Iraqis keep up Quran protests after book burnings

Baghdad, Iraq (AFP):

Iraqi security forces on Saturday dispersed about 1,000 supporters of Moqtada Sadr who tried to march to Baghdad’s Green Zone housing foreign embassies, believing a Quran had been desecrated in Denmark.

The protesters were reacting to reports of an apparent desecration of the Muslim holy book for the third time within a month, with the first two in Sweden already raising diplomatic tensions.

On its Facebook page, the extreme right group Danske Patrioter posted on Friday a video of a man burning what seemed to be a Quran and trampling an Iraqi flag.

Copenhagen police deputy chief Trine Fisker told AFP that “not more than a handful” of protesters had gathered Friday across from the Iraqi embassy.

“I can also confirm there was a book burnt. We do not know which book it was,” she said.

Hours later, the Danish Refugee Council office in Iraq’s main southern city of Basra came under armed attack, its executive director for the Middle East, Lilu Thapa, said.

“Our staff on the premises at the time were physically unharmed, but there has been damage to the property with structures set on fire.”

Sadr, who has a following of millions among the country’s majority Shiite population and wields great influence over national politics, has urged action after Quran desecrations in Sweden.

His followers gathered in the pre-dawn darkness in central Baghdad on Saturday, some carrying portraits of Sadr.

“Yes, yes to the Quran!” shouted the protesters, mostly young men.

Security forces blocked two bridges leading to the high-security Green Zone where governmental institutions and foreign embassies are located.

The demonstrators tried to force their way through but dispersed several hours later, following scuffles, an interior ministry official told AFP, speaking anonymously because he was not allowed to brief the media.

Another security source said officers used batons and tear gas to repel a small group of demonstrators who managed to break into the Green Zone in an attempt to reach the Danish embassy.

Hundreds of Sadr supporters were already behind the storming and torching of Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad early Thursday, over a planned burning of the Muslim holy book in Sweden, weeks after the same protester there lit pages of the Quran.

‘Words no longer enough’

Early Saturday, Iraq’s foreign ministry had condemned “the desecration of the holy Quran and the Iraqi flag” in front of the embassy in Denmark.

Iraqi President Abdel Latif Rashid called on Western governments to put a stop to the “provocations”.

Sadr said in a vague tweet on Saturday that “words are no longer enough” in defending religion.

Sadr shows his ‘force’

Hamzeh Hadad, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said Sadr was indirectly challenging his rivals through the Swedish embassy attack.

“This both allows him to show he still possesses force and challenge his rivals’ credibility among the international community,” Hadad wrote on Twitter.

The cleric’s supporters had rallied by their hundreds in Baghdad’s Sadr City after Friday prayers, chanting support for the Quran. Protests also erupted in Iran and Lebanon.