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.
Isn’t there something actually useful to do in Iraq… Just asking.
Who cares if some idiot wants to burn $insertReligiousBook in some forgein country?
Oh yeah, religious zealots, that’s who. /s
Fragile religiosity, they don’t really trust god to punish the sinners…
that’s such an interesting take on religious people forcing their beliefs on others: so what if they sin? Let your god take care of it, or do you think he’s too incompetent to deal with it himself?
In their eyes, they are God’s wrath.
The Bible literally says this in Judges 6:28-31
In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly-built altar! They asked each other, ‘Who did this?’ When they carefully investigated, they were told, ‘Gideon son of Joash did it.’ The people of the town demanded of Joash, ‘Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.’ But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, ‘Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.’
People protest a lot of stuff in Iraq. Just nobody cares about what the Iraqi public thinks.
After the removal of the Iraqi government and army in the Iraq war, Iraq has essentially become a failed state run by Iranian mafias and tribal militias. There is literally nothing useful to do in Iraq.
removal is a nice euphemism for a foreign invasion and installation of a government hostile to most of the people during a decade of occupation and ressource exploitation.
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Re: your first question: https://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/151e87q/iraq_an_uncut_gem_february_2023/
Doesn’t sound too bad.
I also don’t think we should be burning books at all.
It would be hilarious if there was a Koran inside the embassy, causing the protestors to do the very thing they violently protested against. Are they then going to set themselves on fire in an act of self hatred and remorse?
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On one side nazis on the other religious fundamentalists - they deserve each other.
Where are the Nazis here?
Weren’t it some nazis burning Koran? Who else would do something this pointless?
Just like the last time it’s Salwan Momika, a refugee from Iraq who is burning the Korans.
Is he a nazi? Or what is his point? Is he just into burning books?
Not sure why he’s doing it but he’s not a nazi.
If you are not sure, how do you know?
Doesn’t Sweden have anti-discrimination/anti-Nazi laws or something like that? Why is a demonstration like that legal?
Burning a Quran shouldn’t be a part of a peaceful protest and has nothing to do with Sweden being blocked from joining NATO by Turkey.
Why would you need an anti-something for a book burning? I didn’t know about this book burning event, but this had one purpose from the beginning and they fell for it. They want to show the “religion of peace” is not so peaceful so it works wonders, that’s what they are trying to stir and to bring it into conversation.
If no muslim reacted aggressively or even responded to this, there wouldn’t be a second book burning. And the person doing this would be labeled crazy or something like that buuuut religious people are so easy to trigger so yeah.
Many Muslims don’t give a shit. Provoking poor uneducated people from war-torn countries unsuprisingly does not give you cozy wholesome responses.
It is naive to believe that a Quran burning is simply a “social experiment”. People who passionately support the book burning are obviously hating Muslims passionately as well.
The burning is in Sweden, not Iraq. These poor people only know about it because they’re informed and agitated by religious leaders profiting from this violence. Mobs in Iraq cannot and should not determine the law in Sweden, I think we can all agree on that.
Muslims in Sweden probably don’t love this move either.
Should Swedes also support demonstrations, where Muslim Swedes burn Bibles, Torahs, LGBTIQ+ flags etc, as long as they cite “freedom of speech” and or wanting to do a “social experiment” as their primary motivation?
A Muslim activist who had received permission to burn a Torah and a Bible outside the Israeli embassy in Sweden on Saturday said he was backing off from the move, adding that he only wanted to draw attention to the recent burning of the Quran in the country.
That’s crazy
It’s not about supporting. Swedish officials have been condemning these acts. It’s about allowing it or not and if not, on which basis? Geopolitics is not the rule of the land… and shouldn’t be. People manipulating mobs against Sweden know all this and still do it, they’re the ones at fault here.
I’m not saying that this demonstration should be banned, because people in Iraq got aggressive.
I’m saying that this demonstration should be banned, because this demonstration goes against modern Swedish values and laws. Being openly hostile towards certain religious minorities and ethnicities is not something Swedish authorities should protect.
Burning a Quran is a message of hate towards Muslims, that’s simply it.
Sorry, but if we’re going to be that strict about hate speech then we also must ban the quran itself, where racial violence, ethnic hate and slavery are promoted and justified. If we allow the quran we must allow people to hate the quran as well.
Should Swedes also support demonstrations, where Muslim Swedes burn Bibles, Torahs, LGBTIQ+ flags etc, as long as they cite “freedom of speech” and or wanting to do a “social experiment” as their primary motivation?
Support? No, and Sweden certainly doesn’t “support” the burning. But the government should absolutely not interfere with the right to demonstrate or burn whatever the fuck the individual owns and paid for with their own money.
I should probably mention that a record breaking gathering held a muslim prayer (which requires the same permission as the quran-protest) the same day in gothenburg: https://www.gp.se/nyheter/göteborg/tusentals-samlades-för-bön-i-slottsskogen-historiskt-1.103502911
Should the government block that too?
Is praying publicly the same for you as burning the Quran? I don’t see the similarity.
Did you miss the point on purpose?
I said that the law view them equally because the law/government isn’t supposed to interfere with free speech. That doesn’t mean that the people that make up the government have to agree with what the individual does under their right to free speech.
Preventing someone from doing something considered fairly inoffensive in your own country, to avoid offending some idiot 5000 miles away seems a bit… Overmuch.
I’m a little conflicted on it, I feel like both are in the wrong, though the Iraqi Muslims obviously took it way too far. Books are only being burned because it’ll have a reaction, otherwise it’s just mean-spirited that they’re trying to disrespect someone else’s beliefs. Muslims on the other hand shouldn’t be so predictable that they fall right into it and burning an embassy is just a tad bit of an overreaction. Muslims themselves even have a procedure for burning Qurans, so it’s not like they don’t do it themselves. Granted, the intent is different, but whatever, can they just stop being religious zealots?
Book burning is what fascists do and “just ignore them” is not the way to go about it. If the book burning wouldnt start a response next thing they’d burn a mosque and if that fails they’ll just straight up murder people to incite a reaction.
Anti-Nazi? The guy who burned it today and earlier this summer is literary a former iraqi muslim. He’s not really the nazi type, those are more clownlike.
We Middle Easterners can be way more racist and nationalistic than some drunk skinhead losers in Europe. That guy seems to be the type that browses r/AskMiddleEast or r/exmuslim. Maybe some guy from a broken family, daddy issues or whatever, I am not his psychotherapist lol. Fact is tho, that Nazis use this story as validation and that his supporters are mostly fascists as well.
Fascist sure but nazi has an entirely different racial connotation in a Swedish context.
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Or to put it in other ways: you can burn a bible just fine.
Heck, someone even got a permission to burn a torah and a bible, showed up and then didn’t burn them, but made his point that he could’ve.
I’m not a believer, but I’d say that the holy book of one of the biggest religions on the planet is rather important in the global context. It’s literally one of the major ethical foundation of over two billion people or at least a big part of these believers.
So like it or no, it matters on the geo political scale. It certainly matters enough to some people to actually storm an embassy over a perceived great insult. Now if that’s a good thing that so many people take it that seriously is another question. I for one don’t like that, but that doesn’t make it go away.
It’s not a friendly act, but should it be banned? Sweden also allows you to burn a bible. Also not a friendly act, but should it be banned? Why sacrifice our freedom to appease religious zealots? We also used to have them in Europe. Our right to burn a bible was not God-given, it took centuries to conquer and is not even legal everywhere.
Now, again, it’s not a friendly gesture, for sure, I wouldn’t do it, but I like to know that I could do it without being arrested, because why should anyone being arrested for burning a book they bought? People are not arrested for burning gallons of fuel while driving SUVs and that I find easier to argue for.
It’s not a friendly act, but should it be banned?
I didn’t argue for either way. I’m just pointing out the importance of this specific book and that obviously we should be aware of potential consequences. It certainly sucks that some people take their religion so seriously to injure or kill other people, but it’s really not unexpected nor unprecedented.
So if Sweden does allow the burning, which does have it’s pros and cons, then they have to consider the ramification they could face. That of course should include taking the security of their embassies in extreme religious countries into consideration. Not sure what they did in that regard, but it certainly wasn’t enough.
It’s very easy to sit behind anonymity and argue for the importance of allowing such freedom of expression when we aren’t the ones put in danger because of it.
I think Sweden, and Denmark for that matter, are very well aware of the potential violence this unleashes, they’ve been suffering quite a few attacks against their embassies in recent years for jokes, cartoons or quran burnings.
And yes, it’s easy for me to say this behind anonymity. I live in Brussels and wouldn’t be speaking so easily under my own name. Which says a lot about the degradation of freedom to express your opinions about religion without fearing for your security in Europe today. So yeah, I don’t want to lose that freedom. Better to close the embassies in Iraq.
Again, I wouldn’t burn a quran. But do I think it’s a sacred book above criticism? No, I absolutely do not.
The Quran does not have to be important to you personally, but burning it has no good intentions towards Muslim populations inside and outside Sweden.
Swedish authorities were informed about the planned Quran burning and actively allowed it. Allowing the Quran burning is imo more extreme and political, than not allowing it.
That’s pandering to terrorists. Don’t bow your head to those who want to chop it.
Don’t bow your head to terrorists. But also don’t bow your head to Nazis.
Am I to understand you’re calling those who burned the Qur’an Nazis? You’re too far gone to argue with in this case. Have you even read why they burned it? To incite a response. Which happened just as predicted.
Not to mention how disingenuous it is to separate the terms terrorist and Nazi. They’re one and the same in the end.
Burning books associated exclusively with certain ethnic groups is obviously Nazi behaviour.
It has happened in the past with the Jews. History is just repeating itself. Terrorists and Nazis are the same shit.
Labeling the Quran burning as a “social experiment” does not make it better. The people involved are not tolerant humanists, who work towards a better future. They simply want to spread their hate.
Don’t put words in my mouth. Nowhere did you quote “social experiment” from, because I didn’t fucking say that. If this is how you argue then just leave.
Burning books is what terrorists do. This is an act of terror.
So, burning books is worse than setting a building on fire, potentially endangering many people’s lives? Wow.
You sure are an advocate of good and justice, never met someone so righteous and rational before 🙄.
Two wrongs dont make a right. And someone beating you up after you insulted him does not make it right for you to have insulted him in the first place.
That is stuff already taught in kindergarten…
Two wrongs? So to you a book is as important as lives then. Move along zealot, the adults are talking.
Burning a Quran shouldn’t be a part of a peaceful protest
Why not?
We in the west allow all sorts of offensive messages in protests. What we don’t allow, and this is where the anti Nazi laws come in, are hostile messages, which is anything that instills and encourages hostility towards a group of people.
Burning a copy of a religious holy book is a frankly profane and offensive way of rejecting the ideas in that religion, but it is not, by itself, an encouragement to do harm to those that follow the religion.
There is a difference between burning a Quran saying ‘Sharia law has no place in Sweden’, and doing the same saying ‘Muslims have no place in Sweden’
Some people do see things like bible burnings as a way of making a threat that those who believe in it are next similar to cross burning being used as a threat against black people regardless of the stated intent (people lie btw). I don’t think the law should pander to the false persecution fetishes people have, but unlike 10s of millions of white Christian men in America, Iraqi people have a good reason to be distrustful. Still don’t think it should be illegal, but I’m also not going to be quick to dismiss their fears when 100s of thousands (maybe millions) of civilians in Iraq have been murdered in the last two decades, largely allowed because of racism and islamophobia.
Some people do see things like bible burnings as a way of making a threat that those who believe in it are next
Usually because they’ve been told as much by reactionary religious leaders attempting to profit from it. Whether Christian, Muslim, etc, that’s usually how it goes down.
similar to cross burning being used as a threat against black people
Except cross burning by the KKK was always meant as an overt threat; even the KKK did not pretend it was anything else.
regardless of the stated intent (people lie btw).
The problem there is, how are you gonna hold an effective protest while trying to hide your message? Dog whistles only work when you’re already preaching to the choir.
unlike 10s of millions of white Christian men in America, Iraqi people have a good reason to be distrustful.
Of a protest in Sweden? Why?
I’m also not going to be quick to dismiss their fears when 100s of thousands (maybe millions) of civilians in Iraq have been murdered in the last two decades, largely allowed because of racism and islamophobia.
Are you seriously comparing the aftermath of 9/11 to a Quran burning in Sweden? I think you’re struggling a bit with the concepts of scope and scale…
Of a protest in Sweden? Why?
Are you seriously comparing the aftermath of 9/11 to a Quran burning in Sweden? I think you’re struggling a bit with the concepts of scope and scale…
What does 9/11 have to do with this conversation? We’re talking about Iraq. Nothing to do with 9/11, except the islamophobia and xenophobia that spread as a result of 9/11.
Sweden is practically part of NATO, and has been long since they formally began the process of officially joining. The fact that NATO members murdered huge numbers of civilians within the lifetime of even young adults is pretty relevant seems relevant to why Iraqis might be a bit spooked by perceived threats of violence by islamophobes.
What does 9/11 have to do with this conversation? We’re talking about Iraq. Nothing to do with 9/11, except the islamophobia and xenophobia that spread as a result of 9/11.
You’re the one that indirectly brought it up and tried to compare it to a simple fucking protest in Sweden. Don’t be disingenuous.
Sweden is practically part of NATO, and has been long since they formally began the process of officially joining. The fact that NATO members murdered huge numbers of civilians within the lifetime of even young adults is pretty relevant seems relevant to why Iraqis might be a bit spooked by perceived threats of violence by islamophobes.
Wow. That’s such a huge leap in logic it’s actually quite comical.
First of all, the US wasn’t in Iraq on a NATO mission. NATO themselves kept out of it, the most they did during the conflict was send aid to Turkey, who borders Iraq.
Secondly the protestors in Sweden are just that. They are not NATO combatants, nor combatants in general.
Thirdly, the protesters in Sweden aren’t fucking going to Iraq. They don’t even care about Iraq, they don’t even mention Iraq.
Why would Iraqis think they are facing an existential threat because of a protest in Sweden that has literally nothing to do with them? They dont. It’s not about that.
