Amir Abbas Fakhravar Quotes
No one wants war, neither we nor you. Our greatest efforts have been focusing on own people and forces within our boundaries, without war, to uproot the zealot Mullahs governing our country and replace them with a secular, democratic government which respects human rights and freedom.
Mullahs are Muslim Clerics who at the time controlled Iran which was a Fundamentalist, Islamic Theocracy.
Amir-Abbas Fakhravar, Siavash, Iranian Journalist, Student Leader & Reformer, Testimony, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. July 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This statement was made 20 years before the Arab Spring of 2011.
Most modern Islamic clerics were and are shocked at this interpretation of Islam,
The quotation is notable as it illustrates the great difficulty that modern democracies have with extreme Islamic fundamentalists. Their very perception and world view is so different that often we think of the extremists as insane and they often feel the same way about us.
Islamic religious extremists do not allow freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to life, freedom from torture and mutilation, self-government, gender equality, protection of children or women from violence, sexual freedom, freedom of expression, reproductive rights for women, right work, which are just a few. The modern Islamic extremists allow about the same human rights as did the Christian Kings and the Church of 1000 years ago. Ironically, it is less respect for human rights that many of the great Islamic societies provided 1000 years ago.
Amir Abbas Fakhravar (Persian: امیرعباس فخرآور), research fellow and visiting lecturer at the Center for the Study of Culture and Security at The Institute of World Politics, is an Iranian dissident. Fakhravar served as the Secretary General of the Confederation of Iranian Students and President of the "Iranian Freedom Institute" in Washington, D.C. Currently, Fakhravar is the Senate Chairman of National Iranian Congress (NIC) an organization opposing the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.