Via INN:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s attempt to blame western states for the rise of radical Islam in his speech to the UN General Assembly nearly backfired awkwardly when he used a racist Farsi expression – but was saved by a quick-thinking translator.

During the speech on Friday, Rouhani claimed that “certain Intelligence agencies have put the blade in the hand of the drunken Zangi” – a phrase referring to irresponsible and dangerous jihadi groups, which was translated simply as “madmen” by the translator.

But according to Iranian opposition blog azarmehr, the word “Zangi” is actually a derogatory term for black slaves from Zanzibar in Farsi.

His use of the term was apparently based on a line from a poem by ancient Persian Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi: “It is better to put a sword in the hand of an intoxicated negro than ‘that knowledge’ should fall to a worthless fool.”