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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Ayatollah Khomeini</title>
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		<title>Mullahs Threaten Global Oil Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/ayatollah-threatens-global-oil-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ayatollah-threatens-global-oil-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Dec 2013 05:25:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=213023</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Iranian takeover of OPEC begins. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ayatollah-ali-khamenei.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213046" alt="ayatollah-ali-khamenei" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-450x330.jpg" width="315" height="231" /></a>A few days after the Obama administration signed the nuclear deal with the Islamist state of Iran, after the easing of sanctions on the ruling cleric and Iranian authorities began to take off, the Mullahs initiated their first hegemonic ambition to reclaim and regain its No.2 position in OPEC, threatening to trigger an oil price war if the other 12 countries oppose Iran’s plan. In addition, Iran has put forward a candidate for the position of OPEC secretary general, considered to be the voice of the OPEC organization between meetings.</p>
<p>If the next time you stopped to fill up your car at a gas station, or to buy any other product, and you notice a sudden increase in prices, this can be attributed to the tireless efforts of the Obama administration to start lifting sanctions on Iran, easing pressure on the nation and integrating the Islamists of Iran into the international community, legitimizing them, giving them credibility, calling them rational actors, and pushing for the recent nuclear deal with the ruling cleric in the Iranian regime.</p>
<p>Last week, ahead of the upcoming OPEC meeting, Iran threatened to trigger a price war in the global oil markets. Iranian authorities warned OPEC’s 12 members that Tehran will ratchet up its oil output, no matter what the consequences would be, in an attempt to gain its former influential position. Bijan Zangeneh, Iran’s Oil Minister, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101245791">said</a> before going into the closed meetings that “we will not give up our rights on this issue.” The sanctions, accumulated through many years in the international community, reduced Iran’s leverage to disrupt and control the world economy through managing oil prices. However, the recent agreement with President Obama gave the Iranian Ayatollah and leaders a freedom to more aggressively reclaim and reassert their Islamist ambitions in the region and on the international scale.</p>
<p>There is a special quota assigned for each main oil exporter at OPEC<b>. </b>Iranian leaders<b> </b>stated that they will not comply with that quota. This will result in a disruption in supply and demand, which will ultimately create uncertainty in the market and lead to the rising of oil prices. For industrial countries, this will affect the prices of many other goods, because oil is used as a primary source for fuel. If Iran does not respect individual targets of oil sales in the global market and the quotas of OPEC members, Tehran’s attempts can definitely result in oil glut. In addition, this will lead to an increase in geopolitical tensions in the region and particularly among OPEC members.</p>
<p>An adviser to Iran’s oil minister, Mehdi Hosseini, was previously quoted in the Financial Times as saying that the Iranian government is developing a form of contract that could change the current system of buyback contracts, which currently do not permit foreign companies to book reserves or take equity stakes in Iranian oil, gas, or other projects. This can be viewed as a considerable increase in Iran’s growing power and leverage, which has previously been exposed to little investment in its oil and gas fields due to the international sanctions and pressure.</p>
<p>The primary reason that brought Iranian leaders to the negotiating table was the very sanctions that have accumulated over the past years by the international community and other US administrations. By the conciliatory and submissive stance that the Obama administration is taking towards Iranian and Islamist authorities, and by the easing of sanctions, the Ayatollahs have viewed America’s recent fragile position and the recent nuclear deal as a freehand to threaten the global economy, regain its no.2  position in OPEC, and increase its hegemonic ambitions in the region, particularly towards Israel. Empowered by the temporary nuclear agreement that was reached two weeks ago, Iranian leaders are aiming to increase their oil sale from nearly 2.5 million barrels a day to 4 million barrels.</p>
<p>Obama promised and pushed for a deal— beside the secret deals and talks with the Ayatollahs— arguing that Iranian leaders are rational actors, and if the international community eases the sanctions and trusts the Islamic Republic of Iran, this would be the most efficient deal to get Tehran to reciprocate, since there is a “moderate” cleric in power.  But anyone who has studied the political structure of Iran closely would be cognizant of the fact that there is no fundamental differences between Iran’s political spectrum (reformists like Khatami, moderates like Rouhani, and hardliners like Ahmadinejad) when it comes to pursuing the regime’s Islamist revolutionary ideals; including obtaining nuclear weapons, supporting terrorists organizations, wiping Israel off of the world map, denying the Holocaust, and spreading their Islamist ideology across the world by force.</p>
<p>In addition, the final say rests in the hand of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has clearly declared his denial of the Holocaust, his antagonism towards the United States and Israel, and his ambitions for the world to finally be an Islamist state under the rule of Allah. In fact, recently, Khamenei called Israel a “rabid dog,” adding, &#8220;Israeli officials cannot be called humans. They are like animals.&#8221; He furthermore called the United States a state criminal. All politicians and Ayatollahs in Iran support the current hegemonic and Islamist ambitions of the regime, with the Supreme Leader in charge of foreign policy.</p>
<p>The recent activities after lessening sanctions indicate that efforts by the Islamists in Iran to regain their influence economically— by controlling the oil market— and geopolitically— by further supporting and funding terrorist groups. Thanks to President Obama’s lessening sanctions on Iran, and his blocking of the bipartisan sanctions on the nation, Iran’s increasing control of OPEC’s main decisions and increasing influence in the global oil market is essentially handing over power and leverage to the Ayatollahs. If the current status continues, the United States will soon find itself on the other side of the spectrum, the weak position, in which it would have to struggle to bring the Iranian regime to the negotiating table, bargaining and probably accepting Iran’s demands, along with its hegemonic and nuclear ambitions in order to avoid Tehran’s threats and plans to significantly disrupt the oil market.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Iran&#8217;s Puppet Presidency</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/irans-puppet-presidency/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=irans-puppet-presidency</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:37:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[khamenei]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193522</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the hope for a new direction for the Islamic Republic is futile. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ali-khamenei-6a71cbfcd6f06487.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193539" alt="ali-khamenei-6a71cbfcd6f06487" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ali-khamenei-6a71cbfcd6f06487-450x350.jpg" width="270" height="210" /></a>Iran’s presidential election has invoked significant excitement among some liberal Western and Eastern analysts; the enthusiasm lies in the hope that the next president of Iran would be a reformist, rather than from the hardliner, traditionalist, or Islamic principlist camp. These analysts argue that as the hardliners and principlists – who are loyal to the Supreme Leader and oppose any dialogue with the United States, Israel, and the West – are unwavering in their pursuit to obtain nuclear weapons, if a reformist comes to power, they can resolve Iran’s human rights abuses, support of terrorist groups, and nuclear defiance towards the international community. However, this argument lacks logical and sophisticated depth. The premise behind these kinds of statements by analysts are flawed for the following several crucial reasons.</p>
<p>First of all, Iran’s political structure is strictly run by institutions which were established by the founding father of the Islamist state, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. These institutions include the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the Basij (with more than 7 million members, the Basij is the largest volunteer paramilitary militia in Iran), and Ettela’at, Iran’s notorious intelligence agency. All of these institutions are directly monitored and guided by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to whom the high officials and commanders directly report. Moreover, these institutions receive a high number of benefits from the Supreme Leader and are extremely loyal to him. This kind of shrewd political apparatus can be compared to that of North Korea under Kim Jong-un.</p>
<p>Iran’s foreign and domestic policies are also controlled by the Supreme Leader, under the guidance of the aforementioned powerful institutions. As a result, Iran’s presidency can be regarded as a peripheral, shallow, depthless, and perfunctory position – a superficial political figure that is only granted the authority to set the tone in national and international platforms for the Supreme Leader. When it comes to making policies, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran – although also from the gilded circle of the ruling clerics – is a powerless figure.</p>
<p>Secondly, climbing the political ladder in the Islamic Republic of Iran requires specific personal characteristics and qualifications. If a political figure’s ideologies, policies and tendencies do not comply with those of the ruling cleric and the Supreme Leader, he/she will be thwarted from succeeding in their political career. Tactics that have been utilized to accomplish this include imprisonment, torture, blackmailing, and assassination. As a result, the political figures that have been capable of running for presidency are those who have significantly proven their loyalty and compliance with the Islamist revolutionary ideals. The most significant ideals include antagonism towards the United States and Israel, imposing Shari law throughout the country and across Iran’s borders, arming terrorist militia groups, supporting Assad’s sect-based and police regime, and seeking to become a regional and international hegemon.</p>
<p>Thirdly, and more fundamentally, even if those political figures who challenge the Supreme Leader are able to register for presidential candidacy, they will inevitably become immediately disqualified by the Guardian Council – an authoritarian body that consists of 12 non-elected members who are directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader. As Kambiz, a 24-year-old computer engineering student at Tehran University, told me: &#8220;I am not going to vote. Many of my friends will not vote too. All these candidates are the same. We trusted Khatami (the reformist), but he was one of them and did not stand for us. Rafsanjani, Mashaei and the rest [of the conservatives] are all supporters and beneficiaries of the current corrupt and theocratic regime.&#8221;</p>
<p>Fourthly, major issues that the Islamic Republic of Iran faces – such as enriching uranium and confronting Israel and the United States – have been matters of consensus across all of Iran’s political spectrum, among hardliners, principlists, centrist, moderates, and reformists alike.</p>
<p>When considering the major political and ideological spectrums, all the members of the reformist, hardliner, principlist, centrist, and moderate political camps share identical policies and strategies. The only difference lies in the shrewd political language that each camp uses. While the hardliners – such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current presidential candidate Jalili – publicly attack the West and use inflammatory and provocative language to express their intentions, the reformists are much more sophisticated political statesmen, employing softer tones in order to manipulate the international community and achieve the objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Argo&#8217; and the Continuing Iranian Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/argo-and-the-continuing-iranian-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=argo-and-the-continuing-iranian-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2012 04:35:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Argo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ben Affleck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iranian Hostage Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jimmy Carter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=148417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans escape Iran – with a little help from their friends.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/argo-and-the-continuing-iranian-crisis/01_argo_wallpaper_1920x1200/" rel="attachment wp-att-148709"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-148709" title="01_argo_wallpaper_1920x1200" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/01_argo_wallpaper_1920x1200.gif" alt="" width="315" height="220" /></a>The way it came down at the time, six Americans had been smuggled out of Iran “disguised as Canadians.” After more than 30 years we learn the CIA was also involved. In Hollywood the CIA has been a three-letter code for evil, but not so in <em>Argo</em>, which lays out the backstory in documentary-style footage and wiki-style commentary.</p>
<p>Iran is part of a great Persian legacy, it says. Mohammed Mossadegh is elected and nationalizes the oil business. In 1953 the U.S. and Britain engineer a coup and install the Shah, an evil man who tortures the people. When the Shah falls ill and leaves Iran in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returns. The film fails to provide much background on Khomeini and other key players, including Jimmy Carter, a weak president treated far too kindly here.</p>
<p>As Muslim mobs attack the U.S. embassy, one American explains “we did it to them first with Mossadegh.” The invaders take embassy staff hostage and piece together shredded documents. For the most part the detail is accurate and convincing. The casting is superb, especially the six Americans who escape the embassy and take refuge in the residence of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor.</p>
<p>The Iranians will torture and execute any Americans they catch, so the task is to get the six out of the country. Militants control the roads so they can’t drive. The State Department wants the Americans to pedal 300 miles on bicycles. Enter CIA exfiltration specialist Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) who crafts a plan to get the six out as members of a Canadian film crew. For this plan to work he must concoct a fake film.</p>
<p>Enter John Chambers (John Goodman) and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), glib Hollywood insiders who put together <em>Argo</em>, a sci-fi fantasy picture, and deploy the press to promote the production. Washington big shots sign off on <em>Argo</em> as the best of many bad ideas for the escape, which is going to be tough. Iranian death squads are working three shifts and hanging people from construction cranes.</p>
<p>The Canadian ambassador’s Iranian housekeeper wonders why the six “guests” don’t go outside. They are convinced they are going to die in Tehran. Mendez must persuade them to adopt Canadian identities. More detail would have been played well here, especially the assistance from Ottawa.</p>
<p>The fake Canadians barely make it through an escorted trip through the Tehran bazaar. Now they must get on a Swissair flight to Zurich. Trouble is, Washington changes its mind about the escape plan, and the Muslim militants are getting wise. In a classic Hollywood narrow escape they give chase on the runway but the 747 lifts off, and when it clears Iranian airspace the champagne goes “pop.” It’s a feel-good moment but the story does not end there.</p>
<p>Mendez gets a secret award, the six escapees return to foreign service, and the audience is told that all the hostages are eventually released. <em>Argo</em> doesn’t explain that this only happened when Ronald Reagan took over the presidency. Reagan is absent from this story, and so is Canadian Prime Minister Joseph Clark, who readily signed on to the exfiltration.</p>
<p><em>Argo</em> is not a message movie but lessons abound for all but the willfully blind. When an Islamic regime calls your country the “Great Satan,” you need to take them seriously. In times of crisis, U.S. leaders should pay special attention to their proven friends.</p>
<p>In <em>Argo</em>, the CIA men get most of the attention but they do recognize that “the Canadians are the good guys.” Without them, this “Canadian Caper,” as it was called, doesn’t happen. As the Canadian national anthem says, “<em>Ton histoire est une épopée, des plus brillants exploits</em>.” Helping Americans escape from Iran was only one of those exploits. For a few more click on “World War II.”</p>
<p>Iranian tyrants dislike being deprived of torture subjects. Toward the end of <em>Argo</em> some Iranian official warns, “Canada will pay,” so the story continues. The Ayatollah Khomeini sent Iran to war against secularist Iraq but the regime’s real enemies are the United States and Israel, which it wants to eliminate entirely. That is why a genocidal Islamic theocracy is determined to develop nuclear weapons. That, and the regime’s sponsorship of terrorism, is why <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/27/canada-pm-sees-iran-as-clear-and-present-danger/">Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls Iran a “clear and present danger”</a> and has broken off diplomatic relations.</p>
<p><em>Argo, </em>meanwhile, is shaping up as a hit and certain to garner awards. That calls for a sequel, maybe something on the American hostages held by the Iranian regime for more than 400 days. That story might not be as exciting as the Canadian caper but it could render some strong tag lines. In San Diego a reporter asked a former hostage if he would ever return to Iran. He thought for a moment then said, “only in a B-52.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama, Like Carter, Will Not Act Against Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-puder/obama-like-carter-will-not-act-against-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-like-carter-will-not-act-against-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jul 2012 04:05:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president is reviving the U.S.'s "paper tiger" image. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/obama_carter.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138117" title="obama_carter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/obama_carter.gif" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a>President Barack Obama is hoping that the P5+1 talks with Iran can stave off Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb. But, those recently held in Moscow (June 18-19, 2012), with the participation of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and Iran, like previous talks in Istanbul (April 14, 2012) and Baghdad (May 23-24, 2012) have produced little beside “feel good” sentiments among the participants.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is poised to develop a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it with long-range missiles that can hit the U.S. (short and medium range missiles that can hit Israel and <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/02/16/intel-official-iranian-missiles-could-hit-nearby-us-targets-europe">Europe</a> are already available to Iran ).  While the talks ensue, the centrifuges spin and give Iran the time they need to bring them to the point of no return.</p>
<p>The world powers, while seemingly standing by the demands for Iran to halt uranium enrichment before it reaches the 20% level needed to make an atomic bomb, have been unwilling to make their demand a reality with a determined threat of military action.  Russia and China will not permit the military option.  The real question, however, is why the U.S. and its Western allies have not either.</p>
<p>The reluctance of President Obama to consider military action against the Iranian regime is reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter’s inaction when faced with the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran invading the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking 52 American diplomats hostage; an action which constituted an act of war against the U.S.  The invasion, on November 4, 1979, was executed with the blessings of the Ayatollah Khomeini &#8211; the then new leader of Iran.</p>
<p>Ahmed Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s son, charged with serving as a liaison between the regime and the “students” occupying the embassy would later reveal in his writings that his father expected “thunder and lightening” from Washington &#8211; a decisive military operation that would free the hostages and punish the Iranian regime’s terrorist action.   Instead, the Carter White House displayed weakness with its half-hearted statements, among which included a plea to release the hostages on “humanitarian grounds.”  President Carter showed no interest or intent in using military action.</p>
<p>Khomeini recognized Carter’s weakness and mocked his administration as acting “like a <a href="http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2006/08/why-iran-does-not-fear-us.html">headless chicken</a>.”  Moreover, Carter wrote a personal letter to Khomeini in longhand pleading with an appeal from &#8220;one believer to a man of God.&#8221; Khomeini’s reaction was &#8220;we shall cut off America’s hands.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama’s June 4, 2009, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/">Cairo speech</a>, pleaded with the Muslim world and Iran in a similar manner. “In Ankara, I made clear that America is not, and never will be at war with Islam…Rather than remain trapped in the past, I&#8217;ve made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward.  The question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build. I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve.  There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.”</p>
<p>Obama continued, “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not.  No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.  And that&#8217;s why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.  And any nation, including Iran, should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I&#8217;m hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.”</p>
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		<title>Time Running Out on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-puder/time-running-out-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=time-running-out-on-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:11:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133827</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Israeli government believes the West is about to give in. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/zx500y290_1197706.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-133831" title="zx500y290_1197706" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/zx500y290_1197706.gif" alt="" width="375" height="243" /></a>The recently held negotiations of the P5+1 (U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) and the Islamic Republic of Iran in Baghdad followed similar talks that took place last month in Istanbul – both of which produced one clear result – the enabling of Iran to buy more time in its pursuit of nuclear arms.</p>
<p>The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reportedly found traces of enriched uranium at a 27% level in Iran’s <a href="http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/iaea-finds-higher-grade-uranium-trace-in-iran--sources/">Fordow</a> facility.  According to the Center for American Progress, which reflects the views of President Obama, “The United States and the International community have <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/05/iran_series1.html">time</a> to continue negotiations with Iran and let sanctions pressure the Tehran regime to come clean about its program.”</p>
<p>These kinds of statements and the West’s squandering of time as Iran’s centrifuges spin, has led the Netanyahu government to believe that the West is about to give in to Iran.</p>
<p>For Israel, time is of the essence.  Israelis are not only worried about the lack of concrete results from the talks with Iran; they are deeply concerned about Obama’s habitual appeasement of Iran.  Obama has tried his best to avoid imposing hard hitting sanctions (he had to be publicly rebuked by Senator Menendez (NJ) to sign the latest piece of legislation) and has been obvious in his avoidance of a military confrontation with Iran – thereby empowering the Islamic Republic, which also wants to avoid a conflict – so that it can complete its nuclear program.</p>
<p>The New York Daily News reported on May 30, 2012 that, &#8220;As a candidate Obama pledged to meet personally with Iranian leaders and predicted that Iranians would start changing their behavior if they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so.”  As president, Obama declared in his June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt of the need to “overcome decades of mistrust.”  In this narrative, according to the Daily News, “<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/tehran-outflanking-obama-article-1.1086278?localLinksEnabled=false">Talks</a> are successful insofar as they end not in collapse but in a sustained negotiating process…”</p>
<p>Earlier, on March 20, 2009, Obama videotaped a message to the Iranian people and leaders in honor of <em><a href="http://insidethemiddleeast.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/20/obamas-nowruz-message-to-iranians/">Nowruz</a>,</em> the Iranian New Year.  In the message he declared that, “My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties…this process will not be advanced by threats, we seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.”  There was no mention in Obama’s message of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Commenting on Obama’s gesture to Iran, the liberal New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote (March 23, 2009), “President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement. He abandoned regime change, as an American goal.  He shelved the so-called military option.  He buried a carrot-and-stick approach viewed with contempt by Iranian as fit only for donkeys. And he placed Iran’s nuclear program within the full range of issues before us.”</p>
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		<title>Iranian Threat Heats Up</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/iranian-threat-heats-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iranian-threat-heats-up</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/iranian-threat-heats-up/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:50:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reagan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=123238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The deadly consequences and risks of American inaction.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-02-15T145452Z_01_SIN407_RTRIDSP_3_IRAN-NUCLEAR-AHMADINEJAD.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-123268" title="2012-02-15T145452Z_01_SIN407_RTRIDSP_3_IRAN-NUCLEAR-AHMADINEJAD" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-02-15T145452Z_01_SIN407_RTRIDSP_3_IRAN-NUCLEAR-AHMADINEJAD.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a></p>
<p>Iran announced Sunday that it was cutting off crude oil sales to France and England, a mostly symbolic act given that Iran provides England less than 1% of its crude, and France claims that it “practically stopped importing Iranian oil,”  according to the head of the Union of Petroleum Industries. A few days later, the head of Iran’s armed forces threatened to attack Israel preemptively through its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. The Iranians are once again using bluster to counter the E.U. ban on Iranian oil slated to begin on July 1, and the threat of Belgium-based SWIFT to ban Iran from its system for facilitating transfers of payments among nations through its international network of banks. As a further provocation, the Iranians sent two warships through the Suez Canal in a show of support for global pariah Syria. This follows the Iranian-engineered terrorist attacks on Israeli targets in India, Georgia, and Thailand.</p>
<p>At the same time they threaten and foment terrorist attacks, the Iranians have told the “P5+1” nations (Permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany) of its “readiness for dialogue” and its “new initiatives” concerning its nuclear program, and has allowed U.N. inspectors back in the country, even though President Ahmadinejad said last week that “Our nuclear program is not a subject for negotiations.” Consistent with this position, inspectors were denied access to military installations believed to house nuclear testing equipment. Validating Iran’s lie that its nuclear program is for domestic energy, Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that “we believe we know that the Iranian regime has not decided” to make a nuclear weapon, and that “it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option is upon us.” The ominous background to all this diplomatic chatter is the continuing speculation about when or if Israel will take military action, or whether Israel has the capacity to degrade Iran’s nuclear facilities enough to make an attack worth the risk and blowback.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on in this diplomatic two-step we’ve been dancing with Iran for years. We know that Iran is dead set on acquiring nuclear weapons, or at least “nuclear latency,” the ability quickly to create a weapon. Since its creation in 1979, the Iranian regime has been about more than Iran. As one ayatollah said at the time, the revolution was just “the start of the story. An Islamic and divine government, much like Iran and better, will be created” in other Muslim nations. And more recently, an editorial in the newspaper Kayhan, published by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, proclaimed Iran’s “fixed strategic goal”: “Our late Imam [Khomeini] openly spoke of raising the flag of Islam on top of the palaces of arrogant power, notably the White House . . . as the goal and purpose of the Islamic Revolution.” Seeing itself as a world-transformative power, Iran has been the foremost inspiration and supporter of jihadist violence, its prestige enhanced by its serial humiliations of the U.S., and by its genocidal aggression against Israel, the “little Satan” to America’s “great Satan.” Given its massive oil reserves, which mean it will always have a source of revenue, an Iran with nuclear arms will be virtually untouchable, and thus able to dominate the Middle East and damage our interests, whether by holding oil exports hostage, sparking a larger arms race in the region, attacking our ally Israel, or handing off nukes to one of its numerous terrorist proxies.</p>
<p>Equally obvious is the feckless response of the West to this threat, which seems to have followed a Micawberesque policy of hoping “something will turn up.” Unwilling to act, for years now we have substituted inspections, “talks,” and sanctions as toothless substitutes for action. At least we are consistent, for this is precisely how the West handled the embassy hostage crisis in 1979. Then too we tried sanctions, secret offers to negotiate, and trade embargoes in order to change Iranian behavior. But political, national, and economic self-interest rendered them all ineffectual. For example, the NATO countries were begged to impose a trade embargo, but threats by President Bani-Sadr to cut off oil to Europe––sound familiar?–– led to a weakened and hence ineffectual policy. As the <em>Economist</em> pointed out at the time, “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” The Iranians never have acted by the materialist calculus we have used in our dealings with them.</p>
<p>Moreover, today’s Iran has North Korea as the model for dealing with the West by using diplomatic and inspections processes to create time for achieving nuclear capability. And North Korea is an economic basket case that can’t even feed its own people, unlike Iran, whose oil somebody will figure out a way to buy no matter how many allegedly “crippling” sanctions the West imposes. Yet despite this history, Western leaders continue to assert that “sanctions are working” and that a bit more time will bring Iran to its knees, as Dennis Ross, who was Obama’s Middle East advisor, recently asserted. Meanwhile, Iran’s thousands of recently announced new-generation centrifuges will soon start spinning out even more enriched fuel necessary for weapons.</p>
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		<title>The Genocidal Quest for &#8216;Palestine&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arlene-kushner/islamists-for-palestine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamists-for-palestine</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arlene-kushner/islamists-for-palestine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Feb 2012 04:15:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arlene Kushner]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=122621</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What really lies behind support for the Palestinians in the Muslim world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Israel_egypt_tensions_620x350.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-122623" title="Israel_egypt_tensions_620x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Israel_egypt_tensions_620x350.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a></p>
<p>Ismail Haniyeh, the putative prime minister of Hamas, headquartered in Gaza, has just visited Iran. That visit highlighted a growing division within Hamas between Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas politburo. Until very recently headquartered in Damascus, Mashaal has broken with Iran and relocated to the Gulf State of Qatar.</p>
<p>On February 12, the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khameini, expressing support for his guest, publicly declared that the Palestinian issue was an “Islamic cause.”</p>
<p>The “Palestinian issue”?  This sounds rather as if Iran were promoting a Palestinian state. (This surface impression would coincide with the notion that the Arab/Islamic world would be less bellicose if only Israel would agree to a “two state solution.”)  But it is far from the reality, and the Ayatollah’s words provide an excellent opportunity for setting the record straight.</p>
<p>Just as the Ayatollah is Islamist (perhaps heading the Islamist state “par excellence,” as it were), so is Hamas Islamist—a direct offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Islamist ideology is not nationalist, but, rather, is dedicated to the concept of the <em>ummah</em> —the entire Muslim world seen as a unity. As Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomein said, shortly after the overthrow of the Shah and his return to Iran from exile, “I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke. We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah.”</p>
<p>According to this view, any country, as a sovereign national entity, can legitimately be sacrificed in service to the larger goal of ensuring that “Islam emerges triumphant…”  That triumphalism alludes to rule of shari’a (Islamic law).  The ultimate to be aspired to in this regard is the caliphate, an institution of imperial Islamic rule that strives for global hegemony.</p>
<p>And what of the “Palestinian issue”?  It’s all about the destruction of Israel and the banishment of Jews from the land.</p>
<p>This approach was very explicitly outlined by the Muslim Brotherhood in <em>The Project</em>, part of its charter adopted in 1982 (and described in detail on May 11, 2006 in <em>Front Page Magazine</em>).</p>
<p>Among the techniques it recommended was this:</p>
<p><em> • Adopting the total liberation of Palestine from Israel and the creation of an Islamic state as a keystone in the plan for global Islamic domination…</em></p>
<p>A similar approach is reflected in the 1988 covenant of Hamas, the “Islamic Resistance Movement,” which states:</p>
<p><em> • The Movement&#8217;s program is Islam…</em></p>
<p><em> • The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine…</em></p>
<p><em> • The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders…</em></p>
<p><em> • The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [sacred trust] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day.</em></p>
<p><em> • Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem…</em></p>
<p>No mention of a Palestinian state here and no emphasis on a distinct “Palestinian Arab people.”  No commitment to Palestinian national sovereignty as a value unto itself.   When leaders of Hamas speak of “resistance,” they intend only to banish Jews from a part of the land that ultimately belongs to the <em>ummah</em>.</p>
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		<title>Rift with Iran Deepens</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/joseph-klein/rift-with-iran-deepens/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rift-with-iran-deepens</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:35:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Basij militia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Embassy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Riot]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=114136</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UK closes embassy, reduces diplomatic relations to "lowest level." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Iranian-embassy-007.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-114140" title="Iranian-embassy-007" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Iranian-embassy-007.gif" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a></p>
<p>Shouting &#8220;Death to England&#8221; and throwing in condemnations of the United States and Israel for good measure, members of the Basij militia stormed the British embassy compound and a diplomatic residence in Tehran on November 29th, causing significant damage. The rioters reportedly carried banners bearing the name of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, which runs the overseas operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.</p>
<p>Iranian security forces did little at first to stop the assault. The militants reportedly ransacked offices, burned the British flag, smashed embassy windows, and set at least one vehicle on fire. Militants also surrounded several British staff members. The police finally stepped in to quell the protest before it was allowed to spiral completely out of control.</p>
<p>The attack by the Basij militants occurred just two days after Iran&#8217;s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave a speech to thousands of Basijis from across the country during a meeting held in Tehran.</p>
<p>The next day Khamenei lashed out at Britain directly for unilaterally imposing the one sanction that will likely have a serious impact on the Iranian economy &#8211; requiring that all British credit and financial institutions cease trading with Iran&#8217;s banks, including the severing of all contacts with the Iranian Central Bank.</p>
<p>Addressing Iranian naval commanders, Khamenei said that Britain has a history of humiliating nations but that the Islamic Revolution resulted in Iran “single-handedly standing up to the biggest arrogant [powers] and imperialists and crushing their will.”</p>
<p>In addition to Khamenei&#8217;s denunciations of Britain, Iran&#8217;s parliament approved a retaliatory measure to expel the British ambassador and downgrade Iran&#8217;s diplomatic relations with Britain. All this helped to set the stage for the next day&#8217;s riot.</p>
<p>Referring to the militants as &#8220;students,&#8221; Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said that the &#8220;students’&#8221; action against the British Embassy was a symbol of the public opinion of Iranians,” in remarks to reporters the day after the mob attack, according to the <em>Tehran Times</em>. Larijani&#8217;s expression of support for the militants gives away the lie to the Iranian foreign ministry&#8217;s official expression of &#8220;regret.&#8221;</p>
<p>The British government decided that it had enough of the Iranian regime. It ordered the immediate closure of the Iranian embassy in London and closed its embassy in Tehran. In announcing the decision, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that “If any country makes it impossible for us to operate on their soil, they cannot expect to have a functioning embassy here.” While technically not a complete break in diplomatic relations with Iran, Hague described his government&#8217;s action as reducing relations with Iran to the “lowest level.”</p>
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		<title>The Islamic Republic&#8217;s Warning to the West</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/islamic-republic-bites-back/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamic-republic-bites-back</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:13:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[british embassy]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Iranians storm British Embassy in Tehran.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Picture-52.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-114050" title="Picture-5" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Picture-52.gif" alt="" width="375" height="247" /></a></p>
<p>Yesterday, dozens of young Iranian men <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/11/29/iranian-students-storm-british-embassy-in-tehran/">surged</a> past police into the British Embassy complex in Tehran, smashing windows, hurling Molotov cocktails, and tossing documents from windows. The British flag was burned and the Iranian flag was raised in its place. The embassy was also looted and a car was burned outside. The riot occurred two days after the Iranian parliament voted to reduce diplomatic relations with Britain, who supported upgraded sanctions against Iran for its continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons. At a time of incredibly high tensions in the Middle East, the last thing the region needed was a re-enactment of the 1979 US embassy takeover, the emblematic point of breakdown in relations between the fanatical Iranian regime and the West.</p>
<p>The British Foreign Office denounced the melee, noting that Iran has a &#8220;clear duty&#8221; under international law to protect diplomats and offices. The Obama administration joined Britain as well as other members of the European Union in denouncing the violence. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made the usual toothless condemnations, &#8220;in the strongest terms,&#8221; of course, and reiterated the British demand that &#8220;Iran has a responsibility to protect the diplomatic missions present in its country and the personnel stationed at them.&#8221;</p>
<p>The storming of the embassy by regime supporters was a tenacious effort. Police cleared the demonstrators in front of the main embassy, but later clashed with protesters a second time, using tear gas to disperse the mob after protesters once again gained entry to the compound, according to Fars news agency in Iran. Another Iranian news report said six embassy staff members had been held hostage for a short time. British Foreign Secretary William Hague threatened, &#8220;Clearly there will be other, further, and serious consequences.&#8221;</p>
<p>An Iranian official who declined to be identified told Reuters the government had no role in the uprising. &#8220;It was not an organized measure. The establishment had no role in it. It was not planned,&#8221; he claimed. The assertion is almost impossible to take seriously. The UK has become a major target of government officials in recent days, with one assembly member publicly saying the country was &#8220;worse than the devil&#8221; and calling for the ambassador&#8217;s expulsion. Only days before the attack, the same politician also exhorted the Iranian people to take action: &#8220;The British government should know that if they insist on their evil stances, the Iranian people will punch them in the month, exactly as happened against America&#8217;s den of spies.&#8221; Al-Jazeera reporter Dorsa Jabbari <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/11/20111129132554123213.html">claimed</a> the police and various ministries had prior knowledge of the protest, organized by the student arm of the Basij armed group, Khomeini&#8217;s foot soldiers. &#8220;Any such action of this scale can never be independent in the Islamic Republic,&#8221; he said. &#8220;These gatherings are always approved by higher officials.&#8221;</p>
<p>Giving weight to Jabbari&#8217;s assessment was the fact that Sardar Mohamad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij, appeared on state television on Sunday night. He claimed his group was &#8220;counting the moments&#8221; until it could conduct a strike against &#8220;Zionist forces.&#8221; Sunday was also the day the Iranian parliament <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=27392&amp;title=Iran-parliament-votes-to-expel-British-ambassador">voted</a> to expel the British ambassador. A majority of the 179 lawmakers were in favor of reducing relations to the level of &#8220;charge d&#8217;affaires&#8221; within two weeks. They also approved reducing economic relations with Britain &#8220;to a minimum&#8221; and raised the possibility that other nations would be subjected to the same punishment if they behaved in the same manner. &#8220;This bill is only the beginning,&#8221; warned lawmaker Ali Larijani, speaking on behalf of the parliament. The bill required the approval of Iran&#8217;s Guardians Council before taking effect. They <a href="http://www.theledger.com/article/20111129/ZNYT03/111293006/1035/business?p=3&amp;tc=pg">unanimously</a> endorsed it Monday.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the vote represented a rift between some lawmakers and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While his government remains steadfast in its refusal to halt its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad was hoping to exploit diplomatic channels to mitigate the worst effects of the sanctions. But with the vote, this possibility was lost, a development that comes as no surprise to political analyst Hasan Sedghi. No matter the consequences of further sanctions, &#8220;radical hardliners in Iran will use the crisis to unite people and also to blame the crisis for the fading economy,&#8221; he said.</p>
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		<title>The Dangers of Democracy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-thornton/the-dangers-of-believing-in-democracy%e2%80%99s-magical-powers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-dangers-of-believing-in-democracy%25e2%2580%2599s-magical-powers</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 04:12:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What "freedom" means to the Muslim world. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ss-111128-egypt-election-03.grid-8x2.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-113881" title="ss-111128-egypt-election-03.grid-8x2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ss-111128-egypt-election-03.grid-8x2.gif" alt="" width="375" height="256" /></a></p>
<p>The parliamentary elections that have begun in Egypt will impress only the most starry-eyed of democracy champions. These are the people who, like Senator Joe Lieberman, think that the “Arab Spring” is all about people “demanding lives of democracy, dignity, economic opportunity, and involvement in the modern world.” What we’ve seen so far instead is the growing success of Islamist parties demanding a greater role for Islam and shari’a law in running their countries. Our failure of imagination that has reduced events in the Middle East to our own historical paradigms and ideals continues to compromise our foreign policy in that region, and endanger our national interests.</p>
<p>For example, since we prize freedom, human rights, separation of church and state, and tolerance for a variety of ways for individuals to pursue happiness, we think everybody else values or defines those ideas the same way we do. But what we call freedom, many Muslims see as a soul-destroying license and destructive self-indulgence. As the Ayatollah Khomeini preached in 1979, such Western-style freedom is a “freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way to the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.” Decades earlier, Muslim Brothers theorist Sayyid Qutb, along with Khomeini the most critical influence on neo-jihadism, likewise had scorned Western “individual freedom, devoid of human sympathy and responsibility for relatives.” Similarly, al Qaeda theorist Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, “The freedom we want is not the freedom to use women as commodities . . . it is not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriage.” For the faithful, true freedom is the freedom to live as an observant Muslim in harmony with Allah’s precepts, something far different from what we in the West mean by political freedom. So too with our ideal of human rights, which in Islamic terms means the right to be a faithful Muslim without any interference. That’s why Article 24 of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam reads, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’a.”</p>
<p>This failure to imagine the world-view of those unlike us is worsened by our failure to understand that “democracy” is more than just the mechanics of voting. As G.K. Chesterton said, “We shall have real Democracy, when . . . the ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about.” The evidence of elections in the Middle East so far––in Algeria, Gaza, Lebanon, and Tunisia, which have all seen Islamist parties triumph––suggests that most ordinary Muslims want democracy not to institutionalize Western goods and ideals such as personal freedom, individual rights, or tolerance for minorities, but to integrate more thoroughly Islam and shari’a into government. In Egypt this is the explicit program of the organization poised for success in the democratic elections, the Muslim Brothers. Their 2007 draft platform proclaimed that “Islam is the official state religion” and “the Islamic <em>shari’a</em> is the main source for legislation.” Nor are these demands for more religion in government coming just from a well-organized, unified minority. In a <a href="http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/">Pew poll</a> from 2010, 85% of Egyptians said Islam’s influence on politics is positive, 95% said that it is good that Islam plays a large role in politics, 59% identified with Islamic fundamentalists, 54% favored gender segregation in the workplace, 82% favored stoning adulterers, 77% favored whippings and cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, and 84% favored death for those leaving Islam.</p>
<p>Nor will we see in Egypt the sort of religious tolerance sanctioned by the Western separation of church and state. So far this year, 80 Christian Copts have been murdered, some by soldiers, and their churches attacked and destroyed. The intolerance that breeds such violence finds its sanction in traditional Islam, at least according to Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Cairo’s prestigious Al Azhar University. Gomaa calls Christians “infidels” and quotes the Koran’s injunction to “Fight … the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizya [tribute] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” This faith-sanctioned intolerance explains why only 48% of <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/">Egyptians</a> look favorably on Christians, despite the presence of 8 million Christian Copts, and a scant 2% look favorably on Jews. It is hard to see how a liberal democracy as we understand it can flourish in such an environment of intolerance.</p>
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		<title>Iran’s Thugocracy Attacks Again</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/kenneth-r-timmerman/iran%e2%80%99s-thugocracy-attacks-again/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=iran%25e2%2580%2599s-thugocracy-attacks-again</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:15:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kenneth R. Timmerman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmad Rezai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mohsen Rezai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[murder]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=112445</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Murder in Dubai, a prelude to war?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-112477" title="aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/aaaRezaeiFatherAndSon.gif" alt="" width="375" height="252" /></a></p>
<p>The 35-year-old son of the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohsen Rezai, was found dead in a luxury suites hotel in Dubai on Sunday, a death his family deemed “suspicious.”</p>
<p>Ahmad Rezai had gone to Dubai on September 8 to visit his family, who maintain a residence in Dubai. He has been unable to travel to Iran since he was released from house arrest by the regime on May 1, 2008.</p>
<p>According to the <em><a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/index.php/politics/92522-mohsen-rezaiis-son-found-dead-at-a-hotel-in-dubai-">Tehran Times</a></em>, the younger Rezai “died after receiving an electric shock.” An opposition Iranian source told me he was followed back from Tehran by two members of the Quds Force who may have carried out the hit.</p>
<p>The younger Rezai’s murder was discovered just hours after a series of explosions rocked the main depot for the Revolutionary Guards stockpile of Shahab-3 missiles in the southwestern suburbs of Tehran, killing one of Iran’s top missile experts, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099376,00.html">Brig. Gen. Hassan Moghadam</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unclear if the two events are related, as many bloggers have been <a href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/39000#CurDomainURL%23/blog.cfm">suggesting</a>. However, Gen. Mohsen Rezai commands a substantial following within the IRGC even today, fourteen years after he was replaced as IRGC commander. The murder of his son by another faction of regime thugs will surely have repercussions inside Iran.</p>
<p>To me, this feels like the murder of Ahmad Shah Massood in Afghanistan on Sept 9, 2001. I can still remember hearing of Masood’s murder and thinking at the time: this is the beginning of something really bad.</p>
<p>By the very fact that he lived in the United States and had U.S. citizenship, Ahmad Rezai gave his father an “American connection” the regime jinned up into a massive conspiracy. The fact that they couldn’t prove any of their allegations against him, despite many years of efforts, only convinced them further that father and son constituted a threat to the regime.</p>
<p>Combine this murder with the missile base explosion, the latest IAEA report that reveals ongoing nuclear warhead work – despite the CIA’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate to the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/10/connecting-the-nuclear-dots-on-iran/">contrary</a> – and the intense factional warfare inside the regime that is pitting Ahmadinejad against Khamenei and splitting the IRGC into multiple, mutually-hostile factions – and you’ve laid the table for a dramatic series of events. Something bad is going to happen. And the target is likely to be Israel.</p>
<p><strong>Family background</strong></p>
<p>Gen. Rezai has twice run for president, both times against Ahmadinejad. After the stolen election of June 2009, he joined the other failed candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, in calling for a full investigation of election fraud.</p>
<p>But as street protests in Tehran and elsewhere intensified, Rezai caved into pressure from Ayatollah Khamenei – including threats to his family – and retreated to Mashad for several months where he lectured at the local university. (He holds a PhD in economics.)</p>
<p>Khamenei also threatened the family of Rezai’s boss at the Expediency Council, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.</p>
<p>Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, was arrested after the election on allegations of failing to pay import duties on large quantities of green “mantos” – the head to toe covering, usually in black, that Iranian women are forced to wear in public – she was planning to distribute thanks to grants from NGOs with ties to George Soros and his Open Society Institute.</p>
<p>Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Hashemi, was planning to return to Iran from London after the election, but was ultimately warned away from returning by Ahmad Rezai, who learned that the regime had issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi and fully intended to carry it out if he came to Tehran.</p>
<p>Ahmad Rezai has been in the gunsights of the regime ever since he defected to the United States in 1997 at the age of 22.</p>
<p>I first interviewed him in Los Angeles the following year, when he blasted the regime for carrying out terrorist attacks, including the Khobar Towers bombing.</p>
<p>&#8220;Three persons sign off on every order to commit a foreign terrorist action: Ayatollah Khamene&#8217;i, Rafsanjani, and Khamene&#8217;i&#8217;s chief of staff, Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammadi-Golpayegani,&#8221; he told me in that <a href="http://www.iran.org/tib/public/4901.htm">interview</a>.</p>
<p>In 1999, his father dispatched two people to lure Ahmad away from Los Angeles, where he had obtained political asylum, to the estate of a wealthy Iranian businessman in Costa Rica, on the pretext that Iranian agents in Los Angeles were trying to kill him.</p>
<p>Gen. Rezai was trying to get Ahmad to return to Iran, where he thought he could get the regime to “forgive” his outspoken radio and television interviews. At the time, President Khatami was leading a reformist movement that included a loosening up of the regime’s intelligence apparatus. Gen. Rezai was working with Khatami at the time.</p>
<p>In the end, the younger Rezai managed to return to the United States from Costa Rica, with help from the Foundation for Democracy in <a href="http://www.iran.org/tib/public/5610.htm">Iran</a>, which I founded in 1995. He learned English in my basement by watching Jackie Chan movies for three months while getting resettled into the United States.</p>
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		<title>Case Closed: Iran Trying to Make Nuclear Missile</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ryan-mauro/case-closed-iran-trying-to-make-nuclear-missile/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=case-closed-iran-trying-to-make-nuclear-missile</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:43:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[international atomic energy agency iaea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuclear Weapons]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=111780</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Most damning report ever published by the IAEA,” official says]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-111796" title="ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ahmadinejad_iran-nuclear.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>The International Atomic Energy Agency has just released what is being called “the most damning report ever published” by the U.N. watchdog. The <a href="http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=244833">evidence</a> in the report shows that Iran has a secret enrichment program, is simulating nuclear explosions, working on nuclear triggers, and developing a nuclear warhead. The report even says that Iran has made preparations for an underground nuclear test.</p>
<p>The IAEA report focuses on the <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/parchin-2.htm">Parchin military base</a> 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran. The base has hundreds of buildings, tunnels and bunkers and IAEA inspectors are not allowed to visit. It is here that Iran is carrying out tests to simulate nuclear explosions. In 2003, one large test of high-explosives was done to assist with the development of a nuclear warhead that can be fitted onto a Shahab-3 ballistic missile. There is a chamber designed for a test of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives, a suitable amount for a nuclear explosion.</p>
<p>Iran has obtained the designs for a nuclear weapon and is actively working on a warhead. As of 2006, it was <a href="http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/11/08/iaea-credible-information-iran-worked-on-nuclear-weapon-design-2/">working</a> on neutron initiators, often referred to as the “nuclear trigger” for setting off a nuclear explosion. There is no civilian application for this device. In 2008 and 2009, Iran was researching how to make the core of a warhead where the bomb fuel is stored. There have also been computer simulations of nuclear explosions. A Russian scientist named Vyacheslav Danilenko taught the Iranians how to develop nuclear triggers, test nuclear weapons and develop a warhead from 1996 to 2002.</p>
<p>The IAEA also discloses Iran’s  “Green Salt Project,” a secret uranium enrichment project hidden from U.N. inspectors. The program’s objective is to acquire uranium in order to create the nuclear warhead. The underground Fodor site near Qom, which was revealed in 2009, is part of this project. The mountain-based site is designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges, far from what is necessary for a domestic energy program but enough for nuclear bomb production. The report says at least 412 centrifuges have been installed there and it also houses a stockpile of low-enriched uranium.</p>
<p>Iran is even <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/iran-reasearch-nuclear-warhead-watchdog?newsfeed=true">preparing</a> for an underground nuclear weapons test. The IAEA has obtained Iranian government documents in Farsi discussing the necessary logistics for such a test. One document from 2008 mentions the existence of a 400 meter shaft about 6 miles from the “firing control point.” The report <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059147/The-U-N-nuclear-atomic-energy-agency-admit-fear-Irans-nuclear-arsenal.html">concludes</a> that Iran could make a nuclear bomb in the matter of months.</p>
<p>The IAEA’s revelations come shortly after a former member of the Revolutionary Guards who spied for the CIA, Reza Kahlili, brought renewed attention to reports that Iran already has a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>Yossef Bodansky, who served as the Director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare from 1988 to 2004 and authored “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” presents the most detailed account of Iran’s alleged acquisition of nuclear weapons. In his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Peace-Washingtons-Vulnerable/dp/B0001Q5U58/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320722596&amp;sr=8-1">&#8220;The High Cost of Peace,&#8221;</a> he alleges that in the summer of 1991, the Iranian regime ordered its intelligence service to scour the former Soviet Union to search for nuclear weapons. It made contact with officials in Kazakhstan, and the Iranians sent a delegation to the country in early September.</p>
<p>The Kazakhs agreed to provide disassembled nuclear weapons and a team to help reassemble them after their arrival in Iran. The deal was finalized in December 1991, with Iran agreeing to purchase two 40-kiloton nuclear warheads, one aerial nuclear bomb for a MiG-27 and one 152-mm nuclear artillery shell. These weapons arrived in Iran and became operational by mid-1992. The aerial bomb was stored at the Shahid Babai Base in Isfahan. Bodansky claims that the Iranians envisioned using it in a nuclear suicide attack on a U.S. carrier by a North Korean-trained pilot. The two warheads went to a base in Lavizan in Tehran.</p>
<p>According to an account in Ken Timmerman’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Crisis-Coming-Nuclear-Showdown/dp/1400053684">&#8220;Countdown to Crisis,&#8221;</a> Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major-General and future presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai led the delegation to Kazakhstan. His story likewise states that the weapons were disassembled and brought to Tehran, but that key parts were missing. The Iranians reached out to North Korea for help in filling the gaps, which proved more difficult than anticipated to fill.</p>
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		<title>Khamenei Cheers On Occupy Wall Street</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/joseph-klein/khamenei-cheers-on-occupy-wall-street/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=khamenei-cheers-on-occupy-wall-street</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:40:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic republic of iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupy wall street]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Unholy Alliance on full display.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Khomeini_1355539c.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-108764" title="Khomeini_1355539c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Khomeini_1355539c.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="251" /></a></p>
<p>Barack Obama has finally found the common ground he has been searching for with the Iranian regime. They share support for the Occupy Wall Street protest, whose premise is to pit the &#8220;virtuous&#8221; oppressed 99% of Americans against the top 1% of &#8220;wealthy, greedy&#8221; Americans.</p>
<p>Last week, Obama said that the protest &#8220;expresses the frustrations that the American people feel.&#8221; The protesters, he claimed, &#8220;are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works…and that’s going to express itself politically in 2012 and beyond.” Obama had previously told Americans on national television that their country is a nation “with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few.”</p>
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was so enthusiastic about the Occupy Wall Street protesters that she came as close to offering a prayer as she probably ever has in her lifetime. &#8220;God bless them,&#8221; Pelosi said.</p>
<p>Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, who considers himself to be the earthly deputy of both Prophet Muhammad and the hidden 12th Imam, must have heard Pelosi&#8217;s invocation. He came out in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest this week. He said that it shows how the capitalist system in the U.S. and the West has reached a dead end. When people use the slogan &#8220;we are the 99 percent,&#8221; Khamenei declared, the remaining one percent is &#8220;condemned.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama and Khamenei would have been able to share their support for Occupy Wall Street as an ice breaker if they ever got together for those unconditional negotiations with Iran that Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. Sure, Obama would have had to endure a repetition of Khamenei&#8217;s charge this week that the demonstrators were being harshly treated by U.S. officials. Prophet Muhammad&#8217;s self-declared earthly deputy said with a straight face that such treatment is not seen even in underdeveloped countries with dictatorial regimes. No doubt, to keep the peace, Obama would have bowed to the Supreme Leader and apologized, while continuing his own failure to respond forcefully regarding the brutal crack-down by Khamenei&#8217;s security forces against peaceful Iranian dissidents in June 2009.</p>
<p>Too bad that the Iranian regime&#8217;s attempted assassination on American soil of the Saudi ambassador to the United States and its plot to blow up two embassies in Washington, D.C. intruded and will probably end the chance for such a meeting any time soon. The Obama administration is finally getting upset with the Iranian regime &#8211; something that Iran&#8217;s march towards a nuclear arms capability, its announced intention to send its warships off the coast of the United States, its infiltration of terrorists into Latin America and its plans to build a missile base in Venezuela, have not aroused. But while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling up world leaders to rally expressions of international outrage against Iran, the Iranian government is using the Occupy Wall Street protests to shift blame for the episode to the United States.</p>
<p>Iranian government officials complained that the Obama administration was fabricating the alleged plot to divert attention from the Occupy Wall Street protests. In an interview with the Iranian news agency Fars, transcribed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Majlis Supreme National Security Committee chairman Ala Al-Din Boroujerdi said, &#8220;Without a doubt, this new American-Zionist plot was aimed at diverting public attention from the crisis in which [President] Obama has become entangled – [that is,] the Wall Street popular uprising.&#8221;</p>
<p>Apparently, Boroujerdi missed Obama&#8217;s statement last week giving his presidential seal of approval to the protests as an expression of &#8220;the frustrations that the American people feel.&#8221;</p>
<p>As usual, Obama is out of touch with the feelings of most Americans. The protests express the frustrations of the far Left, his own base. The core includes significant contingents who hate capitalism and think they are bringing the Arab Spring to America. They are much closer to Khamenei&#8217;s way of thinking than they are to ordinary Americans&#8217;.</p>
<p>&#8220;One problem is that the corruption of capitalism has become clear to the people. Of course this movement might be suppressed, but they cannot destroy the roots of the movement,&#8221; Khamenei said.</p>
<p>Khamenei claimed the protests proved that U.S. capitalism was on the &#8220;verge of full collapse.&#8221; He predicted that the movement &#8220;will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the west.&#8221;</p>
<p>General Masoud Jazayeri of Iran&#8217;s Revolutionary Guard, whose Qods Force unit was allegedly involved in the aborted ambassador assassination and embassy bombing plot, said the protests were &#8220;a revolution and a comprehensive movement against corruption&#8230;in the making. The last phase will be the collapse of the Western capitalist system.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>No Celebrity Outrage for Iranian Pastor Nadarkhani</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/mark-tapson/no-celebrity-outrage-for-iranian-pastor-nadarkhani/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-celebrity-outrage-for-iranian-pastor-nadarkhani</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Oct 2011 04:33:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[celebrity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death row inmates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mark macphail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nadarkhani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prison]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A Christian pastor is about to be executed by the Mullahs for his beliefs; where is Hollywood’s outrage?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/nadarkhani.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107488" title="nadarkhani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/nadarkhani.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="341" /></a></p>
<p>When it comes to publicly protesting the sentences of death row inmates, celebrity outrage for a convicted cop-killer is off the charts, but a Christian pastor in Iran about to die for his beliefs doesn’t even rate a “tweet.”</p>
<p>Last month Troy Davis, convicted of the 1989 murder of Georgia officer Mark MacPhail, the married father of two, was executed for his crimes despite a wave of urgent protests on the part of celebrities proclaiming his innocence and horrified by his imminent execution. Kim Kardashian, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, and Alec Baldwin were among the many stars who felt that the evidence of his guilt was insufficient to overcome reasonable doubt (Ann Coulter was not among the doubtful – in <a href="../2011/09/23/cop-killer-is-medias-new-baby-seal/">her recent column</a>, she detailed the overwhelming evidence condemning Davis and described him as “the media’s new baby seal”).</p>
<p>The celebs used their substantial platforms like the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/21/troy-davis-celebrity-support-twitter">social media network Twitter</a> to raise awareness about the case and demand clemency. “If Troy Davis is executed in Georgia it will be a crime,” “tweeted” novelist Salman Rushdie, himself still living under a death fatwa for his book <em>The Satanic Verses</em>, denounced as blasphemous by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini the same year as MacPhail’s murder. (Contrary to a common assumption, the fatwa has never been rescinded; Iranian authorities have said merely that they have no intention of carrying out Rushdie’s sentence.)</p>
<p>But the celebrity silence regarding an even more outrageous and clearcut injustice is deafening. At any moment, Iranian Christian pastor <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/09/28/iranian-pastor-faces-execution-for-refusing-to-recant-christian-faith/">Yousef Nadarkhani may be killed</a> because he refuses to renounce his Christianity and embrace the Islam of his ancestors, which he maintains he has never followed as an adult. His “crime” does not even exist in the Iranian penal code, and no one has been executed in Iran for apostasy since 1990. But the judge has upheld his conviction and sentence based on the religious writings of clerics including Khomeini, unless Nadarkhani – like MacPhail, the married father of two – recants his faith, which he has refused to do on four official occasions before the judge. Even if his execution is commuted, he could still face life in prison. And even if released, he would still be in mortal danger. “In Iran about 18 years ago, they had released a pastor, but then came and assassinated him and his bishop later,” <a href="http://img.ibtimes.com/www/articles/20110929/222139_iranian-pastor-sentenced-to-death.htm">said a Member of the Council of Elders for the Church of Iran</a>.</p>
<p>The pastor of a 400-member Christian “house church,” Nadarkhani has been imprisoned since October 2009 when he complained about his son being forced to read the Koran at school. His wife, also arrested in an attempt to pressure her husband to “return” to Islam, was released a year ago. “Let believers, who are heirs of the glory, be examples for others in order to be a witness of the power of Christ for the world and the future,” <a href="http://www.zimbio.com/Christianity/articles/Hyk2zJ1bgbo/Evangelical+Iranian+pastor+facing+execution">he recently wrote from prison</a>, in a testament to his belief.</p>
<p>The couple is not alone in terms of Iran’s persecution of its Christian minority. Between June 2010 and January of this year, 202 Christians were arrested solely for practicing their faith. They face torture in prison, violent abuse outside prison, and sometimes <a href="http://www.zimbio.com/Christianity/articles/Hyk2zJ1bgbo/Evangelical+Iranian+pastor+facing+execution">disappearance altogether</a>. “We have very little leverage in Iran,” religious <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/28/facing-execution-for-crime-being-christian-in-iran/">civil rights advocate Rev. Keith Roderick says</a>. “[Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is at war with the Christian church there, but our influence has diminished.”</p>
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		<title>Losing Their Religion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/losing-their-religion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=losing-their-religion</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:35:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62551</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why exactly are we treating Islamic theology like a protected species?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/losing.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62553" title="losing" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/losing.jpg" alt="" width="446" height="315" /></a></p>
<p>Although many won’t admit it, we are in the midst of an ideological war with Islam. And since the advantage goes to the side that fully realizes they are at war, the West is losing. The propaganda war is going in favor of Islam precisely because the West doesn’t realize it is supposed to be fighting one. The ability of Islam to rally much of the world behind its hatred of Israel is a telling indication of who is winning the war of ideas. As for war aims, it’s not clear that there are any. Even those who see the danger clearly rarely talk in terms of victory; they talk mainly in terms of resisting cultural jihad. You know you’re in trouble when your ideological opponent is a primitive seventh-century belief system, and yet the best that your top strategists hope for is to put up a good resistance.</p>
<p>As the Dracula-like return of Communist ideology demonstrates, an ideological war needs to be fought to complete and total victory. The enemy ideology should be so thoroughly discredited that no one—not even its former staunchest defenders, not even the most doctrinaire college professor—will want to be associated with it. In regard to Islam, then, our aim should go beyond simply resisting jihad; it should be the defeat of Islam as an idea. But, aside from inflicting crushing military defeats on Islamic powers, how do you accomplish that?</p>
<p>One answer is that you do all you can to force Muslims to question their faith in Islam. As Mark Steyn observes, “there’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.” He was speaking, of course, of the more mushy versions of Western Christianity—the post-Christian Christians who seem anxious to dialogue themselves into dhimmitude. But there’s no reason the concept can’t be applied to Islam. Surely the average intelligent Muslim has occasional doubts about the founding revelations. And just as surely he keeps them to himself, not only because he fears his fellow Muslims, but also because the rest of the world seems to be going along with the pretense that he belongs to a great religion. It may be time for the rest of the world to drop the pretense.</p>
<p>If one of your opponents’ core beliefs is that you need to be subjugated, why wouldn’t you want to foster doubts in his mind? Jihadists commit jihad because they correctly perceive that their religion calls them to it. As long as they are kept secure in the illusion that their faith is unassailable, they will continue the jihad by whatever means seem most expedient. They won’t question their faith—and neither will the majority of Muslims—unless they get used to the fact that it can be questioned and criticized.</p>
<p>One man who has done a lot to shake up the faith of Muslims is Fr. Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest who hosts a weekly Arabic language TV program watched by millions of Muslims around the world. Among other things, the engaging Fr. Botros forces his Muslim audience to confront unflattering facts about their prophet. He also talks to them about the Christian faith—something that most Muslims know very little about, beyond some simple caricatures. Apparently he is very successful at what he does. According to reports he is responsible for mass conversions to Christianity.</p>
<p>Does such questioning of Muhammad’s character provoke anger among Muslims? Well, yes, it does. The elderly Fr. Botros has been labeled Islam’s “Public Enemy #1,” and a reported $60 million bounty has been put on his head. But, according to a recent piece by Raymond Ibrahim, “the outrage appears to be subsiding.” Ibrahim contends that Life TV (the satellite station that carries Fr. Botros’ program) “has conditioned its Muslim viewers to accept that exposure and criticism of their prophet is here to stay.” The first time a Muslim hears the moral flaws of the Prophet exposed, he may well be angry at the exposure. But how about the third time? The tenth time? The twentieth time? What initially provokes anger might eventually provoke doubts about Muhammad’s claims.</p>
<p>There are those who think that such efforts are doomed to failure—that Islam is too deeply rooted in the Muslim world. But deeply held beliefs are not always as deeply rooted as they seem. Thirty-five years ago it would have been non-controversial to say that the Catholic faith was deeply rooted in Ireland, but if you said it today you would be going out on a limb. More to the point, Islam itself was less “deeply rooted” 60 years ago in the Middle  East than it is now. Consider this recollection by Ali A. Allawi, a former Iraqi cabinet minister:</p>
<blockquote><p>I was born into a mildly observant family in Iraq. At that time, the 1950’s, secularism was ascendant among the political, cultural, and intellectual elites of the Middle East. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Islam would lose whatever hold it still had on the Muslim world. Even that term—“Muslim world”—was unusual, as Muslims were more likely to identify themselves by their national, ethnic, or ideological affinities than by their religion.</p></blockquote>
<p>Deeply rooted? Perhaps you’ve seen that sequence of photos of the University of Cairo graduating classes for the English Department. The women of the Class of 1959 look like college students anywhere in the Western world circa 1959. They wear Western style skirts and dresses and no head covering. Ditto for the class of 1978. It could be the class of ’78 at the University  of Chicago. But by 1994 half the women are wearing hijabs. By 2004 almost all the women are wearing hijabs and ankle-length clothing. So, sometime in the 1990’s educated Muslims apparently began to take their faith more seriously. They appear to take it very seriously now. But how “deeply rooted” is twenty years?</p>
<p>Given that the penalty for leaving Islam—or even criticizing it—can be death, we may be mistaking deeply rooted fear for deeply rooted faith. Moreover, the fact that Islam prescribes such harsh penalties for doubters suggests that the faith itself is not intrinsically convincing. As the Ayatollah Khomeini once said, “People cannot be made obedient except with the sword.” Any religion that needs so many external incentives—swords behind you, and virgins in your future—cries out to be questioned. Unfortunately, instead of exploiting its theological weaknesses the West insists on chivalrously shielding Islam from the kind of scrutiny that the West reserves for its own institutions and traditions. And with good reason. Because it’s generally understood, though rarely said, that Muhammad’s claims would not meet the tests of critical reason and historical evidence that we apply to the Judeo-Christian revelation. The much revered sufi theologian al-Ghazali wrote, “The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or his Prophet…” You can see why. Curiosity didn’t kill Christianity, but curiosity would almost certainly kill the Caliphate—or, in our times, the hope for a resurrected Caliphate. Obliged not to mention the Prophet? Given the threat Islam poses to the world and to Muslims themselves, it’s beginning to look as though the obligation runs the other way. The world needs to take a much closer look at the Prophet and his claims. The Prophet is Islam’s main prop. If he is discredited, Islam is discredited. Hence, the mighty efforts by the OIC to make it a crime to blaspheme a prophet.</p>
<p>The Prophet’s integrity is not the only thing in doubt. Theologically speaking, Islam is a house of cards. The whole faith rests on the belief that Muhammad actually received a revelation from God. But where’s the proof? Were there any witnesses to this revelation other than Muhammad? Why should we take his word for it? Why were there so many revelations of convenience that worked directly to Muhammad’s personal advantage? Are there really dozens of renewable virgins awaiting young warriors in paradise, or was this revelation simply a clever recruitment tool manufactured by Muhammad to provide an incentive for following him? And why is the Koran, despite its flashes of poetic brilliance, put together like a soviet-era automobile? As an exercise in composition the Koran would not pass muster in most freshmen writing courses. Why can’t God write as well as the average college student?</p>
<p>Ordinarily it’s not a good idea to go around questioning other people’s firmly held beliefs. But these are not ordinary times, and Islam is no ordinary religion. As any number of observes have noted, it’s partly a religion and partly a supremacist political ideology—although no one seems to be able to say exactly what percent is political ideology and what percent is religion. Is it 50/50 or 60/40 or 80/20? Is it legitimate to criticize the political part of it, but not the religious part? How do you tell where the politics leaves off and the religion begins? Or are they so bound together that they can’t be separated?</p>
<p>If you remember “Joe Palooka,” the old comic strip series about a decent but not-too-bright heavyweight boxer, you might remember that one of Joe’s craftier opponents once tattooed his rather expansive stomach with the word “Mother” inscribed within a large heart. His midsection was his weak spot, of course, but he knew he could count on Joe to avoid hitting him there, Joe being too much of a gentleman to do otherwise. In <em>On the Waterfront,</em> Marlon Brando’s character refers to the place where failed fighters go as “palookaville.” Currently, our whole culture is in danger of ending up in “palookaville” because there are large areas of Islam we decline to examine out of a sense of delicacy that would be excessive in a Victorian matron. Islamic strategists are counting on polite Westerners not to hit them in their soft spot.</p>
<p>Islamic strategists invoke the supremacist principles of the Koran in order to stir up aggression against the Muslim world, yet any criticism of Islam is met with cries of, “No fair! You are blaspheming a prophet and his religion.” So far, the shame-on-you-for-criticizing-a-religion strategy has worked very effectively. Fortunately, a few, like Fr. Botros, aren’t buying into the ruse. He has enough respect for Muslims as individuals to realize that their religion should not be put beyond discussion. Many Muslims, especially Muslim women, suffer a profound sense of desperation: the feeling of being trapped in a 1400-year-old nightmare, with no way out. It’s difficult to see any convincing argument for propping up the system that oppresses them. On the contrary, it seems almost a duty to undermine that system—political and religious—and call it into question at every turn.</p>
<p>In past ideological struggles we wisely sought ideological victory—the discrediting of the belief system that inspired our enemies. Because the driving force behind Islamic aggression is Islamic theology, it makes no sense to treat Islamic theology like a protected species. Rather, we should hope that Muslims lose faith in Islam just as Nazis lost faith in Nazism and Eastern-bloc Communists lost faith in communism.</p>
<p>Of course, it would be all the better if, like Fr. Botros, we had something to offer them in its place. Winston Churchill once said that Greer Garson, for her role in <em>Mrs. Miniver</em>, was worth six divisions in the war against Hitler. It seems safe to say that Fr. Botros, for his role in instilling doubts about Islam and giving Muslims something solid in its place, is worth at least a couple of Departments of Homeland Security.</p>
<p><em>William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in FrontPage Magazine, First Things, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World, and Investor’s Business Daily.</em></p>
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		<title>The Rise of the Ignoramus Jihadist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/wm-b-fankboner/the-rise-of-the-ignoramus-jihadist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-rise-of-the-ignoramus-jihadist</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:03:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Wm. B. Fankboner]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Islamic terrorists are not ignorant and poor, but neither are they truly educated.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/345-muslim-outrage.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60213" title="345-muslim-outrage" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/345-muslim-outrage.jpg" alt="" width="388" height="310" /></a></p>
<p>It is still widely believed in leftist circles that the generic Islamic terrorist is the product of ignorance and poverty. This idea – that terrorists are a persecuted minority of the ignorant and downtrodden – dovetails neatly with another liberal tenet: that the problem of modern terrorism is amenable to a socioeconomic solution. Typical of this putative class of terrorist is “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. A petty criminal who was arrested in his teens for assaulting an elderly woman, and who was in and out of prison for most his adult life, Reid considered himself a victim of racism. He was thus promising material for conversion to Islam: the Jihadists love to glom onto disaffected and benighted losers to do their dirty work.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>But even liberals are coming around to the view that many acts of terror are being planned and carried out by “educated” members of the Islamic middle class, not a few of whom have come from affluent and privileged backgrounds. Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA case officer, states in his book <em>Understanding Terror Networks</em> that a high percentage of al-Qaeda operatives are college educated (34 percent) and come from skilled professions (45 percent). A governmental report prepared for the CIA in 1999 entitled “The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” reached the same conclusion.</p>
<p>However, some qualification of the word “educated” is in order. While secondary education in some Islamic countries like Malaysia is modeled on the Western system, in the Middle East it is largely the responsibility of the <em>madrasahs</em> (religious schools), which are dedicated almost exclusively to religious instruction and indoctrination. Though not all these institutions are stridently anti-Western, the fact that the curriculum is entirely religious-based, i.e., focused on the Quran and the <em>hadith</em>, means that the average <em>madrasah</em> graduate is blissfully unaware of the modern world and thus a receptive vessel for the anti-American narrative promoted by militant jihadists.</p>
<p>For example, if you were to ask a <em>madrasah</em> graduate to explain what role the Christian democracies have played in world affairs in the twentieth century (the Anglo-American alliance that defeated German imperialism in 1918, the Nazi-Fascist Axis in 1945, and international Communism in 1989), they would have no idea what you were talking about. Indeed, so profound is their ignorance of current events and world history, few would even know there had been a Cold War.</p>
<p>If the number of Nobel laureates is any measure—Islam, 20% of the world’s population, has produced 6, while the Jewish community, a tiny minority of 0.2%, has produced 165—intellectual curiosity is not a highly rated virtue in the Koran; “Islam” is a Syriac word meaning <em>submission</em>, which is the surrender of the mind to faith, i.e., the abdication of free conscience and independent thought to the teachings of the Prophet. Most so-called “educated” jihadists, those who see themselves as symbolic emissaries of Islam and are fully convinced of the rectitude of their cause, suffer from a cognitive disorder Thomas Aquinas called “invincible ignorance.” The best (or worst) you can say of graduates of the <em>madrasahs</em> is that their knowledge of history and world affairs is roughly equivalent to that of an average American fourth-grader. In no other culture, society, or religion is the pursuit of knowledge viewed with such virulent contempt and ignorance of the world considered evidence of virtue.</p>
<p>So when we speak of “educated” jihadists we are referring to training and expertise in a specialized technical field or in one of the professions, like medicine. Practically all university-educated jihadists are engineers and technologists. In terms of general education, however, middle-class, university-educated jihadists like Mohammed Atta, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Jordanian double agent Mulal al-Balawi aren’t much better off than ordinary graduates of the illiberal and benighted <em>madrasah</em>, i.e. they reason with the intellectual sophistication of superstitious children. Exposure to Western science and technology does not erase years of obscurantist religious indoctrination and conditioning. Like their fellow supplicants, they have been taught from early childhood to believe that the West, and Israel and America in particular, are their mortal enemies; and that Western Enlightenment values, and the temptations of Western popular culture, constitute a diabolical conspiracy to defile and undermine their religion.</p>
<p>According to a Congressional Research Services report published in 2008, radicalized <em>madrasahs</em> in Afghanistan were incubators for the Taliban movement:</p>
<blockquote><p>In the 1980s, madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan were allegedly boosted by an increase in financial support from the United  States, European governments, Saudi  Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states all of whom reportedly viewed these schools as recruiting grounds for anti-Soviet mujahedin fighters. In the early 1990s, the Taliban movement was formed by Afghan Islamic clerics and students (<em>talib </em>means “student” in Arabic), many of whom were former mujahedin who had studied and trained in madrasas and who advocated a strict form of Islam similar to the Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.</p></blockquote>
<p>The <em>Madrasahs</em> are, in fact, indispensable to the perpetuation of Islam’s medieval worldview. Deprivation of information about life and the ways of the world is an essential tool for infantilizing generations of Muslim students: isolated from reality, these adolescent novitiates never encounter the world as it is and thus never achieve full adulthood. Their maturation into self-actualized individuals is defeated by a distortion field of fanatical dogma and a rancorous hatred of the infidel; while Islam’s demonstrable inferiority to the West fans a searing humiliation and inchoate resentment that cuts them off from every decent human instinct.</p>
<p>Since these embryonic jihadists have no inclination or opportunity to discover their own humanity they will never sense any solidarity with the community of mankind. In the Muslim view the non-Islamic world constitutes “the other,” i.e., the enemy of Islam. In place of humanity Islam offers its young men the spiritual blessings of imams, mullahs, and ayatollahs, and the unsurpassed exhilaration and exaltation of martyrdom.</p>
<p>But while the motivations of information-deprived terrorists are comprehensible, the complacence of Dar al-Islam is unfathomable. One can only gasp with disbelief on learning that in nuclear-armed Pakistan, an ally which the U.S. has bankrolled with over a billion dollars in aid yearly, 64 percent of the population views the U.S. as an enemy. What is to be said of a country where one in five trust Osama bin Laden more than Barack Obama, and of the population that clings to these beliefs after Taliban militias have penetrated to within sixty miles of Islamabad, and after Al Qaeda has, according to estimates of the World Health Organization, killed 150,000 Muslims in Iraq alone? The forces of paranoia, superstition, and ignorance will not be quelled by reason: the roots of anti-Western sentiment are deep, global, and generational in Islamic society. Indeed, how could it be otherwise in Middle Eastern states where outlawing political debate, saturating the media with anti-Western slogans, and propagating hate speech in mosques and in school textbooks, have become institutionalized strategies to maintain political power and prop up incompetent tyrants?</p>
<p>I happened to be teaching at a government prep school in Malaysia, a country that practices a relatively benign version of Islam, during the siege and occupation of the U.S. embassy in Teheran by revolutionaries of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and I was surprised when a devout but gentle Muslim teacher approached me and half-apologetically explained his admiration for the revered Iranian religious leader who had lately occupied the world stage. I hadn’t expected him to repudiate the Ayatollah for fomenting revolution against the Shaw (self-determination is the right of every decent society) but I was disturbed to hear him countenance the storming, and the imprisonment the staff of, an American embassy that was under the protection of international law.</p>
<p>So sacrosanct is the concept of diplomatic immunity that the Italian Minister Bettino Craxi allowed Mohammed Abbass, leader of the <em>Achille Lauro<strong> </strong></em>hijacking, to leave Italy because he had a diplomatic passport issued by Iraq. In the history of revolution, some perpetrated by ruthless and vicious regimes, the taking of hostages of a foreign embassy was unheard of. Moreover, to countenance Ayatollah Khomeini was to countenance his barbaric <em>fatwa</em> against Salmon Rushdie, a criminal incitement to the assassination of a celebrated novelist and blatant attack on the very roots of Western civilization. What did such reckless and defiant acts portend for the future of Islam and the world? The lawless Ayatollah had passed the infallible litmus test for fascism that had been the mantra of every tyrant in history: What&#8217;s Mine is Mine and What&#8217;s Yours is Mine.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>The complacent attitude of my Islamic colleague whose faith in the Iranian Ayatollah was absolute and who believed the revered spiritual leader could do no wrong, was almost as disturbing as the event itself; for me and my generation, his viewpoint bore an eerie resemblance to the mindless adoration of the German people for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. How a gang of inept sociopaths succeeded in taking over the country that gave the world Kant, Goethe and Beethoven is still something of a mystery. When asked about it, most Germans simply shrug and say they awoke one morning and found the Nazis in control. Something like the Nazis’ stealthy seizure of power seems to be taking hold in Islam: a cabal of sociopathic clerics masquerading as a holy religious cause appears to be co-opting Islam in an apocalyptic confrontation with the civilized world with the passive compliance of Islam itself.</p>
<p>The 2005 Pew survey below would seem to indicate that the support of mainstream Islam for violence is diminishing. Such fluctuations in attitude are probably due to increased awareness of the self-liquidating nature of the jihadist philosophy and internal contradictions of Islamic fundamentalism. Such trends can be misleading because the primary cause for jihadist violence still exists, i.e. a culture that has no intellectual tradition, and that uses information deprivation to manipulate the faithful.</p>
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<p>As the examples of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Khmer Rouge show, unanimity is not a prerequisite for the takeover of a society. With a misinformed, cowed, and submissive populace, a scant minority of determined fanatics can do the job. What Dar al-Islam does not fully understand or refuses to admit, even to itself, is that the rise of child-martyrs and ignoramus-jihadists in its midst holds more peril for Islam than it does for the West.</p>
<p>Dealing with Islamic mentality for the first time can be a startling and eye-opening experience for a Westerner. Confronted with Islam’s negative view of the West, one is beset with an overwhelming sense of futility. The problem lies not in only correcting facts, or in supplanting illusion with objective information; this is a mentality so steeped in obscurantist tradition and ignorance that it has never developed any standard for truth; rather “truth” is something used to hoodwink an opponent. And this is an ignorance so absolute and on a scale so extensive that it is impossible to convey it to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. One quickly realizes that in an ignorance this total any fiction, no matter how outrageous, can not only survive but take permanent residence and flourish.</p>
<p>This is a problem that can only be corrected by a major overhaul of the Islamic educational system. For where there is no concept of truth, there is no idea of free inquiry. Thus, it would appear that the tender-minded liberals had it right after all: this is a socioeconomic problem. The children of Islam are the disadvantaged educationally-deprived victims of deliberate parental abuse and theological violation, and nothing will change until this problem is remedied, either by Islam itself or by the political and cultural disaster that certainly awaits it over the horizon of history.</p>
<p>Finally, for those who question the power of the Mosques and <em>madrasahs</em> to infantilize and dehumanize Muslim society, and to cocoon a population in near absolute ignorance, there was this AP filing on April 19, 2010:</p>
<blockquote><p>A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” the cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Mr. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday Prayer leader. Women in <a title="More news and information about Iran." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">Iran</a>, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, are required by law to cover from head to toe but many, especially the young, ignore some of the stricter codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair. “What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?” Mr. Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon on Friday. “There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes.”</p></blockquote>
<p>It would probably be disrespectful to suggest that Sedighi is himself getting off on those sexy Iranian <em>bints</em> in tight coats and exposed locks. Nonetheless the lip-smacking relish with which this revered Shiite cleric describes the cause and effect between male arousal and earthquakes is certainly suspicious. Surrealistic decrees from Iran’s delusional leadership have taught us not to be shocked by any communiqués originating in Teheran, but Westerners would probably be surprised to learn how many listeners in Sedighi’s audience actually agree with this childish nonsense. More to the point, the grim-mouthed cleric spouting this vile claptrap is the venerated prayer leader for a regime that is acquiring the capacity to build nuclear weapons and the rocket technology to deliver them.</p>
<p><strong>William Fankboner is the author of <em>The Triumph of Political Correctness</em> and <em>A Hypertext Field Guide to Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media</em>. He runs a web site at: http://home.roadrunner.com/~lifetime. His e-mail address is: williefank@aol.com.</strong></p>
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		<title>Attacking the Church and Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/attacking-the-church-and-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=attacking-the-church-and-double-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:23:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abuse]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[alfred kinsey]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the media attacks Catholic crimes of 20 years ago but turns a blind eye to present-day Muslim crimes against children.]]></description>
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<p>In the war against jihad it might seem that President Obama’s plan to remove all discussion of Islam and jihad from our national security document would rank higher as a threat to Western security than recent attempts to link the pope to 40 year-old sex crimes in Milwaukee. But the perfect storm that has hit the Catholic Church may turn out to be of greater consequence for the West’s survival. For that reason it’s important to sort out how much of the current indignation toward Rome represents justified anger, and how much of it represents a larger anti-Christian agenda.</p>
<p>Non-Catholic Christians who think the recent media blitz against the Catholic Church is mainly about sex abuse should think again.  Likewise, Christians would be naïve to think that those who would like to discredit the Catholic Church will be content, should they succeed, to leave the rest of Christianity alone.  The attack on the Catholic Church should be seen as part of a larger attack against Christianity itself.  Of course, there have been attacks on Christianity before, but never before have the stakes been so high.  From the standpoint of the West’s survival it would be difficult to imagine a worse time for the pundits to launch a campaign to undermine Christian belief.</p>
<p>There is much to suggest that media criticism of the Church is fueled less by outrage over pedophilia, and more by another agenda.  There wasn’t much outrage over Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13 year-old girl a number of years ago.  When attempts were made last year to bring Polanski back to the U.S. to serve his sentence, many of the same cultural elites who are now condemning the Church, leapt to his defense.  Likewise, there has never been much media outrage over the apparent crimes of celebrated sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.  The media continued to lionize Kinsey long after it was revealed that he had collaborated with pedophiles in order to gather data.  “What did Kinsey know and when did he know it?” has never been a pressing question for CNN or <em>The New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>In 1996—several years before the priestly sex scandal broke—Mary Eberstadt wrote the first of two in-depth articles on “Pedophilia Chic” for the <em>Weekly Standard</em>. She made a convincing case that liberal elites were moving in the direction of tearing down the taboo against pedophilia.  The only thing that stopped them, she suggests in a recent article, was the opportunity to use priestly pedophilia as a weapon to demonize the Church.  Of course, there was no pause in the liberal media’s campaign to normalize homosexuality, and this may account for the fact that much of the media coverage conveniently ignored the homosexual nature of the abuse—something that should have been difficult to ignore, given that about 90 % of male abuse victims were teenage boys, not young children.  While criticizing the Church for cover-ups, media pundits had no compunctions about their own calculated cover-up of a major aspect of the abuse.</p>
<p>Though sexual abuse remains a problem in the Catholic Church, enormous strides have been made in rooting it out, due in large part to a crackdown that originated with Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001.  So, the venomous attacks on him and the church he represents, suggest that something else is afoot.  When a major Canadian newspaper features a piece claiming that the pope’s “whole career has the stench of evil,” it’s time to reach for the decoding machine.  That particular quote comes from Christopher Hitchens, who has made a career in recent years of questioning the legitimacy, not just of Catholicism, but of Christianity, itself.  Hitchens aside, there is plenty of other evidence that Catholics are not the only ones being targeted for de-legitimization.  In Canada and in Europe, Christian pastors have been fined or jailed for expressing their beliefs from the pulpit.  In Birmingham, England, Christian evangelists were warned by police that distributing gospel leaflets in a Muslim section would be considered a hate crime.  A survey of history textbooks for American schoolchildren reveals that they present Christianity as a purveyor of bigotry and violence.  On college campuses, Christian clubs are routinely banned.  Meanwhile, Christianity is often the butt of vulgar comedy routines, and of crude cartoons that make the infamous Muhammad cartoon look benign by comparison.</p>
<p>Why the outrage?  Read between the lines of a typical assault column and you’ll find that what the columnist really hates about Catholicism and about Christianity in general is not the moral failings of Christian leaders, but the fact that Christianity still proposes moral absolutes.  It is not sexual misbehavior that galls, but rather that the churches dare to put limits on sexual behavior.  Christian churches are the main obstacle to the dominance of secular gods such as moral relativism and absolute sexual liberation.  While Christians and non-Christians are rightly disturbed by the sex scandals in the Catholic Church, they also ought to be disturbed at the motives behind some of the criticism.</p>
<p>As Brendan O’Neill, himself an atheist, writes, “Many contemporary opinion-formers are not concerned with getting to the truth [of what happened]…rather they want to milk incidents of abuse and make them into an indictment of religion itself.”  What draws militant secularists and atheists toward the Catholic-abuse story?  O’Neill says it is “their belief that religion is itself a form of abuse.”  As atheist Richard Dawkins writes, “Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.”  But, as O’Neill points out, if religious upbringing is a form of abuse, then “authorities must protect children not only from religious institutions but from their own religious parents, too.”  The dismantling of Christianity can proceed that much more smoothly if enough people can be convinced that, “It’s for the children’s sake.”</p>
<p>There is, of course, a major exemption from media condemnation of child abuse.  It appears that the abuse of children is much more acceptable to the opinion-makers when it is protected by the shield of multiculturalism.  The media has been much less willing to criticize the widespread child abuse that occurs in Islamic cultures, or to note that, in the case of Islam, the abuse is religiously sanctioned.  For example, although one can find plenty of criticism of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s political views, rarely does one see a condemnation of his views on sex.  The one-time spiritual leader of Iran not only endorsed sex with children in his writings, but he also took to himself a 13 year-old bride.</p>
<p>Here we come to the world-historical turning point of which the frenzied assaults on the Catholic Church are only a part.  The drive to undermine the Church’s moral authority, and the threat posed by Islam are linked in an ironic way.  For many centuries the Catholic faith was the main bulwark against the Islamization of Europe.  Now that Christianity is in decline in Europe, Islam is on the move again.  And with the growing presence of Islam has come an increase in child abuse—or what the West considers as child abuse.  The sexual exploitation of children is considered a far less serious offense in Islamic societies, and is often protected by the force of sharia law.  Muhammad, who consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was nine years-old, is considered by all Muslim authorities to have provided a “beautiful pattern of conduct.”  That’s why, whenever a Muslim country tries to ban child marriages (as recently happened in Yemen), you can be sure that the imams will rise up to insist on their right to marry minors.</p>
<p>And the exploitation of girls is only half the story.  There also appears to be some justification in the Koran for the culture of pederasty, which Phyllis Chesler points out is “epidemic in the Muslim world.”  A recent edition of PBS <em>Frontline</em> reported on the phenomenon of the dancing boys of Afghanistan—youngsters who are recruited, usually at age nine or ten, to provide entertainment and sex for men.  While Islam frowns on adult homosexuality, pederasty is a different matter.  Perhaps this has to do with several passages in the Koran which promise men that in addition to the dark-eyed maidens that await them in paradise, “there shall wait on them young boys of their own as fair as virgin pearls” (52: 22).  Since the boys are mentioned in conjunction with the maidens, and since they are described in the same way—“graced with eternal youth,” “fair as virgin pearls”—it seems likely that they are there for the same purpose.</p>
<p>The dancing boys haven’t yet been imported to Europe, but Europe’s waltz with the multicultural devil has already whirled it into unfamiliar territory.  A United Nations NGO study estimates that there are now 10,000 cases of female genital mutilation in Switzerland, with hundreds of thousands of cases elsewhere in Europe.  According to a National Police Chiefs report an estimated 17,000 girls and women in the UK are victims of honor crimes or forced marriages each year.  In the British Midlands girls in their early teens are routinely flown to Pakistan to marry men they have never met.</p>
<p>Europe’s Muslim girls are being mutilated and forced into marriages… therefore, according to the twisted logic of the opinion molders, it must be time to go after the Vatican for possible cover-ups of long ago.  It’s a strange juxtaposition.  Not that the abuse scandals aren’t newsworthy stories.  But there are two ways to frame them.  You can angrily focus on what wasn’t done in the past, or you can point out how much the Church has done in recent years to root out the problem.  Unlike the public schools (which have a much higher incidence of abuse) the Catholic Church has actually done something about its abuse problem.  That’s why almost all the cases highlighted by the media took place decades ago.</p>
<p>Judging by the way the story has been handled, it’s difficult to avoid the impression that the Western elites want to do as much damage as possible to the Church—which, when you think about it, betrays an almost suicidal impulse.  It really does seem that the fate of Europe is bound up with the fate of Christianity in Europe.  Europe is in trouble in large part because it has rejected its Christian heritage and embraced moral and cultural relativism, instead.  In the end, cultural relativism is a suicidal policy which is why Pope Benedict has frequently cautioned the West about the dangers inherent in a “culture of relativism.”</p>
<p>Relativism is the ultimate justification for never having to say you’re sorry.  As the climate of opinion changes in a relativist society, so will the consensus about what’s right and wrong.  And if Catholic Christianity is swept aside in Europe, the climate of opinion will increasingly be dictated by Islam.  Some may think that once Europe is free of its Catholic/Christian influence, children in lederhosen will once again romp freely through the meadows.  But don’t count on it.  Instead, look for children in hijabs being hurried into the local government approved clitorectomy clinic.</p>
<p>A lot of people find it difficult to fathom the motives of suicide bombers.  It may be time to also ponder the motives of the suicide pundits who have declared open season on the religion that built their civilization, while treating as a protected species the religion which aims to dismantle it.</p>
<p><strong>William Kilpatrick’s articles on Islam have appeared in <em>Front Page Magazine, Jihad Watch, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, World, </em>and<em> Investor’s Business Daily.</em></strong></p>
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		<title>Separating Islam From Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/separating-islam-from-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=separating-islam-from-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:09:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=58123</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another empty statement of Islamic moderation.]]></description>
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<p>Barack Obama has removed all mention of Islam from the National Security Strategy document, which during the Bush Administration said: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” Obama apparently agrees with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said Monday: “Islam and terrorism cannot be mentioned together, because they are contradictory to each other.”</p>
<p>Erdogan, incidentally, also famously said this about “moderate Islam”: “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” And that statement itself demonstrates one of the key fallacies of the Obama Administration’s stance that Islam has nothing to do with, uh, Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p>Now that the idea that Islam and terrorism have anything to do with one another has been relegated to the dustbin of history, it’s worth asking why anyone got this idea in the first place. Was it sheer bigotry? Racism? Let’s see. Could it have been from Osama bin Laden, who once praised Allah for the Qur’an’s “Verse of the Sword” (9:5), which instructs Muslims to “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them”? Or maybe it was from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who once thundered: “Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you!&#8230;There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.”</p>
<p>Maybe it was from the British Muslim Omar Brooks, who said in 2005 that it was imperative for Muslims to “instill terror into the hearts of the kuffar” and added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist.” Or maybe it was from the Qur’an itself, which tells Muslims to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (8:60). Maybe it was from the perpetrators of the 15,000-plus terror attacks committed in the name of Islam since 9/11.</p>
<p>But a recent conference of Islamic scholars in Mardin, Turkey, has given apparent intellectual heft to the Obama/Erdogan contention. Discussing a fourteenth-century fatwa by the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya, a favorite of contemporary Islamic jihadists, the scholars declared: “anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation and has misapplied the revealed texts.”</p>
<p>That sounds great. It is unequivocal. But what it is unequivocal about is the use of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa to justify killing Muslims or non-Muslims. It unequivocally declares that illegitimate. It does <em>not</em> declare illegitimate the killing of Muslims or non-Muslims itself.</p>
<p>I am not saying that these scholars did not mean to condemn the killing of Muslims and non-Muslims in the name of Islam. Maybe they did. But they did not do so by condemning the use of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa, for there are plenty of other Islamic sources that justify the killing of unbelievers.</p>
<p>The scholars issued what they called the “New Mardin Declaration,” saying: “Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa concerning Mardin can under no circumstances be appropriated and used as evidence for leveling the charge of kufr (unbelief) against fellow Muslims, waging revolt against rulers, deeming their lives and property freely accessible to Muslims, terrorizing those who enjoy safety and security, acting treacherously towards those who live (in harmony) with fellow Muslims or with whom fellow Muslims live (in harmony) via the bond of citizenship and peace.”</p>
<p>Here again, the focus is very narrow: the New Mardin Declaration seems to discuss only Ibn Taymiyya’s fatwa, not the larger question of the Islamic justification for these things outside of that fatwa. But in any case, the part of the Declaration quoted above offers no comfort to unbelievers concerned about being targeted by jihadists. It is only concerned that Muslims do not declare other Muslims to be unbelievers &#8212; which is indeed a favorite practice of Salafis in general &#8212; and that they do not revolt against rulers (which is probably a slap to Al-Qaeda for waging jihad against the House of Saud, etc.).</p>
<p>It does also rule out “acting treacherously towards those who live (in harmony) with fellow Muslims or with whom fellow Muslims live (in harmony) via the bond of citizenship and peace,” but leaves unclear what exactly might constitute this treachery. This may forbid Muslims in West to commit violent jihad attacks against non-Muslims in their adoptive countries, but it remains unclear whether Muslims in Western countries would be “acting treacherously” by working in non-violent ways to impose elements of Sharia. Would CAIR’s efforts to smear and defame anti-jihadists, and intimidate Americans into being afraid to report suspicious activity by Muslims, constitute “acting treacherously”? Would efforts to secure special privileges for Muslims in workplaces, schools, and public places like airports constitute “acting treacherously”?</p>
<p>The New Declaration said that the distinction in Islamic theology between the dar al-harb, the house of war, and the dar al-Islam, house of Islam, as outmoded, “based on ijtihad (juristic reasoning) that was necessitated by the circumstances of the Muslim world, then and the nature of the international relations prevalent at that time.” The Declaration said that in the modern age, circumstances “had changed with international treaties and nation states.”</p>
<p>That’s reasonable, but it raises another question: if circumstances change again, might all this “reform” be out the window? Is the New Mardin Declaration a matter of an evolved understanding of core principles &#8212; i.e., a genuine reform &#8212; or is it simply a temporary expedient?</p>
<p>On jihad, the New Declaration stated: “Muslim scholars, throughout the ages, have always stressed and emphasized that the jihad that is considered the pinnacle of the religion of Islam, is not of one type, but of many, and actually fighting in the Path of God is only one type. The validation, authorization, and implementation of this particular type of Jihad is sanctioned by the Shariah to only those who lead the community (actual heads of states).</p>
<p>Great. There are many types of jihad. But there is no rejection of the supremacist character of jihad &#8212; i.e., its goal to impose Sharia upon non-Muslims polities. All this is saying is that there are many ways to do that. And that “this particular type of Jihad” &#8212; i.e., not all types &#8212; is the province of the state to sanction. Thus Osama bin Laden, who couches his jihad as defensive, which he must do since he recognizes that the office of caliph, the only person authorized in Sunni Islam to declare offensive jihad, is vacant, would find nothing in the New Mardin Declaration that would stop him. Defensive jihad in traditional Islamic theology does not need the sanction of the state, but becomes the obligation of every individual Muslim as soon as an Islamic land is attacked.</p>
<p>And the New Mardin Declaration goes on to say just that:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is because such a decision of war is a political decision with major repercussions and consequences. Hence, it is not for a Muslim individual or Muslim group to announce and declare war, or engage in combative jihad, whimsically and on their own. This restriction is vital for preventing much evil from occurring, and for truly upholding Islamic religious texts relevant to this matter.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The basis of the legitimacy of jihad is that it is either to repel/resist aggression: “Fight in the Way of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah likes not the transgressors.” (Qur’an, 2:190), or to aid those who are weak and oppressed: “And why should you not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated (and oppressed)?” (Qur’an, 4:75), or in defense of the freedom of worshiping: “To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged; &#8211; and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid.” (Qur’an, 22:39). It is not legitimate to declare war because of differences in religion, or in search of spoils of war.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Osama has quoted Qur’an 22:39 in his communiques. He is waging defensive jihad, not “war because of differences in religion, or in search of spoils of war.” The problem is that with unbelief itself constituting aggression for some Islamic authorities, and given the Qur’anic command to fight unbelievers until “religion is all for Allah” (8:39), it is cold comfort to unbelievers, and no restraint for jihadists, to remind them that they should only be fighting aggression.</p>
<p>There is here no simple and straightforward declaration that Muslims should not fight non-Muslims and attempt to subjugate them under Sharia. And that is still the problem. Obama and Erdogan and the rest are demanding that Islam be separated from terrorism, and yet the conceptual apparatus establishing a peaceful Islam has never been presented. We are all supposed to take it on faith. But the stakes are too high for that.</p>
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		<title>The Wrong Way to Fight Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/the-wrong-way-to-stand-against-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-wrong-way-to-stand-against-jihad</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:04:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Vijay Kumar, a native of India, gives a stern warning to the West about failed approaches in confronting Radical Islam. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kumar.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55984" title="kumar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/kumar.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="460" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview&#8217;s guest today is Vijay Kumar, who is currently running for the U.S. Congress as a Republican candidate for Tennessee 5th Congressional District. The Primary vote comes on August 5 of this year, and the General Election is on November 4. When he ran before, in 2008, he received about 30% of the vote in Republican Primary. His website is <a href="http://kumarforcongress.com/" target="_blank">kumarforcongress.com</a>. Visit his blog at <a href="http://kumarforcongress.net/" target="_blank">kumarforcongress.net</a>.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Vijay Kumar, welcome to Frontpage Interview.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong>You are one of the rare individuals running for office in America who is actually making the issue of Islamic Jihad a significant part of your campaign. Tell us your view of Islamic Jihad and the background you have to make you see it the way you do.</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> I am a native of Hyderabad, India, which is where I first encountered the Muslim culture. We have a substantial number of Muslims there, a higher percentage than most other parts of India, and I began to observe things that troubled me. Later, I traveled a number of Islamic nations, and I lived in Iran from 1976 to 1979, during the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini. I immigrated to the United States in 1979. All my life, I have been interested in political thought. During my travels, I came to realize that Islam is unlike any of the other world religions for a variety of reasons, and they summate to the Islamic ideology behind Jihad.</p>
<p>First, Islam was conceived as a world empire to govern all mankind. It teaches that all the world, and everyone and everything in it, already belongs to Islam&#8211;some people just haven&#8217;t been made to understand that. Until they have, according to Islam, they are considered &#8220;infidels&#8221; and inferiors. Put another way, the Islamic view is that all of us in the world are subjects of the Islamic Empire, and those of us who do not acknowledge our subjugation to it must be overcome and brought to submission, through conversion or force. No other religion in the world has such a purpose of world conquest and domination.</p>
<p>Second, Islam does not allow any introspection or self-criticism. It calls for total acceptance, total submission. The very word &#8220;Islam&#8221; means &#8220;submission,&#8221; and the word &#8220;Muslim&#8221; means &#8220;one who submits.&#8221; The other side of submission, of course, is domination. Islam seeks to dominate every individual and every nation into submission. In that, it shares a key element of slavery, which the civilized world has properly decried and abolished. Such submission is a political act. I am a freeman, and I refuse to submit to Islamic hegemony.</p>
<p>Third, Islam does not have any exit policy for its believers. The act of submission required to become a Muslim is held to be final, irrevocable, and permanent. So criticizing or questioning Islam or its teachings or leaders, or attempting to leave Islam, all are considered severe crimes against Islam, punishable by death.</p>
<p>In contrast, non-Islamic religions allow for dissenting views, introspection, and reasoned debate. In non-Islamic religions, if you so choose, you can leave the faith you were born into without being threatened with physical violence or death. In Islam, both criticism of the faith and apostasy are capital offenses.</p>
<p>All of that is what drives Jihad: Jihad is a permanent war against the unbeliever and his land to bring about his submission. It has been going on for fourteen centuries all over the world, which is why I coined the term &#8220;Universal Jihad.&#8221; Islam&#8217;s Universal Jihad is the single greatest threat to Western civilization and to the entire non-Islamic world in general. It is more dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> More dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined? Please explain this perspective.</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> Nazism was in power for 15 years or so. Communism was in power for about 70 years. Today, Germany, Japan, and Russia, our former adversaries, are now our allies. Also, they are liberal democracies.</p>
<p>Nazism, Communism, and Islam are all three totalitarian ideologies. Communism and Nazism, though, lack a system of transcendental metaphysics, which Islam has. Nazism and Communism do not claim to be religions, and there is no threat of hell-fire to hold over its adherents. By contrast, Islam is a totalitarian form of governance that also claims to be a religion, and so has proved to be far more sustainable than any other form of aggressive totalitarianism.</p>
<p>The doctrine and politics of Universal Jihad have been assaulting the world for 1,400 years. It is exactly what launched the Christian Crusades, which were an attempt to save European civilization from the relentless onslaught and wholesale murder of invading Muslim forces.</p>
<p>Under Universal Jihad, non-Muslim civilizations have been annihilated. To mention just a few examples: Turkey was Christian; Iran was Zoroastrian; North Africa and the Middle East were predominantly Christian; Afghanistan and Central Asia were Buddhist; Pakistan was Hindu; Egypt was Coptic, orthodox Christian. All have fallen prey to invasion by Islam.</p>
<p>Today, Universal Jihad has been brought to the West&#8211;not just by overt violence, but through every strategy and tactic conceivable. Islam is not just the faith of another immigrant group; it is a complete political and paramilitary ideology. Political Islam is here to Islamize the Western nations, and that includes the United States.</p>
<p>So Universal Jihad is a permanent form of warfare against the infidels, their nation-states, and every non-Islamic form of government in the world. It has been Islam&#8217;s mandate for 1,400 years that other cultures must submit to it. Islam is devoted to an eternally-unchanging doctrine: it is obligated to conquer entire world.</p>
<p>No one needs to take my word for it. Syed Abul A&#8217;ala Maududi, a Pakistani, was arguably the most influential Muslim theologian and thinker of the 20th Century. He said the following point-blank:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the  earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program . . . [T]he objective of Islamic Jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Any Muslim or apologist who claims otherwise, or who insists that Islam is just &#8220;a religion of peace&#8221; is not arguing against me: they are arguing against their own most revered leaders and experts on Islam and its true purpose. They are spreading Islamic propaganda that has no other purpose than to lull the infidel into a false sense of  friendship and security.</p>
<p>Such propaganda is a primary and vitally important tool of Islam&#8217;s psychological warfare. Syed Abul A&#8217;ala Maududi also spelled out clearly how many different ways Universal Jihad is to be waged against &#8220;the infidels&#8221;:</p>
<p><em>&#8220;In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Unlike any other religion anywhere in the world, Islam&#8217;s clear, inarguable overarching purpose is Universal Jihad and global conquest, using any means. It is not waged just through terrorism and violent conflict. That is an extraordinarily naive view. Islam also uses psychological warfare, propaganda, covert operations, infiltration, and demographic saturation.</p>
<p>Universal Jihad exists and no amount liberal &#8220;political correctness&#8221; is going to wish it away. It is here on the soil of the United States right this minute. Its openly-declared goal is to destroy the United States as a system of government, to tear up our Constitution, and subject us all to Islamic totalitarianism under Sharia law.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Let me ask you this: World War I was won in four years, World War II was won in six years. But the Israel/Palestine and the India/Pakistan conflicts have not resolved after 62 years. Why do you think?<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>Kumar:</strong> It&#8217;s simple: Muslims do not want peace, they want conquest. When they enter into an alleged &#8220;peace accord,&#8221; it is only a ploy to buy time to build their position for ultimate conquest. This is by their own creed: in Islam&#8217;s system of &#8220;ethics,&#8221; it is perfectly acceptable to lie to mere infidels.</p>
<p>In the case of Israel, the West has never been 100% behind Israeli sovereignty. Both the West and Israel have always only wanted to buy truce with the Islamic nations&#8211;never peace. It is an endless case of appeasement that puts Neville Chamberlain to shame.</p>
<p>As I have said before, and as history proves conclusively and invariably, Islam does not recognize pluralism, and Islam never wants a lasting peace with any non-Islamic people or states. When Muslims are in a relatively weak position they may offer truce&#8211;a temporary agreement&#8211;but never lasting peace. Even a cursory study of the treaties made by Muhammad proves at once that every Islamic treaty is merely another tactic toward ultimate conquest and domination. He set the standard for using treaties as a path to conquest.</p>
<p>Since then, Islam has been waging a relentless war for the past 1,400 years against every non-Muslim within their reach. In the last century, technological advances have extended the reach of the Muslim world considerably. Anybody who believes that it&#8217;s suddenly going to change&#8211;for any reason, through any amount of &#8220;diplomacy&#8221;&#8211;is either grossly uninformed or delusional.</p>
<p>Islamic imperialists have no desire at all for peaceful coexistence with Israel. They want to annihilate the &#8220;Zionist Entity.&#8221; By the way, during the last 60 years, Israel has absorbed more than a million Sephardic Jews from Arab countries. The Arab nations, on the other hand, refuse to absorb two million Palestinians. It&#8217;s a sad irony that two million Palestinians are considered so important while at the same time the suffering inflicted upon 50 million Kurdish people by Muslim nations goes almost unnoticed, unremarked.</p>
<p>Muslims do not recognize the right to existence of either Israel or India. They simply consider them roadblocks to world conquest that need to be removed, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes. Universal Jihad is infinite, endless war against the infidel. It has been formally, blatantly declared. To the Muslim, Jewish Israel and Hindu India are nothing more than inferior infidel nation-states that must be torn down and brought under Islamic control.</p>
<p>Remember this: Kashmir was a Hindu land continuously for 5,000 years. That&#8217;s over twice as long as the time that has passed since the birth of Christ. Islam went there as an imperial force, subjugated the local people, and conquered them, both politically and demographically, after 5,000 years of Hindu peace and civilization. Hence, today the Kashmiri Hindus are refugees in their own land. They have been reduced to a minority.</p>
<p>It is not Kashmir alone. Now Muslims of India wants Mughalstan, the Land of Mugal empire. They want to build an Islamic state from Pakistan to Bangladesh that includes the entirety of north India.</p>
<p>Every year, we are paying Islamic tribute to Pakistan, Egypt, and Palestinians in hopes of maintaining a tenuous truce. We are not really giving them &#8220;aid.&#8221; It is nothing but Islamic tribute to keep them at bay.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s really too simple for anyone to try to complicate it: Islam wants the entire world to submit. India and Israel are simply two obstacles or roadblocks to that goal. If they can get Israel and India to disappear from the face of earth, Islamic Umma&#8211;community, or &#8220;nation&#8221; in the larger sense&#8211;would be one unified imperialism from Morocco to Indonesia. Then it would be Europe&#8217;s turn to be annihilated.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How do we best win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in your opinion?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> It can&#8217;t be overstated or said too many times that these are merely the current fronts of open conflict in Universal Jihad. In fact, it plays into the purposes of Universal Jihadists for the Western world to be fixated on isolated actions in various geographical locations, and thereby never see the bigger picture.</p>
<p>Universal Jihad is an ideology, a doctrine, that is fixed and unchanging. Waging battles of force and military action alone&#8211; especially on Islam&#8217;s home turf&#8211;and continuing to send troops out as reaction to the latest flare-ups or hot-spots in Islam&#8217;s endless war will never succeed. Never.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s also why the idea of a &#8220;War on Terror&#8221; is absurd. Terrorism is nothing more than one of the many technique and tactics used to advance Islam&#8217;s political ideology. On this subject of terrorism, groups like the Taliban are a bunch of obedient foot soldiers. They are what Karl Marx called the &#8220;lumpen-proletariat.&#8221; Allow me to direct your attention to the fact that we never see Islamic Imams&#8211;religious leaders&#8211;blowing themselves up. If martyrdom is such a high holy act, as Islam&#8217;s leaders preach, why aren&#8217;t they the ones strapping on the explosives? It&#8217;s a curious case of &#8220;do as I say, not as I do.&#8221;</p>
<p>Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan form the Axis of Universal Jihad. Unless and until we address the leaders of this Axis of Jihad, and the militaristic ideology of world domination that is their chief export, there is no possibility for peace in the future for humanity.</p>
<p>The real power behind Universal Jihad, in all of its manifestations, lies with the Pakistani ISI&#8211;the intelligence services of Pakistan&#8211;along with the Pakistani military, the Pakistani feudal elite, and the Islamic theological leaders. As a nation-state, Pakistan exists for two reasons: its pathological hatred of India and Hindus, and its parasitic dependence on American aid. Their leaders&#8217; battle cry is always &#8220;Islam in danger&#8221; when they want to stoke the fires of Jihad, and of course Muslims are commanded by the Quran to go forth immediately when called to fight by their Islamic leaders.</p>
<p>Make no mistake: you can only solve the problem of Afghanistan when you address the problem of Pakistan, because Afghanistan is a client state of Pakistan. And you can only solve the problem of Pakistan when you address the problem of Saudi Arabia, because Pakistan is a client state of Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The Pakistanis are being sponsored by the hedonistic rulers of Saudi Arabia. Saudi rulers are materialistic hedonists in their practice, but preach Wahabi Islamic fundamentalist doctrine to the world.</p>
<p>The bottom-line is this: The hedonist Saudi ruling elite form the epicenter for global terrorism, because it is they who fund all mosques and madrasas around the world&#8211;and that includes the United States.</p>
<p>They export oil and worldwide Islamic fundamentalist revolution.</p>
<p>That fundamentalist revolution is Universal Jihad, and its entire force comes solely from its ideology, an ideology that was born right in the deserts of Saudi   Arabia. Therefore, the only real war, and the war that is winnable, is against the ideology that is the doctrine of Universal Jihad.</p>
<p>All three of these nations that make up the Axis of Jihad are ready for internal revolutions. We, the West, are not taking advantage of that situation.</p>
<p>In Iran, for example, a majority of the Iranian population is under 25 years old. They were born after the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. All of those young men and women are ready to be liberated from the totalitarianism that prevails at the hands of the Ayatollahs. We must appeal to their reason and their own human desire for freedom, liberty, and the right to free will.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Saudi regime is ready to collapse because of its own corrupt system. It is beginning to come under assault from Islamic fundamentalists for its hedonistic life style. Instead of kowtowing to the Saudis, we should be shining a bright light on the rampant hypocrisy.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> What do we do then to confront Jihad effectively?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> To reach a lasting solution to Universal Jihad, and to all the violence and terror and misery it causes throughout the world, the goal of the Western world should be to demilitarize, secularize, and democratize the Axis of Jihad. Anything short of that goal is like putting a band-aid on leprosy. For starters, we should do the following things:</p>
<p>1. Stop all immigration from the Axis of Jihad nations.</p>
<p>2. Stop paying Islamic tribute&#8211;so-called &#8220;aid&#8221;&#8211;to Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinians.</p>
<p>3. Support those moderate, secular, Muslims&#8211;there are many—against theological fundamentalists.</p>
<p>4. Build a United Front of Victims of Jihad. That is where Jew and Gentile, Saxon and Slav, Hindu and Buddhist, Norwegian and Nigerian, Catholic and Protestant, Evangelical and Orthodox, have common ground. All can unite to contain the extremist ideology, because all historically have been victims of Universal Jihad.</p>
<p>The United   States and Israel have many allies and friends in this cause. All we have to do is look around.</p>
<p>Together, there are many ways we can fight the ideological war and win it with reason, and with appeal to the human quest for freedom. That is our strongest ally.</p>
<p>The first ideological hurdle to overcome is a clear recognition by our own leaders that the only real enemy is Universal Jihad and the three seats of its power: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. It is an existential crisis for all non-Muslim nations, and for all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. This transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries. Islamic imperialism draws no distinctions between &#8220;infidels.&#8221; Until we win this war, we are all targets for takeover.<br />
<strong><br />
FP: </strong>You mention immigration. Expand on your<strong> </strong>thoughts on demographics when it comes to Islam.<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>Kumar:</strong> Demographic conquest is the most permanent form of Islamic conquest. Before the expansionism of Islam, by force and infusion, Egypt, North Africa, and the southern coast of the Mediterranean were Christian. There was a Buddhist monastery in Alexandria, Egypt. Turkey was Buddhist and Christian. Persia&#8211;now Iran&#8211;was Zoroastrian. The Hindu culture covered an area of the world twice as large as it is now.</p>
<p>The fatal flaw of every one of these nations that has fallen before Islamic invasion has been to open its arms to Islam, only to be stabbed in the back.</p>
<p>Islam primarily is a political and military doctrine, dedicated to world conquest, that wears the cloak of religion. The religious cloak is the Trojan Horse it uses to infiltrate the cultures and nations and civilizations it seeks to destroy and replace with Islamic totalitarianism.</p>
<p>Liberals and progressives in those target nation-states become the water-carriers for Islam&#8217;s demographic tactics, demanding that immigrant Muslims be granted all the &#8220;rights&#8221; they need to kill off the host country and take over. The irony is that the liberals who tout the Islamic cause are the first victims when Sharia takes its grip around the throat of a nation. But this appeal to liberals for sympathy and support is a key part of Islam&#8217;s ideological war.</p>
<p>Unrestrained legal and illegal immigration is tearing apart the very fabric of Europe and the United States and Canada. To survive, the West must ban immigration from all Muslim nations where Sharia is the law of the land. The only exceptions should be apostates and refugees from Islam. We must pass laws to denaturalize and deport all those advocates of Sharia from the West. Europe is already becoming Eurabia, and in Europe multiculturalism means submitting to Islamic supremacy.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Your perspective on Islam&#8217;s dualistic ethics?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> The Quran, the Islamic holy book, has two sets of ethics. One set of ethics is for believers, the other set of ethics for the Kaffirs&#8211;their name for infidels, non-Muslims. The Quran has no good news for the infidel.</p>
<p>In Islam ethics are based upon a simple formula: &#8220;good&#8221; is whatever advances the cause of Islam, and &#8220;evil&#8221; is whatever resists the cause of Islam.</p>
<p>In Islam, all Muslims are brothers who should be kind and honest to each other. But Allah hates the infidel; Allah plots against the infidel, so Muslims should, too. Over 60% of the Quran is devoted to the Kaffir, and every mention is negative, demeaning, insulting, or hateful. It teaches war in the name of peace, hate in the name of love.</p>
<p>&#8220;Ethics&#8221; in Islam is an ideology of double standards, internally warring dichotomies, and endless contradictions. Even its own Imams war among themselves on what is correct &#8220;interpretation.&#8221; That is why it can be fought with reason and overcome.<br />
<strong><br />
FP</strong>: Let’s finish up by talking some more about what can be done. Expand on<strong> </strong>the best way that free peoples who want to remain free can defend themselves against Sharia and Islamic Jihad. What is the wrong way to do it? What are the consequences?</p>
<p><strong>Kumar:</strong> The wrong way to do it is for the liberal media and politicians to keep inhaling the opiate of Islamic propaganda about &#8220;peace, peace, peace, peace be upon you,&#8221; and blowing that toxic smoke all over the world. If we don&#8217;t shake them out of their narcoleptic slumber, their own children, or their children&#8217;s children&#8211;and ours as well&#8211;are going to be bowing in submission before the tyranny of Islamic domination and Sharia law on our own soil.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how the liberals and progressives can help: they should start an organization like the Peace Corps, called Free Americans for Islamic Rehabilitation&#8211;F.A.I.R.&#8211;that sends volunteers to all Islamic nations to demand tolerance and equal rights in those nations for all other religions, for women, for minorities, and for homosexuals. Now there would be true liberalism in action. We&#8217;ll see how far they get putting their money where their mouth is in an Islamic nation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, those of us who are already awake have got to energetically build a coalition of free nations and people around the globe, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, politics, or religion, and begin an information campaign that is more relentless and eternal than Universal Jihad. That sums up why I am running for Congress. I want to help build that coalition and help raise people&#8217;s awareness.</p>
<p>Our leaders have to come to grips with the fact that the seats of power of Universal Jihad are Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. These are the command centers. They are openly declared enemies of every principle our nation was founded upon. We must treat them as such, or Universal Jihad will continue unabated around the world, flaring up endlessly as we pour more money and innocent blood down the drain.</p>
<p>We can win this war, and we can win it decisively, but we have got to recognize and name the true enemies of mankind and freedom, and take effective action in combating the ideology that drives them. Right now, our own State Department and government agencies are spending enormous amounts of dollars and energy defending the very ideology that wants to wipe them and our whole form of government from the face of the earth!</p>
<p>This is why I say repeatedly, as a central part of my campaign, and why I fully believe that war against Universal Jihadists can be won globally in less than five years, that it can be won for less than one billion dollars, and that can be won without any more loss of American or Western lives.<em><br />
</em></p>
<p>There are two great forces at work in this war. One is the totalitarian ideology of Islamic theocracy, which permits of no separation of church and state, no true freedom of thought, freedom of speech, or equal rights under the law. The other is our own  Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, which proclaim and guarantee human freedom, sovereignty, dignity, and basic inalienable human rights.</p>
<p>These two ideologies are diametrically and irrevocably and irreconcilably opposed. It is a war of ideas. It is a war of philosophies. They are mutually exclusive. One of them is going to win over the other.</p>
<p>Which will it be?</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Vijay Kumar, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
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		<title>Exalting Khomeini’s Legacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exalting-khomeini%25e2%2580%2599s-legacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/lisa-daftari/exalting-khomeini%e2%80%99s-legacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:03:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lisa Daftari]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Iran’s leaders try to reignite the cultish reverence for a bloody despot.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini.jpeg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49730" title="ahmadinejad_khomeini" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ahmadinejad_khomeini-300x238.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="238" /></a></p>
<p>Most Iranians can remember the exact moments in their lives when they discovered that the Ayatollah Khomeini had died. For many Iranians, this was a joyous occasion and the cause of days of partying, drinking champagne and fanciful thinking about the fate of their country.  Schools were closed for forty days, and Iranians abroad remained attached to their television sets wondering if they would touch the soil of their homeland once again. Khomeini’s name was synonymous with the Revolution, the precarious social ambiance and the severe impact that Islamic ideology had on the country.  The root of that influence was now gone.</p>
<p>Khomeini, best known to the rest of the world as the founder of modern Islam, the supporter of the Hostage Crisis and the man who issued a fatwa (death decree) on the head of author Salman Rushdie, represented for the Iranian people a central chapter of their modern history that is both complicated and tragic. In the roughly ten years that he reigned, over 100,000 Iranians were executed. The Iran-Iraq war futilely dragged on for almost a decade, and persecuted Iranians across a multicolored Iranian population wondered what the Revolution had achieved.</p>
<p>Looking back at that time makes it difficult to understand how Islamic Republic leaders are now bringing back a cultish reverence for the Khomeini era. Since the post-election protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and likewise, reformist Presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have made serious efforts to revive a faux nostalgia for the late Ayatollah among the opposition.</p>
<p>On the part of the current regime, uniting their modus operandi with that of Khomeini’s gives them a legitimate claim to the Islamic Republic.  Recalling that period reminds Iranians of a time when they were curious to see what the Ayatollah Khomeini could offer them.</p>
<p>For the reformists, who are proposing ‘change,’ they are motivated to do so within the confines of the regime, making respect and support for the Khomeini camp a prerequisite to remain part of and function within the Islamic Republic. As a matter of fact, Mousavi and Karoubi have been quick to use Khomeini’s legacy to strengthen their constituency, alleging that the Ayatollah was a more righteous leader, and that Khamenei’s government has severely deviated from the principles initially set forth.</p>
<p>Besides bearing such resemblances in surnames, Khomeini and Khamenei share similarities beyond the superficial. Both support mass executions, terrorism, and a fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Khomeini was famous for the words, “We do not worship Iran.  We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” To spread Islam and its influence was his agenda, not much different from the current regime. So inherent is Khomeini’s role in the Islamic Republic landscape that to eradicate his influence from the movement is to study the establishment of the American government system without George Washington, or better yet, to assess Nazism absent Adolph Hitler.</p>
<p>The cleansing of Khomeini’s image became en vogue under former President Mohammad Khatami, who sought to salvage the late Ayatollah’s bloody reputation and in effect absolve the regime, beginning at its very roots. It is said that Khatami began his campaign to change the then dull and disillusioned mood during his presidency and to purify Iran’s modern history.  It also might have to do with the fact that Khatami and Khomeini were related. Khatami’s brother, Mohammad Reza, is married to Khomeini’s granddaughter, Zahra Eshraghi.</p>
<p>Incidentally, the intricate web of marriages within the handful of regime dynasties does not stop at the Khatami and Khomeini families. Most staggeringly, the fathers of Mousavi and Khamenei are brothers, making them first cousins. The unions demonstrate how far the inner circle of the regime will go to preserve their stronghold.</p>
<p>Under every IRI leader since Khatami, there has been a push to glorify the name and legacy of Khomeini, a move the leaders believe will sustain the Islamic Republic. For the current government it relies on erasing a very recent history, and for the reformists, it means tying themselves to a retrospectively more ‘benevolent’ supreme leader, in order to say that not everything about the Islamic Republic is corrupt; it had its glory days too.</p>
<p>Making such a claim relies entirely on pandering to a population of Iranians under the age of 30, who do not clearly remember Khomeini’s track record. Or maybe they do remember it and choose not to. It is clearly more pleasant to remember a peaceful history rather than one dotted with executions, stonings and lack of human rights. The leaders may take advantage of the people’s yearning for a united Iran, albeit one that chooses to forget its own history and thus remains under the grips of an Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>When Khomeini’s picture was rampantly burned in the streets of Iran in early December during National Students’ Day, many believed that was, at the very least, a clear and overt indication that the unrest was certainly not just over a fraudulent election. More profoundly taken, burning the picture of the founder of the Islamic Republic represented a denunciation of a theocratic regime and a manifestation of a movement pro-secular.</p>
<p>Yet when the government announced that those in violation are deemed “moharreb,” or Enemies (of God), and subsequently blamed Mousavi and Karoubi for instigating the event, the reformist leaders then in turn blamed the government for staging the incident it in order to discredit the opposition as irreverent and sacrilegious. Subsequently, the Green party urged the opposition to carry pictures of Khomeini to demonstrations in reverence and to never burn or disrespect the late Ayatollah again. In the end, Khomeini actually emerged more popular and even more of a central player in the backdrop of the movement.</p>
<p>It is still not clear who was behind the original burning of the pictures, but the more poignant revelation was how radical the Iranian momentum has become. So incendiary was this incident that it triggered a fad across several continents of posting videos of burning Khomeini’s picture. There are dozens of such groups on Facebook and Youtube created for the cause. Groups such as “I burned Khomeini’s picture” on Facebook has almost 2,000 members. There is even a video capturing a “Burning Khomeini’s picture party” that takes place in Europe, that shows a large group of expatriate Iranians burning the Ayatollah’s picture.</p>
<p>These cyber campaigns, seeking to eradicate Khomeini’s legacy, were created in reaction to the regime’s campaign to exalt it. Freedom-seeking Iranians are warning their countrymen of what can happen if Iranians fail to recall history and fall into the trap of the regime once again.</p>
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