Demonstrators took to the streets on Friday in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon to denounce Sweden’s authorization of rallies organized to desecrate the Koran, amid diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and several Muslim countries.

Swedish diplomacy said it had temporarily repatriated to Stockholm the operations and staff of its embassy in Baghdad, set on fire the day before by supporters of the influential Iraqi religious leader Moqtada Sadr.

It was to respond to his call that hundreds of people demonstrated on Friday in Baghdad after Friday prayers, but also in the city of Nassiriya and Najaf, chanting “No, no to Sweden”, “Yes, yes to the Koran”, according to AFP photographers.

Sweden is the target of these demonstrators after two events organized to desecrate the Koran. Their instigator, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi refugee, had set fire to pages of the book at the end of June, before trampling it and tearing it to pieces on Thursday in Stockholm.

In Tehran, hundreds of demonstrators waved Iranian flags and copies of the Koran on Friday. Others set fire to the Scandinavian country’s flag and threw eggs and tomatoes at the Swedish embassy, ??before dispersing.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian later said that no Swedish ambassador would be accepted until “concrete steps” were taken by Sweden to prevent any further desecration of the Koran on its territory.

In Badgad, protected from the blazing sun by a sea of ??umbrellas, the faithful gathered on an avenue in the poor district of Madinet Sadr chanted “Yes, yes to Islam”, waving portraits of Moqtada Sadr, according to an AFP correspondent.

The demonstrators set fire to rainbow flags, Moqtada Sadr seeing it as the best way to irritate Westerners and denounce a “double standard” of defending LGBT minorities but authorizing the desecration of the Koran.

“Through this demonstration, we want (…) the penalization of any desecration of holy books, those of Islam, Christianity, Judaism: these are all holy books”, explained Amer Shemal, a municipal employee.

Swedish police allowed Momika’s events in the name of freedom of assembly, saying that did not mean they approved.

“Repeating these actions on the pretext of freedom of expression is unacceptable and unjustified,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on the phone with his Swedish counterpart.

Kuwait said it was working for the holding of an “urgent meeting” of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the adoption of “concrete measures to ensure that such acts do not happen again”.

These acts of Mr. Momika have already caused a diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Iraq, which decreed Thursday the expulsion of the Swedish ambassador.

“Embassy operations and expatriate staff have been temporarily relocated to Stockholm for security reasons,” Swedish diplomacy replied on Friday. Twice attacked by Sadrist supporters, the embassy was set on fire Thursday before dawn.

Iraq has also announced that it has suspended the license of the Swedish giant Ericsson. The government nevertheless backtracked on Friday: an adviser to the Prime Minister, Farhad Alaaldin, assured journalists from the foreign press that “the contractual agreements” concluded by Baghdad “will be respected”, just as “no company has been suspended, not even Ericsson”.

In Lebanon, hundreds of people gathered outside mosques in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, and in other cities.

A follower of blows, the Iraqi Moqtada Sadr has several times demonstrated his ability to mobilize thousands of demonstrators in his country.

In the summer of 2022, his supporters invaded the parliament in Baghdad and set up a sit-in. Moqtada Sadr was then in the midst of a showdown with the opposing political camp over the appointment of a Prime Minister.

With the Swedish file, he sends “messages to his audience” and “warnings” to his “political adversaries”: “I have retained the same strength, I can come back at any time,” said political scientist Ali al-Baidar.

His current also seeks to “be seen as the shepherd of the religious file in Iraq” he underlines.

“How this is going to be exploited politically, or be instrumentalized for electoral purposes, it will depend on the will of Sadr,” he adds, referring to the crucial election of the provincial councils scheduled for December.

21/07/2023 22:02:41 – Baghdad (AFP) – © 2023 AFP