Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Jan. 21 posted an open letter to Western youth on his website, asking them to “gain direct and firsthand knowledge” about Islam instead of information based on “resentments and prejudices.” It might be the first time a senior Islamic cleric has directly addressed the youth of the West about his religion. The timing appears to have been an important factor in issuing the letter just two weeks after the Jan. 7 attack by Islamist extremists on the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that set off a new wave of Islamophobia in the West, with anti-Islamization movements already gaining momentum, particularly in Germany and France.
The letter from Iran’s supreme leader arrived as a surprise, reflecting a new approach by the Islamic republic, whose first leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwa calling for the death of the British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie for “The Satanic Verses,” a book regarded by Muslims worldwide as a provocation and blasphemous against Islam.
