SHOCKING AS 2 PROTESTERS BURN QURAN OUTSIDE IRAQI EMBASSY IN DENMARK

Two protesters burned a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran. This is in front of the Iraqi embassy in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen.

The duo from a group called Danish Patriots stomped on the Quran on Monday and set it alight in a tin foil tray. This was next to the Iraqi flag lying on the ground.

Shortly after the incident, Iraq’s foreign ministry called on European Union countries to “quickly reconsider so-called freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate”, according to the Iraqi state news agency INA.

The far-right, ultra-nationalist Danish Patriots held a similar demonstration last week and live-streamed it on Facebook.

After last week’s incident, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen condemned it as an act of “stupidity” by a few individuals, telling national broadcaster DR: “It is a disgraceful act to insult others' religion."

“This applies to burning Qurans and other religious symbols. It has no other purpose than to provoke and create division,” he said. He noted, however, that burning religious books was not a crime in Denmark.

The protesters who burned the koran

The tension between Muslim countries and Scandinavian nations intensified last month. This was after a 37-year-old Christian Iraqi refugee in Sweden, Salwan Momika, burned Quran pages on the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha.

On Sunday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a coalition of 57 Muslim countries, suspended Sweden's special envoy over Quran burnings. The organization said the decision was due to the “granting by the Swedish authorities of licenses that enabled the repeated abuse of the sanctity of the Holy Quran and Islamic symbols”.

A day earlier, several thousand Iraqis demonstrated in Baghdad over Islamophobic protests in the two Scandinavian countries.

Iraqi security forces repelled the protest 48 hours after the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was overrun and set alight. This was in protest at a planned Muslim holy book burning in Stockholm.

Thursday’s anti-Islam demonstration in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, prompted Middle Eastern states, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region’s leading Sunni and Shia powers, to summon Swedish diplomats in protest.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday urged Sweden to hand over culprits to Islamic nations’ judiciaries.

“The Swedish government should know that by supporting the criminal who burned the Holy Quran, it has stepped into battle armor for war on the Muslim world,” he said on Twitter.