July 22 () –
The Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has criticized the recent burning of the Koran in Stockholm, Sweden, and has warned that the Swedish government “has declared war on the Muslim world” by protecting the person responsible for the desecration of the Islamic holy book.
Stockholm “has declared war on the Muslim world by supporting the criminal” and has called for his delivery “to the judicial system of Muslim countries,” Khamenei said in statements reported by the official Iranian news agency, IRNA.
Khamenei has assured that “all the scholars of the Muslim world agree that this gesture of insult to the Holy Qur’an must be answered with the harshest possible punishment.” Thus, the Iranian supreme leader has urged the Swedish authorities to hand over the person responsible to “Islamic justice”.
“The insult against the holy Qur’an in Sweden is a bitter, conspiratorial and dangerous incident,” he stressed.
The Iranian Foreign Minister, Hosein Amirabdolahian, has also referred to the incident and has assured that Tehran will not accept any Swedish ambassador and that there will be no Iranian ambassador in Stockholm either.
“We are not going to accept the new Swedish ambassador who is supposed to arrive in Tehran in the next few days as long as the Swedish government does not take serious measures” against the person responsible for the burning, Amirabdolahian said.
The Iranian Foreign Minister spoke on Friday afternoon with his Swedish colleague, Tobias Billström, whom he urged to take legal action against the person responsible for the desecration.
“The person who has committed this unforgivable insult has to be arrested, tried and held accountable for his actions. Otherwise, Sweden will have to wait for decisive action from Islamic countries,” he stressed.
