The Council On Foreign Relations claimed that it has obtained a copy of the letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to US President George W. Bush.
The link here points to a pdf file. It is not the official translation. I have to say that the quality of the translation is not very good. It is kind of crude and punctuations marks were not used properly. But the central points of the letter did come through.
Have a read and draw your own conclusions, instead of just getting the sound bite version from the mainstream news outlets. Most of them just quoted one sentence from the letter, namely, the one when he commented about rights of technical research.
2 responses to “Letter from Ahmadinejad to Bush”
You’re right about the translation, and the sound bites taking bits and pieces out of context. I think I mentioned that I’m studying Arabic, and the thing is it’s difficult to translate, period. Many concepts that would be expressed with a single word (like “boy”) have different words in Arabic, depending on age, etc. I really think the only way to understand a culture is to truly understand the language. (BTW, Arabic is tough to learn 🙂 ).
For anyone else out there that hasn’t read the letter (even this particular translation), read it. He makes some decent arguments (well, more like items to ponder). For those not familiar with Islam, it’s also a good introduction to the similarity between Islam and Christianity – Christ is recognized in Islam, he’s a prophet like Mohammed. I’m not saying I’m pro-Iran, or support anything their doing, or think that Ahmadinejad is a sound, rational person, but in order to even discuss issues we (and I mean we, the entire world) have to understand their point of view and where they’re coming from. Otherwise foreign policy amounts to just taking comments out of context.
Well said, James. Great comment!