SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) President Bafel Talabani “strongly” condemned the Quran-burning demonstration in Sweden.
“We strongly condemn burning the holy Quran,” Talabani said in a statement on Friday. “We are against such desecration attempts.”
“The incident is painful for the worldwide Muslim community,” he said. “Human holiness cannot be disrespected within the framework of the law,” he added.
An Iraqi man tore up and burned a Koran outside Stockholm’s central mosque on Wednesday, coinciding with the first day of Eid-Alda, a prominent holy Islamic feast that Muslims celebrate.
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech.
Dozens of Iraqis protested on Thursday in front of the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad in reaction to the incident.
Iraq’s Foreign Ministry summoned Sweden’s ambassador.
Swedish police charged the man who burned the holy book with agitation against an ethnic or national group. In a newspaper interview, he described himself as an Iraqi refugee seeking to ban it.
The Iraqi ministry said he was Iraqi and urged the Swedish government to hand him over so he could be tried in accordance with Iraqi law.
The government of several Muslim countries, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Morocco have also issued protests about the incident. The United States also condemned it, but added that issuing the permit supported freedom of expression and was not an endorsement of the action.
