The leader of the powerful Muslim Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, is calling on Muslims to “punish” those who desecrate the Koran.
If governments do not act against those who facilitate the desecration of the Muslim holy book, young Muslims must do so, Nasrallah said in a speech on Saturday, according to the AP news agency.
Nasrallah’s videotaped speech was shown on a chair monitor to tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut for the Shiite holiday of Ashura.
“War with Islam”
The followers, carrying banners with religious slogans and waving religious flags, chanted:
– Oh, Koran, we serve you!
It is not the first time that Nasrallah has criticized the Koran burnings in Sweden and Denmark. Last week he repeated Iran’s leader Khamenei’s words that Sweden’s government has declared war on the Muslim world. Nasrallah said that if the Swedish government “continues on this path, it will be categorized as a country at war with Islam and the Muslims.”
In the latest speech, Nasrallah calls on Muslims to watch for the outcome of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting on Monday. The organization, which includes 57 Muslim countries, is holding an extraordinary meeting in Baghdad to discuss the Koran burnings in Sweden and Denmark.
Terrorist-classified movement
Nasrallah believes that member countries of the OIC should “send a firm, decisive and unequivocal message to these governments that any repetition of the attacks will be met with a boycott.” If they don’t, Muslim youth should “punish the desecrators,” he threatens, without elaborating on what he means by punishment.
Hezbollah is a Shia political Iran-backed movement in Lebanon with both a political and a military branch. The US and the EU classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but the EU has only labeled the movement’s military branch as a terrorist, which can be difficult to distinguish from the main organization.
Facts: Hezbollah
Hezbollah (“Party of God”) is originally a breakaway group from the Shiite Amal movement, which was built with the support of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon that same year. Hezbollah has both a political and a military branch. The group presented a political program in 1985 and was elected to parliament in 1992. Meanwhile, the guerrilla war against the Israeli army continued. Israel’s retreat was described by Hezbollah as a victory. Hezbollah still receives strong support from Tehran and also from Damascus, and since the beginning of 2013 is fighting openly on the side of the regime in Syria. The fighting branch has been guilty of kidnappings and suicide attacks. Source: TT