TIBF event must turn into an international festival – IRI president

1391/02/14-08:30

IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) was supposed to help pave the ground for humanity to have brighter prospects ahead and enjoy a better future, according to IBNA.

The president also expressed hope the landmark cultural event would turn into a cultural festival among different nations where intellectuals, theoreticians and personalities from every corner of the world find a tranquil, human space to exchange views and assist one another in making a perfect and prosperous human community.

President Ahmadinejad was speaking to an opening ceremony of the 25th edition of the major international book fair that was staged on Tuesday in Imam Khomeini Mosalla (Grand Mosque), north of Tehran.

President Ahmadinejad termed the international fair a cultural event that helps convenes a large number of artists, intellectuals, scholars and theoreticians in an annual rendezvous and builds a common ground between the world personalities.

The president appreciated the organizers of the book fair as ‘the ones looking to higher prospects loving humanity,’ adding he wished the book fair would turn into a major international cultural festival.

President Ahmadinejad said humanity was a common ground on which scholars and intellectuals worldwide can share their feelings and exchange their views. He said knowledge and culture belonged to human being as a whole and that the convoy of humanity, having been advancing towards the apex of perfection and prosperity in the past ten millenniums, was in need of knowledge and culture.

President Ahmadinejad said every individual in the course of history was pursuing to discover the truth of human being and conquer the peaks of humanity and that members of the community have made enduring efforts to meet the dream. “We are heirs of those past efforts and are expected to pave the ground for the future generations of humanity,” he said.

The IRI president said human being was in need of several elements in its quest of prosperity and perfection, knowledge above all. “Knowledge is a first element that might help human being to burgeon and flourish. Without knowledge, human being has no sense as it is an elixir that wipes out dust from human soul and helps expose human truth,” he said.

The president termed knowledge essential for human perfection and prosperity, adding that knowledge was gateway for human being to tracks of growth and perfection.

The president called love and affection a second element human being needs in its quest of perfection. “The human quest of peaks of perfection, values and truth was motivated by love,” the president said.

He called justice as a third essential element in human growth and perfection, adding that justice paves the ground for human prosperity and perfection.

The president said human being has a single nature at any point of history or any corner of the world. “All humans have been created based on a Godly primordial nature however they usually fail to make use of the capacity,” the president said. “God has created human with lowest possible levels of capacity among other beings while making him or her able to reach highest levels of existence. Human being is enshrouded by God with impediments and constraints and He has demanded him or her to pass through upwards towards the Godly levels.”

The president said human community has had to pass through various ups-and-downs in the course of history while it has been assisted by scholars and men of knowledge in its passage through such decisive moments. “We may enjoy a true prosperity only when we leave behind any racial, sectarian or individual issues and tread the path of prosperity and perfection by knowledge, love and justice,” the president said.

The president said knowledge lifts human being from the existing boundaries in society, adding that the three elements of knowledge, love and justice were global in nature and that the human community was bestowed with them so that it could remove the existing constraints and life the hurdles ahead.

President Ahmadinejad described books as a vehicle of expression, recording and transfer of knowledge, love and justice, adding that only those publications might survive that accommodates true knowledge, signals love or champions the cause of justice.

“Books belong to entire world people as they spread knowledge, love and justice; they could not be confined to any special time or place,” he said, adding that the book was particularly noteworthy in that it serves as a delicate, human space where the souls of intellectuals, artists and lovers of justice are conjoined together.