On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, Paris became victim to a terrorist attack, where militants opened fire with shotguns in the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding several others. In another terror attack, on Friday, four Jewish hostages were killed at a kosher supermarket in the eastern part of Paris. The world showed solidarity with France a few days’ later where prominent leaders from all around the world, including Muslim leaders, walked arm in arm on the streets of Paris, to pay tribute to the victims that lost their lives. Despite this grand gesture of unity, one which condemned the acts as being a violation of freedom of speech, Iran seems to be the odd one out. Other than the current regime staying silent while others proactively condemned the acts, a senior Iranian cleric has actually expressed his pleasure at the terrorist attacks that left 17 dead, labeling the participants in the mass rally as ‘murderers’.
On Wednesday, January 7, 2015, Paris became victim to a terrorist attack, where militants opened fire with shotguns in the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding several others. In another terror attack, on Friday, four Jewish hostages were killed at a kosher supermarket in the eastern part of Paris. The world showed solidarity with France a few days’ later where prominent leaders from all around the world, including Muslim leaders, walked arm in arm on the streets of Paris, to pay tribute to the victims that lost their lives. Despite this grand gesture of unity, one which condemned the acts as being a violation of freedom of speech, Iran seems to be the odd one out. Other than the current regime staying silent while others proactively condemned the acts, a senior Iranian cleric has actually expressed his pleasure at the terrorist attacks that left 17 dead, labeling the participants in the mass rally as ‘murderers’
Muhammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, a highly influential cleric, claimed during Friday prayers in Tehran that: “Thank God, those who supported ISIS and terrorism and nurtured them, now the very same terrorists have acted against them. For him, these killers were finally showing their ugly faces, by which they were revealing their animosity against. This was a wakeup call for the whole Muslim world, where for him it was high time that it united against the common threat. Kermani also condemned the mass march by millions of French in defense of freedom of expression, adding: “It is surprising that these criminals have held a rally and condemned terrorism, those who themselves are not only the real terrorists, but also nurture terrorists.”
The only other break in their silence was a limited statement passed by Iran’s foreign ministry’s spokesperson a few hours later where she blames the Western countries for this atrocity by saying that “Unfortunately, incorrect policies and duplicity towards the use of violence and extremism disseminates this kind of actions and behavior”. Hence, rather than condemning the perpetuators of this savage crime , the current Iranian regime is more concerned about condemning the abuse of freedoms in the democratic countries, staying true to their own current regime, one that is laced with terror and suppression.
Mrs Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, condemned the silence of Iranian regime’s leaders, and their upright avocation for terrorism where in a conference held north of Paris, a few days after the Paris attacks, titled “In 2015, all for tolerance and democracy against religious extremism” she expressed solidarity with the families of the victims, who lost their lives to the fight against religious fascism. In this conference with the presence of political dignitaries and parliamentarians from various countries throughout the world, Rajavi called the international crisis caused by the rise of ISIS and fanaticism under the banner of Islam, a product of the Iranian regime and the policy of appeasement with this regime.
Another senior cleric leading the Friday sermon in Iran’s second biggest city of Mashhad, actually claimed that the Charlie Hebdo attack was committed by the French Government itself. Cleric Ahmad Alamalhod said: “The attack against the office of the magazine was carried out precisely according to the scenario that France had planned”. For him, these killings were done to create a new wave of Islamophobia, one advocated by the French-Zionism interest
