BAGHDAD: Iraqi security forces on Saturday dispersed about 1,000 supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr who tried to march to Baghdad’s Green Zone housing foreign embassies, believing a Holy 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 Holy 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 Holy 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 Holy 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 Holy Quran.
Early Saturday, Iraq’s foreign ministry had condemned “the desecration of the holy Holy Quran and the Iraqi flag” in front of the embassy in Denmark.
Iraq also condemned the attack on Sweden’s embassy but expelled Stockholm’s ambassador.
Iraqi President Abdel Latif Rashid called on Western governments to put a stop to the “provocations”.
The actions of Sweden-based Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika, whose book-burning protest had been permitted by Stockholm on free speech grounds, triggered condemnation across the Muslim world. Sadr said in a vague tweet on Saturday that “words are no longer enough” in defending religion. The chameleon-like figure, who has made several reversals of position over the years, had said in April that he was “freezing” his movement’s activities for a year, though the decision would not affect religious activities.
Last August he said he was retiring from politics. 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.
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