A senior Iranian cleric has called for the prosecution of those who burned copies of the Holy Qur’an and other Islamic texts at a US military base in Afghanistan.
Addressing a group of seminary students in the city of Qom on Sunday, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi condemned the silence of certain Muslim states, namely Saudi Arabia, over the desecration of the Holy Qur’an at the US-run Bagram Airbase.
“Until anti-Islam foreigners are present in Muslim states, such problems will exist,” said the Grand Ayatollah.
The senior cleric urged Muslims to stand unit and expel the enemy from their countries.
“The perpetrators of this [crime] must be punished and a mere apology will not suffice because burning the Qur’an ... is not something that an apology can fix,” said the Grand Ayatollah.
On February 20, US soldiers burned the copies of the Holy Quran and other Islamic texts at Bagram Airbase, southeast of the city of Charikar in the Afghan province of Parwan.
Following the Qur’an desecration US President Barack Obama sent a letter to his Afghan counterpart Hamed Karzai, apologizing for the actions of American forces in Afghanistan.
Obama told Karzai that the incident was not intentional, which sparked angry protests against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and other Asian countries.
More than 30 people, including two US troops, have been killed as a result of violent clashes of the past six days.
------Agencies
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