Sadr calls for declaring Swedish envoy to Iraq ‘persona non grata’ over Quran burning

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr on Thursday called on the Iraqi government to expel the Swedish envoy to the country over the Scandinavian country’s permission for a member of the Iraqi diaspora community to burn a few pages of the Quran a day earlier.

Sadr called to declare Swedish Ambassador to Iraq a persona non grata and sever ties with Sweden, which he described as “hostile to Islam” and a supporter of “immorality,” according to a statement he shared on his Twitter account.

He called for holding a demonstration outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad to protest the act.

The religious figure also called on the Iraqi judiciary to take legal action against Iraqi national Salwan Momika, 37, who burned a few pages of Islam’s holy book on Wednesday in the presence of Swedish police, as Sunni Muslims around the world marked the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday ("Feast of Sacrifice"), in the Swedish capital of Stockholm

He stomped on the book, in which he had put stripes of bacon, whose consumption is forbidden in Islam.

He had obtained a police permit with a co-protestor to burn the book. The country’s security later launched an investigation into the man for "agitation against an ethnic group."

The judiciary “must work to return him to Iraq or sentence him in absentia,” al-Sadr wrote.

Fayaq Zedan, the head of Iraq’s Judicial Council, directed the public prosecutor to take the necessary legal measures to “extradite” the Iraqi national from the Nordic country.

Iraqi government earlier Thursday slammed the Swedish authorities’ permit for the “dangerous provocation.”

“These acts demonstrate a hateful and aggressive spirit that goes against the principles of freedom of expression. They are not only racist but also promote violence and hatred,” the government’s spokesperson Basim al-Awadi said in a statement on Wednesday.

Al-Sadr also called for burning the flag of LGBTQ+ as it would enrage the country. 

The act has drawn severe condemnation from Muslims in Iraq and other parts of the world. Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan swiftly reacted to the burning act on Wednesday. 

"It is unacceptable to allow these anti-Islamic actions under the pretext of freedom of expression," Fidan said in a tweet. “Turning a blind eye to such atrocious acts is to be complicit," he added.

The fate of Sweden’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) depends on Turkey’s greenlight, which had not been given so far due to Ankara’s opposition to Stockholm’s “support” for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed Kurdish militant group fighting Turkey since the mid-1980s.

Top diplomats from Turkey and Sweden are set to meet on July 6 in Brussels, five days before the security consortium’s summit in Lithuania.

Ankara has previously voiced its strong criticism of Sweden regarding similar incidents of burning the Quran.