On the night of Thursday, the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was stormed, after Swedish police granted permission for a Koran to be burned outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm.
The rioters are singled out as supporters of al-Sadr – the same man who incited his followers to storm the Swedish embassy during a previous Koran burning.
On Saturday, after an alleged Koran burning took place in Copenhagen, he stepped up his rhetoric even further. In a post on Twitter, he threatens a “revolution for the sake of the Koran”, Expressen reports.
Hundreds of thousands of followers
al-Sadr has hundreds of thousands of devoted followers.
– His great strength is that he can drum up a lot of people on the street, he can start big protests. He can start riots when he wants to, when it suits his purposes, says Aron Lund, Middle East analyst at the Total Defense Research Institute FOI.
al-Sadr has been a power factor in Iraqi politics for 20 years. In 2019, his movement was elected as part of the largest party constellation in parliament. Nevertheless, he failed to form a government, as he could not agree with rival parties. Since then, he has stood on the sidelines of politics.
The fact that he has now mobilized his supporters may be a way for him to assert himself against his rivals, according to Lund.
– This is an excellent opportunity for him to show that he is the great defender of the Koran.
In the video: How al-Sadr became one of Iraq’s most powerful leaders.