who fled to Sweden a number of years in the past, on Wednesday stomped on the Quran earlier than setting a number of pages alight in entrance of Stockholm’s largest mosque.
Police within the Swedish capital had granted him a allow for the protest according to free-speech protections, however mentioned later they’d opened an investigation into the person over “agitation”.
The incident occurred as Muslims all over the world started marking the Eid al-Adha vacation and because the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia was drawing to a detailed.
Iraq condemned the Swedish authorities’ resolution to grant an “extremist” permission to burn the Quran .
“These events inflame the feelings of Muslims around the world and represent a dangerous provocation for them,” the international ministry in Baghdad mentioned.
Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr known as for an illustration outdoors the Swedish embassy in Baghdad to demand the removing of the ambassador, charging that his state is “hostile to Islam”.
Iran joined within the condemnation, calling the Quran burning “provocative, ill-considered and unacceptable”.
“The government and people of the Islamic Republic of Iran… do not tolerate such an insult and strongly condemn it,” mentioned international ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani.
“The Swedish government is expected to seriously consider the principle of responsibility and accountability in this regard, while preventing the repetition of insulting the holy sanctities,” he added.
Saudi Arabia, which hosted round 1.8 million Muslim pilgrims for the hajj that ended on Wednesday, additionally denounced the Quran burning.
“These hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification,” the Saudi international ministry mentioned.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, known as the Quran burning a “disgraceful act provoking the feelings of Muslims” as they mark Eid.
The Cairo-based Arab League branded the Quran burning an “assault on the core of our Islamic faith”.
Kuwait known as for perpetrators of such “hostile acts” to be delivered to justice and “prevented from using the principle of freedoms as a ploy to justify hostility against Islam or any holy faith”.
The Quran burning was additionally condemned by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and by Morocco, which recalled its ambassador to Stockholm.
“This new offensive and irresponsible act disregards the feelings of more than a billion Muslims, at this sacred time of the great pilgrimage to Mecca and the blessed feast of Eid al-Adha,” the dominion mentioned.
“Faced with these repeated provocations, committed under the complacent gaze of the Swedish government”, Morocco summoned Sweden’s cost d’affaires in Rabat and recalled its ambassador, it added.
Syria’s authorities condemned the “disgraceful act” on one of many holiest days for Muslims “by an extremist with the permission and consent of the Swedish government”.
Lebanon’s highly effective Iran-backed motion Hezbollah charged the Swedish authorities had been “complicit in the crime”.
Hezbollah known as on Sweden to place an finish to such acts “rather than hiding behind freedom of speech”.
It urged non secular authorities and Muslim and Arab nations to take “all the necessary steps” to compel Sweden and different international locations to stop the recurrence of such incidents and cease “the spread of a culture of hate”.
The Palestinian international ministry condemned what it mentioned was a “flagrant attack on human rights, values of tolerance, acceptance of others, democracy and peaceful coexistence among followers of all religions”.
Additional afield, Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, which enforces a strict interpretation of the Quran and Islamic regulation, additionally reacted angrily, labelling the Quran burning an act of “utter contempt towards this noble religion”.
In January, a Swedish-Danish right-wing extremist burned a replica of the Quran close to the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, additionally triggering outrage within the Muslim world.