Quran Burning in Florida Causes Dozens to Die in Afghanistan

Afghans Burning Obama’s Effigy (cbsnews.com)

The gesture of reverend Terry Jones to put the Quran “on trial” and burn it in a videotape recorded on March 20 in Gainsville, Florida, at his World Dove Outreach Center, caused a violent reaction from people in Afghanistan, resulting in the death of at least 20 people and many injured in a serious of riots that were staged all over the country from Friday to Sunday.

People were chanting “Death to Karzai!” and “Death to America!” prompting the president Hamid Karzai to call on Congress to condemn the burning.

In an interview for the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, general David Petraeus, leader of the coalition operating in Afghanistan, restated that the threat posed by inciting to religious hatred was real and that it placed in danger the lives of soldiers operating in the country.

Riot in Mazar-i-Sherif (aljazeerah.info)

Petraeus had warned about this situation last time when Terry Jones wanted to burn the Quran, on the occasion of the last commemoration of 9/11. Jones changed his mind then, but appearantly picked up where he had left off a few months later.

He called the burning of the Quran “hateful, extremely disrespectful and enormously intolerant.”

A senator of the United States considered on Sunday that the burning of the Quran was worth looking into by the Congress because any religious extremism is wrong and could cause tragedies like the ones that happened over the weekend in Afghanistan.

The senator said that in his opinion Jones’s act was a “publicity stunt.”

A peaceful city like Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan was engulfed on Friday in violence upon hearing about the desecration of the Quran. People stormed a U.N. compound killing seven foreign U.N. employees and four Afghan protestors.

Nine more people were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday during a riot, while millions of Muslims all over the world were outraged over the burning of their holy book.