Tehran, Dec 12, IRNA -- Iran's President Mohammad Khatami here Wednesday described hardline Taliban and their imperialist opponents, obviously the United States, as two blades of the same scissors, which worked to ruin God's religion.

"God's religion today is lying between the two blades of a very dangerous pair of scissors: One blade is the Islam of Taliban, while the other is trying to impose war, hatred, animosity and imperialism on the whole world under the pretext of (fighting) the Islam of Taliban," he told at the inauguration of a paintings exhibition.

"The Islam of Taliban belongs to those who are portraying the beautiful religion of God as ugly with their repellent views and backward ideology as well as their fossilized habits and rigid-mindedness and their attitude towards religion is based on a bunch of illusions and antiquated habits.

"On the opposite side are those powers that are trying to tarnish the image of God's religion, which has turned to a source of uprising for freedom and independence and threat to illegitimate interests of hegemonic powers in many countries," Khatami added.

US has mounted on a self-styled worldwide campaign against terrorism after the September 11 attack on American landmarks, which Washington blames on al-Qaeda and their Afghan-based Taliban allies.

Khatami called on Islamic artists to portray "beauties of God's religion" and show how to free oneself from "existing ugliness".

"The world people today are under the yoke of many repressive systems which have been indulging in killing chances of progress and development among nations and are paying no attention to human rights.

"Dependence, despise, violation of human rights are among the ugliness which exists in our world. An artist must see these and invite world nations to freedom.

"Meanwhile, all Muslim artists, thinkers and statesmen must strive for properly portraying the beauties of God's religion and refrain from remaining silent," the Iranian president went on to say.

Khatami cited the Zionist Israeli regime's daily atrocities against the Palestinian people in occupied lands among ugly pictures of the world.

"Can a committed artist remain silent towards the oppression which the Palestinian people are being subjected to and not call for the establishment of a government in their lands?" he said.

"Can a Muslim accept that some people bear children or are born and die in camps while their land is held occupied by those who have come from the other corner of the world?," Khatami added.