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Iranians burn American and Israeli flags on Quds Day. (AP/Vahid Salemi)
Iran’s leader seems to be fanning the flames of religious war by accusing the US and Israel of fighting Islam and calling on Muslims worldwide to unite against them.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues to make combative statements against the US and Israel, this time charging that the two nations were waging war against Islam and “endeavoring to harness and weaken Iran through stirring sectarian strife and religious wars between Iran and third-party Muslim states.”
Addressing Hajj officials in Tehran on Saturday, Khamenei said Iran has gained “efficiency and effective experience in recognizing the enemy.”
“Our people have realized that their real stubborn enemy is the world arrogance and Zionism and that’s why they chant slogans against the US and Zionism in all their huge national and Islamic gatherings,” he told the gathering, according to the Iranian Fars news.
Iranians are among the millions of Muslims making the annual Hajj pilgrimige to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Khamenei’s message to the officials in charge of the Hajj, was to encourage Iranians to convince their fellow Muslims from other countries to side with Iran and not with the West.
Iranians are accustomed to chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel” during their mass rallies.
Khamenei accused the US of seeking, since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, to incite Arab countries in the region to make “hostile moves against Iran, but the Iranian nation has always been vigilant, knowing that such third parties are only deceived puppets, and the root cause of the problems returns to their real enemies, the US and Israel.”
Calling for Global Islamic Unity and Power
The Supreme Leader called for unity among the Muslim Ummah – Arabic for nation or global community.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AP/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)
He claimed Iranians “have managed to embrace success” because they have “always stood united irrespective of their religious, ethnic, political and partisan differences.”
The statement appears to be contradictory. He begins by promoting unity via Muslim religious identity – the Ummah – but then stresses the Iranian national identity “irrespective of their religious…differences.”
He further claims that plots by “bullying powers,” meaning the US and Israel, are aimed not just against Iran, but in opposition to the entire Muslim world. “They in fact conspire against the Koran and not Shi’ism and Iran, because they know that the Koran and Islam are the center of awakening nations.”
The Muslim leader further asserted that “tens of think-tanks in the US, Europe, Israel and their affiliated countries are studying Islam and Shiism in a bid to identify and using the means to strike at the components of the Muslim Ummah’s power.”
“The world bullies are seriously aiming to stir violence and discord under the name of Islam and to disrepute the religion of Islam, foment internal fights among Islamic nations and even among the people of one nation to weaken the Muslim Ummah, and transferring the Iranian nation’s experience about unity and recognition of the enemy so other nations in the Hajj season can defuse these plots,” he said.
By: United with Israel Staff
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