TEHRAN -- President Seyed Mohammad Khatami said here on Friday that the only way for the world Muslims to remain intact amid the prevailing threats, and to recreate their glorious Islamic culture is to return to the spirit of the holy Qoran and to embrace it wholeheartedly. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 19th Tehran International Holy Qoran Contests before hundreds of political, religious and cultural authorities from Iran and contestants from 41 countries, the president added, "Islam is seriously threatened both from within and from outside the Islamic communities today and the only path towards salvation is true re-embracing of the spirit of the holy Qoran." He defined the threats against Muslims from within their own societies as "backwardness, poverty, ignorance, and in some occasions, tyrant regimes," and the threats from outside, as "the superpowers that wish to take control of the Islamic countries' resorts, keeping them for good as satellites rotating around the axis of the metropolis of power, under constant threats and pressure." The president emphasized, "If we wish to save ourselves from the prevailing undesirable conditions, to restore our glorious past, and to become the creators of a new prosperous civilization, we need to revive the spirit of the holy Qoran in our societies." The president considered "monotheism in the field of beliefs; abiding by ethics in the filed of personal affairs and justice and equality in the field of social affairs," as the spirit of Qoranic teachings, and the fundamentals of its invitation at all times and in all places, arguing, "free and authorized man, that can choose and rule over his own destiny is the axis of all those fields of qur'anic teachings and the context in which they need to be applied."

Khatami said that the rituals and facades of religions form their identities, and to the extent of performing them, the individuals are considered pious, or infidel, but the facade of each religion is only the path towards reaching its core. He added, "If we halt upon reaching the facade and consider it an ultimate goal, that will deprive us form embracing the truth."

The president considered one of the greatest plagues inflicting the Islamic world currently as tendencies towards embracing the facade of the religion and failing to fathom deep in Islam's reality.

He further argued, "Today we have psalms, we have the facades of religion, too, but where are the ethics, justice and kindness? Where is piety and ignoring worldly possessions? Are we, Muslims, truly remembering god in all our deeds?" He warned that if in a society the facades of the religion would be fully manifested, and yet bad-temperedness, poverty, ignorance, inequality and discrimination, and love of wealth would be observed, it means we are far from embracing the true spirit of the religion.

President Khatami reiterated, "When the religion would be devaluated to worshiping facades, the others would have to act pretentiously, and then, oppression, enmity, cheating, negation and hatred, which are all results of facades devoid of the truth, would prevail in the society.

He said that through embracing the real spirit of Qoran, the Islamic Umma (nation) would be able not only to revive its proud past, but also to become the core of illumination, brilliance, and countless blessings for the whole mankind. The president added, "The great social and historic philosophy behind monotheist religions, including Islam, is that their glorious era is not restricted to the past, but is promised to be in the future, and our generation, and our era, should endeavor to make God's promise come true, through taking long strides in that direction." The head of Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution referred to the glorious past of the Islamic culture in the history of the mankind, considering the most important aspect of it as "having taken shape around the axis of a holy text, namely the Qoran, as the only text accepted and respected by the whole Islamic community, that is the secrete of existence of a kind of solidarity in the culture of the Islamic societies, despite all bloody conflicts throughout history." Khatami added, "Although the world Muslims are today far from that glorious civilization, its foundation and generating source, the holy Qoran, is still among us, and the Muslims can, by referring to his eternal text, and having a genuine understanding of the realities of the day, find authentic, genuine and practical answers to all their difficult questions fathoming in its depths."

He reiterated that Qoran dose not belong to one generation, so that with the passage of their day the Qoranic civilization, too, would perish, but is an eternally generating source, capable of creating glorious civilizations. "But in order to revive that glory, we first need to understand the realities of our time, and then to be able to seek for the answers to the mankind's most complicated and critical questions in the holy Qoran."

The president at the beginning of his address congratulated the world Muslims, and the Iranian nation on the glorious occasion of the appointment of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), who was "the perfect human being, the best of God's creatures at all times and the ideal model for all monotheists and noble ones," as god's messenger.