TEHRAN — When voters go to the polls on March 14 to select members of Parliament, they may be able to choose only between conservative candidates and other conservative candidates, leaders of Iran’s main reform party said Wednesday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/world/middleeast/24iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Have the Courage to Say No to Islam
By: Amil Imani
Nearly 1400 years ago, a group of nomads from across the scorching Arabian Desert conquered Iran (Persia), the greatest empire known to the history of mankind. With that, they injected their Islamic virus into the veins of their victim: the Iranian people.
Isn’t it time for the Iranians, in a show of solidarity, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the civilized free people of the world to defeat this virulent disease of Islam? In most other lands conquered by Islam, the conquered peoples have lost their identity and heritage and embraced the ways of their new rulers, under an “Arab” identity. Conversely, in Iran a band of indigenous victims, “infected” by Islam, has mindlessly turned on their Iranian countrymen and tried to rob them of their remaining ancient heritage. It is exactly this savage minority that has established an oppressive tyrannical rule and wields power against the Iranian people. Yet even under the rule of Islamofascism, the overwhelming majority of Iranians of various ethnicities and religions remain faithful to their ancient creed – a creed that was given to the world by Zoroaster.
The twenty-first century presents great challenges and opportunities that demand new ways of thinking and behaving. The doctrine of Islam may have been appropriate for the desert dwellers of Arabia some 1400 years ago, for the very people stigmatized in Islamic literature as “Jahil” (ignoramus). But it is dysfunctional today, to say the least. As a matter of fact, Islam went astray from the very beginning and inflicted a great deal of suffering on both its followers as well as those who resisted its advance.
All pre-Islamic achievements that may strengthen the attraction on the part of the Iranian populace are de-emphasized and sometimes even falsely attributed to Islam, to prevent the average Iranian and the world at large from finding out the historical truths about the destruction and retardation Islam has brought to the region. Islam continues to take credit for the arts and sciences produced by the peoples it has conquered -- and they were mostly Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians, Mesopotamians, and Babylonians.
Keep in mind that Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah --the Qur'an-- the same charter that they held in one hand while slashing the throats of millions of innocent Iranians and yelling joyously "Allah is the greatest" the whole time.
Dear Iranians, I am compelled to write this today and the words just stream through me without any outline or preconceptions. I am talking about this today, partly because it is timely, partly because it is good to know what Islam has done to our precious culture. Some things did not have to turn out as they did. Truth and provocative ideas ought to be welcomed by all of us. “A Slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts” said Euripides. Yet provocative ideas by themselves may not be enough. Actions are needed to correct the past mistakes and that starts with you.
Dear Iranians, as long as you remain a “Muslim” (as you are by default and not by choice), you will remain enslaved by a violent foreign creed and culture. You are unable to think for yourselves and break free. As long as you remain Muslim, you cannot possibly be called an Iranian. Being Iranian is defined by a state of mind, not by a place of residence, your language, your dialect, or even your genetic makeup or race. The barbaric Islamist mullahs and their mercenaries presently ruling Iran are not Iranians by any definition, except by virtue of an identity card. They are Islamofascists who have betrayed their magnificent heritage and have enlisted themselves in the service of a most oppressive and demeaning ideology, Islam.
The detoxification of Islam must start with you. It is you who should pick up the flag of freedom and march in the streets and defend your ancestors who were brutally murdered by the hands of the Arab invaders and forced you to become like them.
Remember, life is precious. It is to be protected, nurtured and celebrated. Humankind is moving, perhaps at a glacier pace, toward reconciliation, ever-expanding inclusiveness without any group or ideology imposing itself on others. Any attempt against this trend of unity in diversity is doomed to failure, as exemplified by the demise of fascism and communism. The charter of Islam, the Quran, for the most part, preaches discrimination, death and imposition of its dogma on everyone. Islam, just like fascism and communism, is a dysfunctional ideology that needs to be abandoned.
Humanity has matured considerably since the time of Muhammad. In order to continue its forward march, mankind must follow a roadmap appropriate for its age and state of development. It is foolish to insist that a book, which demands terrorism and was written over 1400 years ago, must serve as the one and only guide for humanity.
Let us remember that the Arabs who sallied out of the deserts of Arabia did not fan out to the outside world with the Quran in one hand and flowers in the other, preaching love and peace from street corner to street corner, aiming to capture the hearts and minds of the people. Islam was forced on every culture it encountered at the point of the sword. The kinder, gentler alternative was death or imposition of the backbreaking “jizyah” (poll tax) levied on those who were spared the sword and allowed to retain their religious beliefs as “infidels”. In spite of paying the heavy jizyah, non-Muslims were consistently treated, at best, as second-class citizens in their own homelands all across the Middle East.
Iran is our beloved motherland. She deserves love and respect from all her children. Iran is not a land of the evil, even though presently it is in its yoke. Persians often take great umbrage at being confused with Arabs. Authors like Robert Kaplan and V. S. Naipaul have documented the Persian antipathy toward the Arabs, all the while espousing the Arab religion enthusiastically.
Dear Iranians, you have a dilemma. You require reconciliation with the self. You are either the children of Cyrus the Great, who was the founding father of Iran and symbolized justice and respect for diversity, or you can claim to be the descendent of a man who was not an exemplary prophet. In other words, you are either a “Seyyed” (itself a laughable farce), which is another word for an Arab “lord”, or you are a magnificent Iranian who believes in the lofty tenets of Good Words, Good Thoughts and Good Deeds. You cannot be both. It is time to reconcile. The choice is yours.
My aspiration for my motherland is to see it freed from the evil that has been visited upon it ever since our people bought into a most depraved version of Islam. Whether people become Baha'is or Zoroastrians or Christians, it should be a free choice by each person. Even if a person insists on remaining Muslim, that is his or her prerogative. Yet, imposing the suffocating intolerant Islam on an entire nation is something that neither I, nor any freethinking person can accept. Our beloved Iran deserves to be a country where, once again, we take pride in being its children instead of the present when we often do all we can to conceal our nation of birth when visiting abroad.
Those of you who are still entrapped in the cult of Muhammad of the 7th century are victims of the Islamic virus that has destroyed in you the traditional respect for diversity. Iran is now a nation whose residents are most rapidly abandoning Islam as they learn the truth about it. It is the fundamental ancient Iranian belief in the validity and value of diversity that has held the nation together over the millennia.
Islam, with its barbaric exclusionary and primitive Bedouin Arab dogma, overtook Iran and brutally strove to replace the traditional lofty Iranian belief in human rights and diversity. Regrettably, the forced subjugation of the Iranians succeeded to some degree in transmitting the Islamic psychosocial virus to many Iranians—the virus that transforms the person into a bigot who sees only his way and his belief as the right way and the only right mandate. Any and all people who do not see things “his” way are wrong and must be reformed by whatever means, including eradication, if the bigot sees fit.
The diverse people who give Iran its enduring strength include Persians, Azaris, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmen, and more. One and all have their allegiance to Iran as an idea and a nation and they all have shaped Iran into a unified nation. Iranians are the spiritual children of Cyrus the Great and adherents to his Charter—the first Charter of Human Rights—that clearly proclaims the equal rights and worth of the beliefs and practices of all peoples.
Iranians are ashamed by the appearance of Ahmadinejad, “the Monkey”, on the international scene and his declared intent to wipe the Jewish homeland from the face of the earth. Ahmadinejad is not an Iranian. Just look at the numerous photos showing him proudly donning the Arab headscarf around his neck—a Palestinian headscarf that presently stands as a symbol of the Arabo-Islamic genocidal hate campaign against the “non-believers” of all stripes. One quick look at his willingness to give away territorial and political rights of Iran is another testament to his “un-Iranian” nature.
This shameless Ahmadinejad and his cronies, the criminal mullahs, are personifications and agents of Ahriman “evil”. Nothing whatsoever is beyond their evil intentions. Keeping themselves in power by devastating our land, heritage and people is a small price that they are more than happy to pay. Shame, eternal shame on them. Iran shall rise again. It shall rise from its ashes. I am certain of that.
We do recognize that the dysfunctional Islamic “software” is deeply engrained in the minds of its victims who opt to remain in mental bondage rather than purge their minds of the Islamic “blueprint of destruction” and join the rest of the human family with a new emancipating program for life—that of liberty and progress. However, you must avoid any and all Islamic propaganda and join the forces of liberty and gain your freedom from this dark and alien cult of death. For 1300 years, the Islamists have forced you to choose and celebrate death over life, to cry instead laugh and to mourn instead of dance. The crown jewel of Islam simply does not fit the Persians. It never has and it never will.
Keep in mind that Islam hates the power of the individual. Islam hates the achievements of women. Islam hates progress. Islam hates the religious freedom of others. Islam hates the pre-Islamic heritage of Iran and other nations. Islam hates the light of truth. Islam is against free-will and hates democracy, liberty and justice for all. Islam simply loves to crush and eat you alive. That is what Islam does and that is what Islam is. Are you going to worship that? Just Say no, because you are not a robot, you are a human being.
Now, “praise be to the core of goodness” that binds all of us together as devoted lovers of our ancient heritage of respect and diversity. Our motherland is bleeding under the dark cloaks of the oppressive mullahs. Yet, our people shall overcome the poison that courses in their veins and will choose to turn away from the doctrine of death and destruction to, hopefully, pursue life and construction. All of you hold the key and promise for our homeland's revival and its complete freedom from the centuries old yoke of the barbaric rule of Islam and its “Sharia”.
The light of freedom must be preserved for humanity. To save the motherland, all Iranians must unite and JUST SAY NO to Islam and SAY YES to liberty.
Nearly 1400 years ago, a group of nomads from across the scorching Arabian Desert conquered Iran (Persia), the greatest empire known to the history of mankind. With that, they injected their Islamic virus into the veins of their victim: the Iranian people.
Isn’t it time for the Iranians, in a show of solidarity, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the civilized free people of the world to defeat this virulent disease of Islam? In most other lands conquered by Islam, the conquered peoples have lost their identity and heritage and embraced the ways of their new rulers, under an “Arab” identity. Conversely, in Iran a band of indigenous victims, “infected” by Islam, has mindlessly turned on their Iranian countrymen and tried to rob them of their remaining ancient heritage. It is exactly this savage minority that has established an oppressive tyrannical rule and wields power against the Iranian people. Yet even under the rule of Islamofascism, the overwhelming majority of Iranians of various ethnicities and religions remain faithful to their ancient creed – a creed that was given to the world by Zoroaster.
The twenty-first century presents great challenges and opportunities that demand new ways of thinking and behaving. The doctrine of Islam may have been appropriate for the desert dwellers of Arabia some 1400 years ago, for the very people stigmatized in Islamic literature as “Jahil” (ignoramus). But it is dysfunctional today, to say the least. As a matter of fact, Islam went astray from the very beginning and inflicted a great deal of suffering on both its followers as well as those who resisted its advance.
All pre-Islamic achievements that may strengthen the attraction on the part of the Iranian populace are de-emphasized and sometimes even falsely attributed to Islam, to prevent the average Iranian and the world at large from finding out the historical truths about the destruction and retardation Islam has brought to the region. Islam continues to take credit for the arts and sciences produced by the peoples it has conquered -- and they were mostly Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians, Mesopotamians, and Babylonians.
Keep in mind that Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah --the Qur'an-- the same charter that they held in one hand while slashing the throats of millions of innocent Iranians and yelling joyously "Allah is the greatest" the whole time.
Dear Iranians, I am compelled to write this today and the words just stream through me without any outline or preconceptions. I am talking about this today, partly because it is timely, partly because it is good to know what Islam has done to our precious culture. Some things did not have to turn out as they did. Truth and provocative ideas ought to be welcomed by all of us. “A Slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts” said Euripides. Yet provocative ideas by themselves may not be enough. Actions are needed to correct the past mistakes and that starts with you.
Dear Iranians, as long as you remain a “Muslim” (as you are by default and not by choice), you will remain enslaved by a violent foreign creed and culture. You are unable to think for yourselves and break free. As long as you remain Muslim, you cannot possibly be called an Iranian. Being Iranian is defined by a state of mind, not by a place of residence, your language, your dialect, or even your genetic makeup or race. The barbaric Islamist mullahs and their mercenaries presently ruling Iran are not Iranians by any definition, except by virtue of an identity card. They are Islamofascists who have betrayed their magnificent heritage and have enlisted themselves in the service of a most oppressive and demeaning ideology, Islam.
The detoxification of Islam must start with you. It is you who should pick up the flag of freedom and march in the streets and defend your ancestors who were brutally murdered by the hands of the Arab invaders and forced you to become like them.
Remember, life is precious. It is to be protected, nurtured and celebrated. Humankind is moving, perhaps at a glacier pace, toward reconciliation, ever-expanding inclusiveness without any group or ideology imposing itself on others. Any attempt against this trend of unity in diversity is doomed to failure, as exemplified by the demise of fascism and communism. The charter of Islam, the Quran, for the most part, preaches discrimination, death and imposition of its dogma on everyone. Islam, just like fascism and communism, is a dysfunctional ideology that needs to be abandoned.
Humanity has matured considerably since the time of Muhammad. In order to continue its forward march, mankind must follow a roadmap appropriate for its age and state of development. It is foolish to insist that a book, which demands terrorism and was written over 1400 years ago, must serve as the one and only guide for humanity.
Let us remember that the Arabs who sallied out of the deserts of Arabia did not fan out to the outside world with the Quran in one hand and flowers in the other, preaching love and peace from street corner to street corner, aiming to capture the hearts and minds of the people. Islam was forced on every culture it encountered at the point of the sword. The kinder, gentler alternative was death or imposition of the backbreaking “jizyah” (poll tax) levied on those who were spared the sword and allowed to retain their religious beliefs as “infidels”. In spite of paying the heavy jizyah, non-Muslims were consistently treated, at best, as second-class citizens in their own homelands all across the Middle East.
Iran is our beloved motherland. She deserves love and respect from all her children. Iran is not a land of the evil, even though presently it is in its yoke. Persians often take great umbrage at being confused with Arabs. Authors like Robert Kaplan and V. S. Naipaul have documented the Persian antipathy toward the Arabs, all the while espousing the Arab religion enthusiastically.
Dear Iranians, you have a dilemma. You require reconciliation with the self. You are either the children of Cyrus the Great, who was the founding father of Iran and symbolized justice and respect for diversity, or you can claim to be the descendent of a man who was not an exemplary prophet. In other words, you are either a “Seyyed” (itself a laughable farce), which is another word for an Arab “lord”, or you are a magnificent Iranian who believes in the lofty tenets of Good Words, Good Thoughts and Good Deeds. You cannot be both. It is time to reconcile. The choice is yours.
My aspiration for my motherland is to see it freed from the evil that has been visited upon it ever since our people bought into a most depraved version of Islam. Whether people become Baha'is or Zoroastrians or Christians, it should be a free choice by each person. Even if a person insists on remaining Muslim, that is his or her prerogative. Yet, imposing the suffocating intolerant Islam on an entire nation is something that neither I, nor any freethinking person can accept. Our beloved Iran deserves to be a country where, once again, we take pride in being its children instead of the present when we often do all we can to conceal our nation of birth when visiting abroad.
Those of you who are still entrapped in the cult of Muhammad of the 7th century are victims of the Islamic virus that has destroyed in you the traditional respect for diversity. Iran is now a nation whose residents are most rapidly abandoning Islam as they learn the truth about it. It is the fundamental ancient Iranian belief in the validity and value of diversity that has held the nation together over the millennia.
Islam, with its barbaric exclusionary and primitive Bedouin Arab dogma, overtook Iran and brutally strove to replace the traditional lofty Iranian belief in human rights and diversity. Regrettably, the forced subjugation of the Iranians succeeded to some degree in transmitting the Islamic psychosocial virus to many Iranians—the virus that transforms the person into a bigot who sees only his way and his belief as the right way and the only right mandate. Any and all people who do not see things “his” way are wrong and must be reformed by whatever means, including eradication, if the bigot sees fit.
The diverse people who give Iran its enduring strength include Persians, Azaris, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmen, and more. One and all have their allegiance to Iran as an idea and a nation and they all have shaped Iran into a unified nation. Iranians are the spiritual children of Cyrus the Great and adherents to his Charter—the first Charter of Human Rights—that clearly proclaims the equal rights and worth of the beliefs and practices of all peoples.
Iranians are ashamed by the appearance of Ahmadinejad, “the Monkey”, on the international scene and his declared intent to wipe the Jewish homeland from the face of the earth. Ahmadinejad is not an Iranian. Just look at the numerous photos showing him proudly donning the Arab headscarf around his neck—a Palestinian headscarf that presently stands as a symbol of the Arabo-Islamic genocidal hate campaign against the “non-believers” of all stripes. One quick look at his willingness to give away territorial and political rights of Iran is another testament to his “un-Iranian” nature.
This shameless Ahmadinejad and his cronies, the criminal mullahs, are personifications and agents of Ahriman “evil”. Nothing whatsoever is beyond their evil intentions. Keeping themselves in power by devastating our land, heritage and people is a small price that they are more than happy to pay. Shame, eternal shame on them. Iran shall rise again. It shall rise from its ashes. I am certain of that.
We do recognize that the dysfunctional Islamic “software” is deeply engrained in the minds of its victims who opt to remain in mental bondage rather than purge their minds of the Islamic “blueprint of destruction” and join the rest of the human family with a new emancipating program for life—that of liberty and progress. However, you must avoid any and all Islamic propaganda and join the forces of liberty and gain your freedom from this dark and alien cult of death. For 1300 years, the Islamists have forced you to choose and celebrate death over life, to cry instead laugh and to mourn instead of dance. The crown jewel of Islam simply does not fit the Persians. It never has and it never will.
Keep in mind that Islam hates the power of the individual. Islam hates the achievements of women. Islam hates progress. Islam hates the religious freedom of others. Islam hates the pre-Islamic heritage of Iran and other nations. Islam hates the light of truth. Islam is against free-will and hates democracy, liberty and justice for all. Islam simply loves to crush and eat you alive. That is what Islam does and that is what Islam is. Are you going to worship that? Just Say no, because you are not a robot, you are a human being.
Now, “praise be to the core of goodness” that binds all of us together as devoted lovers of our ancient heritage of respect and diversity. Our motherland is bleeding under the dark cloaks of the oppressive mullahs. Yet, our people shall overcome the poison that courses in their veins and will choose to turn away from the doctrine of death and destruction to, hopefully, pursue life and construction. All of you hold the key and promise for our homeland's revival and its complete freedom from the centuries old yoke of the barbaric rule of Islam and its “Sharia”.
The light of freedom must be preserved for humanity. To save the motherland, all Iranians must unite and JUST SAY NO to Islam and SAY YES to liberty.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
OBAMA'S MUSLIM CONNECTION
By Jon Christian Ryter
January 16, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
In 1991 a young Muslim Harvard Law College graduate named Barack Hussein Obama (who has denied his Islamic past and Muslim roots for as long as he has been a public figure) became a civil rights community activist working out of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama worked as a community organizer for Trinity in poor black neighborhoods. Trinity's senior pastor Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, a black racist, who preached radical Afrocentric theology and didn't mind delivering profanity-spiked sermons found a congregation-builder in Obama. Because of what Wright called Obama's multiple-faith background and his Harvard education, he was a natural community-builder.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon212.htm
January 16, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
In 1991 a young Muslim Harvard Law College graduate named Barack Hussein Obama (who has denied his Islamic past and Muslim roots for as long as he has been a public figure) became a civil rights community activist working out of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama worked as a community organizer for Trinity in poor black neighborhoods. Trinity's senior pastor Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, a black racist, who preached radical Afrocentric theology and didn't mind delivering profanity-spiked sermons found a congregation-builder in Obama. Because of what Wright called Obama's multiple-faith background and his Harvard education, he was a natural community-builder.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon212.htm
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Why Hezbollah LOST the War in Lebanon!
Why Hezbollah LOST the War in Lebanon!
And the Current 'Present' Situation in Southern Lebanon
By Gabriel al-Amin
Beirut, Lebanon
On July 12, 2006 Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers that led to Israel's war with them and, by extension, Lebanon itself. Hezbollah has been on Israel's fence since the latter's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Israel always requested from the international community and from the Lebanese government to deploy its Lebanese Army there instead of Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah, quite naturally, refused! Hezbollah vowed to NEVER allow any other force other than itself to occupy southern Lebanon.
http://www.lebanonwire.com/0709MLN/07092429MN.asp
And the Current 'Present' Situation in Southern Lebanon
By Gabriel al-Amin
Beirut, Lebanon
On July 12, 2006 Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers that led to Israel's war with them and, by extension, Lebanon itself. Hezbollah has been on Israel's fence since the latter's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Israel always requested from the international community and from the Lebanese government to deploy its Lebanese Army there instead of Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah, quite naturally, refused! Hezbollah vowed to NEVER allow any other force other than itself to occupy southern Lebanon.
http://www.lebanonwire.com/0709MLN/07092429MN.asp
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Iran And Human Rights
Iran And Human Rights
15 January 2008
Iran And Human Rights (MP3) Listen to Iran And Human Rights (MP3) Iran And Human Rights (Real Player) - Download Listen to Iran And Human Rights (Real Player)
It’s been sixty years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President George W. Bush says the standards of that declaration should guide the conduct of nations:
“It stands as a landmark achievement in the history of human liberty. The declaration opens by recognizing ‘the inherent dignity’ and the ‘equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’ as ‘the foundation of freedom and justice and peace in the world.’”
In December, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and expressed deep concern over the human rights situation in Iran.
The resolution cited “ongoing, systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms” of the Iranian people. It spoke of “increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities.” It noted the “arrests, violent repression, and sentencing of women exercising their right to peaceful assembly.” It cited the “systemic and serious restrictions of freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of opinion and expression, including those imposed on the media and trade unions.” And it cited “the persecution of political opponents. . . .from all sectors of Iranian society.”
The U.N. resolution deplored “confirmed instances” of torture in Iran “and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, including flogging and amputations.” And it cited the Iranian government’s “persistent failure to uphold due process of law.”
President Bush has pointed out that when Cyrus the Great led the Iranian people more than two thousand years ago, he delivered one of the world’s first declarations of individual rights. Mr. Bush says that the U.S. looks forward to the day when the people of Iran enjoy “the full fruits of liberty” they deserve.
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/2008-01-15-voa5.cfm
15 January 2008
Iran And Human Rights (MP3) Listen to Iran And Human Rights (MP3) Iran And Human Rights (Real Player) - Download Listen to Iran And Human Rights (Real Player)
It’s been sixty years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President George W. Bush says the standards of that declaration should guide the conduct of nations:
“It stands as a landmark achievement in the history of human liberty. The declaration opens by recognizing ‘the inherent dignity’ and the ‘equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’ as ‘the foundation of freedom and justice and peace in the world.’”
In December, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and expressed deep concern over the human rights situation in Iran.
The resolution cited “ongoing, systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms” of the Iranian people. It spoke of “increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities.” It noted the “arrests, violent repression, and sentencing of women exercising their right to peaceful assembly.” It cited the “systemic and serious restrictions of freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of opinion and expression, including those imposed on the media and trade unions.” And it cited “the persecution of political opponents. . . .from all sectors of Iranian society.”
The U.N. resolution deplored “confirmed instances” of torture in Iran “and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, including flogging and amputations.” And it cited the Iranian government’s “persistent failure to uphold due process of law.”
President Bush has pointed out that when Cyrus the Great led the Iranian people more than two thousand years ago, he delivered one of the world’s first declarations of individual rights. Mr. Bush says that the U.S. looks forward to the day when the people of Iran enjoy “the full fruits of liberty” they deserve.
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/2008-01-15-voa5.cfm
Monday, January 14, 2008
Iranians are leaving Islam
by Emir Reza
14 Jan, 2008
I was born in the early years of Islamic Revolution in Iran and just before the start of Iran-Iraq war. It is safe to say that the first music I heard must have been a revolutionary music, and the first face I saw on our black and white TV was that of Ayatollah Khomeini. I'm what they call "child of Revolution."
My Father was a simple clerk and my mother a house wife, both practicing Muslims and firm believers in Allah and Muhammad. No blasphemy was allowed in our house and we were perfectly convinced Khomeini was a holy man and a "favorite of Allah and His prophet." It sounds funny to me now but among my first childish drawings was the face of that old man, turban, beard and all.
http://www.islam-watch.org/Emir/Leaving-Islam-When-truth-comes-in-Mullahs-jump-out-the-window.htm
14 Jan, 2008
I was born in the early years of Islamic Revolution in Iran and just before the start of Iran-Iraq war. It is safe to say that the first music I heard must have been a revolutionary music, and the first face I saw on our black and white TV was that of Ayatollah Khomeini. I'm what they call "child of Revolution."
My Father was a simple clerk and my mother a house wife, both practicing Muslims and firm believers in Allah and Muhammad. No blasphemy was allowed in our house and we were perfectly convinced Khomeini was a holy man and a "favorite of Allah and His prophet." It sounds funny to me now but among my first childish drawings was the face of that old man, turban, beard and all.
http://www.islam-watch.org/Emir/Leaving-Islam-When-truth-comes-in-Mullahs-jump-out-the-window.htm
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Ways to Defeat Islamic Jihadism
This is an urgent call to all free people to rise and defeat the Islamic Jihadists who are marching under the banner of the Qur’an to subdue all non-Muslims.
It is imperative that the values and the way of life of civilized people be protected against the assault of Jihadists’ savagery born from a primitive culture of long ago Arabia. There is nothing to negotiate here. Nothing to compromise, for the Jihadists are on a non-negotiable campaign of Allah. The goal of this mission from Allah is the eradication of just about everything that falls under the rubric of human rights.
It takes every free human to do his or her share in defeating Jihadism. Below is a partial list of what can be done.
* You don’t have to take up arms and go around killing the Jihadists. That’s the Jihadists’ way of dealing with us and anyone they don’t approve of. Decent humans value life, even the life of a Jihadist. By contrast, the Jihadists have no compunctions at amputating limbs, stoning, beheading and hanging people even en mass. The brutal mullahs ruling the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomed the new-year by hanging thirteen people, one of them the mother of two young children. We need to dry up their sources of support and beat them in the battle of ideas. We need to show them the fallacy and danger of their pathological belief.
* Fight to end the deadly practice of political correctness. Truth, only naked truth, can set us free. And freedom is our greatest gift of life. Life without freedom is death disguised as life. Remember Patrick Henry’s cry: Give me liberty or give me death. We must fight for life, for liberty and freedom.
* Demand that politicians, Islamic apologists, and paid-for media do not abuse freedom by lying about Islam. When these people portray Islam as a religion of peace, they are lying through their teeth. Just take a quick look at Islam’s history as well as what is happening today in the Islamic lands. Islam is not a religion of peace and it has never been. Islam is violent, oppressive, racist, and irrational at its very core. It is treachery for people to present it as otherwise, either out of ignorance or because of their own personal reasons.
* Challenge your leftist professors who may be retained by Islamic front organizations to trumpet Islam’s virtues. Demand transparency from hired lobbyists and the liberal mainstream media. Sadly, a percentage of people in Western Democracies are born alienated. These people seem to a have congenital hatred of their own societies; they ally themselves with any and all people and forces that aim to destroy our cherished way of life, and they live by the motto: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They eagerly join forces with the Saddam Husseins and Hugo Chavezes of the world.
* Demand that Islamic literature, including the hate and violence manual called the Qur’an, be purged of all violent and hate spewed toward non-Muslims. Is it too much to ask that non-Muslims not be targeted for hate by the so-called sacred religious text? What kind of religion is this? Religion is supposed to bring people together, and not put them at each others’ throats. The Muslims must be made to understand that and they must reciprocate the tolerance that the non-Muslims voluntarily afford them.
* Do not allow any special privileges whatsoever granted to Muslims. Demand that all Muslims have their first and foremost loyalty to the United States and its Constitution and not to the Islamic Ummeh, the Qur’an, and the shariah law. Europe is rapidly buckling under the pressure of Islamism. Just a couple of examples: Germany has legalized polygamy to placate Muslim men, Italy is forced to plan separate beaches for Muslim women
* Demand that none of the barbaric provisions of Islamic sharia be practiced. Just because a woman is born into a Muslim family, that shouldn’t force her to lead a subservient life to a man, for example. All family matters and disputes, without exceptions, must be adjudicated according to the civil laws of the country.
* A Muslim is, first and foremost, an Ummehist, a citizen of international Islam. So, when a Muslim takes the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance, he is either ignorant of the implications of his pledge or is lying willfully. Sadly enough, taqqiyeh (lying, or dissimulation) is not only condoned, it is recommended to the Muslims in their scripture. Hence, a Muslim can and would lie without any compunctions, whenever it is expedient.
* Require that the large number of recent arrival Muslims be carefully vetted for their terrorism and Jihadists backgrounds and beliefs. Many recent arrivals from places such as Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan come as refugees and bring with them their pathological anti-American system of belief. It is criminal to admit these refugees without demanding that they completely renounce their allegiance to the hate dogma of Islam. Those diehard devotees of Islam should make any of the eighteen or so Islamic countries home, rather than invade the secular societies and aim to subvert them.
* Demand that Muslims, without the least reservation, adhere to the provisions of the human rights. Muslims, by belief and practice, are the most blatant violators of human rights. We hardly need to detail here Muslims’ systemic cruel treatment of the unbelievers, women of all persuasions, and any and all minorities across the board. To Muslims, human rights have a different meaning, and its protective provisions are reserved strictly, primarily for Muslim men.
* Go and talk to Muslims, particularly the young and the better educated, about the horror and the fallacy of a primitive belief that has been handed down to them through an accident of birth. Show them the magnificence of freedom, in all its forms; the indispensability of tolerance for all; and, the futility of clinging to an obsolete hodge-podge of delusional ideology. The onus is clearly on the Muslims to prove the validity, utility, and sanctity of the belief they intend to impose on all of us.
* As for democracy, our cherished way of life, Muslims have no use for it at all. Muslims believe that Allah’s rule must govern the world in the form of Caliphate: a theocracy. Making mockery of democracy, subverting its working, and ignoring its provisions is a Muslim’s way of falsifying what he already believes to be a sinful and false system of governance invented by the infidels. Reason, if you can, with the Muslims that their belief is an outright rejection of the greatest gift of life: Freedom.
* Support financially and in every other legal way those individuals and organizations that are fighting the Jihadists’ relentless encroachment. Many European countries are already on the verge of capitulation to the Islamists. The Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, confidently proclaimed recently that Europe will be Islamic in a dozen years. He has good reason to say that. Muslims are forming states within states in much of European towns and cities. In Britain, for instance, non-Muslims are in serious danger entering Muslim neighborhoods
In conclusion: Folks, get off your duff. Stop saying, “let George do it.” Neither George the President, nor the “other guy” George can do it by themselves. This is a battle for survival that every one of us can help wage. Let’s get on with it before, if not you, then your children and grandchildren end up under the barbaric rule of the Jihadists.
It is imperative that the values and the way of life of civilized people be protected against the assault of Jihadists’ savagery born from a primitive culture of long ago Arabia. There is nothing to negotiate here. Nothing to compromise, for the Jihadists are on a non-negotiable campaign of Allah. The goal of this mission from Allah is the eradication of just about everything that falls under the rubric of human rights.
It takes every free human to do his or her share in defeating Jihadism. Below is a partial list of what can be done.
* You don’t have to take up arms and go around killing the Jihadists. That’s the Jihadists’ way of dealing with us and anyone they don’t approve of. Decent humans value life, even the life of a Jihadist. By contrast, the Jihadists have no compunctions at amputating limbs, stoning, beheading and hanging people even en mass. The brutal mullahs ruling the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomed the new-year by hanging thirteen people, one of them the mother of two young children. We need to dry up their sources of support and beat them in the battle of ideas. We need to show them the fallacy and danger of their pathological belief.
* Fight to end the deadly practice of political correctness. Truth, only naked truth, can set us free. And freedom is our greatest gift of life. Life without freedom is death disguised as life. Remember Patrick Henry’s cry: Give me liberty or give me death. We must fight for life, for liberty and freedom.
* Demand that politicians, Islamic apologists, and paid-for media do not abuse freedom by lying about Islam. When these people portray Islam as a religion of peace, they are lying through their teeth. Just take a quick look at Islam’s history as well as what is happening today in the Islamic lands. Islam is not a religion of peace and it has never been. Islam is violent, oppressive, racist, and irrational at its very core. It is treachery for people to present it as otherwise, either out of ignorance or because of their own personal reasons.
* Challenge your leftist professors who may be retained by Islamic front organizations to trumpet Islam’s virtues. Demand transparency from hired lobbyists and the liberal mainstream media. Sadly, a percentage of people in Western Democracies are born alienated. These people seem to a have congenital hatred of their own societies; they ally themselves with any and all people and forces that aim to destroy our cherished way of life, and they live by the motto: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They eagerly join forces with the Saddam Husseins and Hugo Chavezes of the world.
* Demand that Islamic literature, including the hate and violence manual called the Qur’an, be purged of all violent and hate spewed toward non-Muslims. Is it too much to ask that non-Muslims not be targeted for hate by the so-called sacred religious text? What kind of religion is this? Religion is supposed to bring people together, and not put them at each others’ throats. The Muslims must be made to understand that and they must reciprocate the tolerance that the non-Muslims voluntarily afford them.
* Do not allow any special privileges whatsoever granted to Muslims. Demand that all Muslims have their first and foremost loyalty to the United States and its Constitution and not to the Islamic Ummeh, the Qur’an, and the shariah law. Europe is rapidly buckling under the pressure of Islamism. Just a couple of examples: Germany has legalized polygamy to placate Muslim men, Italy is forced to plan separate beaches for Muslim women
* Demand that none of the barbaric provisions of Islamic sharia be practiced. Just because a woman is born into a Muslim family, that shouldn’t force her to lead a subservient life to a man, for example. All family matters and disputes, without exceptions, must be adjudicated according to the civil laws of the country.
* A Muslim is, first and foremost, an Ummehist, a citizen of international Islam. So, when a Muslim takes the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance, he is either ignorant of the implications of his pledge or is lying willfully. Sadly enough, taqqiyeh (lying, or dissimulation) is not only condoned, it is recommended to the Muslims in their scripture. Hence, a Muslim can and would lie without any compunctions, whenever it is expedient.
* Require that the large number of recent arrival Muslims be carefully vetted for their terrorism and Jihadists backgrounds and beliefs. Many recent arrivals from places such as Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan come as refugees and bring with them their pathological anti-American system of belief. It is criminal to admit these refugees without demanding that they completely renounce their allegiance to the hate dogma of Islam. Those diehard devotees of Islam should make any of the eighteen or so Islamic countries home, rather than invade the secular societies and aim to subvert them.
* Demand that Muslims, without the least reservation, adhere to the provisions of the human rights. Muslims, by belief and practice, are the most blatant violators of human rights. We hardly need to detail here Muslims’ systemic cruel treatment of the unbelievers, women of all persuasions, and any and all minorities across the board. To Muslims, human rights have a different meaning, and its protective provisions are reserved strictly, primarily for Muslim men.
* Go and talk to Muslims, particularly the young and the better educated, about the horror and the fallacy of a primitive belief that has been handed down to them through an accident of birth. Show them the magnificence of freedom, in all its forms; the indispensability of tolerance for all; and, the futility of clinging to an obsolete hodge-podge of delusional ideology. The onus is clearly on the Muslims to prove the validity, utility, and sanctity of the belief they intend to impose on all of us.
* As for democracy, our cherished way of life, Muslims have no use for it at all. Muslims believe that Allah’s rule must govern the world in the form of Caliphate: a theocracy. Making mockery of democracy, subverting its working, and ignoring its provisions is a Muslim’s way of falsifying what he already believes to be a sinful and false system of governance invented by the infidels. Reason, if you can, with the Muslims that their belief is an outright rejection of the greatest gift of life: Freedom.
* Support financially and in every other legal way those individuals and organizations that are fighting the Jihadists’ relentless encroachment. Many European countries are already on the verge of capitulation to the Islamists. The Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, confidently proclaimed recently that Europe will be Islamic in a dozen years. He has good reason to say that. Muslims are forming states within states in much of European towns and cities. In Britain, for instance, non-Muslims are in serious danger entering Muslim neighborhoods
In conclusion: Folks, get off your duff. Stop saying, “let George do it.” Neither George the President, nor the “other guy” George can do it by themselves. This is a battle for survival that every one of us can help wage. Let’s get on with it before, if not you, then your children and grandchildren end up under the barbaric rule of the Jihadists.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Dear Dr. Jasser
This is a letter to Dr. Jasser from a decent, concerned American.
December 26, 2007
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser
c/o AIFD
Dear Dr. Jasser:
I am a non-religious yet spiritual individual who has for many years endeavored to educate people about the dangers of radical Islam (or Islamism, as it is now often called), which I consider to be the greatest extant threat to mankind. Since learning about your website a few months ago, I have read most if not all of your articles. While I admire your courage in acknowledging the serious problem we all face from radical Islam, I can’t help but feel that your articles are at best misleading, at worst deceptive. Before justifying my position I would like to state in all sincerity that I believe you to be a moral and righteous man. But now to the matter at hand.
A recurring theme in many of your articles is to blame terrorism and radical Islam on “political Islam.” To the best of my knowledge, you have never explicitly defined this term, nor described what precisely it encompasses. Do you consider the following to be caused by political Islam?
hatred of Christians and Jews women’s subjugation people crashing airplanes into buildings
acceptance of the hatred literature which permeates Mosques in the United States
physicians attempting to blow up airports “honor killings” by men of their daughters and/or wives
In my opinion these actions and beliefs are not the result of political Islam, or at least not solely so, but instead have their origins in Islam itself. But even if, arguendo, one conceded that they are attributable to political Islam, one would still have to ask why there exists political Islam, but not political Christianity, or political Judaism, or political Hinduism, or political Buddhism. In at least two of your essays you have stated that people get the governments they deserve, but you have never taken this to its logical conclusion. Simply put, political Islam exists because of the very essence of Islam itself.
I am not a religious scholar, but virtually every author I have read, both Moslem and non-Moslem (I almost wrote “infidel’) alike, agree on two points: First, that Islam is more than just a religion but rather, a set of rules that regulate almost all aspects of life, and second, that Islam teaches that religion and government are inseparable. As such, political Islam is an integral part of Islam.
You seek to reform/modernize Islam, specifically advocating the practice of that which is peaceful and applicable to a modern society, and rejection of that which is not. At the risk of trivializing a serious - - deadly serious - - situation, when I read your articles I am reminded of the old saying “if my Aunt had a mustache, she’d be my Uncle.” All religions need to grow and adapt but what you are advocating is in essence, a complete re-structuring of Islam. What you apparently fail to consider is that such a religion would cease to be Islam; you might as well call it “Jasserism.”
I apologize for being so forthright, especially as we have never met, but there is no way for me to make my point by tap dancing around the issues. With all due respect Doctor, you have become an apologist for Islam. Each time I read one of your articles I feel I am reading the words of a desperate man, one who is trying with every fiber of his being to convince others, and ultimately himself, that Islam is good and moral, when everything he sees tells him otherwise. No matter how you and others may try to give it a positive spin, the facts as best we can determine them, are that Islam - - literally from its inception - - has been characterized by violence, aggression, dominance and subjugation. I am not a big fan of any organized religion, but Islam seems to truly be in a class by itself. Are there other religions in which the prophet of God killed, either by his own hand or by his commandments, those who opposed his teachings? Are there other religions which teach methods of warfare? Are there other religions which so specifically divide the world into believers and non-believers? Are there other religions which explicitly teach that non-believers be subjugated, and forced to pay a special tax? Are there other religions which advocate death for apostasy? And last but not least, are there other religions which promise the rewards of heaven for killing those of different faiths? I am not aware of any. This is the reality of Islam.
In closing, I would like to repeat something I said earlier, namely that I consider you to be a moral and just human being. But I would now like to add something that I truly hope you will consider: Your morality stems not from your being a Moslem but occurs only because you reject so much of Islam. If you adhered strictly to the teachings of the Koran, you would be a very different man. You consider yourself a devout Moslem yet most Moslems would probably classify you very differently. The significance of this cannot be overstated. There are many paths to God, yet you hang tenaciously to Islam, despite recognizing what it has brought to the world. Alas, there are no more difficult bonds to shed than those of religious indoctrination. For what it’s worth, I daresay any other religion would be proud to have you as a member.
Sincerely,
L. B, Ph.D.
December 26, 2007
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser
c/o AIFD
Dear Dr. Jasser:
I am a non-religious yet spiritual individual who has for many years endeavored to educate people about the dangers of radical Islam (or Islamism, as it is now often called), which I consider to be the greatest extant threat to mankind. Since learning about your website a few months ago, I have read most if not all of your articles. While I admire your courage in acknowledging the serious problem we all face from radical Islam, I can’t help but feel that your articles are at best misleading, at worst deceptive. Before justifying my position I would like to state in all sincerity that I believe you to be a moral and righteous man. But now to the matter at hand.
A recurring theme in many of your articles is to blame terrorism and radical Islam on “political Islam.” To the best of my knowledge, you have never explicitly defined this term, nor described what precisely it encompasses. Do you consider the following to be caused by political Islam?
hatred of Christians and Jews women’s subjugation people crashing airplanes into buildings
acceptance of the hatred literature which permeates Mosques in the United States
physicians attempting to blow up airports “honor killings” by men of their daughters and/or wives
In my opinion these actions and beliefs are not the result of political Islam, or at least not solely so, but instead have their origins in Islam itself. But even if, arguendo, one conceded that they are attributable to political Islam, one would still have to ask why there exists political Islam, but not political Christianity, or political Judaism, or political Hinduism, or political Buddhism. In at least two of your essays you have stated that people get the governments they deserve, but you have never taken this to its logical conclusion. Simply put, political Islam exists because of the very essence of Islam itself.
I am not a religious scholar, but virtually every author I have read, both Moslem and non-Moslem (I almost wrote “infidel’) alike, agree on two points: First, that Islam is more than just a religion but rather, a set of rules that regulate almost all aspects of life, and second, that Islam teaches that religion and government are inseparable. As such, political Islam is an integral part of Islam.
You seek to reform/modernize Islam, specifically advocating the practice of that which is peaceful and applicable to a modern society, and rejection of that which is not. At the risk of trivializing a serious - - deadly serious - - situation, when I read your articles I am reminded of the old saying “if my Aunt had a mustache, she’d be my Uncle.” All religions need to grow and adapt but what you are advocating is in essence, a complete re-structuring of Islam. What you apparently fail to consider is that such a religion would cease to be Islam; you might as well call it “Jasserism.”
I apologize for being so forthright, especially as we have never met, but there is no way for me to make my point by tap dancing around the issues. With all due respect Doctor, you have become an apologist for Islam. Each time I read one of your articles I feel I am reading the words of a desperate man, one who is trying with every fiber of his being to convince others, and ultimately himself, that Islam is good and moral, when everything he sees tells him otherwise. No matter how you and others may try to give it a positive spin, the facts as best we can determine them, are that Islam - - literally from its inception - - has been characterized by violence, aggression, dominance and subjugation. I am not a big fan of any organized religion, but Islam seems to truly be in a class by itself. Are there other religions in which the prophet of God killed, either by his own hand or by his commandments, those who opposed his teachings? Are there other religions which teach methods of warfare? Are there other religions which so specifically divide the world into believers and non-believers? Are there other religions which explicitly teach that non-believers be subjugated, and forced to pay a special tax? Are there other religions which advocate death for apostasy? And last but not least, are there other religions which promise the rewards of heaven for killing those of different faiths? I am not aware of any. This is the reality of Islam.
In closing, I would like to repeat something I said earlier, namely that I consider you to be a moral and just human being. But I would now like to add something that I truly hope you will consider: Your morality stems not from your being a Moslem but occurs only because you reject so much of Islam. If you adhered strictly to the teachings of the Koran, you would be a very different man. You consider yourself a devout Moslem yet most Moslems would probably classify you very differently. The significance of this cannot be overstated. There are many paths to God, yet you hang tenaciously to Islam, despite recognizing what it has brought to the world. Alas, there are no more difficult bonds to shed than those of religious indoctrination. For what it’s worth, I daresay any other religion would be proud to have you as a member.
Sincerely,
L. B, Ph.D.
Inside the Ring
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080104/NATION04/410150204&template=printart
Article published Jan 4, 2008Inside the Ring
January 4, 2008 By Bill Gertz -
Coughlin sacked Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military's Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
Mr. Coughlin was notified this week that his contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, effectively halting the career of one of the U.S. government's most important figures in analyzing the nature of extremism and ultimately preparing to wage ideological war against it.
He had run afoul of a key aide to Mr. England, Hasham Islam, who confronted Mr. Coughlin during a meeting several weeks ago when Mr. Islam sought to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views on Islamist extremism.
Mr. Coughlin was accused directly by Mr. Islam of being a Christian zealot or extremist "with a pen," according to defense officials. Mr. Coughlin appears to have become one of the first casualties in the war of ideas with Islamism.
Article published Jan 4, 2008Inside the Ring
January 4, 2008 By Bill Gertz -
Coughlin sacked Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military's Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
Mr. Coughlin was notified this week that his contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, effectively halting the career of one of the U.S. government's most important figures in analyzing the nature of extremism and ultimately preparing to wage ideological war against it.
He had run afoul of a key aide to Mr. England, Hasham Islam, who confronted Mr. Coughlin during a meeting several weeks ago when Mr. Islam sought to have Mr. Coughlin soften his views on Islamist extremism.
Mr. Coughlin was accused directly by Mr. Islam of being a Christian zealot or extremist "with a pen," according to defense officials. Mr. Coughlin appears to have become one of the first casualties in the war of ideas with Islamism.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Where Are The Americans?
Where Are The Americans
by Michael D. Shaw
Amil Imani, an ex-pat Iranian now living in the US, recently posted an interesting article to the American Thinker website.
His premise is that the current theocratic and despotic rulers of Iran are not true Iranians in the sense that they do not portray the ancient traditions started by King Cyrus the Great. This Cyrus II, besides founding Persia by uniting the Medes and the Persians, conquering Babylon and liberating the Jews, also wrote the very first Charter of Human Rights.
Exhibiting qualities that were not exactly common in his era, Cyrus respected the religious beliefs and cultural traditions of other races, earning him the devotion of all his subjects.
Imani holds that the real descendants of Cyrus are those people—scattered throughout the world—who adhere to Cyrus' Charter: Free humans with human beliefs. Noting that even racially different humans have precious little genetic variation, he contends—and I must agree—that what makes people different is not their biology, but the "software" that runs them.
Are there any lesson here for Americans?
We first have to pin down our origins...
Ethnically, the founders of our country were primarily of Anglo-Saxon extraction. Religiously, some were devout, many were not. And, some who were overtly religious, such as John Jay, were paradoxical in their concurrent anti-slavery and anti-Catholic activities.
Although most were from privileged backgrounds, some, including Alexander Hamilton, certainly were not. In any case, all distinguished themselves in their professional lives, demonstrating the qualities of industry, charity, and self-sacrifice.
Few of the founders would fit the stereotype of a "rebel," yet, rebels they were. And, it was this very rebellion against an overarching imperial power that would unite men whose professional and commercial interests were disparate enough to cause a civil war a mere 85 years later.
But, if we want to look at the "software" that ran these men, the legacy is our Constitution. Originally written in the summer of 1787, it would not be until May 29, 1790 that the last holdout (Rhode Island) would ratify the document, and then only barely. Still, if this Constitution defines America, or is at least one way of defining America, it is at once simple—and sobering—to hold our leaders to this standard.
Since the colonies came together voluntarily, and secession was always on the table, the very notion of a War Between the States was a hideous affront, a bloody travesty, and a supreme betrayal. No American could advocate this, and few outside the leadership class actually did. Indeed, a goodly number within the leadership class protested vigorously. Even this cultural blasphemy would not be enough to destroy the Republic, but it did change it.
The way was paved for a Federal Leviathan, orders of magnitude beyond what was imagined by the most ardent Federalists of the 18th century. Power-hungry career politicians could now build their own personal empires in a manner that would have disgusted all the founders.
Massive classes of victims would be created, to justify ever more expansion of the monster. Neither these victims, nor their political pimps bear any resemblance to the American ideal, even if they dominate political discourse. And all the while, the Constitution is relegated to little more than ceremonial status, since more than 90 percent of what goes on these days is neither mentioned, nor even remotely anticipated by this document and its amendments.
Of course, appearances are kept up, with fatuous bloviating about "Constitutional Law," a branch of law that has become little more than a trivial pursuit of the dubious—if devastating—rulings of a Supreme Court, that has sadly become a Supreme farce, aided and abetted by an increasingly feckless Legislative and Executive Branch. None of this, I would remind you, is faintly American.
Somewhere, though, within our 300 million souls, the original fire is burning; only don't bother looking for it in the hearts of our leaders.
—12/19/06
[Discuss This Article.]
by Michael D. Shaw
Amil Imani, an ex-pat Iranian now living in the US, recently posted an interesting article to the American Thinker website.
His premise is that the current theocratic and despotic rulers of Iran are not true Iranians in the sense that they do not portray the ancient traditions started by King Cyrus the Great. This Cyrus II, besides founding Persia by uniting the Medes and the Persians, conquering Babylon and liberating the Jews, also wrote the very first Charter of Human Rights.
Exhibiting qualities that were not exactly common in his era, Cyrus respected the religious beliefs and cultural traditions of other races, earning him the devotion of all his subjects.
Imani holds that the real descendants of Cyrus are those people—scattered throughout the world—who adhere to Cyrus' Charter: Free humans with human beliefs. Noting that even racially different humans have precious little genetic variation, he contends—and I must agree—that what makes people different is not their biology, but the "software" that runs them.
Are there any lesson here for Americans?
We first have to pin down our origins...
Ethnically, the founders of our country were primarily of Anglo-Saxon extraction. Religiously, some were devout, many were not. And, some who were overtly religious, such as John Jay, were paradoxical in their concurrent anti-slavery and anti-Catholic activities.
Although most were from privileged backgrounds, some, including Alexander Hamilton, certainly were not. In any case, all distinguished themselves in their professional lives, demonstrating the qualities of industry, charity, and self-sacrifice.
Few of the founders would fit the stereotype of a "rebel," yet, rebels they were. And, it was this very rebellion against an overarching imperial power that would unite men whose professional and commercial interests were disparate enough to cause a civil war a mere 85 years later.
But, if we want to look at the "software" that ran these men, the legacy is our Constitution. Originally written in the summer of 1787, it would not be until May 29, 1790 that the last holdout (Rhode Island) would ratify the document, and then only barely. Still, if this Constitution defines America, or is at least one way of defining America, it is at once simple—and sobering—to hold our leaders to this standard.
Since the colonies came together voluntarily, and secession was always on the table, the very notion of a War Between the States was a hideous affront, a bloody travesty, and a supreme betrayal. No American could advocate this, and few outside the leadership class actually did. Indeed, a goodly number within the leadership class protested vigorously. Even this cultural blasphemy would not be enough to destroy the Republic, but it did change it.
The way was paved for a Federal Leviathan, orders of magnitude beyond what was imagined by the most ardent Federalists of the 18th century. Power-hungry career politicians could now build their own personal empires in a manner that would have disgusted all the founders.
Massive classes of victims would be created, to justify ever more expansion of the monster. Neither these victims, nor their political pimps bear any resemblance to the American ideal, even if they dominate political discourse. And all the while, the Constitution is relegated to little more than ceremonial status, since more than 90 percent of what goes on these days is neither mentioned, nor even remotely anticipated by this document and its amendments.
Of course, appearances are kept up, with fatuous bloviating about "Constitutional Law," a branch of law that has become little more than a trivial pursuit of the dubious—if devastating—rulings of a Supreme Court, that has sadly become a Supreme farce, aided and abetted by an increasingly feckless Legislative and Executive Branch. None of this, I would remind you, is faintly American.
Somewhere, though, within our 300 million souls, the original fire is burning; only don't bother looking for it in the hearts of our leaders.
—12/19/06
[Discuss This Article.]
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Never Mind the Bomb, Beware of Islamofascism
The National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran’s bomb project has stirred a great deal of controversy. Some say that there is now reason to abandon the war posturing and start negotiating a live-and-let-live deal with the Mullahs, since they have “abandoned” their quest for the bomb. At least that is what the not-so-reliable report seems to imply. Others, with good reason, remain skeptical of both the validity of the report and the ever-cheating, conniving Mullahs.
This controversy aside, the irrefutable fact is that the Jihadist belief of Islam itself poses existential danger to the world. Beliefs energize and direct actions. Beliefs are as indispensable as the air we breathe. Even an atheist is a believer, with his own system of disbelief. Not believing in anything is mental breakdown. There is something about humans that demands a belief. A belief can be anything or a combination of many things; it can be well-defined and even rigid, or a loosely put together hodge-podge with considerable latitude. It can be magnificent or the most abhorrent. But, it has to be there. Beliefs steer our vehicles in the journey of life.
A peculiar thing about beliefs is that they don’t have to be based on reason. Rationality does not have full charge of the human mind. Emotions, fantasies, misperceptions and a host of other operations make us the muddling fuzzy-thinkers that we are. A constant upheaval rages in the arena of the mind where all kinds of clashing forces and conflicting information vie for a place. All along, some mysterious housekeeper of the mind works at maintaining a semblance of coherence and order.
It is in the chaotic, fallible and conflict-ridden battlefield of the mind that beliefs are subjected to constant assaults as well as reinforcement. Somehow, usually in early life, the foundation for a belief system forms. Once this happens, the person tends to build on that foundation and protect it against anything that aims to change or undermine it.
The importance of early years in belief formation was recognized centuries ago by Saint Augustine, who said something to the effect: give me a child until he is seven and he will be forever mine. Sigmund Freud’s entire theory of Psychoanalysis is based on the primacy and importance of childhood experiences and education. The famed behavioral psychologist J.B. Watson went even further by declaring:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”
What Watson said may not hold perfectly in every case. Yet, the essence of his boast is indeed supported by numerous studies. Early environmental influences play the primary role in programming the mind and setting it on its course. In actuality, the brain seems to say: first come, first served. It is for this reason that Muslims are overwhelmingly born to Muslim parents, Hindus to Hindu parents, Catholics to Catholic parents, and so on.
This is not to say that changes, even major changes, are not possible after the early years. They are possible and they do happen in some instances. However, in order for significant changes to occur, major re-working must take place in the mind. Change is effortful and the law of conservation of energy also applies to the working of the mind and mitigates change unless the incentives to do so overcome the default mode of inertia.
The parents, other adults and children, as well as the prevailing culture are powerful teachers and trainers of the young mind. In the Islamic world, for instance, Islam permeates every aspect of life with overbearing severity. The young mind has little access to competing non-Islamic input. As the child’s foundation of belief forms, the mind works to protect it, further reinforce it, and bar, falsify, or dismiss any ideas that may clash with its already in-place contents.
As humans, we lack comprehensive pre-programmed software, instincts, to direct us in life. We, however, are born with predispositions which are the rudiments of software programs that will be further elaborated in interaction with life. We are, therefore, importantly dependent on how we and others, and in what fashion, further elaborate the rudimentary software. Somehow, there has been a trade-off. As our brain evolved both in size and power, what few instincts we may have had gave way. In a real sense, we took more and more charge of our own destiny.
As humans became more autonomous, a brain operation called “Confirmation Bias,” evolved to maintain internal harmony within the mind. Studies have shown that when Confirmation Bias is at work the brain areas ordinarily associated with rational decision-making are inactive. By contrast, an elaborate network of brain structures that process emotion and conflicts are highly activated. In short, confirmation bias has its own brain resources that shut out the reasoning parts in order to protect the already in-place beliefs and preferences.
The Confirmation Bias protects beliefs, values and ideas, be they political, religious, or of any other type; it is also helped in the discharge of its functions by the mind’s defense mechanisms such as rationalization (faulty reasoning) and denial (refusing to accept the reality of the irrefutable). Allocation of extensive faculties of the brain to content protection demonstrates the critical importance of the mind’s belief to its normal functioning.
The mind, concurrent with fiercely protecting its belief, actively seeks to further reinforce it with whatever supporting evidence it can muster. Total or major replacement of beliefs, particularly as one gets older, becomes less likely, yet it happens occasionally. Ideas, on the other hand, are much more amenable to change, replacement, or discard as long as they do not substantially undermine the integrity of the overall belief.
However, if a person’s ideas keep on changing gradually, they may swing the balance in favor of a total belief change. This is how Muslims usually become apostates, for example. Therefore, it is imperative that the belief of Islamofascism be challenged at every bend to make the Muslims start thinking and re-examining their ideas of faith.
Forming a religious belief is primarily an emotional undertaking. Therefore, reason must work extremely hard to override the emotion-based belief. Yet, it can be done.
There is nothing inherently wrong with religion. Religion can be a tremendous force for the good. However, when religion, this feeling-based belief, is filled with superstition, intolerance and hatred, then the observer of that religion embodies those qualities and becomes a menace to the self and to others. Feelings energize actions. Destructive feelings energize destructive actions.
Muslims living in theocratic states, in particular, are victims of their religious brains. Their religious brains are indoctrinated from the moment of birth by an extensive ruthless in-power cadre of self-serving clergy who are intent on maintaining their stranglehold on the rank and file of the faithful who are their very source of support and livelihood.
The mullahs and imams, as well as parents and others, envelop the receptive mind, feed it their dogma, and shield it from information that may undermine or falsify their version of belief.
Islamofascism is a pandemic fiercely-promoted belief system that enjoys a huge advantage over the competition. Some of the reasons for Islamofascism longevity and success are listed below.
* It is a crusading belief. Early on, it forced itself by the sword and as time went on it employed any and all schemes to promote itself while destroying the competition.
* It mandates prolific procreation on the faithful. It allows a man to have as many as four wives concurrently, in part to cater to the lust of the men and in part to produce more children who would, in turn, swell its ranks.
* It gets the first crack at imprinting its dogma on the blank slate of the child’s mind from the very first day of birth. The imprinting is usually deeply engrained and makes it difficult for the person to fully erase it, or replace it altogether. Even when successful, an ex-Muslim, or a “cultural” Muslim retains on his slate some traces of the early imprints. It may take more than one generation to fully erase the Islamic imprints.
* It does not allow anyone the choice of leaving its fold at the penalty of death for apostasy.
* It holds that the earth is Allah’s and no non-Muslim is entitled to the same rights and privileges reserved for its own members. Even the “people of the book,” Jews and Christians, must pay the religious tax of jazyyeh to be allowed a subservient place under the Islamic rule.
* It campaigns ceaselessly at propagating itself by any and all means, while banning other religions from so doing. Islamic proselytizers invade the lands of the unbelievers and work relentlessly to convert others while non-Muslim faiths are even barred from having a place of worship in lands such as the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia.
* It is anathema to many of civilized humanity’s values, such as those enshrined in the first amendment of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights.
* It is a caste system where the male believer enjoys valued privileges denied to all minorities, women and slaves. This discriminatory provision guarantees generation after generation of avowed in-power adherents who would shirk at nothing to maintain their privileged status granted to them by Allah.
* It is a powerful carrot-and-stick system of belief. It maintains its stranglehold on its obedient followers by promising them unimaginable compensations, if not in this world, then assuredly in the next, while anyone who strays from the mandated path is threatened with a raft of unending horrid torture from a vengeful Allah.
* The extortion-high oil prices that oil-rich Muslims extract from the addicted and oblivious non-Muslim world fuel the Islamic jihad throughout the world. Muslim kings, emirs and sheiks enjoy opulent life and aim to have it the same in Allah’s next world by funneling a portion of their huge parasitic income to madresehs (religious indoctrinating schools), mosques, storefront recruiting centers and charitable outlets that would enlist and hold masses of choiceless and fanatical believers. By funding these activities in the service of the jihadist Islam, these in-power Muslims believe that they can have it both ways: a material existence of great enjoyment here and an eternal life of hedonism in Allah’s promised paradise. In the bargain, these ringleader menaces of the world, aim to assuage their guilt feeling resulting from oppressing the impoverished exploited masses of Muslims with the delusion they are furthering Allah’s cause.
The danger of the bomb in the hands of the Mullahs has not disappeared, in spite of what the mainstream media and the Useful Idiots claim by misrepresenting the NIE report. The NIE guesses that the Mullahs seem to have ceased the construction of the warhead in 2003. How can the CIA be sure that this is the case and that the Mullahs are not secretly constructing it? Yet, the IRI, by its own admission, is on a crash program to develop long range missiles and operates cascades of centrifuges to make enriched weapon-grade uranium needed for the bomb.
The handwriting is on the wall. Huge numbers of Muslims, overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, and deeply indoctrinated in the jihadist belief are invading the world. It is this human bomb that must be diffused as well as keeping a vigilant eye on the other one that Iran’s Mullahs are relentlessly pursuing.
In short, never mind the nuclear bomb, if you like. But, we must do all we can to erase the suicide-homicide belief-vest that Islamofascists straps on their masses of the poor, the undereducated, and their deluded followers.
“Think globally, act locally,” is the rallying cry of the environmentalist movement. The same exhortation even more urgently applies to the fight against the deadly spread and menace of Islamofascism.
This controversy aside, the irrefutable fact is that the Jihadist belief of Islam itself poses existential danger to the world. Beliefs energize and direct actions. Beliefs are as indispensable as the air we breathe. Even an atheist is a believer, with his own system of disbelief. Not believing in anything is mental breakdown. There is something about humans that demands a belief. A belief can be anything or a combination of many things; it can be well-defined and even rigid, or a loosely put together hodge-podge with considerable latitude. It can be magnificent or the most abhorrent. But, it has to be there. Beliefs steer our vehicles in the journey of life.
A peculiar thing about beliefs is that they don’t have to be based on reason. Rationality does not have full charge of the human mind. Emotions, fantasies, misperceptions and a host of other operations make us the muddling fuzzy-thinkers that we are. A constant upheaval rages in the arena of the mind where all kinds of clashing forces and conflicting information vie for a place. All along, some mysterious housekeeper of the mind works at maintaining a semblance of coherence and order.
It is in the chaotic, fallible and conflict-ridden battlefield of the mind that beliefs are subjected to constant assaults as well as reinforcement. Somehow, usually in early life, the foundation for a belief system forms. Once this happens, the person tends to build on that foundation and protect it against anything that aims to change or undermine it.
The importance of early years in belief formation was recognized centuries ago by Saint Augustine, who said something to the effect: give me a child until he is seven and he will be forever mine. Sigmund Freud’s entire theory of Psychoanalysis is based on the primacy and importance of childhood experiences and education. The famed behavioral psychologist J.B. Watson went even further by declaring:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”
What Watson said may not hold perfectly in every case. Yet, the essence of his boast is indeed supported by numerous studies. Early environmental influences play the primary role in programming the mind and setting it on its course. In actuality, the brain seems to say: first come, first served. It is for this reason that Muslims are overwhelmingly born to Muslim parents, Hindus to Hindu parents, Catholics to Catholic parents, and so on.
This is not to say that changes, even major changes, are not possible after the early years. They are possible and they do happen in some instances. However, in order for significant changes to occur, major re-working must take place in the mind. Change is effortful and the law of conservation of energy also applies to the working of the mind and mitigates change unless the incentives to do so overcome the default mode of inertia.
The parents, other adults and children, as well as the prevailing culture are powerful teachers and trainers of the young mind. In the Islamic world, for instance, Islam permeates every aspect of life with overbearing severity. The young mind has little access to competing non-Islamic input. As the child’s foundation of belief forms, the mind works to protect it, further reinforce it, and bar, falsify, or dismiss any ideas that may clash with its already in-place contents.
As humans, we lack comprehensive pre-programmed software, instincts, to direct us in life. We, however, are born with predispositions which are the rudiments of software programs that will be further elaborated in interaction with life. We are, therefore, importantly dependent on how we and others, and in what fashion, further elaborate the rudimentary software. Somehow, there has been a trade-off. As our brain evolved both in size and power, what few instincts we may have had gave way. In a real sense, we took more and more charge of our own destiny.
As humans became more autonomous, a brain operation called “Confirmation Bias,” evolved to maintain internal harmony within the mind. Studies have shown that when Confirmation Bias is at work the brain areas ordinarily associated with rational decision-making are inactive. By contrast, an elaborate network of brain structures that process emotion and conflicts are highly activated. In short, confirmation bias has its own brain resources that shut out the reasoning parts in order to protect the already in-place beliefs and preferences.
The Confirmation Bias protects beliefs, values and ideas, be they political, religious, or of any other type; it is also helped in the discharge of its functions by the mind’s defense mechanisms such as rationalization (faulty reasoning) and denial (refusing to accept the reality of the irrefutable). Allocation of extensive faculties of the brain to content protection demonstrates the critical importance of the mind’s belief to its normal functioning.
The mind, concurrent with fiercely protecting its belief, actively seeks to further reinforce it with whatever supporting evidence it can muster. Total or major replacement of beliefs, particularly as one gets older, becomes less likely, yet it happens occasionally. Ideas, on the other hand, are much more amenable to change, replacement, or discard as long as they do not substantially undermine the integrity of the overall belief.
However, if a person’s ideas keep on changing gradually, they may swing the balance in favor of a total belief change. This is how Muslims usually become apostates, for example. Therefore, it is imperative that the belief of Islamofascism be challenged at every bend to make the Muslims start thinking and re-examining their ideas of faith.
Forming a religious belief is primarily an emotional undertaking. Therefore, reason must work extremely hard to override the emotion-based belief. Yet, it can be done.
There is nothing inherently wrong with religion. Religion can be a tremendous force for the good. However, when religion, this feeling-based belief, is filled with superstition, intolerance and hatred, then the observer of that religion embodies those qualities and becomes a menace to the self and to others. Feelings energize actions. Destructive feelings energize destructive actions.
Muslims living in theocratic states, in particular, are victims of their religious brains. Their religious brains are indoctrinated from the moment of birth by an extensive ruthless in-power cadre of self-serving clergy who are intent on maintaining their stranglehold on the rank and file of the faithful who are their very source of support and livelihood.
The mullahs and imams, as well as parents and others, envelop the receptive mind, feed it their dogma, and shield it from information that may undermine or falsify their version of belief.
Islamofascism is a pandemic fiercely-promoted belief system that enjoys a huge advantage over the competition. Some of the reasons for Islamofascism longevity and success are listed below.
* It is a crusading belief. Early on, it forced itself by the sword and as time went on it employed any and all schemes to promote itself while destroying the competition.
* It mandates prolific procreation on the faithful. It allows a man to have as many as four wives concurrently, in part to cater to the lust of the men and in part to produce more children who would, in turn, swell its ranks.
* It gets the first crack at imprinting its dogma on the blank slate of the child’s mind from the very first day of birth. The imprinting is usually deeply engrained and makes it difficult for the person to fully erase it, or replace it altogether. Even when successful, an ex-Muslim, or a “cultural” Muslim retains on his slate some traces of the early imprints. It may take more than one generation to fully erase the Islamic imprints.
* It does not allow anyone the choice of leaving its fold at the penalty of death for apostasy.
* It holds that the earth is Allah’s and no non-Muslim is entitled to the same rights and privileges reserved for its own members. Even the “people of the book,” Jews and Christians, must pay the religious tax of jazyyeh to be allowed a subservient place under the Islamic rule.
* It campaigns ceaselessly at propagating itself by any and all means, while banning other religions from so doing. Islamic proselytizers invade the lands of the unbelievers and work relentlessly to convert others while non-Muslim faiths are even barred from having a place of worship in lands such as the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia.
* It is anathema to many of civilized humanity’s values, such as those enshrined in the first amendment of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights.
* It is a caste system where the male believer enjoys valued privileges denied to all minorities, women and slaves. This discriminatory provision guarantees generation after generation of avowed in-power adherents who would shirk at nothing to maintain their privileged status granted to them by Allah.
* It is a powerful carrot-and-stick system of belief. It maintains its stranglehold on its obedient followers by promising them unimaginable compensations, if not in this world, then assuredly in the next, while anyone who strays from the mandated path is threatened with a raft of unending horrid torture from a vengeful Allah.
* The extortion-high oil prices that oil-rich Muslims extract from the addicted and oblivious non-Muslim world fuel the Islamic jihad throughout the world. Muslim kings, emirs and sheiks enjoy opulent life and aim to have it the same in Allah’s next world by funneling a portion of their huge parasitic income to madresehs (religious indoctrinating schools), mosques, storefront recruiting centers and charitable outlets that would enlist and hold masses of choiceless and fanatical believers. By funding these activities in the service of the jihadist Islam, these in-power Muslims believe that they can have it both ways: a material existence of great enjoyment here and an eternal life of hedonism in Allah’s promised paradise. In the bargain, these ringleader menaces of the world, aim to assuage their guilt feeling resulting from oppressing the impoverished exploited masses of Muslims with the delusion they are furthering Allah’s cause.
The danger of the bomb in the hands of the Mullahs has not disappeared, in spite of what the mainstream media and the Useful Idiots claim by misrepresenting the NIE report. The NIE guesses that the Mullahs seem to have ceased the construction of the warhead in 2003. How can the CIA be sure that this is the case and that the Mullahs are not secretly constructing it? Yet, the IRI, by its own admission, is on a crash program to develop long range missiles and operates cascades of centrifuges to make enriched weapon-grade uranium needed for the bomb.
The handwriting is on the wall. Huge numbers of Muslims, overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, and deeply indoctrinated in the jihadist belief are invading the world. It is this human bomb that must be diffused as well as keeping a vigilant eye on the other one that Iran’s Mullahs are relentlessly pursuing.
In short, never mind the nuclear bomb, if you like. But, we must do all we can to erase the suicide-homicide belief-vest that Islamofascists straps on their masses of the poor, the undereducated, and their deluded followers.
“Think globally, act locally,” is the rallying cry of the environmentalist movement. The same exhortation even more urgently applies to the fight against the deadly spread and menace of Islamofascism.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Bomb, Iran's Mullahs and Doomsday
It is the holiday season and we all have received this most welcome present: the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear problem. Since 2003 the mullahs running Iran have, on their own and through their own goodwill, have ceased all activities aimed at acquiring the bomb, so says the report.
Therefore, there is nothing to worry about folks, nothing to spoil the holiday season, and there is good reason to be upbeat about a safe and secure world.
Superficial reading of the CIA’s presentation of the findings is the comfort pill that successfully sugar-coats swallowing even the most unpalatable news.
A word of advice for President Bush: now you can also relax and give the celebratory mood a boost by ordering the armed forces to stand down. We have enough trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots of the world. This huge worry about the mullahs’ bomb is a distraction and doesn’t rate anything. Why listen to the warmonger alarmist Dick Cheney and his Neo-cons and keep us all in a jittery mood about the men-of-Allah mullahs?
Mr. President, in addition to the comforting NIA report (which was incidentally ordered by your adoring fans, Congress Democrats), you probably want to hear the dissenters and the skeptics before impulsively singing the praise of the mullahs, as Jimmy Carter did, or hastily launching a re-enactment of “ Shock and Awe,” this time on Iran.
* Prudence demands that you, as our President, make your decision on the basis of facts, first and foremost, and then weigh the opinions, conjectures, and advice of others. You need to do the same with the report. Don’t let the medium, the clever packaging of the report, become or even obscure the message. Once you do that, you will find an awful lot of troubling issues. Let me summarize things as I see them.
* Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity:” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.
* A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule.
* After Khomeini’s demise, another mullah much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and re-activated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.
* Decades later, some Iranians opposed to the rule of the murdering mullahs finally by-passed the watchdog and showed the world proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon. This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.
* As time went on, you, Mr. President vowed that Iran would never be allowed to achieve its goal during your watch. You kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s president, things started heating up greatly. Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights. He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with the Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time, while working around the clock to get to the Surge Capacity.
* The NIE report assures us that the IRI abandoned its nuclear weapon program some three years ago. So, there is really nothing to fear and even less reason to maintain the dangerous game of brinksmanship with the mullahs. Upon superficial reading of the report one may get the impression that the mullahs are not exactly the saints of Allah as Jimmy Carter had thought them and helped bring them to power. Yet, they neither are as scheming un-repenting villainous zanies that their enemies portray them.
* Now we have something that no one could imagine was possible only weeks ago. The latest comprehensive NIE report has something in its sleigh to appease, if not please, all the quarrelling children. Ahmadinejad boasts to the world that it stood up to the Great Satan, embarrassed it and didn’t even blink. You, Mr. President, can meekly end your term without having to make good on the threat of using force to make the mullahs drop their bomb quest. The Democrats who hate you and the Republicans more than they dislike or fear the zany bomb-wielding mullahs can happily celebrate and have new ammunitions for their weapons to capture the White House. The IAEA can keep its plush job of trotting around the world and doing nothing to warrant its existence. The Europeans can keep on doing lucrative business with the gas station the mullahs operate. The U.N. Security Council can stall, water down, or completely abandon any new sanctions on the IRI. The Russians and the Chinese can delight at the U.S. humiliation and keep on making money from their nuclear and oil deals. See how great it is? Just one report and a huge problem is solved and everyone is happy.
* But I hate to be the dissenting voice. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly now that the West and much of the non-Islamic world is preparing for holiday festivities. Threats to my life by the Islamists have failed to silence me. I have not taken to remaining silent just to keep people in their comfortable deadly delusions. Here is my take on the whole thing.
1. The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been at the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing and treachery. Hence, for the NIE’s report to be based primarily on supposed interception of secret conversations of high-ranking Iranian leaders is nothing more than a practice in gullibility. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs.
2. The defected/abducted Iranian general Askari a while back was seen by some as a veritable trough of inside information about Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, this man may simply be a planted mole.
3. If indeed the IRI has abandoned its entire program to achieve Surge Capacity, then why is it that it does not allow the IAEA unimpeded access to over some 30 known facilities? The IAEA is allowed to visit only a handful of them, and only with prior notice.
4. The bleeding heart liberals, otherwise known as the Useful Idiots, citing the NIE demand in chorus that we should immediately begin negotiating with the mullahs with no pre-conditions at all. We never had much leverage with the mullahs. What little leverage we had is wiped out by our own NIE. What these Useful Idiots don’t seem to understand is that one can only negotiate with a party who is indeed interested in negotiation.
The extortion-high oil money has intoxicated the mullahs. They see themselves as the Tolooi (ascending like the rising sun) and non-Islamic world as the Ofooli (sinking like the descending sun). Why negotiate any live-and-let-live arrangement with a dying adversary, they reason. The mullahs are only interested in the eventual full surrender of the non-Islamic world. Any concession they make is either tactical or altogether worthless. These villains have a mile-long sheet of past broken promises and treachery. The Useful Idiots neglect to tell us how one negotiates with these inveterate connivers. They seem to think that throwing a couple of bones to the mullahs will keep them gnawing at the bones and leave their own flesh intact: a deadly delusional and wishful thinking.
5. Some influential pundits pontificate that we can live with a nuclear Iran, if it comes to that. They say that Iran would never use the bomb. Because the mullahs, the fanatic zanies as they may be, are not going to risk Iran becoming a radioactive parking lot by the massive U.S. retaliation. Wrong. Once again, these well-healed arrogant know-it-all pundits are seeing things through their own spectacles.
The civilized people cherish and celebrate life. The Islamists relish death as stated in their ideology and practiced daily. Recall what Hassan Nasrullah; the leader of Lebanon Hizbollah had to say about why his people would prevail in the war with Israel. He said, “Israelis love life. We Muslims love death.” These fanatics firmly believe in an incomparably magnificent pleasure-filled next world that awaits the faithful Muslim. To them, this world is nothing but a heap of dust, while the next is a paradise of eternal lust.
6. It is fine for Hassan Nasrullah to claim the love of death by the faithful. But, do these soldiers of Allah actually walk the walk and actively seek death? The answer is indeed a resounding yes. It is a pillar of belief in Islam that whichever side is killed, Islam and Muslims are the beneficiaries of the death. Based on this horrific ideology of death, the Muslims have visited death on untold numbers of both Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The Khominist regime of the IRI sent tens of thousands of its own children to their death to clear minefields in its holy war with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Not limiting itself to this horrific act, the Khominists executed tens of thousands of political dissenters without the least due process. Islam wins, either when you kill or you get killed. That’s the motto of the religion of death.
7. The killer Muslims joyfully strap on bomb vests and detonate them in a marketplace, in a wedding hall, in schools, in hospitals, in funeral processions, and even in mosques. These acts of killing and maiming innocent people happen daily. The bomber kills himself for the privilege of killing as many as possible in the process. The rewards that the killer is convinced awaiting him warrants the most hideous act. And there is an over-abundance of these murderers who vie with one another to kill and get killed.
8. Suicide bombing that maims and kills dozens is often dismissed as an act of aberration by an individual deceived by ruthless conniving handlers. But, no one would ever contemplate using the nuclear bomb when it entails the certainty of his own destruction as well as his country, so goes the deterrence logic.
Logic, what logic? Fanaticism generated by belief defies logic at every bend. A zealot end-of-the-worlder Ahmadinejad has already climbed to a position of great power. What if another Ahmadinejad-type gets to have his finger on the bomb’s trigger? Would he pull it, even if it is going to kill him and all his people? Only a fool would bet against it.
My advice to the President and the people of my adopted country is: go ahead and make merry, enjoy the gift of life, but don’t let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency. Yes, if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark. After all it is the mullahs’ deeply-held belief that their cataclysmic act will expedite the coming of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age), whence he would set the world on the righteous course while those who have hastened his coming will be immersed eternally in the joys of pleasure in Allah’s promised paradise.
Therefore, there is nothing to worry about folks, nothing to spoil the holiday season, and there is good reason to be upbeat about a safe and secure world.
Superficial reading of the CIA’s presentation of the findings is the comfort pill that successfully sugar-coats swallowing even the most unpalatable news.
A word of advice for President Bush: now you can also relax and give the celebratory mood a boost by ordering the armed forces to stand down. We have enough trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots of the world. This huge worry about the mullahs’ bomb is a distraction and doesn’t rate anything. Why listen to the warmonger alarmist Dick Cheney and his Neo-cons and keep us all in a jittery mood about the men-of-Allah mullahs?
Mr. President, in addition to the comforting NIA report (which was incidentally ordered by your adoring fans, Congress Democrats), you probably want to hear the dissenters and the skeptics before impulsively singing the praise of the mullahs, as Jimmy Carter did, or hastily launching a re-enactment of “ Shock and Awe,” this time on Iran.
* Prudence demands that you, as our President, make your decision on the basis of facts, first and foremost, and then weigh the opinions, conjectures, and advice of others. You need to do the same with the report. Don’t let the medium, the clever packaging of the report, become or even obscure the message. Once you do that, you will find an awful lot of troubling issues. Let me summarize things as I see them.
* Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity:” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.
* A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule.
* After Khomeini’s demise, another mullah much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and re-activated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.
* Decades later, some Iranians opposed to the rule of the murdering mullahs finally by-passed the watchdog and showed the world proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon. This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.
* As time went on, you, Mr. President vowed that Iran would never be allowed to achieve its goal during your watch. You kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s president, things started heating up greatly. Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights. He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with the Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time, while working around the clock to get to the Surge Capacity.
* The NIE report assures us that the IRI abandoned its nuclear weapon program some three years ago. So, there is really nothing to fear and even less reason to maintain the dangerous game of brinksmanship with the mullahs. Upon superficial reading of the report one may get the impression that the mullahs are not exactly the saints of Allah as Jimmy Carter had thought them and helped bring them to power. Yet, they neither are as scheming un-repenting villainous zanies that their enemies portray them.
* Now we have something that no one could imagine was possible only weeks ago. The latest comprehensive NIE report has something in its sleigh to appease, if not please, all the quarrelling children. Ahmadinejad boasts to the world that it stood up to the Great Satan, embarrassed it and didn’t even blink. You, Mr. President, can meekly end your term without having to make good on the threat of using force to make the mullahs drop their bomb quest. The Democrats who hate you and the Republicans more than they dislike or fear the zany bomb-wielding mullahs can happily celebrate and have new ammunitions for their weapons to capture the White House. The IAEA can keep its plush job of trotting around the world and doing nothing to warrant its existence. The Europeans can keep on doing lucrative business with the gas station the mullahs operate. The U.N. Security Council can stall, water down, or completely abandon any new sanctions on the IRI. The Russians and the Chinese can delight at the U.S. humiliation and keep on making money from their nuclear and oil deals. See how great it is? Just one report and a huge problem is solved and everyone is happy.
* But I hate to be the dissenting voice. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly now that the West and much of the non-Islamic world is preparing for holiday festivities. Threats to my life by the Islamists have failed to silence me. I have not taken to remaining silent just to keep people in their comfortable deadly delusions. Here is my take on the whole thing.
1. The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been at the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing and treachery. Hence, for the NIE’s report to be based primarily on supposed interception of secret conversations of high-ranking Iranian leaders is nothing more than a practice in gullibility. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs.
2. The defected/abducted Iranian general Askari a while back was seen by some as a veritable trough of inside information about Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, this man may simply be a planted mole.
3. If indeed the IRI has abandoned its entire program to achieve Surge Capacity, then why is it that it does not allow the IAEA unimpeded access to over some 30 known facilities? The IAEA is allowed to visit only a handful of them, and only with prior notice.
4. The bleeding heart liberals, otherwise known as the Useful Idiots, citing the NIE demand in chorus that we should immediately begin negotiating with the mullahs with no pre-conditions at all. We never had much leverage with the mullahs. What little leverage we had is wiped out by our own NIE. What these Useful Idiots don’t seem to understand is that one can only negotiate with a party who is indeed interested in negotiation.
The extortion-high oil money has intoxicated the mullahs. They see themselves as the Tolooi (ascending like the rising sun) and non-Islamic world as the Ofooli (sinking like the descending sun). Why negotiate any live-and-let-live arrangement with a dying adversary, they reason. The mullahs are only interested in the eventual full surrender of the non-Islamic world. Any concession they make is either tactical or altogether worthless. These villains have a mile-long sheet of past broken promises and treachery. The Useful Idiots neglect to tell us how one negotiates with these inveterate connivers. They seem to think that throwing a couple of bones to the mullahs will keep them gnawing at the bones and leave their own flesh intact: a deadly delusional and wishful thinking.
5. Some influential pundits pontificate that we can live with a nuclear Iran, if it comes to that. They say that Iran would never use the bomb. Because the mullahs, the fanatic zanies as they may be, are not going to risk Iran becoming a radioactive parking lot by the massive U.S. retaliation. Wrong. Once again, these well-healed arrogant know-it-all pundits are seeing things through their own spectacles.
The civilized people cherish and celebrate life. The Islamists relish death as stated in their ideology and practiced daily. Recall what Hassan Nasrullah; the leader of Lebanon Hizbollah had to say about why his people would prevail in the war with Israel. He said, “Israelis love life. We Muslims love death.” These fanatics firmly believe in an incomparably magnificent pleasure-filled next world that awaits the faithful Muslim. To them, this world is nothing but a heap of dust, while the next is a paradise of eternal lust.
6. It is fine for Hassan Nasrullah to claim the love of death by the faithful. But, do these soldiers of Allah actually walk the walk and actively seek death? The answer is indeed a resounding yes. It is a pillar of belief in Islam that whichever side is killed, Islam and Muslims are the beneficiaries of the death. Based on this horrific ideology of death, the Muslims have visited death on untold numbers of both Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The Khominist regime of the IRI sent tens of thousands of its own children to their death to clear minefields in its holy war with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Not limiting itself to this horrific act, the Khominists executed tens of thousands of political dissenters without the least due process. Islam wins, either when you kill or you get killed. That’s the motto of the religion of death.
7. The killer Muslims joyfully strap on bomb vests and detonate them in a marketplace, in a wedding hall, in schools, in hospitals, in funeral processions, and even in mosques. These acts of killing and maiming innocent people happen daily. The bomber kills himself for the privilege of killing as many as possible in the process. The rewards that the killer is convinced awaiting him warrants the most hideous act. And there is an over-abundance of these murderers who vie with one another to kill and get killed.
8. Suicide bombing that maims and kills dozens is often dismissed as an act of aberration by an individual deceived by ruthless conniving handlers. But, no one would ever contemplate using the nuclear bomb when it entails the certainty of his own destruction as well as his country, so goes the deterrence logic.
Logic, what logic? Fanaticism generated by belief defies logic at every bend. A zealot end-of-the-worlder Ahmadinejad has already climbed to a position of great power. What if another Ahmadinejad-type gets to have his finger on the bomb’s trigger? Would he pull it, even if it is going to kill him and all his people? Only a fool would bet against it.
My advice to the President and the people of my adopted country is: go ahead and make merry, enjoy the gift of life, but don’t let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency. Yes, if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark. After all it is the mullahs’ deeply-held belief that their cataclysmic act will expedite the coming of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age), whence he would set the world on the righteous course while those who have hastened his coming will be immersed eternally in the joys of pleasure in Allah’s promised paradise.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Fighting For the Soul of Iran
Fighting For the Soul of Iran
By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com Thursday, December 06, 2007
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Amil Imani, a pro-democracy activist who advocates regime change in Iran. He was born in Tehran into a Muslim family and moved to the United States during the Islamic Revolution. An American citizen, Mr. Imani is a columnist, poet, literary translator, novelist, essayist, and political analyst. He is a regular contributor to The New Media Journal, American Thinker, Faith Freedom International and the popular Iranian online magazine, Iranian.com.
[Editor’s note: due to the many death threats Amil Imani receives, Frontpagemag.com cannot produce a picture of him at this time.]
FP: Amil Imani, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Imani: Thank you Jamie for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts and my views with your readers. I am also a fan of your wonderful online magazine. I visit it quite often.
FP: Thank you Amil.
Let’s begin by you telling us a bit about your background.
Imani: I was born in Tehran, Iran into a wonderful, loving and intellectual family. Growing up in a Muslim family, I was fortunate that my parents never forced their will on me to follow Islam and its rituals or for that matter, any other religion or ideology. They believed that religion was a personal choice and in time I would decide for myself. Yet, I did grow up in a Muslim society and have witnessed first-hand the horrors and indignity that Islamofascism visits on people it subjugates, and for that matter, I have taken it upon myself to do my part in defeating this ideology of oppression, hate and violence.
For as long as I can remember I have had a torrid passion for poetry. I finished my first book of poetry at the age of thirteen. I find writing to be therapeutic. It enables me to put in words my feelings about my native country Iran and its sad plight at this time. It empowers me to be able to "defend" Iran’s extremely rich culture and her people and gives me the freedom to say things from the heart. It also gives me strength to defend my adopted home, the United States of America and her extremely wonderful and gracious people from the threat and wrath of Islamofascism.
I pray that God gives me the energy and resources to carry out my services to both Iran; the United States and the generality of humanity with evermore effectiveness.
I was also fortunate enough to visit many countries around the world and appreciate other cultures. I moved to the United States during the thuggish revolt in Iran, better known as the Islamic Revolution of Iran. This untimely revolution outrageously installed the most oppressive theocratic Islamic system known to the history of mankind. With that, it renewed an era of Islamic terrorism.
I have remained in contact with the people of Iran and understand their frustration and their pain. The overwhelming majority of Iranians of today stand shoulder to shoulder with the civilized free people of the world to defeat Islamofascism. The Iranians have not forgotten their heritage; they pride in their ancient creed of light—that of Zoroaster; they see themselves as inheritors of a great culture and tradition—that of Cyrus the Great, the exemplary just king; and, are determined to pay any price to put an end, once and for all, to the virulent disease of Islamofascism. We must remain resolute and maintain a warrior’s heart. I believe this is a righteous battle against evil.
FP: Tell us the nature of the regime that rules Iran.
Imani: The Islamic Republic of Iran is a unique creature—it is best described as a Theocratic Aristocracy. The “divinely-ordained” rulers maintain themselves in power by an elaborate system of patronage. Lucrative positions, contracts, and valued privileges are distributed by patronage.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a quisling entity that has betrayed its people, its tradition, its glorious pre-Islamic achievements, and is incessantly working against Iran’s national interest. Iran, under the stranglehold and machinations of the Mullahs, has been transformed, in less than three decades, to the lead perpetrator of all that is abhorrent to humanity.
Iran’s ruling Mullahs are clustered around major factions such as the conservatives, the moderates, and the so-called reformists. Yet, the differences among these factions are tactical rather than strategic. One and all share the same overarching goal of defeating the “Crusader-Zionists” by any and all methods possible, bringing about the “end of the world” Armageddon, and thereby creating the requisite conditions for the appearance of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, to assume his rule of the world.
Presently, the Mullahs have been doing all they can to imprison and kill with impunity the internal opposition, and want the rest of the world to keep its nose out of their “family” business. Executions in Iran have skyrocketed.
Under the rule of these adherents of death, everything in Iran is deteriorating and dying. In spite of huge oil revenues, the per capita income of the Iranians is now about one third of what it was before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Every form of misery has also skyrocketed. Drug addiction, prostitution and suicide have gone through the roof. The young and the educated continue deserting Iran and family, fleeing to the four corners of the earth in search of a decent life.
Iran of today, on the one hand, has the potential of rapidly becoming a nuclear state and becoming a formidable adversary that would not settle for anything less than the total subjugation of the free world. On the other hand, in Iran’s people and culture is a genuine potential for replacing the doomsday-bent Mullahcracy and making Iran the free world’s staunchest partner with the U.S. in the Islamic world.
FP: Your thoughts on the Mullahs’ ban on Western music? What other music is banned? Why does music represent such a threat to Islamic fundamentalism? What is the overall role of the religious police?
Imani: In principle, music is forbidden by Islam, but they have not been able to take that away from the people. Classical and Jazz music is widely available in music stores, but the state-run media limits the use of such genres. Traditional Persian music is not restricted, but it is not easy to obtain government permits for recordings that are meant for commercial distributions. There is actually a government ministry that censors music, publications, and other art forms. There is a ban on Iranian music that comes from abroad, especially from Los Angeles studios. But, how can anyone stop 40 million strong youth under the age of 30 from listening to Western or pop music?
Under the Sharia law in Iran, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. Men and women not from the same family are forbidden to dance together and women are obliged to cover their heads, arms and legs.
Religious police or clerical police or morality police are groups that are funded, legally authorized, and/or recognized by the Islamic athurity, to enforce morality who enforce sharia law within Islamic theocraciess.
Recently, these repression police have attacked Iraian women all across the country and have arrested thosands of them for petty offences such as showing a little hair or wearing tight jeans. Iranian women have come a long way in their struggle for their rights and they continue to challenge the Mullahs repressive police.
FP: How have the institutions of higher education faired under the regime?
Imani: The institutions of higher learning are still excellent, but the atmosphere of free thought is almost non-existent in the humanities, and the students are forced to take Islamic instruction and indoctrination. On the other hand, in the arena of science Iran still cranks out one of the highest number of geniuses, albeit in an atmosphere of nearly total control. For example Sharif University graduates are among the most sought after graduates by MIT, and other reputable institutions worldwide. There is a great "brain drain" in Iran, since there is no social freedom and the economy holds no future for graduates, so many of the country's prodigies are now in North America and Europe. Many of the Fortune 500 companies are owned by Iranian expatriates, and organizations like NASA benefit from the scientific talents of such Iranian exiles. In fact the current head of NASA's Mars Mission is Dr. Firouz Naderi (an Iranian)
FP: What has the regime done to the economy?
Imani: The country's income has grown exponentially, but the resources are not put back into the economy. There is an incredibly high rate of joblessness along with a high inflation rate.
The lifeblood of Iran’s economy is oil and natural gas. The Mullahs neglect and squandering of these vital and irreplaceable resources holds a future of even more severe hardship for the Iranian people. Impartial expert studies show that Iran’s oil production, at the present rate of exploitation and absence of maintenance, will decline by nearly ten percent per year and will hit zero by 2015.
Corruption and mismanagement, combined with the huge allocation of resources to acquire nuclear weapons, are bound to burden the country’s badly ailing economy that will likely bury the Mullahs in the rubble of their own making and grant them their death wish.
FP: Can you talk a bit about prostitution and drugs in Iran?
Imani: Yes. There are millions of drug addicts in Iran, especially young people. It is a major public health issue. It ranges from prescription drug abuse to I.V. drugs. A lot of people are addicted to opium, morphine, and heroin. There is a great spread of street drug use, such as crack cocaine, "crystal", and other "designer drugs". There is no uniform policy to enforce drug charges. A lot of big dealers are arrested and executed, yet others who have connections to the regime get off the hook and are in fact get subsidized by certain elements in the government to keep some drugs cheap and available, in order to poison the youth and keep them from revolting against the Islamic regime. The other ugly face of addiction and poverty is the widespread prostitution that goes hand-in-hand with this phenomenon.
FP: Tell us about the fate of homosexuals in Iran.
Imani: Well, in Islam homosexuality is condemned, but they have not necessarily enforced it. In most cases, though, when they run out of other ideas to execute innocent people on political charges, they accuse them of homosexuality, pedophilia, adultery, etc. In fact the majority of mullahs engage in homosexual acts and are pedophiles, but they keep it quiet and look out for their own.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was challenged during his appearance on Amnesty International statistics that suggest that 200 people had been executed in Iran so far this year, among them homosexuals.
FP: The Left played a pretty substantial role in the Iranian Revolution didn’t it?
Imani: The communists of course were very active in the original uprisings against the Shah. A very strange marriage took place early on between the Islamists (who were an insignificant minority) and the variety of communist factions. They buried their hatchets and supposedly "unified" the nation for a "common" cause, which was supposed to be the achievement of democracy and freedom of speech.
Unbeknown to most Iranians who jumped on the bandwagon with these two main groups, the communists had the dream of socialism and the Islamists wanted to bring about Islamic fascism. They both lied to the people and betrayed their trust, and of course the Islamists used the idea of "Taqqyeh" or Islamic "white lie" and took the nation and its revolution hostage.
Then they started to arrest and kill the communists and anyone else they found to be against the establishment of an Islamic system. This is exactly the way these forms of uprisings turn out. You can see it played out almost as a parallel in the October Revolution in Russia, which was the basis for George Orwell's book "Animal Farm".
Nahavandi on his interview from FrontPageMag.com said: “The collapse of a pillar of stability in the East, of its army, its pro-western regime was a golden opportunity for Moscow. It effectively did help, thanks to the role played by the “Tudeh”, the ultra-left – mujahideens etc… who were then manipulated by the K.G.B., by Qaddafi’s Libya, then close to Moscow and which financed the revolution, by the support Damascus gave the revolution, by the role played by East Germany, etc.”
FP: So what is your faith today? Do you consider yourself a Muslim?
Imani: No, I do not consider myself a Muslim. You cannot possibly be a Persian and a Muslim at the same time. They are incompatible. As a matter of fact, to most of us, (true Iranians), calling us Muslim, is a great insult. This may come as a surprise to the Western people, but this is a mutual feeling with the new generation in Iran. The Iranians are fed up with Islam and they want out. I regained my freedom when I left Islam.
Over the years the concept of religion and faith in my mind has transcended and matured up. It searched for the realms of real and unreal, my mind traveled and expanded beyond the meaning and definitions of words to regain its forgotten truth, a knowing, a deeper truth. Here, the real story is not whether one faith washes his feet, or signs a cross with holy water, or whirls like a Dervish. The issue is how they treat those who disagree with them or stray from their sanctioned behaviors.
My beliefs have matured over the years. I now think that God has a set of values that are absolutely right and good, rebellion against which is wrong (sinful), and about which the commitment to deceive others is evil, as is the commitment to deny the existence of anything absolutely good or bad.I believe that there is an unfathomable Being who is the Fashioner of this universe, including us. We refer to this Being as God, He, and so forth, in a futile attempt to encapsulate this Being into our extremely finite minds.
I also believe that this Being is not a dot commer. He doesn't sit around and wait to fill orders or requests. Neither does he interfere in the details of our lives. What he has done and does, to my understanding, is to establish certain rules and parameters that give each one of us a tremendous leeway on how to play the game of life.
Each one of us, according to these rules and parameters, receives a "hand" for playing the game. It really doesn't matter what kind of hand we start with, it matters how well we play the hand we are dealt. Do we enlist ourselves in the service of good and combat evil, or do we just squander away our time?
I believe that prayers are primarily for giving us comfort, for calming us down, for helping us take the steps needed to mend our ways, to do all we can to be worthy humans. Also to clear our hearts and heads from the dross of daily worldly entanglement, to help put matters in proper perspective, to live at peace with both our gifts as well as our limitations, to aid us in entertaining good thoughts, uttering good speech and doing good deeds.
When prayers are said with the above mindset, they are already answered prayers. Death is inevitable. It is the journey that invariably follows birth, sooner or later. Let us hope that we all do justice to our gift of humanness in this life and wing to the next with minimal sense of shame and shortcoming.
FP: What do you think of the possibility of Islamic democracy?
Imani: Islam clearly is incompatible with democracy. Keep in mind that the very name “Islam” is a derivation of “taslim,” the Arabic word for “surrender,” surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Quran.This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights.
Below is a brief presentation of what this surrender to Islam entails and why it is imperative that all freedom-loving people arise and defeat the menace of Islamofascism.
Amendment I of the Bill of Rights enshrines some of the most cherished ideals of freedom-loving people: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Islam considers itself the three branches of government. It enacts laws as it sees fit, adjudicates laws, and executes as it deems. Islam is anathema to the provisions of the First Amendment and much more.
* Islam proclaims itself as the only legitimate religion for the entire world, grudgingly granting minor recognition to Judaism and Christianity from whom it has liberally plagiarized many of its dogma. Jews and Christians are allowed to live under the rule of Islam as dhimmis and must pay a special religious tax of jazyyeh. Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, members of other religions, agnostics, or atheists are not even allowed to live practicing their belief or disbelief.
* Islam actively suppresses and even prohibits the practice of other religions, including those of the “people of the book,” Jews and Christians. There is not a single church or synagogue in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia, while thousands of mosques dot the tolerating and welcoming non-Moslem lands. Islamic countries that allow for Jewish and Christian places of worship subject these “people of the book” to numberless subtle and not-so-subtle forms of persecution. Moslems in non-Moslem lands proselytize relentlessly and convert others while any Moslem who leaves Islam is judged as apostate and automatically condemned to death.
* Freedom of speech is just about non-existent in Islam. The word is Allah’s, his chosen divines such as Ayatollahs and Imams are the only ones who are to make pronouncements squarely-based on Allah’s word, the Quran. Any expression in the least at deviance from the Quran, the Hadith and the edicts of Islamic high divines is heresy and severely punishable. Hence, stifling of free expression is the major mechanism by which the Islamic clergy retain power and prevent constructive change in Islamic societies.
* Freedom of the press is completely alien to Islam, since a free press tends to express matters as it sees it, rather than as it is stated in the Quran. To Islam, the Quran is the press and the only press. There is no need for critical reporting, no need to present ideas that may conflict with the Quran, and no place for criticism of anything Islamic. The stranglehold of Islam on the individual and society is complete.
* Peaceful assembly of the people is not allowed. The backward oppressive Islamic societies inflict great hardship on the citizenry and any assembly of the victims presents a threat to the suffocating rule. Islamic governments routinely prevent peaceful assemblies from taking place. Failing to do so, they unleash their hired thugs, the police and even the military against any assemblage no matter how peaceful and how legitimate is its grievance. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is vying with Saudi Arabia as the leader of true Islamic rule, routinely attacks any and all gatherings of its people, arrests them, imprisons them without due process, tortures them, and even executes them in secret dungeons. Journalists, academics, unionists, students, teachers, women rights groups who dare to petition the government for redress are labeled subversive and are severely punished.
* Not only Islam does not allow freedom of assembly and the press, it is intrusively restrictive in every aspects of a person’s life. The way women should dress, the haircut of men, the music people are allowed, movies to watch, television programs to view, and even parties in the privacy of their home are subject to the ridiculous monitoring of moral police. Islam is hell-bent on outward morality and puritanical conduct while it is rotten to the core just below the pretentious surface.
* Islam segregates by gender many public places and events such as beaches, sporting venues, public transportations, and even building elevators. Families are often prevented from attending a sporting event together or swimming together at a beach.
That is why Islam cannot possibly work in those countries where democracy is at work.
FP: Many people think Iranians are Arabs, but they are Persians. Can you explain the ethnological differences to our readers? How do Arabs feel about Persians? How do Persians feel about Arabs? It is clear, of course, that one whole group of people never completely feels the same about any one thing, I’m just asking about some common attitudes.
Imani: I don’t really blame anyone for confusion on this issue. Many people or Americans are not well-travelers and obviously they don't know or they cannot tell the difference. However, if you travel to Los Angeles, you can hardly find an American who is not able to distinguish from the two races. Californians know Iranians well. There are roughly around 700,000 or more Iranians live in California.
The 700,000 Iranians include Azaris, Kurds, Baluchis and other ethnics. But, they are all proud to be Iranians. It is the strength of Iran that has successfully blended many ethnic groups into one whole nation called Iran (meaning the land of Aryans) for thousands of years. We pride ourselves in being ethnically diverse, yet united in our love for Iran.
Let's say, the "American Natives," and the "Mexican Natives" are from the same ethnic stock--Native Americans. Most Iranians are not Semites as the Arabs are. And not being able to tell a person from El Salvador apart from one from Mexico is like saying that you cannot tell an Iraqi apart from a Saudi. Well, they are both Hispanic in the case of the former and Arabs in the case of the latter.
Temperamentally, I am averse to making a big deal out of genetic difference. It smacks of Eugenics and racism. I prefer that we emphasize our cultural uniqueness and our ancient tradition of respect for human life and human rights.
Persians often take great umbrage at being confused with Arabs. Authors like Robert Kaplan and V. S. Naipaul have documented the Persian antipathy toward the Arabs, all the while espousing the Arab religion enthusiastically. It is rather understandable for reasons of history, geography and religion why Iran is bracketed into the Arab world in the minds of many.
Funny thing about racism is that it works both ways. I know that many Arabs also resent being taken as Iranians. So, best thing to do is to stay clear of notions that smack of superiority for oneself and denigrating others.
FP: Tell us who the Baha’i are and their fate under the Iranian regime.
Imani: The terrible plight of the Baha’i faithful in Iran is particularly heartwrenching, since they are the largest non-Muslim group in the country and have, from day one, been severely brutalized by Muslims. The Baha’i Faith dates back to the middle of the 19th century when an Iranian nobleman, Baha’u’llah, founded the new faith as an independent religion—a very painful thorn in the side of a ruling vested clergy with a stranglehold on the masses.
The slaveholder, Islam, finds the Baha’i Faith a threat to its very existence, since many of the Baha’i teachings are anathema to that of Islamofascism—the current favorite version of Islam in official Iran. Below is a brief list that contrasts some of the two beliefs. Beliefs are impetus to action and when beliefs clash, people clash.
1. Muslims contend that Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets, that God sent his best and final messenger to mankind, and any other claimant is an imposter worthy of death. Baha’is believe that God has always sent his emissaries to educate humanity and shall do so in the future. They believe that Baha’u’llah is the latest in that line of prophets.
2. Blind imitation and obedience to any authority is anathema to Baha’is. Baha’is believe that the human mind and the gift of reason should guide the person in making decisions about all matters. To this end, they place a premium on education and independent investigation of truth. Baha’is consider the education of women as important as that of men, since women are the early teachers of children and can play their valuable part by being themselves educated. By contrast, Muslims look for to religious authorities for guidance and often deprive women of education and independent thinking.
In recognition of the importance of independent thinking, no one is born Baha’i. Once one is born to a Muslim, he is considered Muslim for life. If he decides to leave Islam, he is labeled apostate and, apostates are automatically condemned to death. The slaveholders are intent on keeping all their slaves as well as their issue. By contrast, every child born in a Baha’i family is required to make his own independent decision regarding whether or not he wishes to be a Baha’i. Freedom to choose and independent thinking are cherished values of the Baha’is, in stark contrast to that of Muslims.
3. Baha’is believe that truth transcends all boundaries. Scientific and religious truth emanates from the same universal source. They are like the two sides of the same coin. To Baha’is, science and religion are as two wings of a bird that enable human flight toward the summit of its potential; that any religious belief that contradicts science is superstition. Muslims believe that their religious dogma, irrespective of its proven falsehood, is superior to that of science. The Muslims literally believe, for instance, that Muhammad unsheathed his sword and split the moon in half and many, many more scientifically-untenable views.
4. Muslims hold the view, expressly stated in the Quran, that men are rulers over women. Baha’is fully reject this notion and subscribe to the unconditional equality of the two sexes. This Baha’i principle emancipates one half of humanity from the status of subservient domestic to that of a fully participating and self-actualized human. It undermines the heartless exploitation of women and demands that women be treated with all due respect under the law.
5. Prejudice of any type is alien to the Baha’i Faith and severely undermines its pivotal principle of the oneness of humanity. Muslims are notorious when it comes to prejudice. Prejudice against others is thoroughly exploited by the Islamofascist. In contrast, Baha’i scriptures say, “…again, as to religious, racial, national and political bias: all these prejudices strike at the very root of human life; one and all they beget bloodshed, and the ruination of the world. So long as these prejudices survive, there will be continuous and fearsome wars.”
The above is a short treatment of some of the salient features of the two belief systems—one dating back some fourteen centuries and one of relatively recent origin. It is understandable that the intolerant defunct fascist Islam sees its death in a competing ideology vastly at odds with its barbaric tenets.
It is the modus operandi of radical Muslims to write graffiti on the walls of synagogues, churches, cemeteries and other holy places of non-Muslims. The plights of Baha’is are no exception. Here are some examples of graffiti in Abadeh, a small town in Iran: 'Death to Baha'is, the mercenaries of America and England,' 'Hezbollah despises the Baha'is,' 'Baha'is - mercenaries of Israel' and 'Baha'is are unclean' - phrases that relate directly to government propaganda that has been disseminated in the Islamic Republic news media in recent years," said Ms. Diane Ala’i, who represents the Baha’i International Community to the UN in Geneva.
We also feel for our long-suffering Baha’i compatriots in Iran. They have been savagely brutalized for over a century and a half through the demonic machinations of the despicable mullahs. They continue to pay dearly for their audacity to believe in human dignity.
FP: Children were used as human minesweepers in the Iran/Iraq war. Tell us about this horrifying crime against humanity perpetrated by the Mullahs.
Imani: The Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic State, for one, made extensive use of the fatwa. Widely-known in the west is Khomeini’s fatwa condemning Selman Rushdie to death for his book. A less known fatwa of Khomeini during the last Iran-Iraq war led to the slaughter of thousands of Iranian children. Children, nearly all under 15 years of age, were given plastic keys to paradise as they were commanded by the fatwa of the imam to rush forward to clear minefields for the tanks to follow. The Islamic murderers, in obedience to the fatwa of a bloodthirsty man of Allah, had no problem in deceiving the clueless lads with made in China plastic keys to paradise.
Such is the existentialistic threat of Islam. It is a rigid stone-age authoritarian system with a stranglehold over many of the nearly one and half billion people under its command.
It was a very well documented fact. They brainwashed these children to believe that they were serving god and would give them "keys to paradise" made out of plastic and headbands with Islamic verses that glorified "martyrdom". They even would spray a man on a horse with a fluorescent substance and had him gallop across the battle fields to mesmerize these kids into believing that it was the Shiite Islamic messiah "Mahdi". It only takes sick and criminal minds to do this to any human being, let alone to innocent children, who were mostly orphans.
FP: What would be your advice to the Bush administration of what policy to pursue toward Iran?
Imani: First and foremost, I would advise President Bush to hire new advisors on Iran. The past and the present U.S. policy on Iran has been a failure. It was former President Jimmy Carter who was instrumental of brining the Ayatollah Khomeini in power and creating this international mess. It was Jimmy Carter who reassured the world that the Ayatollah Khomeini was a peaceful and “Holy Man”. With Carter’s support, the Ayatollah Khomeini was installed as the unelected dictator of Iran.
I think it would be prudent to say that now it is responsibility of the U.S, to help the Iranian people to regain their country back from the Islamic hijackers.
I would advise President Bush to adhere to the policy of no bombs, no appeasement. I think in that regard, I speak for many Iranians. It is dangerous and unnecessary to attack Iran militarily, neither does the U.S. need to go the route of appeasement with a seriously weak adversary.
President Ahmadinejad’s bellicosity notwithstanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran is on the verge of collapse upon the head of the despised Mullahs and their fronting thugs. A few nudges from the outside world would serve as the tipping point for the long-suffering Iranians to rise and bury the Mullahs in the graveyard they have made of Iran.
In short, Iran is in a state of serious upheaval. Replacing Ahmadinejad with the already tried and proven wanting gang of Rafsanjani-Khatami is not going to change matters much. As for the West, it is prudent that it does not embark on a trigger-happy policy. The mullahs' lease on life is just about over. A concerted political, economic and moral support for the long-suffering valiant secular opposition can put an end to the shameful and hate-driven Islamofascist of any and all stripes.
FP: Amil Imani, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Imani: Thank you again, Jamie for the opportunity to say a few words (maybe a little more than a few words) with your readers. I'm honored and grateful for the invitation.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=FC3E3A2D-7B61-4485-977D-E7BBCC549684
By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com Thursday, December 06, 2007
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Amil Imani, a pro-democracy activist who advocates regime change in Iran. He was born in Tehran into a Muslim family and moved to the United States during the Islamic Revolution. An American citizen, Mr. Imani is a columnist, poet, literary translator, novelist, essayist, and political analyst. He is a regular contributor to The New Media Journal, American Thinker, Faith Freedom International and the popular Iranian online magazine, Iranian.com.
[Editor’s note: due to the many death threats Amil Imani receives, Frontpagemag.com cannot produce a picture of him at this time.]
FP: Amil Imani, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Imani: Thank you Jamie for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts and my views with your readers. I am also a fan of your wonderful online magazine. I visit it quite often.
FP: Thank you Amil.
Let’s begin by you telling us a bit about your background.
Imani: I was born in Tehran, Iran into a wonderful, loving and intellectual family. Growing up in a Muslim family, I was fortunate that my parents never forced their will on me to follow Islam and its rituals or for that matter, any other religion or ideology. They believed that religion was a personal choice and in time I would decide for myself. Yet, I did grow up in a Muslim society and have witnessed first-hand the horrors and indignity that Islamofascism visits on people it subjugates, and for that matter, I have taken it upon myself to do my part in defeating this ideology of oppression, hate and violence.
For as long as I can remember I have had a torrid passion for poetry. I finished my first book of poetry at the age of thirteen. I find writing to be therapeutic. It enables me to put in words my feelings about my native country Iran and its sad plight at this time. It empowers me to be able to "defend" Iran’s extremely rich culture and her people and gives me the freedom to say things from the heart. It also gives me strength to defend my adopted home, the United States of America and her extremely wonderful and gracious people from the threat and wrath of Islamofascism.
I pray that God gives me the energy and resources to carry out my services to both Iran; the United States and the generality of humanity with evermore effectiveness.
I was also fortunate enough to visit many countries around the world and appreciate other cultures. I moved to the United States during the thuggish revolt in Iran, better known as the Islamic Revolution of Iran. This untimely revolution outrageously installed the most oppressive theocratic Islamic system known to the history of mankind. With that, it renewed an era of Islamic terrorism.
I have remained in contact with the people of Iran and understand their frustration and their pain. The overwhelming majority of Iranians of today stand shoulder to shoulder with the civilized free people of the world to defeat Islamofascism. The Iranians have not forgotten their heritage; they pride in their ancient creed of light—that of Zoroaster; they see themselves as inheritors of a great culture and tradition—that of Cyrus the Great, the exemplary just king; and, are determined to pay any price to put an end, once and for all, to the virulent disease of Islamofascism. We must remain resolute and maintain a warrior’s heart. I believe this is a righteous battle against evil.
FP: Tell us the nature of the regime that rules Iran.
Imani: The Islamic Republic of Iran is a unique creature—it is best described as a Theocratic Aristocracy. The “divinely-ordained” rulers maintain themselves in power by an elaborate system of patronage. Lucrative positions, contracts, and valued privileges are distributed by patronage.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a quisling entity that has betrayed its people, its tradition, its glorious pre-Islamic achievements, and is incessantly working against Iran’s national interest. Iran, under the stranglehold and machinations of the Mullahs, has been transformed, in less than three decades, to the lead perpetrator of all that is abhorrent to humanity.
Iran’s ruling Mullahs are clustered around major factions such as the conservatives, the moderates, and the so-called reformists. Yet, the differences among these factions are tactical rather than strategic. One and all share the same overarching goal of defeating the “Crusader-Zionists” by any and all methods possible, bringing about the “end of the world” Armageddon, and thereby creating the requisite conditions for the appearance of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, to assume his rule of the world.
Presently, the Mullahs have been doing all they can to imprison and kill with impunity the internal opposition, and want the rest of the world to keep its nose out of their “family” business. Executions in Iran have skyrocketed.
Under the rule of these adherents of death, everything in Iran is deteriorating and dying. In spite of huge oil revenues, the per capita income of the Iranians is now about one third of what it was before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Every form of misery has also skyrocketed. Drug addiction, prostitution and suicide have gone through the roof. The young and the educated continue deserting Iran and family, fleeing to the four corners of the earth in search of a decent life.
Iran of today, on the one hand, has the potential of rapidly becoming a nuclear state and becoming a formidable adversary that would not settle for anything less than the total subjugation of the free world. On the other hand, in Iran’s people and culture is a genuine potential for replacing the doomsday-bent Mullahcracy and making Iran the free world’s staunchest partner with the U.S. in the Islamic world.
FP: Your thoughts on the Mullahs’ ban on Western music? What other music is banned? Why does music represent such a threat to Islamic fundamentalism? What is the overall role of the religious police?
Imani: In principle, music is forbidden by Islam, but they have not been able to take that away from the people. Classical and Jazz music is widely available in music stores, but the state-run media limits the use of such genres. Traditional Persian music is not restricted, but it is not easy to obtain government permits for recordings that are meant for commercial distributions. There is actually a government ministry that censors music, publications, and other art forms. There is a ban on Iranian music that comes from abroad, especially from Los Angeles studios. But, how can anyone stop 40 million strong youth under the age of 30 from listening to Western or pop music?
Under the Sharia law in Iran, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. Men and women not from the same family are forbidden to dance together and women are obliged to cover their heads, arms and legs.
Religious police or clerical police or morality police are groups that are funded, legally authorized, and/or recognized by the Islamic athurity, to enforce morality who enforce sharia law within Islamic theocraciess.
Recently, these repression police have attacked Iraian women all across the country and have arrested thosands of them for petty offences such as showing a little hair or wearing tight jeans. Iranian women have come a long way in their struggle for their rights and they continue to challenge the Mullahs repressive police.
FP: How have the institutions of higher education faired under the regime?
Imani: The institutions of higher learning are still excellent, but the atmosphere of free thought is almost non-existent in the humanities, and the students are forced to take Islamic instruction and indoctrination. On the other hand, in the arena of science Iran still cranks out one of the highest number of geniuses, albeit in an atmosphere of nearly total control. For example Sharif University graduates are among the most sought after graduates by MIT, and other reputable institutions worldwide. There is a great "brain drain" in Iran, since there is no social freedom and the economy holds no future for graduates, so many of the country's prodigies are now in North America and Europe. Many of the Fortune 500 companies are owned by Iranian expatriates, and organizations like NASA benefit from the scientific talents of such Iranian exiles. In fact the current head of NASA's Mars Mission is Dr. Firouz Naderi (an Iranian)
FP: What has the regime done to the economy?
Imani: The country's income has grown exponentially, but the resources are not put back into the economy. There is an incredibly high rate of joblessness along with a high inflation rate.
The lifeblood of Iran’s economy is oil and natural gas. The Mullahs neglect and squandering of these vital and irreplaceable resources holds a future of even more severe hardship for the Iranian people. Impartial expert studies show that Iran’s oil production, at the present rate of exploitation and absence of maintenance, will decline by nearly ten percent per year and will hit zero by 2015.
Corruption and mismanagement, combined with the huge allocation of resources to acquire nuclear weapons, are bound to burden the country’s badly ailing economy that will likely bury the Mullahs in the rubble of their own making and grant them their death wish.
FP: Can you talk a bit about prostitution and drugs in Iran?
Imani: Yes. There are millions of drug addicts in Iran, especially young people. It is a major public health issue. It ranges from prescription drug abuse to I.V. drugs. A lot of people are addicted to opium, morphine, and heroin. There is a great spread of street drug use, such as crack cocaine, "crystal", and other "designer drugs". There is no uniform policy to enforce drug charges. A lot of big dealers are arrested and executed, yet others who have connections to the regime get off the hook and are in fact get subsidized by certain elements in the government to keep some drugs cheap and available, in order to poison the youth and keep them from revolting against the Islamic regime. The other ugly face of addiction and poverty is the widespread prostitution that goes hand-in-hand with this phenomenon.
FP: Tell us about the fate of homosexuals in Iran.
Imani: Well, in Islam homosexuality is condemned, but they have not necessarily enforced it. In most cases, though, when they run out of other ideas to execute innocent people on political charges, they accuse them of homosexuality, pedophilia, adultery, etc. In fact the majority of mullahs engage in homosexual acts and are pedophiles, but they keep it quiet and look out for their own.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was challenged during his appearance on Amnesty International statistics that suggest that 200 people had been executed in Iran so far this year, among them homosexuals.
FP: The Left played a pretty substantial role in the Iranian Revolution didn’t it?
Imani: The communists of course were very active in the original uprisings against the Shah. A very strange marriage took place early on between the Islamists (who were an insignificant minority) and the variety of communist factions. They buried their hatchets and supposedly "unified" the nation for a "common" cause, which was supposed to be the achievement of democracy and freedom of speech.
Unbeknown to most Iranians who jumped on the bandwagon with these two main groups, the communists had the dream of socialism and the Islamists wanted to bring about Islamic fascism. They both lied to the people and betrayed their trust, and of course the Islamists used the idea of "Taqqyeh" or Islamic "white lie" and took the nation and its revolution hostage.
Then they started to arrest and kill the communists and anyone else they found to be against the establishment of an Islamic system. This is exactly the way these forms of uprisings turn out. You can see it played out almost as a parallel in the October Revolution in Russia, which was the basis for George Orwell's book "Animal Farm".
Nahavandi on his interview from FrontPageMag.com said: “The collapse of a pillar of stability in the East, of its army, its pro-western regime was a golden opportunity for Moscow. It effectively did help, thanks to the role played by the “Tudeh”, the ultra-left – mujahideens etc… who were then manipulated by the K.G.B., by Qaddafi’s Libya, then close to Moscow and which financed the revolution, by the support Damascus gave the revolution, by the role played by East Germany, etc.”
FP: So what is your faith today? Do you consider yourself a Muslim?
Imani: No, I do not consider myself a Muslim. You cannot possibly be a Persian and a Muslim at the same time. They are incompatible. As a matter of fact, to most of us, (true Iranians), calling us Muslim, is a great insult. This may come as a surprise to the Western people, but this is a mutual feeling with the new generation in Iran. The Iranians are fed up with Islam and they want out. I regained my freedom when I left Islam.
Over the years the concept of religion and faith in my mind has transcended and matured up. It searched for the realms of real and unreal, my mind traveled and expanded beyond the meaning and definitions of words to regain its forgotten truth, a knowing, a deeper truth. Here, the real story is not whether one faith washes his feet, or signs a cross with holy water, or whirls like a Dervish. The issue is how they treat those who disagree with them or stray from their sanctioned behaviors.
My beliefs have matured over the years. I now think that God has a set of values that are absolutely right and good, rebellion against which is wrong (sinful), and about which the commitment to deceive others is evil, as is the commitment to deny the existence of anything absolutely good or bad.I believe that there is an unfathomable Being who is the Fashioner of this universe, including us. We refer to this Being as God, He, and so forth, in a futile attempt to encapsulate this Being into our extremely finite minds.
I also believe that this Being is not a dot commer. He doesn't sit around and wait to fill orders or requests. Neither does he interfere in the details of our lives. What he has done and does, to my understanding, is to establish certain rules and parameters that give each one of us a tremendous leeway on how to play the game of life.
Each one of us, according to these rules and parameters, receives a "hand" for playing the game. It really doesn't matter what kind of hand we start with, it matters how well we play the hand we are dealt. Do we enlist ourselves in the service of good and combat evil, or do we just squander away our time?
I believe that prayers are primarily for giving us comfort, for calming us down, for helping us take the steps needed to mend our ways, to do all we can to be worthy humans. Also to clear our hearts and heads from the dross of daily worldly entanglement, to help put matters in proper perspective, to live at peace with both our gifts as well as our limitations, to aid us in entertaining good thoughts, uttering good speech and doing good deeds.
When prayers are said with the above mindset, they are already answered prayers. Death is inevitable. It is the journey that invariably follows birth, sooner or later. Let us hope that we all do justice to our gift of humanness in this life and wing to the next with minimal sense of shame and shortcoming.
FP: What do you think of the possibility of Islamic democracy?
Imani: Islam clearly is incompatible with democracy. Keep in mind that the very name “Islam” is a derivation of “taslim,” the Arabic word for “surrender,” surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Quran.This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights.
Below is a brief presentation of what this surrender to Islam entails and why it is imperative that all freedom-loving people arise and defeat the menace of Islamofascism.
Amendment I of the Bill of Rights enshrines some of the most cherished ideals of freedom-loving people: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Islam considers itself the three branches of government. It enacts laws as it sees fit, adjudicates laws, and executes as it deems. Islam is anathema to the provisions of the First Amendment and much more.
* Islam proclaims itself as the only legitimate religion for the entire world, grudgingly granting minor recognition to Judaism and Christianity from whom it has liberally plagiarized many of its dogma. Jews and Christians are allowed to live under the rule of Islam as dhimmis and must pay a special religious tax of jazyyeh. Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, members of other religions, agnostics, or atheists are not even allowed to live practicing their belief or disbelief.
* Islam actively suppresses and even prohibits the practice of other religions, including those of the “people of the book,” Jews and Christians. There is not a single church or synagogue in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia, while thousands of mosques dot the tolerating and welcoming non-Moslem lands. Islamic countries that allow for Jewish and Christian places of worship subject these “people of the book” to numberless subtle and not-so-subtle forms of persecution. Moslems in non-Moslem lands proselytize relentlessly and convert others while any Moslem who leaves Islam is judged as apostate and automatically condemned to death.
* Freedom of speech is just about non-existent in Islam. The word is Allah’s, his chosen divines such as Ayatollahs and Imams are the only ones who are to make pronouncements squarely-based on Allah’s word, the Quran. Any expression in the least at deviance from the Quran, the Hadith and the edicts of Islamic high divines is heresy and severely punishable. Hence, stifling of free expression is the major mechanism by which the Islamic clergy retain power and prevent constructive change in Islamic societies.
* Freedom of the press is completely alien to Islam, since a free press tends to express matters as it sees it, rather than as it is stated in the Quran. To Islam, the Quran is the press and the only press. There is no need for critical reporting, no need to present ideas that may conflict with the Quran, and no place for criticism of anything Islamic. The stranglehold of Islam on the individual and society is complete.
* Peaceful assembly of the people is not allowed. The backward oppressive Islamic societies inflict great hardship on the citizenry and any assembly of the victims presents a threat to the suffocating rule. Islamic governments routinely prevent peaceful assemblies from taking place. Failing to do so, they unleash their hired thugs, the police and even the military against any assemblage no matter how peaceful and how legitimate is its grievance. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is vying with Saudi Arabia as the leader of true Islamic rule, routinely attacks any and all gatherings of its people, arrests them, imprisons them without due process, tortures them, and even executes them in secret dungeons. Journalists, academics, unionists, students, teachers, women rights groups who dare to petition the government for redress are labeled subversive and are severely punished.
* Not only Islam does not allow freedom of assembly and the press, it is intrusively restrictive in every aspects of a person’s life. The way women should dress, the haircut of men, the music people are allowed, movies to watch, television programs to view, and even parties in the privacy of their home are subject to the ridiculous monitoring of moral police. Islam is hell-bent on outward morality and puritanical conduct while it is rotten to the core just below the pretentious surface.
* Islam segregates by gender many public places and events such as beaches, sporting venues, public transportations, and even building elevators. Families are often prevented from attending a sporting event together or swimming together at a beach.
That is why Islam cannot possibly work in those countries where democracy is at work.
FP: Many people think Iranians are Arabs, but they are Persians. Can you explain the ethnological differences to our readers? How do Arabs feel about Persians? How do Persians feel about Arabs? It is clear, of course, that one whole group of people never completely feels the same about any one thing, I’m just asking about some common attitudes.
Imani: I don’t really blame anyone for confusion on this issue. Many people or Americans are not well-travelers and obviously they don't know or they cannot tell the difference. However, if you travel to Los Angeles, you can hardly find an American who is not able to distinguish from the two races. Californians know Iranians well. There are roughly around 700,000 or more Iranians live in California.
The 700,000 Iranians include Azaris, Kurds, Baluchis and other ethnics. But, they are all proud to be Iranians. It is the strength of Iran that has successfully blended many ethnic groups into one whole nation called Iran (meaning the land of Aryans) for thousands of years. We pride ourselves in being ethnically diverse, yet united in our love for Iran.
Let's say, the "American Natives," and the "Mexican Natives" are from the same ethnic stock--Native Americans. Most Iranians are not Semites as the Arabs are. And not being able to tell a person from El Salvador apart from one from Mexico is like saying that you cannot tell an Iraqi apart from a Saudi. Well, they are both Hispanic in the case of the former and Arabs in the case of the latter.
Temperamentally, I am averse to making a big deal out of genetic difference. It smacks of Eugenics and racism. I prefer that we emphasize our cultural uniqueness and our ancient tradition of respect for human life and human rights.
Persians often take great umbrage at being confused with Arabs. Authors like Robert Kaplan and V. S. Naipaul have documented the Persian antipathy toward the Arabs, all the while espousing the Arab religion enthusiastically. It is rather understandable for reasons of history, geography and religion why Iran is bracketed into the Arab world in the minds of many.
Funny thing about racism is that it works both ways. I know that many Arabs also resent being taken as Iranians. So, best thing to do is to stay clear of notions that smack of superiority for oneself and denigrating others.
FP: Tell us who the Baha’i are and their fate under the Iranian regime.
Imani: The terrible plight of the Baha’i faithful in Iran is particularly heartwrenching, since they are the largest non-Muslim group in the country and have, from day one, been severely brutalized by Muslims. The Baha’i Faith dates back to the middle of the 19th century when an Iranian nobleman, Baha’u’llah, founded the new faith as an independent religion—a very painful thorn in the side of a ruling vested clergy with a stranglehold on the masses.
The slaveholder, Islam, finds the Baha’i Faith a threat to its very existence, since many of the Baha’i teachings are anathema to that of Islamofascism—the current favorite version of Islam in official Iran. Below is a brief list that contrasts some of the two beliefs. Beliefs are impetus to action and when beliefs clash, people clash.
1. Muslims contend that Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets, that God sent his best and final messenger to mankind, and any other claimant is an imposter worthy of death. Baha’is believe that God has always sent his emissaries to educate humanity and shall do so in the future. They believe that Baha’u’llah is the latest in that line of prophets.
2. Blind imitation and obedience to any authority is anathema to Baha’is. Baha’is believe that the human mind and the gift of reason should guide the person in making decisions about all matters. To this end, they place a premium on education and independent investigation of truth. Baha’is consider the education of women as important as that of men, since women are the early teachers of children and can play their valuable part by being themselves educated. By contrast, Muslims look for to religious authorities for guidance and often deprive women of education and independent thinking.
In recognition of the importance of independent thinking, no one is born Baha’i. Once one is born to a Muslim, he is considered Muslim for life. If he decides to leave Islam, he is labeled apostate and, apostates are automatically condemned to death. The slaveholders are intent on keeping all their slaves as well as their issue. By contrast, every child born in a Baha’i family is required to make his own independent decision regarding whether or not he wishes to be a Baha’i. Freedom to choose and independent thinking are cherished values of the Baha’is, in stark contrast to that of Muslims.
3. Baha’is believe that truth transcends all boundaries. Scientific and religious truth emanates from the same universal source. They are like the two sides of the same coin. To Baha’is, science and religion are as two wings of a bird that enable human flight toward the summit of its potential; that any religious belief that contradicts science is superstition. Muslims believe that their religious dogma, irrespective of its proven falsehood, is superior to that of science. The Muslims literally believe, for instance, that Muhammad unsheathed his sword and split the moon in half and many, many more scientifically-untenable views.
4. Muslims hold the view, expressly stated in the Quran, that men are rulers over women. Baha’is fully reject this notion and subscribe to the unconditional equality of the two sexes. This Baha’i principle emancipates one half of humanity from the status of subservient domestic to that of a fully participating and self-actualized human. It undermines the heartless exploitation of women and demands that women be treated with all due respect under the law.
5. Prejudice of any type is alien to the Baha’i Faith and severely undermines its pivotal principle of the oneness of humanity. Muslims are notorious when it comes to prejudice. Prejudice against others is thoroughly exploited by the Islamofascist. In contrast, Baha’i scriptures say, “…again, as to religious, racial, national and political bias: all these prejudices strike at the very root of human life; one and all they beget bloodshed, and the ruination of the world. So long as these prejudices survive, there will be continuous and fearsome wars.”
The above is a short treatment of some of the salient features of the two belief systems—one dating back some fourteen centuries and one of relatively recent origin. It is understandable that the intolerant defunct fascist Islam sees its death in a competing ideology vastly at odds with its barbaric tenets.
It is the modus operandi of radical Muslims to write graffiti on the walls of synagogues, churches, cemeteries and other holy places of non-Muslims. The plights of Baha’is are no exception. Here are some examples of graffiti in Abadeh, a small town in Iran: 'Death to Baha'is, the mercenaries of America and England,' 'Hezbollah despises the Baha'is,' 'Baha'is - mercenaries of Israel' and 'Baha'is are unclean' - phrases that relate directly to government propaganda that has been disseminated in the Islamic Republic news media in recent years," said Ms. Diane Ala’i, who represents the Baha’i International Community to the UN in Geneva.
We also feel for our long-suffering Baha’i compatriots in Iran. They have been savagely brutalized for over a century and a half through the demonic machinations of the despicable mullahs. They continue to pay dearly for their audacity to believe in human dignity.
FP: Children were used as human minesweepers in the Iran/Iraq war. Tell us about this horrifying crime against humanity perpetrated by the Mullahs.
Imani: The Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian Islamic State, for one, made extensive use of the fatwa. Widely-known in the west is Khomeini’s fatwa condemning Selman Rushdie to death for his book. A less known fatwa of Khomeini during the last Iran-Iraq war led to the slaughter of thousands of Iranian children. Children, nearly all under 15 years of age, were given plastic keys to paradise as they were commanded by the fatwa of the imam to rush forward to clear minefields for the tanks to follow. The Islamic murderers, in obedience to the fatwa of a bloodthirsty man of Allah, had no problem in deceiving the clueless lads with made in China plastic keys to paradise.
Such is the existentialistic threat of Islam. It is a rigid stone-age authoritarian system with a stranglehold over many of the nearly one and half billion people under its command.
It was a very well documented fact. They brainwashed these children to believe that they were serving god and would give them "keys to paradise" made out of plastic and headbands with Islamic verses that glorified "martyrdom". They even would spray a man on a horse with a fluorescent substance and had him gallop across the battle fields to mesmerize these kids into believing that it was the Shiite Islamic messiah "Mahdi". It only takes sick and criminal minds to do this to any human being, let alone to innocent children, who were mostly orphans.
FP: What would be your advice to the Bush administration of what policy to pursue toward Iran?
Imani: First and foremost, I would advise President Bush to hire new advisors on Iran. The past and the present U.S. policy on Iran has been a failure. It was former President Jimmy Carter who was instrumental of brining the Ayatollah Khomeini in power and creating this international mess. It was Jimmy Carter who reassured the world that the Ayatollah Khomeini was a peaceful and “Holy Man”. With Carter’s support, the Ayatollah Khomeini was installed as the unelected dictator of Iran.
I think it would be prudent to say that now it is responsibility of the U.S, to help the Iranian people to regain their country back from the Islamic hijackers.
I would advise President Bush to adhere to the policy of no bombs, no appeasement. I think in that regard, I speak for many Iranians. It is dangerous and unnecessary to attack Iran militarily, neither does the U.S. need to go the route of appeasement with a seriously weak adversary.
President Ahmadinejad’s bellicosity notwithstanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran is on the verge of collapse upon the head of the despised Mullahs and their fronting thugs. A few nudges from the outside world would serve as the tipping point for the long-suffering Iranians to rise and bury the Mullahs in the graveyard they have made of Iran.
In short, Iran is in a state of serious upheaval. Replacing Ahmadinejad with the already tried and proven wanting gang of Rafsanjani-Khatami is not going to change matters much. As for the West, it is prudent that it does not embark on a trigger-happy policy. The mullahs' lease on life is just about over. A concerted political, economic and moral support for the long-suffering valiant secular opposition can put an end to the shameful and hate-driven Islamofascist of any and all stripes.
FP: Amil Imani, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Imani: Thank you again, Jamie for the opportunity to say a few words (maybe a little more than a few words) with your readers. I'm honored and grateful for the invitation.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=FC3E3A2D-7B61-4485-977D-E7BBCC549684
Monday, October 29, 2007
Happy Cyrus Day
October 29th has been designated as the international day of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, who declared the first charter of human rights in the world, also known as the Cyrus Cylinder. In 539 BC, Persian troops entered the city of Babylon, without encountering any resistance. On October 29th, Cyrus himself entered the city, assuming the titles of "King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the four corners of the world.” The Cyrus Cylinder was placed under the walls of Babylon as a foundation deposit, following a long Babylonian tradition.
Cyrus the Great proclaimed more than 2500 years ago: “Today, I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion. People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate other's rights.” Cyrus the Great declared himself not a conqueror, but a liberator and the rightful successor to the crown.
Iranians are proud spiritual descendants of King Cyrus the Great, the author of the first charter of human rights. Some of Cyrus’ children live in the patch of land, called Iran. The overwhelming majority—free humans with human beliefs—live in every country, city, and village of the earth.
Those world-wide people, one and all, irrespective of nationality, color, or creed are “Iranians” because they all adhere to the Cyrus Charter; they practice and defend its lofty tenets and transfer this humanity’s precious treasure to the next generation.
The ancient world held universal admiration for the beliefs and practices of the Persians as enshrined in the Cyrus Charter of Human Rights. Even the Greeks, the traditional adversaries of the Persians, called Cyrus “The Lawgiver.” History has recorded that Cyrus did accomplish the task for which he was foreordained.
Alexander the Great plundered Persia. He destroyed and burned Persepolis, the magnificent palace complex of the Achaemenid kings in the province of Pars. Yet, Alexander paid tribute to Cyrus the Great at his tomb. This shows how much Cyrus the Great was respected, even in the eyes of his fierce enemies.
Cyrus the Great was an adherent to the faith of Zoroaster, which was based on the triad of Good Thoughts, Good Speech and Good Deeds and constituted the standard of life for the Persians. Other teachings of the faith of Zoroaster, arguably the most ancient divine religion, have inspired the teachings of other faiths.
Cyrus the Great has been given many names: Cyrus the enlightened liberator, Cyrus the benevolent, Cyrus the Law-giver, Cyrus the righteous, Cyrus the heroic conqueror, Cyrus the tolerant King, and many more. No other man so far back in ancient history had been showered with such accolades by kings and emperors who knew of him only by reputation.
Cyrus the Great is the founding father of Persia and the mighty Persian Empire— perhaps the most exemplary, magnificent and just king the world has ever seen.
An illustration of the benevolent beliefs and practices launched by this unsurpassed historical figure goes back to the landmark action of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. In 539 B.C., having conquered Babylon, the benevolent King Cyrus freed the Jews from captivity and empowered them to return to the Promised Land and build their temple.For his acts of kindness, Cyrus the Great is immortalized in the Bible in several passages and called “the anointed of the Lord.” The Jews, throughout recorded history, looked to Cyrus’ people, the Iranians, as their friends and protectors against oppressors such as the Seleucids and the Romans.
In the book of Isaiah, Cyrus, the King of Persia, a non-Jew was called the "mash'aka" God, according to Isaiah when he wrote: “Thus said the Lord to his 'mash'aka (anointed), to Cyrus” (Isaiah 45:1). Jeremiah also told that Cyrus was commissioned by God to go to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple.
"Who carry the vessels of the Lord" (v. 11b). Ezra tells the story of the departure of the exiles from Babylonia: "King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods" (Ezra 1:7).
"This says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whom I have seized by the right, to subdue nations before him. Yes, I will open the loins of kings, to open the two-leaved doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before you and make hills level; I will tear apart the bronze doors and cut the iron bars in two. And I will give you the treasures of darkness, even treasures in secret places, that you may know that I am the Lord who calls you by your name, I the God of Israel" (vs.1-3 Para.).”
To Cyrus the Great, humanity was one widely dispersed family. He believed in this tenet long before unequivocal genetic findings clearly established that biologically there is only one human race; that the genetic variation within a single troop of chimpanzees, for instance, is greater than that of any two human groupings, no matter how different they may appear physically. What makes people different is not their biology, but the “software” that runs them.
People are as good as their software – their beliefs.There is ample proof to support the above assertion. A case in point is the present menace posed by the people whose life is programmed by the software of Islam: an ideology anathema to the Cyrus Charter.
Regretfully, the Islamic Republic despotic rulers have occupied the Iranian nation and have set out to defeat the Iranian spirit inside Iran and extinguish Cyrus’ spirit around the world through brainwashing, coercion, and terrorist acts beyond the borders of Iran.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, which holds in great contempt any non-Islamic belief or heritage, has embarked on destroying the archeological sites of Pasargad and Persepolis -- some of humanity's most prized cultural heritage. The heinous destruction of the two Buddha statues by Afghanistan's Taliban pales in comparison to the present barbaric designs of the Islamic Republic.
Pasargad and Persepolis are more than a mere collection of ancient structures. They are embodiments of humanity's historical respect for liberty and tolerance of diversity. For 2,500 years, the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargad, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian Empire. But many fear the new built dam and reservoir pose a great threat to the ancient structure, the tomb of the Cyrus the Great.
But once again, human decency is rising to the challenge, this time in the voice and actions of billions of free people who proclaim: we are also children of Cyrus the Great; we meet any challenge and pay any price to defeat tyranny; and we will not rest until humanity is completely free of the despotic rule of Islamofascism.
Cyrus the Great proclaimed more than 2500 years ago: “Today, I announce that everyone is free to choose a religion. People are free to live in all regions and take up a job provided that they never violate other's rights.” Cyrus the Great declared himself not a conqueror, but a liberator and the rightful successor to the crown.
Iranians are proud spiritual descendants of King Cyrus the Great, the author of the first charter of human rights. Some of Cyrus’ children live in the patch of land, called Iran. The overwhelming majority—free humans with human beliefs—live in every country, city, and village of the earth.
Those world-wide people, one and all, irrespective of nationality, color, or creed are “Iranians” because they all adhere to the Cyrus Charter; they practice and defend its lofty tenets and transfer this humanity’s precious treasure to the next generation.
The ancient world held universal admiration for the beliefs and practices of the Persians as enshrined in the Cyrus Charter of Human Rights. Even the Greeks, the traditional adversaries of the Persians, called Cyrus “The Lawgiver.” History has recorded that Cyrus did accomplish the task for which he was foreordained.
Alexander the Great plundered Persia. He destroyed and burned Persepolis, the magnificent palace complex of the Achaemenid kings in the province of Pars. Yet, Alexander paid tribute to Cyrus the Great at his tomb. This shows how much Cyrus the Great was respected, even in the eyes of his fierce enemies.
Cyrus the Great was an adherent to the faith of Zoroaster, which was based on the triad of Good Thoughts, Good Speech and Good Deeds and constituted the standard of life for the Persians. Other teachings of the faith of Zoroaster, arguably the most ancient divine religion, have inspired the teachings of other faiths.
Cyrus the Great has been given many names: Cyrus the enlightened liberator, Cyrus the benevolent, Cyrus the Law-giver, Cyrus the righteous, Cyrus the heroic conqueror, Cyrus the tolerant King, and many more. No other man so far back in ancient history had been showered with such accolades by kings and emperors who knew of him only by reputation.
Cyrus the Great is the founding father of Persia and the mighty Persian Empire— perhaps the most exemplary, magnificent and just king the world has ever seen.
An illustration of the benevolent beliefs and practices launched by this unsurpassed historical figure goes back to the landmark action of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. In 539 B.C., having conquered Babylon, the benevolent King Cyrus freed the Jews from captivity and empowered them to return to the Promised Land and build their temple.For his acts of kindness, Cyrus the Great is immortalized in the Bible in several passages and called “the anointed of the Lord.” The Jews, throughout recorded history, looked to Cyrus’ people, the Iranians, as their friends and protectors against oppressors such as the Seleucids and the Romans.
In the book of Isaiah, Cyrus, the King of Persia, a non-Jew was called the "mash'aka" God, according to Isaiah when he wrote: “Thus said the Lord to his 'mash'aka (anointed), to Cyrus” (Isaiah 45:1). Jeremiah also told that Cyrus was commissioned by God to go to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple.
"Who carry the vessels of the Lord" (v. 11b). Ezra tells the story of the departure of the exiles from Babylonia: "King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods" (Ezra 1:7).
"This says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whom I have seized by the right, to subdue nations before him. Yes, I will open the loins of kings, to open the two-leaved doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut. I will go before you and make hills level; I will tear apart the bronze doors and cut the iron bars in two. And I will give you the treasures of darkness, even treasures in secret places, that you may know that I am the Lord who calls you by your name, I the God of Israel" (vs.1-3 Para.).”
To Cyrus the Great, humanity was one widely dispersed family. He believed in this tenet long before unequivocal genetic findings clearly established that biologically there is only one human race; that the genetic variation within a single troop of chimpanzees, for instance, is greater than that of any two human groupings, no matter how different they may appear physically. What makes people different is not their biology, but the “software” that runs them.
People are as good as their software – their beliefs.There is ample proof to support the above assertion. A case in point is the present menace posed by the people whose life is programmed by the software of Islam: an ideology anathema to the Cyrus Charter.
Regretfully, the Islamic Republic despotic rulers have occupied the Iranian nation and have set out to defeat the Iranian spirit inside Iran and extinguish Cyrus’ spirit around the world through brainwashing, coercion, and terrorist acts beyond the borders of Iran.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, which holds in great contempt any non-Islamic belief or heritage, has embarked on destroying the archeological sites of Pasargad and Persepolis -- some of humanity's most prized cultural heritage. The heinous destruction of the two Buddha statues by Afghanistan's Taliban pales in comparison to the present barbaric designs of the Islamic Republic.
Pasargad and Persepolis are more than a mere collection of ancient structures. They are embodiments of humanity's historical respect for liberty and tolerance of diversity. For 2,500 years, the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great has stood on the plain at Pasargad, a simple but dignified monument to a king revered as the founder of the mighty Persian Empire. But many fear the new built dam and reservoir pose a great threat to the ancient structure, the tomb of the Cyrus the Great.
But once again, human decency is rising to the challenge, this time in the voice and actions of billions of free people who proclaim: we are also children of Cyrus the Great; we meet any challenge and pay any price to defeat tyranny; and we will not rest until humanity is completely free of the despotic rule of Islamofascism.
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