The burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Sweden on one of the holiest days in Islam sparked outrage on Wednesday in many Muslim countries and widespread condemnations of the Swedish authorities.

In Iraq, several hundred people protested outside the Swedish embassy in Baghdad at the urging of Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist cleric who called on the Iraqi government to break off diplomatic relations with Sweden, which he called “hostile” to Islam.

The crowd became increasingly angry, scaling the wall surrounding the compound and pushing through an external gate. There was no sign that Iraqi diplomatic police forces attempted to stop them. The protesters did not enter the embassy itself, which was closed for the Islamic holiday, and eventually left. Sadr called for larger protests after prayers on Friday.

Iraq’s foreign ministry also condemned Sweden “for allowing an extremist to burn a copy of the holy Quran”.

In the incident in Stockholm on Wednesday, two men, watched by a crowd of people, tore pages out of a Quran and burned them outside a mosque.

In an application for the permit, one of the men, Salwan Momika, identified by Swedish media as an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, said he wanted to express his opinion about the Quran by tearing it up and burning it. The police had granted a permit for the demonstration after a Swedish court ruled that banning it would impinge on the right to freedom of speech.

However, the permit says that demonstrators are not allowed to burn objects in Stockholm.

The timing of the burning of Islam’s holy book, during Id al-Adha, further angered and pained Muslims in many countries, who were celebrating the holiday, which honours the end of Haj.

Morocco summoned Sweden’s representative in Rabat to ask him to condemn the act and recalled its own ambassador in Sweden according to the Moroccan state news agency. Jordan also said it had expressed its displeasure to Sweden’s ambassador, according to the state news agency, calling it “a racist act of serious hate.”

Egypt called the burning of the Quran “a disgraceful act” and Saudi Arabia said that such “hateful and repeated acts cannot be accepted with any justification”.

And President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said in an address on Thursday that the country would never bow to “the politics of provocation”.

New York Times News Service