Who Is Fuelling Extremism in the World? An Iranian speaks from a Chicago hotel
Let us see what an important Iranian sitting in one of Chicago’s smartest hotels has to say about ‘extremism’. Sounds interesting. What is more interesting is the timing of allowing him to enter the USA when the American administration seems poised to take on Iran on the nuclear issue.
“The Iranian might appear an improbable figure in the breakfast room of the hotel, dressed in his black turban and long gown, his spectacles giving him the appearance of a university don – which he once was – rather than the seer of Iran, a man whose demands for a civil society and democracy at home were overwhelmed by the ascetic clerics who surround the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
“Yet he is enormously important in the Sunni as well as the Shia Muslim worlds as a philosopher-scholar, which is probably why the Bush administration gave him a visa, and his message was the sharpest he has ever delivered to the Muslim world and the secular West.”
He said: “We have to find ways to confront these people on both sides. We need public opinion to be influenced … And now the neo-conservative policies have created this sort of war.”
Enough of suspense. Who is this man…Read on here.
10 Responses to “Who Is Fuelling Extremism in the World? An Iranian speaks from a Chicago hotel”
The article ends with this:
One man’s wisdom is another man’s propaganda, I guess.
Anything written by Robert Frisk has to be taken with a grain (or huge tablet) of salt. He is as openly anti-America, and anti-Western civilization as anybody writing today.
He is completely intellectually dishonest, and is of such low reputation that to Fisk (to prove specious by means of refutation by examples of actual facts) is now a verb.
Khatami should NOT have been permitted to enter the US.
More about Khatami HERE:
From http://WWW.MEMRITV.ORG, VIEWED IN ALL 192 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD
Special Dispatch – Iran
September 1, 2006 – No. 1279
From the MEMRI TV Archives – Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami: “Difficult to Distinguish Between President Bush &Bin Laden”; America is the Root of Worldwide Terror; “There Will Be No Change in Relations Between Iran &U.S.”; “We Will Not Relinquish Our Right to Enrich Uranium”; &Debating Tehran University Students
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit: MEMRI
The following are MEMRI TV clips with former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. They include interviews covered by Iranian Channel 1, Al-Arabiya TV, and Al-Jazeera TV.
Iranian President Khatami: I Expect No Change in U.S.-Iranian Relations; We Love Hizbullah; Chirac Told Us He Never Called to Disarm Hizbullah
The following are excerpts from an interview with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami that was aired July 14, 2005 by Al-Arabiyya TV:
TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT MEMRI
Jerusalem Post 09/01/2006:
Jewish groups in the US and American lawmakers are protesting the administration’s decision to grant a visa to former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami, who was invited to give a series of speeches in the US.
The State Department issued Khatami a visitor’s visa with no restrictions, though an official spokesman stressed that he will have no meetings with official US representatives during his visit.
Khatami is expected to give a speech next week at the National Cathedral in Washington, to meet with former president Jimmy Carter and to speak at events at the UN and Harvard University.
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group representing 51 Jewish organizations, issued a statement expressing disappointment over the decision to allow Khatami into the US.
“He presented himself as a moderate leader, but proved to be no different than the hardliners and ultimately worked in concert with them,” it said of Khatami, citing the facts that during his term as president, Iran built up its nuclear program, provided Hizbullah with rockets and supported terror groups.
Jewish activists and Israeli diplomats have expressed their opposition to the Khatami visit in conversations with administration officials, but the US maintained that since there is no political substance to the visit, he would be allowed to come to the US and attend events focusing on the role of religions in promoting peace.
A White House official said Wednesday that the administration expects that Khatami will “face tough questions” from his audiences regarding the behavior of Iran in the past and the present and that he will be asked about human rights abuses that occurred during his presidency.
Khatami will be the most senior Iranian official to visit the US since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The most significant event in his US schedule is his meeting with Carter, whose term was marked by the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran. The 52 Americans held hostage were only released after Carter lost the 1980 election, a lose that was largely due to his inability to end the crisis.
Several US lawmakers have also protested the decision to allow Khatami enter the country. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehitnen (R-FL), who chairs the House subcommittee on the Middle East, said that “it is mystifying that we would roll out the red carpet for a person who has incited violence against civilians and who has expressed incendiary rhetoric against the United States and our allies.”
If Chalabi can visit here, whats different with Khatami. I suppose were getting a balanced view from MEMRI – LOL. When do the bombs start dropping on Narantz – we have such great a source of ME intell as MEMRI.
Wait, I thought the Bush administration stifled all dissent??
They will probably label Khatami as a Democratic sympathiser. I can see the Howard Dean and Khatami agree on GWOT strategy anyday now. CS can you link to this in the Liberal MSM- LOL.
Fisk is pretty worthless, IMO. And at least according to Fisk, Khatami apparently has a real problem with cause and effect. The events of 9/11 gave the neocons a reason to start this war according to this article, and terror was the reaction. Sorry, but 9/11 was terrorism as was the first attack on the towers. This administration blew it by moving past Afghanistan to Iraq, which had nothing to do with terrorism. We should have stayed in Afghanistan and finished the real job, including the rebuilding of Afghanistan. The international PR, including in the Arab world, would have been priceless. Instead we have an attack on a country that everyone in the world knew had nothing to do with 9/11 to feed conspiracy theorists who used the invasion of Iraq as ammunition for their “war on Islam” meme.
Actually some Conservative commentators are already very happily labelling Jimmy Carter an islamo-fascist appeaser, as he is planning to meet with Khatami during his visit here. I guess at 80, Carter no longer cares what is said or written about him.