This happened “in response to the Swedish government’s repeated authorization to burn the noble Koran, insult Islamic sanctities, and burn the Iraqi flag,” government spokesman Basem Al-Awadi said.
So not just the Koran but also a symbol of their nation. So long as nobody was killed it is a very fair retaliation. Respect goes both ways.
What’s wrong with flag burning? I get that it’s nationalist pieces of shit doing it this time, but literally every other day there is a post here of people burning US, Israeli, UK, etc flags. If we can do it, then why get angry when the reactionaries do it too?
Also really? Burning a 5 dollar flag off of Amazon is equivalent to burning a building with people inside? That’s a fair retaliation? Even the Iraqi government issued a condemnation of the burning and offered to assist with repairing the damages.
But burning Qurans outside of a mosque is a wonderful pastime for our Nazi friends it seems. Literal human garbage.
We have a local popular saying that roughly translates to “never confuse the reaction of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressor” that I think applies here. As I said, it is only an unambiguously fair reaction if they did not kill anybody, which the outlet doesn’t report on. In case innocent workers (“diplomats” hardly count) were harmed then we can bring out the criticism/support balance and figure the better position out more thoroughly.
Burning the Koran and the flag essentially has the same purpose, even if they are usually taken differently by Christians and Christian Atheists. They are both symbols of a people, and burning them represents hatred towards that people. Since a majority of Iraqis are Muslims, there is not much difference here but I pointed it out to make it less ambiguous to those who still tolerate veiled islamophobia for some faux atheist principle. And also to point out the hypocrisy of the outlet to only put “Koran” in the headline and not refer to the flag. They know what they’re doing.
The desecration of brick and mortar is about as material as the help that Sweden provides to Iraqi people. That is, it is only symbolic.
The main difference between Indian, Irish or even British people burning the British flag compared to Europeans burning the Iraqi one is that first is being done out of rejection of imperialist authority on their lands, while the latter is being done by explicitly imperialist powers after having invaded and ruined the country (or at least aided in it). The act in a vacuum isn’t evil because nothing social exists in a vacuum, the important part is to notice the explicit message of it. If I were to burn a flag of Portugal as a Brazilian it would have a different meaning from me burning those of Uruguay or Haiti, and the same thing applies to an European burning the flags of the countries their nations destroys.
Understandable, I agree with your points, and I’m not saying the reason for the act was bad. I realize that I worded myself poorly, but I was attempting to say that the attacking of the embassy seemed like a disproportionate escalation in the face of the offense. Especially when the embassy has nothing at all do with the situation and is manned by innocent workers, of which the actual diplomats are a tiny percentage of.
I agree the act was hateful and done of malice against a people, but I struggle to see how escalating to the burning of a diplomatic embassy accomplishes anything.
Also Christian Atheists is an extremely weird oxymoron. How can one be atheist if they are Christian?
Yeah, it is definitely an escalation, but I wouldn’t say it’s disproportionate within the context of Sweden also joining NATO. That means that Sweden is basically an enemy country to them, and also one that not only houses neo-nazis but authorizes burning of Iraqi symbols. From my understanding this a constant criticism from Muslim-majority countries opposed to NATO that they’ll house both neo-nazis and fundamentalist terrorist recruiters within their lands while constantly invading, destabilising or toppling MENA countries that actually try to curb those groups.
Reading further it seems like workers were safely evacuated the day before and nobody was hurt. Things like this happen a lot where armed groups burn empty buildings/busses and symbolically and embassy workers in enemy countries already expect events like that. It sends the message that Sweden is not welcome there and makes their meddling and interference harder to do, though it sometimes can also be a false flag operation to justify even more military intervention. I guess an important bit is that the embassy is Sweden’s government’s official representation in Iraq, so if Iraqi people have an issue with Sweden that’s the first place to go complain.
It is definitely not some great victory for Iraq though just a minor event, but it’ll make headlines in The West® and I still think it’s not really an unfair escalation. Now the ball is on the court of Sweden on if they’ll escalate further or back down.
Also Christian Atheists is an extremely weird oxymoron. How can one be atheist if they are Christian?
I haven’t found a better name for this phenomenon I see a lot, so that’s how I call them in my head. It’s that sort of atheist that assumes that just because they renounced the metaphysical beliefs of Christianity that they are suddenly devoid of all Christian cultural values and social beliefs, which leads them to assume they’re universal. They tend to side a lot with actual reactionary Christians on racist/xenophobic policies such as the clothing bans by refusing to understand the power dynamics and nuances of religions, cultures and their interactions, and also look down on different religious traditions such as Hanukkah without bothering to even learn about them beforehand. Lots of them don’t even know much about Christianity outside of Catholicism/Protestantism. TLDR: Culturally Catholic Reactionary Atheists.
I met a lot of people like that in my life, including one former friend that went on a huge tirade against Islam just because I commented that I was trying to learn how to pronounce Arabic script. Being atheist and an amateur theology/history nerd myself I am not fond of this behaviour.
Where are you reading that people were inside the embassy when it was burnt?
Sweden’s embassy staff in Baghdad are all safe amid protests outside of the building, the foreign ministry’s press office told CNN via email.
Thank you for the update! I read an earlier version from an Iraqi source where they simply stated that the embassy was burnt and the location of diplomatic staff was unknown and a few were unaccounted for.
I guess that’s a major fall through with breaking news.
What would you think of a British protestant nationalist burning an Irish Catholic symbol?
I’m not a Christian? Why would you assume that I would think differently if it was a Christian symbol being burnt or because it’s a Quran that I think lesser of Islam and think Islamic materials hold less worth then Christian ones?
I would feel the same way. It would be a bizarre attack that exposes the shittiness of the perpetrator, but one that is ultimately meaningless and not worth killing or pointlessly escalating over.
There are acts worth escalating over. The burning of a book is not one. Or burn a bunch of Bibles in retaliation, not an embassy.
Embassies of western countries in the global south are dens of spies and centers for fomenting subversive activity against the host state. US embassies are especially dangerous - the US embassy in Iraq for instance pretty much runs the country and is basically a big military base - and not far behind are UK, French and German ones. All that their “diplomats” do is blackmail and threaten other countries’ officials to do what they want, and if they still don’t obey they will create and prop up opposition groups to remove the un-cooperative government. They should be treated by global south countries no differently than western NGOs and western media, which are also dangerous and hostile to independent global south governments - as a profound threat to sovereignty and national security.
So what’s takes the place of an embassy for the case of the population?
Or are you suggesting that no citizen in the global north or south will ever need a visa, wish to immigrate/emigrate, study internationally, preform business of any sort, pay taxes overseas, renew documents, get a work visa, or any of the hundreds of functions of an embassy???
Also the DPRK still allows foreign embassies, they funnily enough have a Swedish embassy in Pyongyang.
Also all those things you say that governments can do has already been done since the beginning of time with or without an embassy. I’m not saying they don’t do shitty things, but do you really think the CIA is going to implode if all embassies ceased to exist?
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I think it’s worth noting that the burning of the embassy was not due to Sweden’s inappropriate relationship with global south countries and was rather due to the offense caused by these actions
How would you know the inner workings of embassies in the DPRK? You know absolutely nothing about how those apparti work and are simply spouting lines that sound nice because they align with what you want to believe, not what you know in reality.
Also what workarounds? Are you telling me that the average citizen in Guatemala, the US, South Africa, Iraq, Australia, China, or France has the ability to somehow work around the problems your disaster of a situation would create in the same manner that an International Intelligence Agency would???
Please detail how this plan would end in anything other then a disaster for everyone involved???
You do realize that there was a time for before embassies correct? And that embassies were created to avoid the long list of problems that exist when one of them doesn’t exist?
Also the legitimate functions far outweigh your ideas of spies and saboteurs, and they can be mitigated without the elimination of a vital service that would directly negatively impact the regular citizenry of nations.
I never mentioned you being christian, I’m just seeing your stance.
Or burn a bunch of Bibles in retaliation, not an embassy.
This can actually escalate it into a worse situation, since there’s a lot of christians in Iraq, it might end up ugly. Also, the Iraqi flag was also burnt.
I think you might be seeing this in a religion view. it’s not about religion, Islam here is just the context, a random book written by an Iraqi writer could’ve been burned and it would’ve caused the same reaction. It’s about bigotry and the reaction by authorities.
In Denmark, burning a flag is legal as long as it isn’t done as an act of provocation
Based.
I bet that Rasmus Paludan is involved in this.
