July 21, 2023, 10:19 PM
July 21, 2023, 10:19 PM
Thousands of people demonstrated this Friday (07.21.2023) in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon to denounce the desecration of the Koran in Sweden, that caused the fire of the embassy of the Scandinavian country in Baghdad the day before and a serious diplomatic crisis.
Called on by the influential Iraqi religious leader Moqtada Sadr, hundreds of people protested in Baghdad after Friday prayers. While in Tehran, hundreds of protesters took to the streets with flags Iranians and copies of the Koran, and chanted “Down with the US, UK, Israel and Sweden.” Some also set Swedish flags on fire. Protests also broke out in Lebanon, where hundreds of people gathered outside several mosques in a southern Beirut suburb, a stronghold of Hezbollah, the armed Shiite political group.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry announced at the same time that it had temporarily repatriated its embassy in Baghdad to Stockholm for security reasons. “The personnel deployed arrived in Sweden on a scheduled flight,” a spokeswoman said.
Stockholm was the scene of two recent desecrations of the Koran, the first at the end of June and the last this Thursday (07.20.2023), both starring an Iraqi refugee, Salwan Momika, 37 years old. On Thursday he stomped on and tore up a copy of the holy book for Muslims, though without setting it on fire, as she had announced he would.
The Swedish police had authorized the act in the name of freedom of assembly, although it qualified that this does not mean that it approves the acts of the Iraqi refugee. In June, Momika burned several pages of the book in front of to a mosque in the Swedish capital.
