A senior Iranian cleric has warned the ongoing spiraling protests against a US-made anti-Islam movie have triggered the second wave of the Islamic awakening that would obliterate the United States.

“This insult touched off the second wave of Islamic awakening and we hope that this wave would grow into a tsunami which would annihilate the US,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, the top member of the Assembly of Experts, told thousands of clerics in the holy city of Qom on Sunday.

“The Americans are frustrated. But if they are honest in their claims that they do not support this [anti-Islam] campaign they should punish the film director who has surrendered to police in order to stave off any repetition,” he said.

Khatami said the blasphemous film is a “Zionist-American” movie, adding, “This crime is led by the US and the Zionists.”

“Today, the wave of global hatred is spiraling against you [the US] and if until yesterday, Iran was [the only country] against you [the US], today the entire Muslim world shouts the slogan of Down with the US,” he noted.


Khatami dismissed the US justification of freedom of expression for its inaction against the blasphemous film. “They say people enjoy freedom of expression there. This justification is a lie. In your countries, nobody can speak differently from you about Holocaust. [Can you still claim that] you support freedom of expression?”

Fury over the US-made anti-Islam film, produced by Israeli-American Sam Bacile, has spread across the Muslim world, with protesters marching on the US embassies and torching the US flags.

Bacile has assumed responsibility for the direction and production of the blasphemous film, which he said was made thanks to Jewish donations totaling USD 5 million.
press tv/281

News ID 182735