Quran burning in Afghanistan: Anti-US protests spread to Pakistan

Hundreds of religious and hardline activists took to the streets in Islamabad, Karachi and Multan.


Afp February 24, 2012

ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of religious and hardline activists took to the streets on Friday to demonstrate against the burning of the Holy Quran at a US airbase in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Demonstrators shouted "death to America" and called on Pakistani leaders, US allies in the Afghan war, to resign with rallies organised in Islamabad, Karachi and Multan, AFP reporters said.

In Islamabad, the general secretary of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) demanded that the Islamic world should review its relations with the United States.

"We will not allow Americans to ridicule our religion and our holy Holy Quran," Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri told the crowd, asking the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to convene a special session to condemn the incident.

In Karachi, hundreds of activists of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, blacklisted as a terror organisation for associations with al Qaeda, chanted "Death to America".

"There is just one remedy for America - jihad and only jihad," the crowd shouted. "Death to America, death to America's friends," echoed slogans.

The demonstrators were carrying flags with black and white stripes.

They also held up banners, one of which said: "The defeated Americans are bound to bite dust in their war against Allah and His Book."

President Barack Obama was Thursday forced to apologise for the incident, which the Afghan presidency blamed on a US officer at the Bagram airbase.

"We don't accept Obama's apology. The Muslims don't accept his apology, as it is nothing but a farce," said Naveed Qamar, the head of JuD in Karachi. "The Americans are deliberately provoking us through shameless sins," he added.

"It is now up to our rulers whether they continue to be slaves of America or become slaves of our beloved prophet."

In Afghanistan, at least 15 people, including two American soldiers, have been killed in three days of furious anti-US protests.

COMMENTS (12)

Dr Khan | 12 years ago | Reply

We need to protest more strongly so the non muslims dont repeat theses so called mistakes. The youth needs to defend their religion the quran is the speeech of Allah! We need to defend it with our lives. We owe Allah that much at least.

M.B.F. Gibraltar | 12 years ago | Reply

Why Other Muslim Countries are not like us? They know that It's Allah who protects His Book & His House not the yelling slogans or "Crowd Pleasing" colorful banners. And for the same reason all Muslim countries have limited__ "as-needed" Islamic parties & only one or two kind of peaceful sects of Islam who are absolutely not into "Foreign & Local funding based wealth generating private mosques". Neither are other Muslim as temperamental to get excited to die on a hot-speech or two as we are in Pakistan. They also are into manipulating masses of millions jobless-sitting-around Muslims to use for their own Show-of-Power to the political opponent. They are actually amazed how we have been dutifully closing local schools & bombing local institutions like universities & colleges and burning buses & Gov't properties for Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Algeria, Somalia....the list goes on and on and on. What they don't know is we beat all Muslim countries in joblessness, illiteracy, violence, corruption so it's obviously very easy to incite the crowd for any activity on a short notice. Surprised? Remember how fast that hawker in bazaar amass a whole crowd before even he pulls his product out of his dirty sack? How did he do that? You can do that too for a living!

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