Thousands of followers of Iraqi Shiite clerics rallied in major Iraqi cities on Friday to condemn the burning of the Koran
Release date – Saturday 23 July 07:40
Basra: Thousands of followers of an incendiary Iraqi Shiite cleric rallied in major Iraqi cities on Friday to condemn the burning of Korans during protests in Sweden earlier this week. Some demonstrators called for the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador to Iraq.
At rallies in the capital Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who has a large following of grassroots and political leaders, burned Swedish flags and rainbow LGBTQ+ pride flags, chanting ” Yes, yes, Islam” and “No, no to the devil. Addressing crowds in Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, Friday prayer preacher Saeed Sattar Batat called on Iraqi authorities to “expel the Swedish ambassador and cut off all diplomatic relations with them if necessary”.
The protests came a day after hundreds of protesters briefly stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
A man who described himself in Swedish media as an Iraqi refugee burned a copy of the Koran outside a mosque in central Stockholm on Wednesday.
An Iraqi security official said the man was an Iraqi Christian who had previously fought in the Christian unit of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a mostly Shiite militia that was incorporated into the country’s armed forces in 2016.
Swedish police authorized the protest on free speech grounds after a Swedish court overturned a previous decision to ban similar protests.
The act, which took place during the major Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, drew widespread condemnation from the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday the incident would pose another hurdle for Sweden to join NATO.
Iraqi officials have called on Sweden to extradite the man who burned the Koran to face prosecution in Iraq.
