TRIPOLI — Hundreds of Lebanese took to the streets of the northern city of Tripoli on Saturday, Jan. 4, to protest the torching of a decades-old library owned by a Greek Orthodox priest.

The demonstrators held up banners that read “Tripoli, peaceful town” and “This is contrary to the values of the Prophet Mohammad.”

Assailants set alight the Saeh library belonging to Father Ibrahim Surouj on Friday night, destroying two-thirds of the 80,000 books and manuscripts it stored, a security official said.

Father Ibrahim Surouj stands in his library in Tripoli. More than two-thirds of the 80,000 books and manuscripts were destroyed.

The attack came a day after “a pamphlet was discovered inside one of the books at the library that was insulting to Islam and Prophet Mohammad,” the official said at the time.

Later, however, “it became clear the priest had nothing to do with the pamphlet,” said the same source.

“Then on Friday night, the library was torched,” he added.

The attack left the shelves and walls of the library charred.

But the Greek Orthodox priest forgave those responsible for the attack, in a statement aired on television on Saturday.

The library is located in the historic heart of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city and scene of frequent Syria-related violence pitting Sunnis against members of the minority Alawite community, to which Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

Sectarian violence involving the city’s Christians has been extremely rare in recent years.

But Friday’s incident comes amid a backdrop of growing religious radicalism in Lebanon related to the war in neighboring Syria.