It’s been a while since we’ve heard of minions of big-time fire-breathing clerics of the Religion of Pieces losing their minds and acting up, but they sure did in the early hours of Thursday morning, Baghdad time.
Hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in central Baghdad in the early hours of Thursday, scaling its walls and setting it on fire in protest against the expected burning of a Koran in Sweden https://t.co/69hY4znGiS pic.twitter.com/6860Jeyq25
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 20, 2023
Of course, the riot was in anticipation of a book burning (I’ll give you three guesses which one) in Sweden, which requires a riot, death if they can swing it, and fiery destruction in a completely different county.
Breaking: Muslim extremists stormed and attacked the Swedish embassy in Baghdad. They’ve set it on fire as revenge for an expected Quran-burning protest in Sweden, which they want banned. pic.twitter.com/nvK0Xq19ba
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 20, 2023
It also meant Iraq bowing up against Sweden for good measure. Now, mind you – the book-burning fool causing the hubbub is himself an Iraqi and an immigrant to Sweden. Way to literally smoke the country fool enough to let you in, dude.
Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador on Thursday in protest at a planned burning of the Koran in Stockholm that had prompted hundreds of protesters to storm and set alight the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
An Iraqi government statement said Baghdad had also recalled its charge d’affaires in Sweden, and Iraq’s state news agency reported that Iraq had suspended the working permit of Sweden’s Ericsson on Iraqi soil.
Anti-Islam protesters, one of whom is an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden who burned the Koran outside a Stockholm mosque in June, had applied for and received permission from Swedish police to burn the Koran outside the Iraqi embassy on Thursday.
At least he got the proper paperwork.
The Iraqi government said they were sorry about the fire and all that, but make sure that dude keeps his BicFlic in his pocket, m’kay?
…The Iraqi government condemned the assault on the embassy, according to a statement from the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, which declared it a security breach and vowed to protect diplomatic missions.
But Baghdad had also “informed the Swedish government … that any recurrence of the incident involving the burning of the Holy Koran on Swedish soil would necessitate severing diplomatic relations”, the statement said.
Chubby radical cleric (and perpetual thorn in rational thought’s side) Muqtada al-Sadr had his followers doing the dirty work and wound up turning a non-happening stunt into a diplomatic crisis.
Less than a year after declaring he had left Iraqi politics, the unpredictable Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has reminded his rivals of the influence he still wields after his supporters stormed and torched the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.
Prompted by one man’s plan to burn a Koran, the incident has dragged Baghdad into a diplomatic crisis and disrupted the relative calm enjoyed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani since he took office with the backing of Sadr’s Shi’ite rivals.
While condemning the storming of the embassy, in which nobody was hurt, the Iraqi government also moved to sever ties with Sweden over the threat to burn the Koran – after Sadr challenged it to take “a firm position”.
Not nailing this bastard when we had the chance is one of the great missteps of that whole second Iraq invasion.
…Sadr rose to prominence after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, forming a militia that waged two insurgencies against U.S.-led forces. He was an outlaw wanted dead or alive during the U.S. occupation, but later rose to become a political kingmaker and Iraq’s most powerful figure.
He is an heir to a prominent clerical dynasty. Sadr is the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999 after openly criticising then-dictator Saddam Hussein. His father’s cousin, Mohammed Baqir, was also killed by Saddam, in 1980.
When Saddam was executed in 2006, witnesses taunted him by chanting Moqtada’s name as he was led to the gallows, leaked footage showed.
Hundreds of islamists stormed Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad, Iraq and burned it down yesterday after another Quran was burnt in Sweden. 😡😡
— Ashlea Simon (@AshleaSimonBF) July 20, 2023
Thank God there are some in the Iraqi government who aren’t afraid – yet – to speak up for commonsense, even as the government itself overreacts in the face of Sadr’s threats and the pressure from his lunatic hordes.
…A Shi’ite politician from one of Sadr’s rival parties said the storming of the embassy aimed to embarrass the government, and to weaken its international ties built by Sudani, who has forged good relations with Western countries including the U.S.
But the bravery to speak common-sense went all for naught, as the Iraqi government just announced it was severing diplomatic ties with Sweden.
Iraq has severed diplomatic ties with Sweden Thursday after a planned anti-Quran demonstration unfolded in Stockholm, during which an individual stepped on and kicked the Islamic holy book and Iraqi flag.
The move came after images emerged of protesters storming the Swedish embassy in Baghdad for the second time in less than a month, lighting a small fire and sending plumes of smoke into the air.
The demonstrator in the Swedish capital Thursday – identified in Swedish media as Salwan Momika, an Iraqi of Christian origin who lives in Sweden as a self-identified atheist – had threatened to burn a copy of the Quran, according to The Associated Press. But he did not do so.
The Iraqi government has also suspended Ericsson’s license to work in the country (which they say is related to the book burning, but Ericsson’s been in a bit of shady-dealing trouble lately).
The Iraqi government suspended on Thursday the license granted to the Swedish telecom company Ericsson to operate in the country, according to a statement cited by the Iraqi News Agency (INA).
The director of the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC), Ali Al-Moayad, issued a decision to suspend Ericsson’s license to operate in Iraq, according to a statement issued by the CMC.
The statement illustrated that the decision was made in response to Sweden’s permission to burn a copy of the Holy Quran and the Iraqi flag.
For Sadr, he could care less if Iraq stays a Third World country – he’d be perfectly happy to be king of that Islamic paradise.
…For the Sadrists, the burning of the Koran “could be an issue that could revitalize their ideological power amongst Iraqis“, said Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at London’s Chatham House think tank.
“It also puts the government on the spot,” he said
“Although he said he was leaving politics, his intention was never really to leave politics. In fact, his goal now is to stage a comeback.”
Why does every picture with these fools look like Benghazi?
Sweden has their own Islamic problems to worry about. For instance, the Syrian who stabbed children in the park had asylum in Sweden, and, for a while, the Swedish had quite a issue with hand grenades in bins. From a 2018 report:
…The number of explosions caused by hand grenades has increased in Sweden in recent years. There were fewer than five in 2014 but at least 20 in 2017, and a further 39 grenades were seized by police.
…The rise in possession of hand grenades – mainly unused stock from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s – has come to symbolise Sweden’s heated debate about violent crime as it heads towards an election in September.
The rate of violent crime in the suburbs of Sweden’s big cities has worsened in recent years, in what officials blame on rising gang-related crime.
There were 306 shootings last year, which left 41 people dead. In 2011, there were 17 fatalities.
…The violence has turned some parts of Stockholm into “no-go zones” for paramedics, says Henrik Johansson, former head of Sweden’s paramedics union.
“People who live in these areas are very scared to call the police or get help from ambulances. They are scared about consequences for them and their families.”
Police have acknowledged 60 or so “vulnerable areas” but reject the description of “no-go zones“, a highly loaded term in Sweden.
After all, violent crime in Sweden and who is to blame for it has become an ideological battlefield.
And now, perhaps, a fissure with their substantial Iraqi ex-pat community. In a country of only 10.5M people, an immigrant group with almost a quarter of a million members and a penchant for demonstrative rumbling is nothing to sniff at.
Iraqis are the second largest minority group living in Sweden, with 146,048 Iraqi-born people living in Sweden and 79,732 Swedes with at least one Iraqi-born parent.[2] They are also one of the largest Asian communities in the country.[3] The size of this group has doubled in the period of 2002 to 2009; the influx of Iraqi refugees increased dramatically from 2006 to 2009 as a result of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
As always with these things, the contagion has taken off but it does seem as if prominent Swedish Muslims are trying to keep everyone calm at home. The (catch this title) Spokesperson of the High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (I’m ded) weighed in with a suitably woke statement re: hate speech, while their representative toadie on the ground in Baghdad chimed in for good measure.
The argument here is that peaceful assembly and freedom of speech should take a backseat to violent religious extremists.
— Jesusaurus Rex (@Je5usaurus_Rex) July 20, 2023
There’s also the matter of the $24M€ Sweden gives the Iraqi government every year. Will money talk?
And then there’s the Biden administration…
It looks like you kids are on your own.
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