TEHRAN: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Sweden has “gone into battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting those responsible for desecrating the Holy Quran.
Iran’s state media reported that Khamenei said that people who desecrate the Quran should face the “most severe punishment” and demanded Sweden hand over those responsible for prosecution in Islamic countries.
“All Islamic scholars agree that those who desecrate the Koran deserved the most severe punishment… The duty of that (Swedish) government is to hand over the perpetrator to the judicial systems of Islamic countries,” Khamenei said in a statement carried by state media.
Iran has delayed the posting of a new ambassador to Sweden and said it was not accepting a new Swedish envoy.
“The Swedish government should know that by supporting the criminal who burnt the Holy Quran it has gone into battle-array for war on the Muslim world,” Khamenei later tweeted.
“They have created feelings of hatred & animosity toward them in all the Muslim nations & many of their governments,” he said.
He also urged Sweden to “turn over the criminal who burned the Holy Quran to the judicial systems of Muslim countries.”
Protests have raged across Iran and Iraq after Sweden allowed the burning of the Koran under rules protecting free speech. Protesters in Iraq set alight the Swedish embassy in Baghdad on Thursday.
An Iraqi immigrant to Sweden burned a Quran outside a Stockholm mosque last month, sparking outrage and condemnation from Muslim countries around the world.
Protesters in Sweden destroyed a book they said was the Quran outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm on Thursday, but did not burn it as they had threatened to do.
