One Iranian general even called for the burning of the White House in retaliation.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said, “Disrespecting Muslim beliefs and violating the rights of the Afghan people is an indication of the irresponsibility of these occupiers.”
At Friday prayers last week, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami lambasted the Americans in his sermon. “This was an intentional move prompted by the level of hatred the Americans have for Islam.”
Khatami, who is not related to the former president of the same last name, continued: “I announce with a loud voice: The world should know that the American administration is hostile to Islam. The American insult was not a mistake. It was done deliberately because Washington’s rulers are hostile to Islam.”
The US forces in Afghanistan have said some of its men who couldn’t read Arabic and didn’t know the books were Qorans erroneously put them with trash consigned to an incineration dump.
This has cause major riots in Afghanistan and has become a political issue in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Oddly, it has not aroused passions much in the Arab world.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Reza Naqd of the Basij spoke of the Qoran-burning Saturday and rejected President Obama’s apology. Naqd said, “Nothing but the burning of the White House itself can relieve the injury done to us by the burning of the Qoran.… Their apology can be accepted only if they hang the military commanders responsible for this.”
Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi condemned the silence of some Muslim states, a clear reference to Saudi Arabia. But he had a solution for the problem of Qoran-burning.
“Until anti-Islamic foreigners are driven out of the Islamic world, such problems will continue to exist,” he said. He did not say what other Qoran-burnings in the Islamic world he had heard of.
He also rejected the Obama apology. “The perpetrators of this [crime] must be punished and a mere apology will not suffice because burning the Qoran … is not something that an apology can fix.”
