December 23, 2016
With the presidential elections just five months away, President Rohani has started using the kind of harsh anti-foreigner language he has normally avoided, presumably to try to appeal to those who might otherwise vote against him.
In a speech last Thursday to an Islamic unity conference, Rohani urged Muslims around the world to unite against the “great conspiracy” that he said the enemies of Islam have launched against the faith.
In the speech, he attributed actions of the Islamic State to the West, to the point of even accusing the major powers of enslaving Christian girls!
“The aim of the enemies is to create hopelessness and destroy the opportunities of Muslim communities,” the president said. He then proceeded to list many of the atrocities carried out by the Islamic State, but laid them at the feat of Westerners.
“Big powers set up streams of blood in the streets of Mosul and destroyed this beautiful city. They took away sleep from Muslims and enslaved Muslim and Christian girls,” he said.
Rohani said Western powers and their regional allies are responsible for the destruction of cities and the beheading of Muslim youths.
“First and foremost, the sin related to these crimes falls on the big colonialists, Western powers and occupiers of the region who opened the way to terrorist groups, armed them and bought smuggled oil from them, allowing looted works from destroyed museums to be sold in their markets.
“The second culprits are some of the Muslim countries that gave money and weapons to terrorist groups,” Rohani said.
The president called on Muslim thinkers to invite young people to the true message of Islam.
Rohani cited what he called the centuries-old coexistence between Shia and Sunni Muslims as well as other religious and ethnic groups, when “we used to respect one another and refrained from insulting our religious luminaries.”
The president described Shia and Sunni Muslims as brothers in faith.
“Shia crescent or Sunni crescent, both are wrong. It is not Shia or Sunni that are squared off against each other. As the late Imam (Khomeini) said, it is rather the American Islam standing against the genuine Mohammedan Islam.”
