BEIRUT, 6 February 2006 — Violence over cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) spilled out of Syria yesterday into Lebanon where angry protesters torched the Danish mission. They also ransacked a Christian neighborhood and beat up residents, raising the possibility of the disturbances turning into a sectarian strife in the country. Interior Minister Hassan Al-Sabaa announced his resignation after a Cabinet meeting.
Copenhagen ordered Danes to leave the country or stay indoors, in the second day of violence against its diplomatic outposts in the Middle East. On Saturday, Danish and Norwegian missions in Syria were set ablaze by thousands of people in protest over the cartoons in several European papers. Syria voiced its regret over the attacks. “The Foreign Ministry expresses its regret over the acts of violence which accompanied the protests yesterday, which caused damage to embassies in Damascus,” the ministry said in a statement.
In Beirut, mobs, armed with stones and sticks, seized fire engines, overturned police vehicles and garbage containers to use them as barricades, badly damaged cars and threw stones at a church in the mainly Christian Ashrafieh area where the Danish mission is located. At least 30 people were injured. Residents bitterly complained of police inaction.
Orange flames and thick, gray smoke billowed from the 10-story building, which also houses the Austrian Embassy and the residence of Slovakia’s consul.
The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference condemned the burning of the embassies in Damascus. “Overreactions surpassing the limits of peaceful democratic acts... are dangerous and detrimental to the efforts to defend the legitimate case of the Muslim world,” the OIC said in a statement.
OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu “expresses his disapproval over these regrettable and deplorable incidents,” the Jeddah-based body said.
In Copenhagen, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller called for cooler heads to prevail. “It is a critical situation and it is very serious,” Moeller said on Danish public radio. “The government has no intention to insult Muslims,” Moeller told a news conference. “We are trying to explain to everyone that enough is enough. This situation must not be talked up. Those who have talked it up must now talk it down.”
In a letter to Ihsanoglu, Moeller said he wanted to “discuss ways to calm the situation,” an OIC spokesman said. He said Ihsanoglu had welcomed the suggestion and that arrangements for the trip would be made “through diplomatic means.”
But Muslim rage showed no sign of abating. Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced Tehran had recalled its ambassador to Denmark, joining Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya in pulling their diplomatic representatives.
And the Iraqi Transport Ministry decided to cancel its contracts with Danish firms and reject any offers of Danish reconstruction money. Transport Minister Salam Al-Maliki said the decision would involve contracts in the fields of ports, aviation, rail and maritime transport. “The ministry rejects receiving Danish donations for reconstruction as a form of protest for their act,” he said.
Maliki referred only to Danish contracts but a senior official in the ministry said those with Norwegian firms would be terminated too because media there reprinted the cartoons.
