Iranian President Claims Islam is Not a Religion of Peace

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 03 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a parliamentary committee that his remarks calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and describing the Holocaust as a “myth” had a profound impact on Muslims around the world, providing a “shock” that was needed “to awaken the Muslims who are in a state of lethargy”, a government-owned news agency reported on Tuesday… “Some in Iran and abroad thought that we were making these speeches without a specific plan and policy, but we have been pursuing a specific strategy in this regard”, the Iranian president told a group of Islamist student activists in a midnight meeting last week, according to the Persian-language website Khedmat, which was launched by Ahmadinejad’s campaign team during the presidential elections last year. “The wave [that these speeches created] has a lot of supporters among young people in the Muslim world and it will continue to move forward”, Ahmadinejad said.