Webinar on clarifying Leader's letter to Western youth held in Stockholm

The webinar on reading out the Leader of the Islamic Revolution's letter to the Western youth was held in Stockholm with the participants from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy in attendance on Wednesday.

Following the terrorist events in France on January 21, 2015 and the publication of insulting images to Islam and Muslims in a French publication, along with an intensifying anti-Islamic and Islamophobic media campaign by Western authorities, the Leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, wrote a letter to young people in Europe and North America.

The letter addressed young people in Europe and North America directly, and called on them to explore the motives behind this broad Western Anti-Islamic campaign.

The Leader urged young Europeans and North Americans to find out more about genuine Islam from its original sources, and not to rely on prejudiced Western information on Islam, and to try to get a direct and immediate cognition of Islam, in response to a flood of prejudices and negative propaganda.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution's letter issuance addressing Western youth, 2 specialized webinars were planned by the Cultural Attaché Office of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Stockholm and the first webinar entitled Reading out the Leader's letter to Western youth was attended by participants from Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy with of academics, students and cultural activists from different countries being present at the event.

Hoda Ahmadi, a researcher and student of religious studies from Malmö in Sweden, spoke about the philosophy of the letter issuance and its timely necessities, and by analyzing the cultural situation of the West, compared it with Imam Khomeini's letter to Gorbachev and its potential capacities and effects and discussed the need for its widespread dissemination.

A cultural-religious activist and secretary of the Italian Islamic Unity Center also introduced the formation of the ISIL terrorist outfit as a manifestation of deviant Islam {fake version of Islam), a conspiracy to tarnish the image of Islam and Muslims, and the letter and its message as a strategy to counter and neutralize this conspiracy.

 At the end of the meeting, Seyed Zia Hashemi, Iran's cultural attaché in Stockholm, analyzed three important aspects of the letter, including the content of the letter, literature and the logic of compiling and selecting its audience, namely the youth of Western society.