Iran, Islam, and Israel

The latest twit of the Ayatollah on the destruction and extinction of Israel within 25 years must serve as notice that no nation should have anything to do with Iran. There are many objections, in theory and practice against a state of theocracy: for example, the inability to deal with the politics and the practicalities of the modern world. Nor is theocracy possible in the modern era where human rights are obligatory. Dictatorship of the ordained has been a regular feature of history. But modern day life has made such dictatorships more and more difficult. The human spirit refuses to be confined within the space a dictatorship allows. Hitler is the most recent example of a dictatorship, although many argue that he got to power democratically. But his argument of the superiority of the Aryan race is in no way dissimilar to the Ayatollah’s. What is the sin of the Jews in the eyes of the Ayatollah?

In Hitler’s world the Iranians or Persians or whatever guise they may now dress themselves, would eventually end up in the gas chambers… those who did not would end up as second class citizens in Hitler’s scheme of races. The Nazis also killed 1 million Gypsies, another million Armenians, etc; it is indeed ironic that today it is the descendants of Hitler who are lending a hand to the Syrian refugees, while the President of Syria is an ally of Iran. Other rich Arab countries have shamelessly stood by doing nothing.

The lessons of history are clear. Up until very recently all wars were religious although their aims were political. Millions of people have been slaughtered in the course of history, in the cause of religion -The Aztecs, The Mayans, Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Christians, Moslems, etc. the artifacts that today dot many parts of the world are monuments built in memory or honor of one religious God or icon or God, Allah. One king chopped the head of six Queens and broke away from the Catholic Church all in the name of the religion. The most peaceable peoples of the world kept a pantheon of gods whom they strictly kept away from normal political rivalry. It is true that the so called normal political rivalries sometimes led to wars but never on the scale which the religious wars entailed. The Holy Bible is full of stories which actually led to religious wars – the failure of the people who called themselves God’s Chosen to obey the Laws of their God. This led them to Egypt, Babylon, and all those places today occupied by Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, etc

By the 16th century some sort of calm came over the world in terms of fighting for religious purposes. The crusades were over; the Arabs revenge for the crusades could be said to be over. A new, perhaps worse, mercantilism gripped the world. The West, who had superior transport systems, had improved the war material learnt from China – gun powder and how to use them – and exhausted themselves after centuries of fighting each other, decided, like the hunter, that there was better game reserves overseas. They came together as one and set out to conquer the world. The Industrial Revolution was at hand; this was a hungry beast that could consume all one had in order to produce something one needed.

The King had his knights, his bishops, his abbots or if truth be told, knights, bishops, abbots, etc… were small armies under the king. It is equally true that most men in Europe were farmers but they were called upon so frequently to fight since 1066 that by the 16th century most men were soldiers who occasionally farmed. Much booty or loot was available to soldiers, as were women, wine and other pleasures which the life of a farmer lacked. Throughout the 16th – 18th century, I have not read one account of rape and I am sure it was not that people were not raped. Soldiers and officers were billeted in people’s houses, they went to war. I think we know enough about soldiers to stick our noses up when a soldier speaks of being “an officer and a gentleman”. That they indeed have to preach that code is eloquent testimony that it is one of their hardest tasks. Or that priests who come over to other people’s countries with or without their wives would be expected to be anything else than buggerers escapes my understanding. Those of them who are normal and ended up in Polynesia or in areas where sex was regarded as natural nearly all went ‘native’. In China and Japan the depth of racism could be found in the anger of the Chinese and Japanese that white men took their women so easily. Today, there is a valuable export of Nigerian women to Italy and other parts of Europe. The trade should be organized, legalized just as Napoleon legalized prostitution in France; registering them and making sure they paid their taxes. The mind boggles as how to calculate, verify and quantify such a tax.

European colonization was an economic enterprise, not a religious one, regardless of the Bibles and …….. But colonization had within it its own demise or denouncement. The colonialist brought education with all its implications – one of which was that, self determination was a non negotiable concept of freedom and democracy. But these are all secular goals. The problem of Islam is that it has not or cannot drag itself from its moorings in 7^th century Arabia and environs.

Christianity has now become synonymous with the West. There is a sense in which this is acceptable – human behaviours, freedoms, democracy, choice, equality, etc. It is, of course, true that one may view the West also as Godless, almost satanic – but this does not produce a jihad or a crusade. That Western governments often undertake ungodly acts is also accepted – e.g. the barefaced unapologetic exploitation of the blacks during the slave trade, the refusal to pay reparations for that trade which in many senses was worse than the holocaust, the continual exploitation of primary resources in the third world for the benefit of the West; the inability of the third world to meet development demands simply because the West will not allow it.

Islam, on the other hand, sells itself short by the insistence that its religion is not a smorgasbord in which they can pick and choose, that it is a way of life, that the Koran was the word of (God) Allah given directly to the prophet Mohammed and that it is not subject to reform. Yet, the very many splits within the Islamic faith must be the evidence of the fragility of its claims that it is a way of life, unchangeable and ordered by God, through his Prophet Mohammed. The way the princes of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, the Sultanates of Brunei etc acts was certainly not the way prescribed by the Prophets in the Koran. Nor does the Koran prescribe the perpetual enslavement of a people to royal families in perpetuity. Many modern refinements include the possession of atomic weapons which obviously does not exist in the Koran, although the Koran enjoins leaders to protect their people.

There are many passages in the bible as in the Koran which talk about annihilating the enemy. But this enemy is because he is an anti-God, not because some caliph or priest or the other proclaims him as such. Being against the teachings of Islam cannot in itself, in the modern world, be a reason for annihilation. Ultimately God fights His own battles in ways unknown to man. The precepts to go and convert are precisely the same in Christianity and Islam. Whereas Christianity has leant the ultimate lesson to give under Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God which is God’s, it will seem that Islam is still to understand that dichotomy which is the basis of secular and religious realms in society. Islam pretends that no such distinction exists between the secular and the political; but this is no more than a pretense. There are many states, not necessarily Islamic, which regard the United States as the Great Satan; but such an interpretation is just that – an interpretation. The Koran does not talk of the United States as the Great Satan; Other aspects of modern life which Islam has adapted to include diplomacy, passports and immigration, railways, airlines and other means of transportation, a mega change in clothing, eating, housing; I could go on and it would be tedious.

The orthodox Muslim would counter that all the above are peripherals: that the core of the religion enjoins proselytization, the killing of one’s enemies, plus the other five fundamental pillars of Islam. If there is such agreement, why are Muslims killing so many of their own faith? Are we witnessing a purge- getting rid of the unwholesome Muslims so as to leave the true Muslims whose duty would be the establishment of world Islam? I have heard, otherwise sane people, proclaim this – the insignificance of human life and human rights. But when these are denied Muslims/ Moslems, a mighty furor, is raised against such deprivation.

The Geneva Convention (I assume the Ayatollah is opposed to this) prescribes, inter alia, the sanctity of human beings and the rights adhering to a person; it moves on to declare that genocide is a crime against humanity and calls upon all nations to uphold the principle. It was this principle that led to the 2^nd World War and the condemnation of Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. The Iranians and the Ayatollah are bemused by the horror tales of the holocaust which they deny ever happened. If a man refuses to see his own reflection in the mirror such a person is dysfunctional, deluded and incompetent. The previous Ayatollah was saved from imprisonment and even death by fleeing to France – a country whose code of existence is equality, freedom and brotherhood. It was from there he came back to impose a peculiar form of government – a quasi democratic theocracy. The Iranians have, theoretically, a right to nuclear power, peaceful or otherwise. What they do not have is a right to acquire nuclear weapons solely for the purpose of exterminating Israel. They may rightly argue that no nation has the right to nuclear power and if one has, so others have a right to seek them. But this is a cyclical argument at the moment because all nations eventually must agree that the possession of such a terrible weapon is a danger to the whole world.

The Iranians must find other animals to hunt in the forest. This singular aim to hurt Israel cannot be sustained and the end will lead to Iranian perdition.

 

Patrick Dele Cole