Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah urges Muslims to 'punish' Quran desecrators if governments fail to do so

The comments by Hassan Nasrallah came in a video address to tens of thousands gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs to mark Ashura, a Shia holy day commemorating the 7th century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein.

Nasrallah often uses religious occasions to send political messages to followers, and on Saturday slammed recent incidents in which the Quran was burned or otherwise desecrated at authorised demonstrations in Sweden and Denmark.

He said Muslims should watch for the outcome of an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, scheduled to take place in Baghdad on Monday to discuss the organisation's response to the Quran burnings.

The organisation and its member states should "send a firm, decisive and unequivocal message to these governments that any repeat of the attacks will be met with a boycott," Nasrallah said. If they do not, he said, Muslim youth should "punish the desecrators."

He did not elaborate what such a boycott and punishment should entail.

Members of the crowd, who carried banners with religious slogans alongside the flags of Hezbollah, Lebanon and Palestine, chanted, "Oh, Quran, we are at your service; Oh, Hussein, we are at your service."

Shias represent over 10% of the world's 1.8 billion Muslims and view Hussein as the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

Millions of Shia Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and around the world on Friday commemorated Ashura, while Saturday marked the culmination of the observances in countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered in the Iraqi city of Karbala, where Hussein is entombed in a gold-domed shrine. In the streets of the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, mourners gathered to watch reenactments of the Battle of Karbala and Hussein’s death.

In the streets, young men clad in black and white slashed their heads with swords and knives to demonstrate their grief. Friends swabbed each other’s heads with tissues and handed each other water.#

In Syria’s capital, Damascus, the crowds were mourning not only the death of Hussein but a deadly attack in the suburb of Sayida Zeinab, home to a shrine to Zeinab, the daughter of the first Shia imam, Ali, and granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

A bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded there on Thursday, killing at least six people and wounding dozens more. On Tuesday, another bomb in a motorcycle had wounded two people.

On Friday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying Thursday's bombing came "during their annual polytheistic rituals." The group’s extreme interpretation of Islam holds Shia Muslims to be apostates.