Islam rejects violence by any group, religious affiliation

President Rouhani addressed a conference in Tehran, the 30th Islamic Unity Conference on Thursday where he urged Muslim denominations to abandon mutual defamation and instead to hate the common enemy: Zionist regime. The current edition of the conference brings together 220 scholars and dignitaries from 60 Islamic countries with the theme of fighting Takfirism.

President Rouhani blamed colonialism of the past centuries for the current state of the affairs in world of Islam; “foreign intervention incited strong response from all Muslims, including Shia and Sunni, who fought for their independence, through teachings of the Holy Quran which mandated their resistance and defiance of the despotism inside and colonialism and imperialism outside,” he emphasized.

“A peculiar problem is what incorporates both evils into one entity; the enemies of Islam attracted groups of extremist Muslims to their highly deviant version of the scriptures, and foster them as transformative forces of instability and chaos in Islamic lands, while safely plundering the resources in Muslim countries.”

“The Islamic world should abandon perennial hatred of fellow Muslims to embrace the spirit of unity and to see clearly what is happening in Islamic countries; they had devastated Mosul and Aleppo, both historic cities and cradles of thousands of years of civilization; they had sold Muslim as well as Christian young generation to slavery in lands once under the Islamic rule,” Rouhani objected. “Violence is rejected in Islam, either by a group of fanatics or a denomination excommunicating others as heretics; the Muslim scholars should awaken the masses to this reality and to explain to the public the hazards of the authoritarian thinking,” he urged.

Rouhani rejected blanketing terms of abuse as Shia Crescent or Sunni Triangle as only used disparagingly by both Islamic great sects; “all Muslims are equal and should equally respect others; unity should embrace all; young populations should receive inspiration and hope; otherwise, they will easily fall into traps of the extremists and terrorism” he concluded.