Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo, which stared with an affectionate welcome from Egypt’s new Islamist president, turned less pleasant as the day wore on. First, he was lectured by a senior Sunni Muslim cleric and then was nearly struck with a shoe by a man furious at Iran’s support for the Syrian government.
A correspondent for Turkey’s Anadolu Agency captured the unsuccessful shoe attack on video and reported that the bearded man who tried to strike the Iranian president was a Syrian who shouted, “You killed our brothers!â€
According to the Turkish news agency’s report, the man “was immediately detained†after hitting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards with his shoe at Cairo’s al-Hussein mosque.
While striking someone with the sole of one’s shoe has been a sign of disrespect in Arab countries for years, the insult spread to other parts of the world after an Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, nearly hit President George W. Bush with both of his shoes at a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.
