Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who made a hate-filled speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday blaming the U.S. directly for the creation and success of ISIS in the Middle East, fumbled badly when he used an openly racist statement denigrating black people.
The leader of Iran was, fortunately for him, saved from complete embarrassment during the speech by a quick thinking translator who, instead of repeating the actual translation of the offensive word, used the word “madmen.”
Rouhani said in his native tongue of Farsi at the Security Council, “Certain Intelligence agencies have put the blade in the hand of the drunken Zangi.”
In this case, Rouhani was referring to ISIS when he said Zangi, but according to an Iranian blog called Azarmehr, the actual word is a derogatory term for black slaves from Zanzibar.
The Iranian President’s use of the word is based on an excerpt from an ancient Persian Sufi poem by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, which says, “It is better to put a sword in the hand of an intoxicated negro than ‘that knowledge’ should fall to a worthless fool.”
It’s just as well the quick thinking translator, who was translating in real-time , changed the real meaning of the word, saving the president considerable embarrassment.
As it happens, this isn’t the first time that Iranian Presidents have made comments in speeches that led to disputes among translators.
Back in 2005, during then-president’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad time in control , he openly called for Israel to be”wiped off the map” at a conference entitled “A World Without Zionism”.
At the time, Iranian officials and other analysts insisted Ahmadinejad’s comments were mistranslated, while others pointed to the fact that the Iranian regime openly calls for an end to the State of Israel and actively funds terrorist groups committed to the Jewish state’s destruction made the debate somewhat academic.
