Iran’s IRGC chief vows punishment after desecration of Quran in Europe

The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened punishment on Thursday for those behind the desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, in Europe.

“Today, we are the guardians of Islam and the Quran … We say to those who burned the Quran, this fire will catch your bodies and turn them into corpses,” state news agency IRNA quoted Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami as saying.

“Live in secret from today and have nightmares every night, Muslims will not leave you even if decades pass,” added Salami.

Last month, a far-right activist from Denmark burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Days later, a Dutch leader of the far-right Pegida movement tore pages from a Quran near the Dutch parliament.

Salami referenced the attack against novelist Salman Rushdie in August, saying that those who desecrated the Quran should expect a similar fate.

The IRGC commander made the same reference last month last month regarding the staff of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei deemed “insulting” by Tehran.

Rushdie was stabbed on August 12 as he prepared to speak at an event in western New York. He had long faced death threats for his fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses,” published in 1988.

In 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time, pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, that called for the murder of Rushdie and anyone involved in the publication of the book for blasphemy.