Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said that current US foreign policy triggers terrorism and violence in the world, but American Muslims can play a key role in promoting peace and security.
In his first public appearances during a nearly two-week visit to the US, Khatami spoke twice on Saturday in the Chicago area. He is the most senior Iranian official to visit the US since Islamic fundamentalists seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 during the Carter administration and held Americans hostage for 444 days.
"As America claims to be fighting terrorism, it implements policies that cause the intensification of terrorism and institutionalized violence," Khatami said during a 40-minute keynote address on Saturday at the Islamic Society of North America's 43rd annual convention.
Speaking through a translator, Khatami told tens of thousands of Muslims gathered at the meeting that there is a chronic misunderstanding between the West and the East that goes all the way back to the Crusades and continues today.
He said American Muslims "through active participation in the social arena" can form lobbying groups and form a consensus with other Americans.
"Public opinion can be rescued from the grips of ignorance and blunder, and the domination of arrogant, warmongering and violence-triggering policies will end," he said.
Khatami called the US "a great nation" and said that as president of Iran he was among the first world leaders to condemn the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I knew this inferno would only intensify extremism and one-sidedness and would have no outcome except to retard justice and intellect and sacrifice righteousness and humanity," he said, referring to the attacks.
He said Muslims must forge a new identity that embraces the modern world, tolerates other religions and works toward peace.
Khatami will make stops at universities, speak at the UN and attend two Islamic conferences during his trip, an official close to him said on Friday.
Khatami arrived in the US on Thursday after the US State Department issued the visa on Tuesday and put no travel restrictions on Khatami.
He was invited to the US by the UN's Alliance of Civilizations, of which he is a founding member. The alliance's high-level group, which will meet tommorrow and Wednesday, strives to foster cross-cultural understanding between Western and Islamic states.
Earlier on Saturday, Khatami spoke to several hundred leaders of the Islamic community at Bait ul Ilm, an Islamic center in suburban Streamwood.
Speaking in Farsi with English intrepretation, Khatami focused on Islamic religious themes in his remarks at the Islamic center.
"There is a great opportunity of dialogue and cooperation among people of faith, Khatami said.
"But I mean people of true faith. I don't mean extremists and terrorists," he said.
Khatami's visit to the Islamic Society has drawn criticism from the Chicago Jewish Federation.
That group has issued a statement that condemns Khatami, saying he's "behaved as an enemy of America and our most cherished values."
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