Leader Renews Calls for Unity among Muslim Nations

Addressing a gathering of Iranian authorities and Islamic states' ambassadors to Tehran on Tuesday, Ayatollah Khamenei said stirring sectarian strife and Shiite-Sunni conflict is enemies' key tool to undermine Islam.

As regards the reason behind the enemies' strategy, Imam Khamenei said, “One of the main objectives of the arrogance front to sow discord among Muslims is to cover up its problems and protect the occupying Zionist regime (Israel)."

The leader further asked Muslim nations, especially the elite of the Islamic Ummah, to wisely recognize the realities on the ground through a correct understanding of the enemies’ plots.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Imam Khamenei pointed to the extensive efforts to suppress the popular uprisings in the Islamic countries, also known as Islamic Awakening Movement, and said, “Although this suppression seems to have yielded result in some regions, but the fact is that the Islamic awakening cannot be suppressed.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also commented on the wrong and sketchy perceptions of Islam and the holy Quran, saying that the lack of correct view about Islam and deep understanding of Islamic teachings and Quranic principles have led some people to oppress and slaughter Muslims and even abduct girls in some African countries in the name of Islam.

The Boko Haram, a terrorist group acting in Nigeria, has been fighting for five years, carrying out bombings and attacks on civilians and the security forces in the African country.

Last month, the notorious armed group kidnapped more than 200 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria.

Public outrage has been growing over the mass abduction of the Nigerian schoolchildren.

Also earlier, a senior Iranian cleric strongly condemned the Boko Haram group as “savage” terrorists who commit atrocities in the name of Islam, stressing that they are not Muslims at all.

“The world should know that they (the Boko Haram members) are strangers to Islam and are not Muslims at all,” Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi said in Iran’s central city of Qom.

The top cleric noted that those African militants are disowned by the Muslim world, and added, “We believe they are savage people whom should not be even called human beings.”

Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi further called for vigilance in the face of such “irrational” violent groups, warning that the enemies of Islam in the West may start mounting an anti-Islam propaganda campaign under the pretext that the Boko Haram militants are Muslims.