Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in the early hours of Thursday morning and set it on fire, a source familiar with the matter and a Reuters witness said, in a protest against the expected burning of a Koran in Sweden.
Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in the early hours of Thursday morning and set it on fire, a source familiar with the matter and a Reuters witness said, in a protest against the expected burning of a Koran in Sweden.
I know enough about the religious texts to know that’s a huge simplification. And while the old testament does have horrible things in it, the quran goes far beyond. This is something we should be able to discuss freely.
Arguing which religious scripture is worse is a useless excercise imo.
I don’t argue against criticism of the Quran. Even in Iraq, there are many people, that publicly do this.
Burning the Quran is not a critique and is not an invitation of a civil discussion. It is a declaration of extreme hate. Assuming anything different is just being overly charitable to a bunch of literal neo-Nazis.
And assuming that the sensitivies of people burning embassies should be accounted for is being overly charitable to a bunch of literal religious-nazis. These are 2 very different degrees of violence. It’s not the same burning a book and burning an embassy (luckily no one died, but not that the mob cared).
These Iraqis are not Swedish citizens. The book burning is happening in Sweden. I don’t agree with the violent response by these hooligans in Iraq and they should be held responsible. There is no rule of law in Iraq, so no idea how Iraqi authorities will respond.
But the book burning should not have happened in the first place, not because of the reaction in Iraq, but because it is not something a civilised society should condone.
I will not comment on this any further. These are my thoughts on this topic.
I didn’t intend to reply but turns out that an important piece of information has been very discreetly mentioned by the press: