Last week, the Swedish embassy in Baghdad bore the brunt of it, and a day later, thousands more people in the Iraqi capital protested against the burning of a Quran in Sweden.
These protests spread all over the world, as they have done often in the past when there are incidents that touch upon Islam. Cartoons of the Prophet, a book named after the satanic verses from the Quran, and of course, the repeated burning of the holy book.
These are helpful topics for politicians who want to divert attention from their failures, or who urgently need to be back in the spotlight. It’s an area where worlds keep colliding: that of freedom of speech, with that of the sanctity of a religion and everything connected to it.
People behind the incidents usually want to provoke these reactions. In January, a Swedish-Danish extreme-right activist also burned a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, thereby also triggering furious reactions in the Muslim world. The Swedish government then tried in vain to ban book burnings, but the highest court would not allow it.
Dangerous book
But this time it was a 37-year-old Iraqi. Salwan Momika called the Quran a dangerous book before he stepped on it and set several pages on fire. He did this during the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, one of the holiest holidays of Islam, and in front of the Central Mosque in Stockholm. He had a permit for his protest, in line with Swedish rules for freedom of speech. After that court decision, the police had no other choice but to allow him.
Iraq says it will ask for Momika’s extradition and the Iraqi judiciary has announced that it wants to prosecute him. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Swedish ambassador over the matter.
But who is Salwan Momika? Not an ex-Muslim, who turns against the faith he left, as many in the Islamic world think. Nor a Yazidi, who wants to avenge the genocide on his people by an Islamic terrorist group in Iraq. He is a Christian from the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh, near Mosul.
Qaraqosh was occupied for several years by that same terrorist group, ISIS. And has been working hard on reconstruction in recent years. Momika is sort of a local celebrity, although he is mostly notorious, local sources report. At the time when ISIS held a third of Iraq (2014-2017), he set up a mini-militia to combat the group.
Pro-Iranian
His ‘Hawks Syriac Forces’ were affiliated with the pro-Iranian Christian Babylon Brigades, which resort under the Shiite PMF militias Hashed al-Shabi (and whose leader Rayan al-Kildani is on the American sanctions list for terrorism). There are images of him taking the oath of allegiance to the Hashed. Momika is said to have had a conflict with Al-Kildani. He was arrested in 2017 and went missing for two weeks.
According to another source, he approached both major Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) and their Peshmerga troops for support for his militia. But also Iran, Hezbollah, and even Israel.
Momika is part of an important, large Assyrian family in Qaraqosh. Locally, he was mainly seen as a troublemaker, opportunist, and even a ‘psycho’. He founded an organization, the Syrian Resistance Movement, which initially attracted people with promises to help them. Until he failed to fulfill those promises. There are also photos that he has been a member of the Syriac Union Party.
He is said to have fled to Sweden after being threatened. On his social media, he distances himself from Iran and the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. And he denies ever having been affiliated with the Hashed al-Shabi.
Extreme right
Why would someone burn a Quran in the country where he has been granted asylum? By now, Momika is said to be a member of an extreme-right party in Sweden and to have political ambitions. In that context, he calls for a ban on the Quran in Sweden.
All of this makes the many reactions to his act even more interesting. Few people have taken the trouble to look into the background of it. Here is a frustrated opportunist who commits a controversial act to gain favor with his new friends. And that is not, as it is constantly stated in the Islamic world, an act of the Swedish authorities, nor did they approve of the Quran burning.
Yet all of this was enough reason for an angry crowd to storm and invade the Swedish embassy in Baghdad. But not on their own initiative. The many angry expressions on the internet, the Iraqi footballers and referees posing with a Quran before the match – this is mainly because religious leaders and politicians drew attention to Momika’s act.
And not surprisingly: in Iraq, they find themselves on the Shiite side. The side with which Momika collaborated against ISIS, and from which he has publicly distanced himself since. That would not have gone down well there. Especially the Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr seized on the book burning to make himself visible again, as months earlier he had withdrawn from politics and even disbanded his militia. Although he had emerged as the winner in the 2022 elections, still his opponents took the power.
Support
To demonstrate how much support he still has and that he remains a factor to be reckoned with, he called on his supporters to show their anger at the Swedish embassy in Baghdad. This call was widely heeded, resulting in damages. The following day, a Friday, tens of thousands participated again in marches in Baghdad and Basra to protest the Quran burning. They also vented their anger on rainbow flags, which many Muslims see as a symbol of a hated and corrupting Western decadence.
Thus, an extreme right-wing Christian with a pro-Iranian past gave Sadr the opportunity to manifest himself again. And allowed his frustrated supporters to vent their pent-up anger.
It is always interesting to compare Sadr’s reaction with the much more moderate message of the Iraqi religious leader Ayatollah Al-Sistani – who stands far above Sadr in the hierarchy. He called on all Muslim countries to protest at their Swedish ambassadors and on the UN to take effective steps to prevent the burning of the Quran. For him, nobody had to take to the streets.
Turkish President Erdogan also couldn’t resist the opportunity to give his already sensitive relationship with Sweden another push. He is blocking Sweden’s accession to NATO because, according to him, Stockholm is doing too little to stop the Turkish-Kurdish resistance organization PKK. This incident is a new obstacle for accession, Erdogan stated.
Arrogance
‘We will eventually teach Western monuments of arrogance that insulting Muslims is not freedom of thought,’ Erdogan said. ‘As much as those who commit this crime, those who allow it under the guise of freedom of thought, those who turn a blind eye to this baseness will not achieve their goals.’
Apparently, burning a Quran is much worse than intruding and looting an embassy. Not only are there differences in the perception of freedom of expression between the West and the Islamic world. The same applies to the proportionality of punishment and retribution. With which Momika ignited yet another fuse in an already explosive powder keg.
