Fanatical Armageddon Abracadabra

Ahmadinejad's devious bluster-blasted diplomacy, as the two earlier articles noted, has antagonized the US, the EU, the UN, and increasingly, it seems, even China and Russia ---- otherwise busy trying to court Iranian ties for years now and equally interested in stymieing American power and influence globally. One and all, they're losing patience with his fist-shaking defiance, lies, and prevarications, however popular such contempt and pugnacity toward the infidel powers might play out in the Islamic world itself.

Even so, the most interesting and dangerous of Ahmadinejad's power and popularity isn't his crafty nose-thumbing diplomacy, rather his fruitcake Islamic views . . . which, pared of certain Shiite-specific overtones, are widely shared in the Muslim world these days, and probably since Islam's inception. Specifically, according to this Apocalypse Now visionary rigmarole, the End-of-the-World-as-We-Know-It Showdown with the infidels is supposed to materialize any day now thanks to Ahmadinejad's own personal master, the Hidden Imam Mahdi . . . a Messianic figure for all Muslims, whose reappearance for Shiites --- and first-time earthly pop-up for Sunnis --- will set off a period of vast chaos, violence, and wars world-wide, out of which, at the end, Muslims everywhere will emerge gloriously triumphant and the infidels destroyed. Meaning? Quite simply, as every legal and theological variety of Islam agrees, all infidels at the end of this Cosmic Gunfight-at-the-OK-Corral will have been either killed off, forced to convert to Islam, or forced to acquiesce in their Allah-ordained status as inferior dhimmis lorded over by Muslim rulers and each and every Muslim subject: special taxes paid to the rulers, special garb so that Muslims will avoid too much contact with these impure kafirs, and special obligations to pay humble deference to any Muslim they encounter.

Are Muslims bothered by this apocalyptic scenario of mass destruction and deaths to guarantee Islam's triumph on earth? If so, they're not only not vocal, but any opposition by them would be at cross odds with Koranic teachings. All Islamic varieties and legal traditions assume that it is in the interest of humankind that they all either convert to the true religion, remain in subject and repressive dhimmi state until they do, or are killed off if they refuse either of the previous options. (More accurately, Islam contends that all babies are born Muslim, but are foolishly led astray by their parents and become Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and the like. So, rather than an adult converting for the first time to Islam, what is really at stake is that you are returning to the Allah-ordained state in which you and all humans were born.)

At most, Ahmadinejad and the Hojjatieh Shiite sect in Iran differ on whether human beings can accelerate the Mahdi-Messiah's appearance and the apocalyptic struggle between good and bad --- Islam and infidels. Ahmadinejad, who sees himself as the chosen personal vassal of the Mahdi, clearly believes it's his duty as Iran's president to hasten his personal Master's pop-up from Peek-a-Boo Hidden Status to his long-awaited visible, action-oriented status.

Even Islamic Sufis --- whose outlook derives from more mystic sources, including Jewish, and who claim to have a pacifist outlook --- believe that the use of violence to tame human sin is not "violence" as ordinarily understood. Click here for the views of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who advocates the use of "violence" to force mankind to become good Muslims --- the only way to ensure that the evil side of human beings is properly tamed.

Not to worry though, infidels! The use of violence to this end, you see, isn't "violence as ordinarily understood." . . . exactly the sentiments of totalitarian mass-murderers on a vast scale like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and a dozen other Communist megalomaniacs in power. Come to that, Nasr himself --- described by by Robert Pape, a specialist on and apologist for Islamist terrorism as a "widely respected scholar"--- himself adheres to a clear totalitarian view of society: everything in public and private life, no exceptions (politics, economics, science, art, literature, family life, sexuality, and so on) --- should be under Islamic law and norms, enforced by the right authorities.

Are Nasr's views exceptional in Sufism? Hardly. Contrary to their claims, their own traditions stretching back to medieval times --- including their most widely revered pioneer thinker, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a 11h century scholar --- unambiguously endorse the spread of Islam by Holy War and other forms of jihadi-inspired violence.

Then There's Ahmadinejad's Allah-Ordained Personal Mission To Hasten the Inevitable Armageddon-Showdown with the Infidels

Ahmadinejad, note quickly, claims to have a long-standing intimate relationship with the Peek-a-Boo Mahdi: he sees himself as His Chosen Personal Vassal.

The Mahdi, in this screwball hooey, has been hiding out furtively the last 1000 years at the bottom of a dank deep well on the grounds of a mosque in Qum, more or less in the suburbs of Teheran, waiting for the ripe moment to reappear. Ahmadinejad's election last year as Iran's president has, in his modest megalomaniac view, made that moment imminent . . . a cosmic event just around the corner. Seems nutty? Sure; and it gets hokier. As the Holy-Spook's heaven-ordained chief butler, Ahmadinejad has boasted of holding regular telepathic chitchats with the Hide-and-Seek Specter, and not just in regular visits to the drip-drip-drip well where the Mahdi is playing coy, but by long distance from within the shadowy innards of his presidential palace . . . no doubt thanks to Verizon's contracted Celestial-Service.

These babbling bughouse idiocies run on. Ahmadinejad, believe it or not, has used his public life to make them come real.

No sooner was he installed in his presidential office last year than he ordered all government agencies to focus primarily on hastening the Specter-Spook's return and His and Islam's Armageddon Showdown with the infidels. Earlier, as mayor of Teheran, he spent lavish sums on widening the boulevards in central Teheran the better to facilitate the street mobs' rapturous greetings when the Mahdi strolls up and down them, with his teeny-tiny vassal at his side.

Seems Madhouse Claptrap, Wouldn't You Say? . . . .

. . . all this fanatically Dark-Age mumbo-jumbo spouted out and acted on in the 21st century? To us, sure --- and probably to any non-believer not holding down a bed in a padded-cell at a psycho-ward for the criminally insane; but not to true-believing Muslims, whether Sunni or Shiite.

In most civilized countries, let's face it, a man trying to arm himself with powerful weapons who has frequent sotto-voce chats with ghostly presences while threatening to extinguish his neighbors with big guns would be regarded as a paranoid schizophrenic and locked up in a maximum security loony bin for the community's good. Not so in Iran or elsewhere in Islam. The people there must be very tolerant of walking paranoid weirdoes armed to the teeth . . . provided, of course, those weirdoes hold power in Iran's clerical-fascist regime and excite the shamed, humiliated masses of Muslims with the prospects of a nuclear-armed Armageddon.

Nor is that all. Ahmadinejad's fanatical Armageddon-Hokum includes eternal joy on earth for all true-believing Muslims, provided they've been purified of their sins. According to his hoked-up revelatory hocus-pocus, not only will the infidels be all destroyed in the Cosmic Showdown Apocalypse or forced to convert or be subjugated to dhimmi-status, but --- glory of glories --- sinful Muslims will be generously purified and forgiven and pure jihadi-striving Muslims like the great Personal Vassal of the Mahdi himself will be given instant saintly status, after which the entire Islamic world will live happily on mundane earth itself. Until that even more joyous day, you understand, when each and every pious Muslim is lifted by angels right up to Paradise and to carnal delights without measure for all of eternity.

This series on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, please note, is now in its 6th article-installment. Observe quickly though: even as it has been pushing forward, a . . .

3. A Second-Fiddle Mini-Series Has Also Been Unfolding of Late

Specifically, Starting with the 4th Article, the Reasons for Ahmadinejad's Mythic Sky-High Popularity All over Global Islam

His ecstatic acclaim buzzes and clatters everywhere in global Islam these days . . . even among the volatile massed morons of the Arab street in Sunni countries and their equally ignoramus carbon-copies elsewhere in Islam. It's a whirring, exuberantly overwrought sentiment, you can be sure, that's not shared by the Sunni rulers themselves or by the few western-oriented intellectuals still left in those countries who haven't been intimidated, jailed, tortured, or killed off by either the secret police from one side or radical Islamist terrorists from the other.

As for the swarming lunatic mobs, most of their barnstorming berserker members must have a lot of time on their hands.

Over and again, with manic fired-up fervor, they spend lots of their days doing nothing other than blowing their gaskets and running amuck over any touchy pretext . . . however lunatic or preposterous the alleged injury might be. The precipitating pretense might, you understand, be nothing more than a handful of cartoons, published in one of the tiniest countries in the EU; or a rumor that someone had put a copy of the Koran in a toilet; or a novel by a British writer of Indian origins; or a degenerate Miss World contest in their country or maybe just a Muslim woman winning it; or because Buddhists are in charge of Thailand, and Muslims hate being ruled by these infidels and lots of them like to kill the unbelievers; or because a former Muslim has converted to Christianity and should be killed; or because 5 vicious guys in Pakistan (as recently happened) stoned to death an alleged adulteress woman and have been condemned by some misguided state judge for not having been authorized by the right Islamic judge; or because Muslim moderates in Bangladesh tried to practice parliamentary democracy and human rights challenge Muslim traditions; or because of Jew-this, Jew-that. In short, they're likely to blow their stacks over almost any provocation, however trivial or idiotic, and immediately go ape in frenzies of fury that convincingly imitate Attila-the-Hun's barbarous hordes as they storm this way or that in a blinding rush, while screaming hysterically, burning flags, torching thousands of cars nightly, burning churches, charging embassies, or engaging in murderous pogroms against infidels.

If the Pope cites a 14th century Byzantine Emperor's views of Islam --- a paragraph in a speech several pages long --- the level of beserking hatred and violence will soar even higher: a nun-nurse will be killed, churches will be torched, priests will be shot with "God Is Great" chanted by the murderers as happened recently in Turkey, fatwas will be issued calling for the Pope's murder, and the Saudi kleptocrats will invariably increase their funding of venomous women-hating, homosexual-hating, Jew-hating, and human right-hating mosques and cultural centers in the US or Europe --- or of propaganda instruments like CAIR in the US to combat "misunderstandings" that Islam means peace and tolerance. Funny, no? I mean, the Muslim mobs freak out by the tens of millions on such pretexts, but you never see millions marching anywhere to protest suicide terrorist attacks by the thousands, the terrorists, we're told, not at all representative of Islamic dogmas and duties . . . at any rate, as long as the terrorist targets are infidels.

In case anybody is still in the dark just how rife the rippling sense of shame, humiliation, and resentments happen to be in Islam these days --- along with raw crackling urges for lashing out and killing turnip-ghost enemies --- what more evidence could you offer than these bursting explosions of rampaging rage and violence? And note the murderous irony here. Among other things, the 14th century Byzantine Emperor accused Islam of being violent, and suddenly --- all over the world --- tens of millions of Muslims and their clerics start doing their by now well rehearsed Attila-the-Hun routine. And, into the bargain, we get solemn statements from Muslim statesmen such as this Daffy-Duck form of logic voiced by a Pakistani spokeswoman: "Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence."

What next? Millions of Islamic protestors running around with placards demanding that anyone who criticizes Islam as violent should be beheaded?

Oh Oh, correction. Prof bug has just goofed.

(i.) The mentality of the average Progressive Liberal these days in the West, you need to grasp, can't tolerate such hard truths. No such evidence will ever be convincing to them . . . yes, never-ever. If multitudes of Muslims blow up and flare all the time, you have to understand, it must be because "we" have done something to vex them, and so not only is their fury based on justified grievances, but it is our overriding duty to talk, talk, and talk to them --- and go on talking --- until, with enough concessions on our part, we have assured them that we understand, we repent, we will be kinder and far more generous in the future, and most of all guys, cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die (ha ha), we will continue to appease their legitimate rage whenever it boils over the next time.

In short, if others attack, kill, or torture Americans and our allies, it's our fault, we haven't been sufficiently bunny-huggy sensitive to their legitimate grievances, we're imperialist and vicious anyway, and since war never settles anything, our duty is to listen, talk, talk more, talk until it hurts, and of course make concessions by the boxcar load until our enemies' begin to see us in a different light and we all make kissy-kissy in the end.

If, by contrast, a war erupts, it's either based on ethnocentric misunderstanding (almost always ours), or on our bellicosity --- the US, the creator of the League of Nations, the United Nations, NATO, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the world's foremost exporter of democracy, a bad bad militarist power at bottom --- or on our failure to follow this sure-fire recipe for conflict-resolution.

(ii.) So if an ex-president of clerical-fascist Iran --- in power when hundreds of Iranian students were killed protesting for human rights in the late 1990s, women further suppressed at the same time, and terrorist movements further armed under his watch: oh, not to forget generous funding for illegal nuclear enrichment --- is invited to speak on Human Rights at Harvard, the progressive left will listen respectfully, nod their heads in agreement, and come away thinking what a decent, basically good-hearted guy he is . . . just as Chamberlain and the appeasers thought was the case with Hitler in the late 1930s. After all, what could be better than open dialogue and frank willingness to listen and meet the others' grievances that, as it happens, seem to be totally limitless . . . based not on what we do, but what we are.

As for the ex-Iranian president Khatami's speech at Harvard, apparently the only time the respectful auditors shook their heads was when he got on the subject of homosexuals and Islam. Otherwise, what a wonderful dialogue across civilizations with the former head of the number one terrorist-supporting state in the world! . . . soon, of course, to have nuclear bombs, and headed by Khatami's successor who happens to be a screw-loose Islamic fanatic with an apocalyptic view of the world. (iii.) For a detailed list of berserker Muslim mob violence that has entailed the murder of non-Muslims --- nearly 6000 such violent acts since 9/11 --- click here. As the site's summary table shows, there have been almost 5800 violent-mob or terrorist attacks on non-Muslims world-wide since those September 2001 massacres . . . or about 3 murderous attacks per day on an average. Observe that these are attacks, not fatalities. The fatalities number far higher, and the critically injured higher still.

And It Can Get Crazier

To add a few more nifty Attila touches, these barbaric lunacies on a vast scale will often be accompanied by blasts of skyward gunfire and firebombs thrown with semi-professional skill at preferred targets.

Mind you, this is hardly a complete list of crazed mob violence that rages on and off in Islam these days. That list runs on and on. And so, to save time, assume in shorthand terms that on practically any idiotic pretence whatever --- usually one, to go by experience, that crackles with bughouse paranoia and conspiratorial idiocies --- Islamic mobs are likely to flare up and start running amuck in screw-loose ways almost anywhere in the world, and often by the tens of millions.

Loss of Contact with Solid Reality

Note that the alleged incitements to these barbarous rampages are very likely to be just that: alleged --- which is to say not just trivial and wildly exaggerated, but having nothing to do with the reality of any event whatsoever.

And that's the key here: a total flight of most Muslims into a fantasized nightmare-world full of rippling shame, raw humiliation, imagined persecution, voice-in-the-night oppression, and the resulting rage-charged urges to strike out and kill their boogeyman tormentors and fiendish enemies. As a westernized Pakistani scholar who's connected vaguely with Cambridge University has put the psychic delirium in these terms:

"The Muslim Delusion"

"In the 21st century, when the world is moving fast and some nations have already reached the stars, Muslims remain far from the horizons. Decadence, illiteracy and orthodoxy are the pronounced facets of the current Muslim culture. Deluded by their fantasies they are entrenched in illusions, vanities and misconceptions. Illiteracy, sectarian strife, and misconceived perceptions have further added to their despair.

The delusion that besets the Muslim mind represents a deep psychological betrayal that leaves severe scars on the body politic of the Muslim Ummah. It is a period of anguish, despair and delusion, which many Muslims fail to recognize. They brush aside the realities by declaring that they are the darlings of God and everything will be resolved in their favour.

The issues are varied and the situations are challenging. Muslims are entrapped in the cobweb of their fantasies and imaginations. It is from this premise that we have to take a start and pursue our quest for truth and insight. We have to see where we are wrong and how we are being undermined by a growing wave of fanaticism and distorted perceptions." ---Iqbal Syed Hussain, The [Pakistani ]Nation, August 2006.

Our Major Task in This Article?

Easy enough to clarify: to be resolutely analytical and supply hard evidence for our claims --- such as the one just made about most Muslims adhering to the delusive screw-loose worldview.

Most of the hard evidence will come later in Part Three. For the time being, simply note that a recent Pew Research Center opinion poll found that 84% of the Muslims in the world's four largest Muslim countries --- Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey: which, taken together, have 45% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslim population --- denied that Arabs were even involved in the 9/11 terrorist massacres on US soil. This denial, you understand, is asserted a good four years after bin Laden boasted about launching the terrorist attacks of 9/11. No matter. The video was obviously a Jewish-CIA-Jack Bauer hoax. Muslims don't want to believe that fellow Muslims, members of the religion of peace, would slaughter thousands of innocents this way. Ergo, Muslims never did it.

By similar Daffy-Duck logic, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards --- their elite military units --- recently informed the world that 9/11's real perps were the Bush administration and Israel's Intelligence Agency. Their motives? It's obvious:

"The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East", Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday. His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8511

Not to worry, though, true-believers or so the general went on. Mecca and Medina may be at the geographical heart of global Islam, but the political heart, he now reassured Muslims world-wide, is in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] is the flag-bearer of the front of Islamic awakening and the fronts of the awakening of third world nations", he said.

Making sure that Muslims and infidels alike understood just what a mighty Scimitar-Swinging Islamic country Iran now is in the Ahmadinejad era, Ahmadinejad himself warned recently that if any infidel country wants good relations with his super-power,

". . . you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender. " --- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking on Iranian TV August 15 2006

Back To Our Analytical Tasks Today

As you work your way through this mini-series on Ahmadinejad's rocketing mythic acclaim in global Islam, try to keep in mind these above-mentioned operative terms of a psychological sort, all of a strikingly abnormal nature: bursting fantasies, roiling paranoia, eruptive hysteria, a lack of bracing contact with reality, and --- come to that, as you'll see --- a variety of other emotionally inflamed psychopathologies that infest the demented and delusive worldview that's rife all over Islam these days.

Chief among those other pathologies of a snapping screwball sort is the recourse by most Muslims to rabid conspiratorial scapegoating of an extravagantly homicidal sort, especially when it comes to making sense of Islamic weakness, backward conditions, and failures galore in grappling effectively with the forces of modernity and globalization . . . centuries old by now.

Cracking with vicious paranoid projections as it does, this conspiratorial blame-shifting entails the massively shared conviction that Islam's countless failures and troubles are not homegrown at all. Nope, they've nothing to with Islam whatsoever; they're not in the least related to Islam's systematic rigidity and scorn for secular learning, its lack of a critical attitude toward their religion, and the absence of an inculcated sense of personal responsibility and full free will for your individual destiny. No way! Impossible and inconceivable! It's all the fault of Islam's turnip-ghost tormentors! The denial and scapegoating paranoia deepens. These brutal bogeymen fiends, it turns out, are remarkably powerful, furtive, and monstrous masterminds whose insidious work always unfolds behind and underneath the visible world in ink-shadowed secrecy, and invariably with one obsessive aim in mind: to dominate all of mankind --- and especially Allah's favorites --- for their own diabolic purposes.

Five will get you ten that you can easily guess who these marionette masters of demonic global dominance happen to be. If it helps, Muslim readers can think of the descendants of Apes and Pigs.

4. Ahmadinejad's Mythic Half-Messianic Celebrity Explained

As the last two articles in this series on Ahmadinejad's Hall-of-Muslim-Fame status showed, his surging popularity among Islam's masses is hardly surprising, and neither are the reasons for it.

Instead, the Surprise Would be the Opposite

Yes, the polar opposite. After all, his loony religious rigmarole, his constant bad-mouthed brush-offs of the infidel powers as well as the UN, and his constant Jew-hating rants and threats to extinguish Israel ---not to forget Iran's nuclear programs and its ardent support for Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists alike, which make the threats more credible --- all resonate boisterously at a psychic level with a rife, markedly delusional worldview found everywhere in Islam these days. This point is pivotal. Pause a moment and ponder it.

A Concrete Rephrase

To help you master what this point entails, we'll put it in more concrete terms. In plain language, Ahmadinejad's raucously manic acclaim in Islam at the street-level and in numerous clerical circles shows him to be only latest, most up-to-date model in a long line of Heroic He-Man Militarists in Islamic history. With both crowd-pleasing piety and swagger, each of these Sword-Wielding Strongmen promised that he would smite and slay Islam's infidel enemies at a blow, and in the same blow, reassert its Allah-ordained destiny to rule everywhere on earth one day, no exceptions. If there's any difference with Ahmadinejad's current mythic status, it's in his orthodox Shiite stress on the Hidden Imam's masterminding soon, any day now, the destruction of the infidel demons.

A Sidebar Clarification: All Muslims share a belief in a future Messianic Mahdi's immanence. Similarly, all believe he's the triggerman who will set off the Apocalyptic Death-to-the-End Showdown with the non-Muslim world, itself considered a transition not just to a definitive global triumph for Islam, but also a New Age of ever-after happiness for purified Muslims on earth itself. Hitherto, the Sunni Swinging-Scimitar Saviors in Islamic history have not trumpeted this Mahdi mumbo-jumbo. Shiite Saviors have and do now, not least because they believe the Mahdi has already come once in human history, except that he decided for some unclear reason to hide out in a deep dank well at a mosque near Teheran, presumably waiting --- in Ahmadinejad's own mind apparently --- for Ahmadinejad to become the President of mighty Iran itself, with its nuclear weapons as an adjunct to the swinging swordsmen blows.

Then, Too, the Dreaded, Hateful Mastermind Tormentors of Islam Are Singled Out for Destruction by Ahmadinejad and Iran's Hezbollah Protégés

Full of fantasized turnip-ghost enemies who have caused Muslim decline and weakness, the screw-loose mental-set ripples with urges for violent revenge against these Islamic tormentors and saboteurs.

By now, you know who the chief puppet-pulling manipulators themselves are . . . those who control the US, dupe the rest of the West, and stage-manage in their secretive, conspiratorial ways Hindu India, Orthodox Russia, Israel, and the fiendish Polar Bears. Yes, none other than the world's Jews, 15 million strong, who have come to dominate the US and others for their own devilish reasons, and who as descendants of Apes and Pigs have kept Islam down and nearly out in the power-game for centuries now. There is only one way to deal with these fiendish demons: destroy them and their world-wide cabal thanks to a Muslim Strongman Savior, Islam's only hope and --- since it is destined to rule globally --- humankind's as well.

Note the last italicized word, rife a couple of paragraphs ago. How rife exactly is this blistering freaked-out worldview in the Islamic world?

As recent survey data show that we'll reproduce later in this article, it's now shared by about 70 to 80% of the world's Muslim population. Little wonder. It's been purveyed for decades now by hordes of vicious medieval-minded imams and mullahs and sheiks, together with the lavish help of media-hacks and so-called scholars in the despotic Arab and other Muslim countries, not to mention that it's been backed by about $80 billion Saudi oil-money and billions more spent by Iran . . . the two clerical-fascist countries, Sunni and Shiite, vying with one another for the most influence over the Islamic movement worldwide.

Lest you think the claims about 70 to 80% are exaggerated, we'll supply the data later. Simply note that the chief moderate Shiite Ayatollah in Iraq --- the Ayatollah Sistani --- has published on his Arabic web-site the following description of all non-Muslims. They are in the same category as

"urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors
and the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things]

If this is the view of the most moderate Ayatollah in that country we're militarily and financially bleeding for, what do the less moderate ayatollahs and mullahs and imams there think?

(i.) These are hardly novel views in Islam. The Grand Imam of al-Azhar University in Egypt, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, repeatedly insists --- in line with views, he says, derive from the Koran --- that Jews are "enemies of Allah [and] decendants of apes and pigs". He also repeatedly insists that terrorist bombing attacks are fully in line with Koranic duties too. "Fight the disbelievers! Allah is on your side; he will give you victory"

Note that these views of Jews are rife all over the Islamic world and are far from being endorsed only by a few extremists. You are left wondering whether there is anyone in Islam who believes all humans are descended from "apes", though no doubt espousing evolutionary theory in Muslim ruled countries may get you beheaded more swiftly than denouncing death-by-stoning of women alleged to be adulteresses or of homosexuals or of apostates who convert to Christianity.

As for women who get raped, not only should they be killed for not dying to protect themselves, women who don't wear headscarves and dress moderately --- according to the Muslim Mufti in Copenhagen Shahid Medhi (a mufti is the official head of the Islamic community) --- deserve to be raped.

(ii.) Needless to say, these are markedly disturbing convictions and beliefs. They have had, as we know now, a concrete impact on Islamic jihadi terrorism and mob violence. In the five years since 9/11's terrorist attacks in the US, there have been nearly 6000 deadly attacks against non-Muslims world-wide . . . attacks, mind you, not casualties. The latter number in the tens of thousands. For a well documented list of all these attacks, as we noted earlier, click here.

(iii.) Fortunately, there are moderate spokesmen and clerics in Islam like Kamal Nawash, Irshad Manji, and the Italian Sheik Palazzi (attacked at UC Santa Barbara in 2004 by the Muslim Students Association for his criticisms of jihadi terrorism) --- even though only a handful, it seems, dare to speak out repeatedly and vociferously, against these vicious views, rather than equivocate, mince words, and offer up vague general criticisms that have no bite like CAIR . . . many of whose leaders have been found guilty in American courts of terrorist activities or terrorist financial support.

There are even some fundamentalist movements in Islam --- a tiny handful --- that oppose the use of force or terrorism against non-Muslims, though again they don't seem to count for much except in Indonesia. Even there, though, jihadi emotions against the Chinese and Christian minorities run high. In the late 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were slaughtered in an orgy of vicious jihadi massacres. When Indonesia occupied East Timor, a Catholic country, in the late 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Catholics were killed with merciless jihadi fervor; and in Aceh, one of Indonesia's island-parts, anti-Christian riots and massacres regularly occur today against the tiny Christian community. In Pakistan it's worse. Christian churches and worshippers appear to be bombed on a frequent basis.

So, yes . . . let us hope that the moderates prevail in Indonesia, whose democratically elected government we support and are allied with, though letting free the jihadist mastermind of the Bali bombings isn't encouraging, any more than the joyful reception accorded Ahmadinejad when he visited that country earlier this year. Remember, too, that the moderates are a distinct minority --- if that means they are Muslims who haven't as yet fully internalized a conspiratorial, crackpot worldview full of vicious fantasies. At most they amount to about 20 to 30% of the total Islamic population worldwide, and in the Arab countries and Pakistan they are almost certainly far fewer than that.

(iv.) Our best hope in this respect is that the radical Islamist terrorists have lately been kabooming more Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt than non-Muslims in Europe or elsewhere.

In the upshot, there is increasingly criticism of these Islamic terrorist wings of Islam . . . something brought out in the recent Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Survey that we'll quote later today too. The evidence? Until these terrorist attacks against Muslims proliferated in 2005 and earlier this year, Muslims world-wide were shown--- in the 2004 Global Attitudes Survey --- to have an overwhelmingly positive view of bin Laden as a great Islamic champion. That changed only in the course of a year's time, and for the reason just mentioned.

Seems odd, no? Muslims appeared entirely indifferent to Al Qaeda's vicious terrorist attacks on Americans, Israelis, Jews in several countries, Madrid, London, Iraq, and elsewhere . . . all unclean infidels, you see. According to the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Survey 2004,

Osama bin Laden, however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable.

Two years later, after suicide terrorism carried out by al Qaeda and its affiliates or imitators worldwide had kaboomed skyward thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, and elsewhere, bin Laden's popularity --- guess what? --- had plunged in the Muslim world.

(v.) Make sure you grasp what's at stake here.

Specifically, the marked shift in bin Laden's Hero-Stature as an Islamic Strongman Champion between 2004 and 2006 shows just how blatantly skewed and biases Muslims are toward jihad suicide-terrorism. Fort most Muslims, itt's not only perfectly acceptable to kaboom infidel citizens worldwide for jihadi purposes, but the El Supremeo Triggermen Terrorists will achieve mythic status and acclaim on a vast scale in global Islam. If, though, the mass-murdering jihadi terrorists turn against Muslims, watch out!

Enter Ahmadinejad Again: Small Wonder for the Resonance Between His Belligerent Diplomacy, Theocratic Fanaticism, and Jew-Hatred with Threats of Extinction and Most Muslims Worldwide.

Small wonder for sure.

For almost a half century now, you see --- longer, if you look at its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood that emerged in the 1920s and its more secular outright fascist ideology espoused by Iraqi and Syrian Baathists in the same period --- this unhinged, widely shared psychic-syndrome has been purposefully taken up and spread, as we just noted, by hordes of blistering moss-backed clerics, sheiks, mullahs, and ayatollahs, as well as by mediocre scholarly propagandists, 3rd-rate media-hacks in the controlled Muslim media, and Baathist ideologues . . . not to forget the $100 billion or so spent by the Islamo-fascist oil-rich countries of Saudi Arabia and Iran for decades too in order to diffuse the menacing, psychopathological mind-set everywhere in the world where Muslims live.

Next to the Saudi and Iranian money, the worst of these perpetrators and facilitators have been rigid, worried, Dark-Age clerics and sheiks fearful of losing their power and control over Islam's poorly educated masses . . . more than half of the 320 million Arab peoples still illiterate in 2006. The more westernized global media have penetrated every nook-and-cranny of the Islamic world, the more these jihadi inflamed clerics and publicists have grown fearful of their impact, and hence the more stridently and fanatically they have purveyed their fundamentalist versions of Islam, whether Shiite or Sunni, with fervor and the connivance of double-dealing Arab and Muslim dictators . . . only too happy to deflect the distraught, dismayed resentments of their mass populations outward onto hobgoblin foreign-devils.

Is this really astonishing, the rapid global diffusion of radical Islamist conspiratorial hokum, vicious scapegoating, and resentments of the powerful infidel countries near and far . . . the nearest one, and the most hated because it's people are formerly despised Jewish-dhimmis, is Israel?

Astonishing? Come on, you know the answer: the astonishment would be the opposite.

Muslims, You See . . .

are fully aware of living in the most backward countries in the world, several dozen of them, except for a few tropical-African countries . . . just as they are fully cognizant that Islam has been in rapid decline economically, technologically, militarily, and scientifically for centuries now.

All this is bound to be brain-roiling for the true believers. Their imperial traditions and religious dogmas instruct them that Islam's Allah-ordained destiny is to rule everywhere in the world; but how can it possibly do so if the 1.3 billion Muslims living in Muslim-run countries are increasingly backward, weak, and poor compared to the infidel world . . . with the gap between the Islam and the dynamic infidel countries increasing each year that goes by? The upshot? Islamic balm to the rescue! In plain English, what better way for Islam's clerical and scholarly guardians to maintain and solidify their atavistic mind-controlling devices than to reassure the vastly shamed and humiliated Muslim populations that the failures of Muslim countries to modernize have nothing to do with Islam: whether it credos, customs, legal norms, or contempt for secular knowledge? And that sooner or later --- thanks to some great Islamic Strongman Champ --- Islam's inevitable destiny to triumph over the infidels will unfold exactly as Islam's clerics and apologists contend; and especially over Islam's biggest tormentors and evil enemies, the world's tiny Jewish community . . . some 15 million worldwide as opposed to 1.3 billion Muslims?

Obviously, to answer our last question --- no better way at all.

And in the same way, to go on, these analgesic mind-control dogmas --- full of paranoid hatred and conspiratorial scapegoating, with urges to strike out and kill --- seek to reassure the true-believers that Islam's universal failures at successful modernization have nothing to do with its lack of free-will traditions beyond lip-service of a minor sort, as opposed to the much greater emphasis on Allah's destiny: if Allah wills this or that or doesn't, so be it; or nothing to do with a related lack of any strong sense of personal responsibility; or, for that matter, nothing to do with Islam's indoctrinating inculcation of a rigid mentality that ill suits the constant flux of change, challenges, and dislocations of modern life. Or with the subjugation of half of humankind where Islam prevails. Or, just to bring a long list to a close, with the strictly hierarchical and authoritarian ways of seeing the world and instilling knowledge of any sort, but especially of a secular sort, that prevail everywhere in the Islamic world.

Consider just one statistic here. It's head-spinning.

The 320 million Arab peoples at the center of the Islamic world --- who lve in 21 different countries --- have translated fewer books the last 1000 years than Spain does every year for its 40 million people. A 1000 years . . . back practically to the Dark Ages! Compared with one year's translation output of Spain, a country 1/8th the size in population! Whew! Wow! The statistic, by the way, isn't part of the Jewish conspiracy; it appeared in the UN Arab Development Report of 2002. When you look at it, could there be any more concrete indicator of just how traditionally parochial and contemptuous the Arabs' religious and political leaders have been of scholarship, philosophy, science, art, and literature produced elsewhere in the modern world over a whole millennium?

5. Enter the Psychological Functions of the Inflamed Paranoid-Packed Syndrome: Starting with Blame-Shifting

What Explains Islamic Weakness and Strikingly Backward Conditions?

For non-Muslim observers, the failure of any Islamic country even remotely to match the technological, scientific, and economic progress of West Europe, the English-speaking democracies, or Japan --- and more recently the former East European satellites of the Soviet Union, China, India, Taiwan, Singapore, or even Mexico and Brazil --- isn't hard to explain. Come to that, the initial article on Ahmadinejad's popularity --- the 4th in this series on Iran --- spent several pages setting out the pre-conditions of successful modernization and showing how thoroughly askew and dysfunctions are the mentalities, knowledge, crony patron-client hierarchies, pervasive corruption and other predatory behavior are in the Islamic world, with some variations across them . . . not to mention thoroughly dysfunctional institutions in every realm, whether economic, financial, political, legal, administrative, or educational. (If you click on the previous link to the earlier buggy article, be sure to read the whole list of pre-conditions of effective modernization and the subsequent list of Muslim failures to do well on virtually any of them.)

Consider the record.

Start with the most industrialized of fully Muslim countries: Turkey, which underwent a modernizing revolution early in the 20th century. Its 70 million people turn out in 2006 to be a good 20% poorer in per capita income than Mexico, a country that underwent its own modernizing revolution at about the same time --- and Turkey is the most industrialized of all Islamic countries in the world, almost 50 of them ruled by Muslim governments. Turkey's per capita income, to be exact, is $8200; Mexico, with a population of 105 million, stands at $10,000. (By comparison, the US with 300 million people has a per capita income of $44,000; Japan around $32,000, with Britain, France, Germany, and Italy each about $31,000). Leaving aside the small, otherwise backward rentier oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, only Malaysia in the Islamic world has a higher per capita income, $12,100, than Turkey; but Malaysia's economic success, or half-success, has been almost exclusively due to the entrepreneurial prowess and hard work of the country's large Chinese minority . . . roughly a quarter of the total population of 25 million, working closely with multinationals and dominating all the modern manufacturing and financial institutions.

If it were entirely Chinese, Malaysia's per capita income would likely be similar to Taiwan's and Singapore's, around $29,000.

Blame-Shifting and Other Pathological Defense-Mechanism: Or the Mental Dismay and Dislocations in Islam That Have Ensued from Islamic Decline and the Urgent Need for Psychological Narcotic-Balm It's easy to document the dismay, dislocations, and the rest of the mental, emotionally crackling disruptions rife in global Islam these days. As no one less than Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia noted in his keynote address to the heads of Islamic countries gathered at the Islamic Summit Conference in 2003, the psychological outcome of this long, strung-out decline of Islamic power, prestige, and influence is a ripping sense of pervasive shame and humiliation among the Muslim peoples:

"I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation," Mr. Mahathir said. "We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated. . . . Today we, the whole Muslim [community], are treated with contempt and dishonor. . .

There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right. They believe that things can only get worse. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I have said, this is the Will of Allah, that the proper state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this world . . .

Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly. And so we find some of our people reacting irrationally. They launch their own attacks, killing just about anybody including fellow Muslims to vent their anger and frustration.

But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon them by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger? Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?"

It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews".

But Note

However self-evident Islam's pervasive failures are to other people, Muslims --- conditioned by the first 1000 years of their militarized expansion, conquests, and imperial rule to see Islam's truths bound up with Islam's secular power and prestige --- won't and probably can't accept responsibility for their civilization's weakness and backward conditions.

For one thing, to accept such blame would be psychologically traumatic, equivalent to admitting that Islamic traditions and customs --- hitherto unquestioned in all the different varieties of Islam and Islamic law --- might not be divinely truthful to the last comma and period. And so enter the rabid, screw-loose worldview that the antediluvians in Islam have concocted, propagandized, and diffused around the globe to sooth, reassure, and bolster Islamic confidence in their religion, their secular destiny, and their Allah-ordained certainty that the Muslim religion and rule will prevail everywhere in the world . . . and soon too. For another thing, all Muslim countries are paradigms still of shame-honor societies. In such societies, the worst fate that can befall you or your family is publicly viewed shame and humiliation, and striving to avoid such a horrible destiny is usually the major motive of people in it, especially those who are rich and powerful or aspire to rise socially and otherwise. There is only one way to deal with shame and humiliation when it befalls you: very publicly, you have to punish the villains who have caused it. As you know, this can entail the need to slaughter your wife, your sisters, or your daughters if they've not just committed adultery, but "allowed" themselves to be raped.

These are important matters. We'll return to the demands of shame-honor norms in Islamic societies later on in this article, and in a variety of hopefully illuminating ways.

PART TWO:
AHMADINEJAD'S SKY-HIGH POPULARITY CLARIFIED: OR WHY HAVE SO MANY MUSLIMS DRIFTED INTO CONSPIRATORIAL PARANOID-PACKED PSYCHO-PATHOLOGY?

An Elaboration

What follows is a more extended analysis of Ahmadinejad's popularity, undertaken for its wider psychological import: in particular, for the light it throws on just how far Muslims worldwide have forsaken any bracing contact with existing realities --- economic, political, diplomatic, and military --- and freewheeled into a fantasy-ridden dreamland of blame-shifting, conspiratorial hokum, resentments galore at Islamic failures, systematic scapegoating, and crackling urges galore too for violent and maybe even apocalyptical destruction of their bogeymen tormentors and enemies.

Three overlapping sets of reasons explain, for the most part, how Ahmadinejad fits into this destructive, dangerously delusional worldview and how, in turn, his skyhooting celebrity in Islam is anything but novel.

1. For A Start, The Rise and Fall of of Muslim Musclemen Maestros on
the Heavenly Hit-Man Parade Turns Out To Be

. . . the longest-running record-album in Islamic history, stretching back to its very start as a fervent militarized religion in the mid-7th century . . . only with the manic martial lyrics increasingly preposterous for a good two or three centuries now, and the music itself unremittingly strident and off-key. Enter center-stage tiny full-of-jihadi-frenzy Mahmoud who relishes, like all earlier kill-crazy crooners at the top of their popularity, the glare of the Islamic world's brightest spotlights!

What Wild Acclaim!

Now Numero Uno on Islam's Sanguinary Songbird Parade full of rabid military hype and jivey rap, he's the most celebrated swinging-scimitar soloist of the day. A motor-mouth melodist who likes to sing, telepathically at any rate, in tune with his Hidden Master, the Messianic Mahdi who has been hiding out, for 1000 years or so, at the bottom of a deep well near Teheran, Mahmoud has shot up the Hit-Man charts from out of nowhere the last year. And not least, it appears, because of Islam's favorite tune in his Gold-Platter Album that sends the moronic mobs everywhere hipping and hopping madly in a lather of excited hope and expectation.

A catchy Persian version of Apocalypse Now! , complete with the plagiarism of ear-splitting howls from Wagner's The Valkyrie . . . only with Brünnhilde's big-breasted role played by a man for obvious religious reasons, and the Valkyries' winged-horses cloned into Arab Stallions with big-you-know-what. Guess who sings the Siegfried role in the smash album? Instead of slaying fire-spouting dragons, though, this Siegfried in 10-inch elevator shoes takes out his fantasized nuclear-sword and slays fire-spraying Jew-demons by the dumpster-load.? You've guessed it who it is by now: Maestro Motor-Mouth himself, a high-pitched alto-soprano hoping to sing like a full-mouthed tenor and maybe even make it to the Metropolitan Opera before the great Iranian Mahdi-inspired nuclear-force Kabooms it into oblivion, along with the rest of New York's infidel population . . . including, alas, the makers of those delicious kosher Coney-Island hotdogs sold at Costco stands everywhere.

According to a rumor, squeaky-voiced Ahmadinejad, who won't just play Siegfried, but is the producer, director, and scenery-manager, tried to con Marlin Brando into putting on blonde Brunnhilde-drag and belting out some arias opposite him. Alas Marlon, though heavy enough for the role, heaven knows --- and with lots of experience playing the master of apocalypse in the Coppola film of the 1970s --- balked even after the water-on-the-brain Mahdi raised him up from the grave poof-like! only to insist that the resurrected great actor first convert to Islam before dolling-up for the Brunnhilde spiel.

Yes, can you believe it? --- flatly refused; nada, nada.

Marlon, it appears, who was only too happy to go on moldering in his grave, pasted the Mahdi on the jaw and leapt back into his wormy coffin. No conversion for him, even in a Heaven-Offered redivius role that most actors would die for. Don't worry about Marlon though.

For one thing, he won't have to make love every night for the rest of eternity to 72 demanding sex-starved virgins . . . I mean, what condition is your poor male tool going to be like after 12 or 13 billion nights of endless demands? No, not there you hunky dolt! Here, and now here, and now for heaven's sake keep it up for a good hour or so And for another thing, Marlon's graveyard happens to be located next to a Bourbon Distillery Plant whose zonked-out manager waters the graves there with a case of costly booze each night. Words has it that Marlon hasn't had a sober night ever since his burial, and with no hangovers to worry about the next morning!

Whether the rumor is accurate is another matter. Prof bug is uncertain. Still, who can forget Brandon's Kurtz and the chilling tales he related to the naïve Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) when Sheen found him at long last in the dense tangles and miasmic waters of the Cambodian jungle . . . very apropos for the kind of religious fanaticism, please note --- only jihadi in nature --- that Ahmadinejad with his flipped-out freaking Mahdi Apocalypse-Now fantasies seems to spend his time nurturing mentally and turning over again and again in his mind:

"I've seen horrors," Kurtz says, "... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

"I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.

"And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion

All At Once Another Query Rises Up:

How does Ahmadinejad's bustling celestial-like popularity reflect his reassuring, if belligerent belted out narcotic-balm that Muslims consume in vast quantity?

The simple answer: After a good three centuries of relentless, psychically dislocating decline in Muslim power, wealth, technology, imperial rule, and global prestige --- topped by a series of disastrously lost wars to tiny Israel, manned by a few despised, ex-dhimmi Jews, since 1948 --- most Muslims, as Prime Minister Mahathir noted, pop and snap with the "horrors" of shame, humiliation, and resentful urges for revenge against the alleged culprits. None of them could be Muslims. None could be Islamic traditions, customs, local cultures, and discouragement of critical secular thought. None could be due to the most dysfunctional institutions worldwide in all domains: economic, political, financial, administrative, legal, educational, and what have you. No, not possible. Clearly unthinkable for true-believing Muslims.

Who then are these fiendish culprits?

Mahathir himself supplied the universally believed answer among Muslims . . . with, try to remember, the conspiratorial make-believe that's we're about to quote joyously received by all the 57 heads of Islamic communities and countries around the world at the Islamic Summit Conference of 2003 --- their applause at the end ear-splitting with heartfelt relief. Start with the paragraphs quoted earlier, then note the enemy Islam is pitted against in the latter three paragraphs.

"I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation," Mr. Mahathir said. "We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated. . . . Today we, the whole Muslim [community], are treated with contempt and dishonor. . .

There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right. They believe that things can only get worse. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I have said, this is the Will of Allah, that the proper state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this world . . .

Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly. And so we find some of our people reacting irrationally. They launch their own attacks, killing just about anybody including fellow Muslims to vent their anger and frustration."

So who then are the enemies who have tormented Islam, dissed and humiliated 1.3 billion Muslims, and kept Islam blatantly backward, weak, and disrespected? Guess who?

"We are up against a people who think," Mahathir went on. "They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also. . . .

"But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon them by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger? Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?"

It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews". "

So, To Answer Our Query of a Moment or Two Ago, Any Surprise Would Be the Opposite:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Jew-hating rants, his threats to destroy Israeli, his systematic Holocaust denial, his thumb-nosing defiance of patsy infidel diplomats, and his Armageddon Showdown jive --- fought this time, the message goes, with nuclear weapons if need be --- wouldn't be joyously, rapturously, acclaimed by what Mahathir calls hopeless, humiliated, oppressed, and contemptuously dissed Muslims everywhere?

Most people, not in the grip of such delirious, emotionally inflamed psychopathologies, you see, would regard Ahmadinejad as a vicious, big-mouthed, religious fanatical Hitlerian would-be.

According to recent survey data, even the appeasement-minded EU publics are beginning to catch on. A good 60% of the French, believe it or not, now favor a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent the country from deploying nuclear weapons. Not so the world's Muslim populations. Far from being worried that Ahmadinejad is a Hitler-in-the-making with Islamic twists, they largely regard Hitler himself as something of a hero . . . a pioneer anti-Zionist; had he killed off all of Europe's Jews, not just 60%, you could be sure that his hero-status would have soared even higher:

Another, More History-Laden Reason for Ahmadinejad's Bursting Mythic Celebrity in Islam Enters the Picture Too

As it happens, it's not just Ahmadinejad's obsessive Jew-hating racism, iterated threats to annihilate Israel, and his bluster-splattered diplomacy that plays Euro- and UN-diplomats for fawning patsies --- or even his nuclear weapons ambitions --- that underpins his fame and celebration in global Islam. There's an age-old tradition in Islam that he also embodies in his person . . . just about the oldest, when you get down to it, in Muslim history. We mentioned it before, and it needs to be mentioned and stressed again.

In effect, Ahmadinejad is just the latest in a long line of Islamic Martial Jive-Artists who managed to soar right up the Celestial Kill-Crazy Champion-Chart out of nowhere, provided they promised to slay enough of the infidels and spread Islamic power, rule, and religion everywhere. No exaggeration. These Slay-the-Infidel Serenaders have been bursting upward on Islam's Heavenly Hit-Man Parade this way for well over 1400 years now.

Consider Ahmadinejad's hit album, an instant gold-platter winner a thousand times over among Muslim auditors. It's the same album that was first recorded in a tiny 7th century oasis-shaded studio in the Saudi sands. And though the title ever since has gone under different aliases, its most evocative label-name happens to be, appropriately enough, When the Swinging-Scimitar Saints Come Marching In: Or Why Are Infidel Heads Rock-and-Rolling All Over Our Sands? Ever since it began spinning fervently among Arab tribes early in the 7th century, Mohammed himself a Militarized Soloist without parallel in Islam's long history --- no one else quite reaching The Prophet's exalted status ever since --- its militant bellicose lyrics and martial rhythms have echoed down throughout Islamic history.

Even the Prophet's very last words to his followers, as they readied themselves to spread Allah's True Faith all over the world with their matchless Arab cavalry and cacophonous marching bands , belted out Islam's bellicose lyrics with brisk jihadi vocals:

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no God but Allah.'" [March 632AD]

Needless to add, the album's No. 1 rank on the Muslim Hit-Man Parade didn't end with Mohammed's death. You already know that. Only the vocalists and lyrics have changed over the centuries.

And it gets more joyful still. When not spreading Islam by the bloody sword, Muslims believe in fair play. So then, to allow a fair battle for Numero Uno to future Swinging-Scimitar Sinatras of the Sands, Mohammed's gold-platters --- thousands of them, gathered in the Koran, the Hadith, and Sira --- were retired soon after his passage to Paradise, and the competition has been open ever since to whoever could chop off the most heads while yodeling victory at the top of his lungs in the jiviest head-banging way.

The Popularity Results in Islam, Historically Viewed

With lots of ups and downs on the charts, the Swinging-Scimitar Saints album has been spinning madly ever since its early 7th century origins, and the only changes, to repeat, have been in the names of the Swinging Scimitar Vocalists of the day and some updates of the lyrics to suit the times.

As for those breathless battles for Numero-Uno Big-Name Rapper-Rank they don't, you understand, unfold peacefully the way the rivalry between, say, Bruce Springsteen and Flapper-the-Dapper does here in the States . . . you know, by means of consumer purchases at the local record-store or through frantic pirated downloads in the wee hours of the morning. No way! No sir! The Master-Maestro Militarists who battle one another to become Islam's Biggest-Gun, Biggest-Name Soloist shoot up or down the charts --- or clear off them, with their heads rocking and rolling in the sands --- in more chic Islamic-preferred ways: by extra-crafty, extra-violent behavior, with your songbird rivals disposed of by means of palace-plots, bloody coups, sanguinary massacres, macabre bombings, and constant wars between Sunnis and Shiites, or between Arabs and Ottoman Turks, or between Arabs, Ottomans, and Persians, or between them and the Moguls . . . at any rate, whenever the Swinging-Scimitar Soloist Rivals could take time off from killing, crushing, and enslaving the infidels in the Middle East, North and Tropical Africa, Hindu India, and Christian Europe for a good 1000 years.

More recently, a few of the cleverer Touring Triggerman-Troubadours have concocted some even more blood-splattered antics . . . vicious enough, mind you, to make Tony Soprano wish that his ancestors hailed from Saudi Arabia, not Sicily.

To reach Violent-Vocalist Visionary of the day paramountcy, you have to understand, the lead songbird aspirants have found it useful to arm credulous sacrificial-lambs with suicide-belts, then send them out to slaughter, on a vast scale, unsuspecting men, women, and children who foolishly think they can go about their daily business without their bodies suddenly ripped apart and blown to Kingdom-Come. Oh Oh, wrong choice of words! No way the shredded, blow-to-smithereens infidels and apostate Muslims will reach the Kingdom-Come. Impossible! Contrary to holy writs. Their post-mortem trip is strictly downward to the hot zones. The Kingdom-Come --- Aka Paradise --- is reserved for the martyrs and other jihadi-enthusiasts themselves, where they can disport themselves ever after in the arms of dozens of browbeaten virgins --- and maybe beaten elsewhere too, come to think of it --- while drinking themselves silly on wine and listening to Heavy-Metal rock without worry of future punishment for their sins.

Sidebar Clarification: The last lyrical command of Mohammed jotted down earlier, please note, are fully in line with The Prophet's other martial-vocals that he stressed in his lifetime. Consider the record from the most authoritative source, the holy Koran:

"If [you] would read the Koran, you will find out that Allah wants Muslims to kill the infidels (unbelievers) wherever they are found (Koran 9:5), and that peace will come only to those who submit to him (Koran 8:17, 48:29, and 65). The Koran also has Allah saying that unbelievers should be killed (Koran 2:191, 3:141, 4:104, 4:89, 8:12-16, 9:5, 9:73-74, 9:123, 25:52…), that Muslim apostates should be killed or chastised (Koran 2:39, 2:85, 3:85, 3:106, 4:89, 16:106, and 47:25-28), that the heads and fingers of unbelievers should be cut off (Koran 5:33, 8:12, and 47:4), and that Muslims should fight and humiliate Jews and Christians (Koran 5:18 and 9:29). Is this a religion of peace?

"There is more. For Allah, warfare is good (Koran 2:216) and jihad (fighting in the way of Allah) should continue until only Islam is dominant (Koran 2:193, 3:85, 8:39, 9:33, 35:37 and 61:9). Allah wants his followers to slaughter his enemies (Koran 8:67), allows Muslims to loot (Koran 8:1, 8:41, 8:69, and 59:7), to commit suicide (Koran 2:154, 2:207, 3:140-144, 3:157, 9:111 and 47:4), and to acquire slaves (Koran 4:3, 4:23-24 and 8:67). Muhammad himself was allowed to engage in unlimited sex with female slaves and captives (Koran 4:3, 23:6, 33:50-52 and 70:30). Is this a religion of tolerance? In addition, Allah orders Muslims not to take Jews, Christians and other unbelievers as friends (Koran 3:28, 5:51 and 9:23), and will not forgive Christians (Koran 4:48 and 4:116). Muhammad taught to put the infidels to death wherever they were found (Koran 2:191, 2:244, 4:89, 5:36, 9:5, and 9:29), urged Muslims to fight the unbelievers who are close (Koran 9:123), mentioned that fighting is obligatory (Koran 2:216), and mandated the conquering of those relatives who opposed Muslims because loyalty to Islam overrode all other human bonds (Koran 9:23-24, and 58:22).

"Muhammad is also quoted in the Koran as urging fighting until Islam is the only religion (Koran 2:193, 8:39, and 61:9), seeking the death of apostates (Koran 9:73-74), accepting slavery (Koran 4:3, 4:24, 5:87-89, 23:6, 24:32-33, 33:50-52 and 70:30), supporting the slaughter of captives (Koran 8:67), the raping of women captives (Koran 4:24), beheading the infidels (Koran 47:4), and approving looting in wars (Koran 24:29, and 48:20-21). Is this the religion of diversity?

"The Koran states that if Muslims do not fight, Allah will replace them with others who will. (Koran 9:39). Those who cannot fight must help fellow Muslims in other ways, including through donations of money. (Koran 8:72). Only Islamic law or Sharia is lawful for Muslims (Koran 5:50). There will not be mercy on unbelievers (Koran 5:36-38 and 48:29). The end of the jihad will happen when there is faith only in Allah (Koran 2:193). Power must belong to Muslims only (Koran 63:8), and they must exert power over non-Muslims (Koran 4:141). Is this a multicultural religion?

(i.) The contrast with Christianity's origins and early spread couldn't be more striking. A lengthy 300 years elapsed before Christianity, recall, was yoked onto the Roman Empire as a unifying force by Constantine --- himself remaining a pagan until he lay on his death-bed; what's more, during those 3 centuries, its religious doctrines appealed mainly to the weak, the poor, and the distraught under Roman rule --- and not to the rich and powerful, who repeatedly persecuted the faithful.

So yes, to go on, Christianity --- once it made its pact with the Roman Empire --- became a rationalization for imperial conquest, spread and rule over non-Christian infidels in Roman times and ever since . . . for that matter, right down to WWII's end. After Rome's fall, the later expansion of Christian states inside and outside of Europe entailed the use of massive violence . . . sometimes against other Christian powers, sometimes against non-Christian peoples within the borders of expanding central states, and sometimes by means of rampant violence against Jews, Christian heretics, and Muslims living in countries conquered by Christian kings in Europe. By the same token, Muslims were expelled from Iberia once the Christian monarchs defeated Muslim armies on their soil in the 1490s, and Jews were expelled at one time or another from virtually every European country during the Middle Ages and from Iberia in the 1490s too, not to mention --- in the pre-Hitlerian days --- that they suffered constant pogroms and homicidal rampages almost everywhere in early and medieval Europe and then after the 17th century all over East Europe.

(ii.) But most of this was a rationalization, not the prime motive of conquest and subjugation except perhaps during the Crusades, and even then it was Christian retaliation --- mixed later with economic motives --- for Islamic conquest of Christian lands and especially the Holy Land.

The biggest exception was the harsh treatment suffered by Christian heretics in the Middle Ages and especially Jews, a direct religious outcome, during the Middle Ages and later in modern Europe until the 19th century . . . after which the more liberal, democratizing West Europe countries secularized and gave Jews citizenship. The violence against Jews was horrendous in these Christian lands. By some estimates, based on recorded birth and death statistics, about half the Jews born in Europe after the 11th century --- when they were first ghettoized -- died at the hands of their neighbors right down into the early 19th century in much of West Europe and until the start of the 20th century in Czarist Europe.

Worse then followed.

From the 1880s on, in huge backlashes against capitalism, socialism,and modernity, Jew-hatred of a homicidal pseudo-Darwinian sort began to flourish strongly in France, Germany, Austria, and virtually all of East Europe, with the Holocaust the direct outcome in Nazi occupied Europe during WWII . . . all the European countries except Britain, neutral Spain and Portugal, and Nazi-allied Finland and Bulgaria --- plus brave little Denmark under Nazi occupation --- actively collaborating with the Nazis in the war to exterminate Jews without let-up. What about the Jewish conditions in Islamic countries? They were generally much better . . . at any rate, until the emergence of liberal democratic countries in 19th century Northwest Europe and in the English-speaking world. Whatever humiliations, repression, and occasional pogroms Jews suffered in the Islamic world down through until WWII, they were generally accorded more tolerance and acceptance than in virtually all Christian countries . . . with, to repeat, the big exception coming after the start of the 19th century in the liberal, democratizing countries of the English-speaking world, Holland, and Scandinavia.

(iii.) Does this blood-splattered history of Christian violence invalidate our key point here?

No, not fully. The hard fact is, the origins of religions matter. They matter a great deal. For all the historical homicidal crimes on Christian hands --- including Jew-hatred, Jew-subjugation, and Jew-persecution and pogroms --- there is nothing in the religion that orders Christians to spread their faith by means of the sword, the gun, and empire-building. What's more, ever since the Nazi Holocaust, Catholics and Protestants alike have been busy criticizing and apologizing for Christianity's historical built-in Anti-Semitism. Islam's jihadi-duties are exactly the opposite. Irrespective of how some Muslim scholars later sought to stress a new form of jihad --- self-mastery in the service of Allah --- Islam commands its followers, exactly as Mohammed repeatedly did and again at the very end of his life, to spread Islam by the sword, kill the infidels if they resist, and keep in fighting until all the world is under Islamic rule.

(iv.) Observe one other difference between Christianity and Islam.

From the start, Christianity wasn't only free of any attachment to a militarized state or any state whatever, its founders stressed the separation between religious faith and obedience to a state's leaders. By contrast, in Islamic history there is not supposed to be any separation whatever between Islam and the state. The caliph should be head of both. Leaving aside the Reformation and the emergence of the sovereign monarchical state in West Europe from 1649 on (the Treaty of Westphalia), you can see how, at least in the more liberal of those states like Britain, secularism --- which means a gradual reduction in the authority of religion in public life of any sort, whether economic, cultural, or political --- has roots in this early distinction between state and religion in Christian history.

Do They Seem . . . Well, a Tad Violent . . . These Repetitive Blood-Soaked Battles for the Top-Spot on Islam's Heavenly Hatchet-Man Charts?

Sure; and zealously manic as well, full of Holy War death-to-the-end serenades . . . and as you just saw, not always against the infidels themselves. Enter a key point: a huge change in the high-notes of martial swagger that have marked Muslim Melodies after 1700.

Meaning?

Well, for the moment . . . leave aside a few tens of millions of deaths inflicted by swarms of Wandering Mass-Murderer Minstrels during Islam's first 1000 years of imperial expansion, military conquests, and terrorism inflicted on the infidels, plus, of course, the countless internecine wars and terrorism between the Swinging Scimitar-Songsters and the frenzied armies of their faithful followers, all of whom, oddly --- yes, very very oddly --- somehow always forgot that Islam means peace. Oh sure, the way Attila-the-Huns presence on any Roman imperial border meant peace-was-imminent too, along with millions of corpses to prove it. Still, there's a key point lurking in Islamic shadows here. Namely? Whatever else you can then say about all jihadi-inspired mayhem and violence on a huge homicidal scale, at least the Lead Trigger-Men Troubadours and their Lyrical Holy-War Hymns weren't fully off-key or ridiculously empty and ear-grating in military terms down to 1700 or so.

The Reason: Until Then, Islamic Conquests, Expansion, and Imperial Rule Rested on Hard Military Power

For a long period, the Supreme Head-Banging Hummer after The Prophet Himself was Saladin, arch Kurdish-nemesis of the Christian Crusaders in the 12th century . . . Saddam Hussein, note, only the latest of his most illustrious admirers, except that Saladin had a wise, merciful side, and no one has ever accused Saddam of that crime. In the early modern-era, from 1454 on, the lead Conquering Crooners weren't as well known or pre-eminent, but just as efficient at conquest and expansion: most of them, when you get down to it, little more than a strung-out series of Crafty and Oppressive Ottoman Song-and-Dance Artists, who marched violently all over Eastern and Southern Europe and colonized the Christian populations there for centuries, with a million or so European slaves one of their Heavenly-blessed rewards . . . a handsome enough human-booty in its own right, yes? --- though not quite up to the 11 million human trophies that Muslims awarded themselves for the African slaves that they rounded up and transported back to North Africa and the Middle East from Mohammed's time on: that slave-trade, come to think of it, not ended yet; no, no, still briskly active in Mauritania, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.

Hmm, 11 million. It's a figure to set you thinking. More specifically, it's roughly the same number of African slaves bought from the venal chiefs of West African tribes and transported by European slave-ships to the New World from the 16th century until the 1870s. out of the mercenary arms of Africa tribal leaders in West down to the present. eleven million, as it happens, roughly the same number of African slaves that Europeans would import to the New World from the 16th century until the 1870s.

Then, for a while --- further to the East from the Ottomans --- the main rival Rippers to Constantinople and daring Heavy-Metal Persian aspirants were the mass-murdering Moguls who overran Hindu India in the 16th and 17th centuries, after earlier overrunning the Persians and the Arabs. Thanks to those vast Mongol conquests, the Mogul rulers --- as the Europeans came to call them --- soared to Numero Uno on the Muslim Hit-Man Parade . . . especially after they slaughtered millions of Hindus in coming to dominate India in the 15th and 16th centuries. Dismayed, unaccustomed to a downward movement on the Triggerman Charts, the Ottoman-Caliphs Crooners fought back as best as they could to eliminate their rivals in Persia and India. It was a jolly blood-letting time among the Swinging-Scimitar Saints that lasted generations, until one day the Ottoman Yodelers and the Persian Ripper-Rappers and the Mogul Melodists suddenly remembered that Islam meant peace, kissed one another on the cheeks --- no slobbering, deep-tongue stuff of the Madonna-Britney Spears sort --- and lived happily ever after fighting the infidels and guiding their empires to precipitous plunges in power, technology, science, industrialization, and whatever else makes for a modern country.

Oh, not entirely living happily ever after --- or at least peacefully. That isn't the Muslim way. Just as Colonel Nasser's forces used poison-gas on Yemenite Arabs in his wars for the Number One spot back in the 1950s and 1960s, and Saddam Hussein's hordes used poison gas on Iranian Shiite hordes in the 1980s, so the Arabs slaughtered the Turks in WWI with glee --- and vice versa.

Not all Arabs fought the Turks for their independence in WWI. In typical fashion, the Palestinian Arab leadership --- who backed Hitler in WWII, the Soviet Union in the cold war, and Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War --- managed to set this dismal diplomatic record going by being the only Arab group who sided with the losing Turks in WWI.

2. From 1700 On Islamic Decline Became Ever Faster in Relative Terms . . . Matched by an Ever Faster Psychic Escape into a Make-Believe World of Imaginary Salvation by the Sword on the Part of Islam's Shamed, Humiliated Masses

Topsy-Turvy Time in Islam and Retreat into Self-Delusional Make-Believe

Forget the touch or two of buggy sarcasm in the above analysis . . . all the stuff about songfest struggles by batty, mentally bedraggled frauds for first place in Muslim popularity who emerged after 1945. Focus instead on the recurring key point in that fast, top-skimming analysis: down to 1700 or so, the Militant Martial Musclemen in Islam weren't just blowhard blusterers. Their claims to Islamic heroic-status rested on hard military power. It was only after 1700 that a rapidly modernizing Europe --- especially in the western half, but to an extent also in Russia and all over the Balkans --- was able to shoot past its major rival for global power, status, and imperial rule: Islam in various imperial guises.

By the end of the 18th century, the last of the Islamic imperial powers --- the Ottoman Turks ---were being called the "Sickman of Europe", and one European colony began rebelling and winning their independence. Even as the British assumed control of India and Persia and parts of the Arab world in the 19th century, and the French came to dominate North Africa, the Ottomans survived in their shrinking empire only because the European rival powers each had an interest in its survival, lest their main rivals reaped the most from its ruins. By 1900 Islamic societies were universally among the most backward in the world, and all were colonized by modern European powers without exception. Only Turkey itself, having lost WWI and all its Arab and European possessions, survived as an independent state, which then underwent a fitful, half-successful modernizing revolution under Ataturk --- Turkey today, with 70 million people, the most successful modernizer in the Islamic world, yet 25% poorer in per capita income than a larger Mexico that underwent a modernizing revolution of its own in the same period.

Which isn't to say that the bloody quest for Top Scimitar-Swinger of the day in Islam has itself ended, only that the battles for top spot have become more ludicrous and head-spinning --- a series of fantasized castle-chasing chants and braggadocio without the Rival Rippers having anything solid by way of power to back up their swagger. An exaggeration? Hardly.

The Record Since 1945 Is Particularly Disastrous

With Islam's global power, economic advance, and prestige at their lowest ebb in history and likely to dry up in the next few decades amid demographic explosions and further economic stagnation, the Bellicose Swaggers who tried to make themselves Islam's savior by the sword and gun have blighted the strikingly violent, strikingly backward landscape of the Middle East and Near Asia with the graves of millions of Arabs and Iranians who have eagerly lapped up the belligerent rhythms of these Jivey Big-Mouthed Blowhards: Egypt's Gamil Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Syria's Hafiz Assad, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the PLO's Yasser Arafat, Al Qaeda's bin Laden, and of course --- perhaps the shortest-lived contender of them all, Ahmadinejad's main rival for Big-Gun Soloist of the moment --- Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah fame, destroyer of South Lebanon, Lebanon's infrastructure, and a Shiite toady of Ahmadinejad and the clerical-fascist mullahs in Tehran; but victorious for the moment in Muslim eyes merely for surviving a war with Israel . . . assuming you call a subterranean-existence for the Sheik anything beyond mere survival.

Each and every one of these Bully-Boy Gangsta-Rappers in the Middle East --- big busts without exception, motor-mouth frauds from start to finish --- crooned and swooned and banged out a series of jazzy heavy-metal promises of comic-opera extravaganza for the benefit of their massed moronic fans in the Arab street and elsewhere. All their jivey off-scale lyrics have led only to one Muslim disaster after another; no exceptions.

All of which raises a question: haven't their screaming, hair-tearing Arab fans and groupies, not to forget the crude cartoon-burning berserkers elsewhere in Islam, been disappointed by the disastrous comedowns suffered by each of these Conmen-Crooners, all of whom, down to now, eventually tumbled off the Charts faster than Pat Boone did in the rock era?

Sure; goes without saying: one dismal, dismaying disappointment after another . . . not that that their precipitous come-a-croppers, big boo-hoos and all among the tone-deaf fans that followed, fully discouraged the mobbing groupies and adulators from more dreamland fantasy that sooner or later --- next year or the year after; anyway, at least before the next Y-2 millennial scare --- some new Strongman Savior-Soloist with a Sword and Pistol at his side would surely materialize and prove to be the real McCoy this time: you know, some super-duper Muslim Muscleman-Presley or Swinging Scimitar-Sinatra who, out of nowhere, would rush one day into the recording studio with guns blazing, grab the mike, and instantly --- after beheading the doubters --- start spinning a new round of lyrical bamboozling rigmarole that would send the fickle, fantasy-frazzled fans going ape once more in a new frenzy of jihadi hip-hop excitement. Death to the Jews! Death to America! Death to the Infidels , that sort of jive.

Enter Again, Center Stage Folks!, Mahmoud Tiny-Tim Ahmadinejad . . . Whose Signature Head-Banging Number Resonates Everywhere with Joy in Islam These Otherwise Dismal Days: KABOOM, KABOOM, IF I COULD TAKE US ALL TO PARADISE UP ABOVE

Recall that earlier we referred to Ahmadinejad's most popular tune in his Gold-Platter Album of the year, a Persian take on Apocalypse Now.

It's a very catchy tune, this Kaboom! Kaboom! if prof bug himself says so, not quite up to the yodeling harmonics in Song of Music about gentle Dears and Does, all those wonderful melodies and clever lyrics, and so on; but enough to get downtrodden, shamed, and humiliated Muslim hearts soaring anyway: (Note: to hear the full effect of Ahmadinejad's wonderful music, you need to click on this link . . . even though the singer and the music are only so so. For the original lyrics and music, which Ahmadinejad hqw shamelessly changed, click here. The original Crew-Cuts version is a midi that you can easily find on the Internet)

Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da
Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da

Oh Life could be a dream, Kaboom!
If I could blow them all apart (Kaboom!)
The Jew-Pigs and Jew–Apes one and all (Kaboom!)
Not a blessed Jew, not even a few,
Left to hound us
with their evil goo, yada da da da da.
Goo so full of poop and pooh,
That hitherto
Has given us Muslim-guys,
the eternal screw!
And kept us from Rising Up to Paradise above,
As we all would,
but never could,
Until the Jew Pigs and Apes
Are gone for good (Kaboom!),
In a Blessed Heaven-Sent Mushroom Cloud!

Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da
Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da
If you tell me I'm the only one that you Muslims love, (Kaboom!)
Life would be a dream, sweethearts.

Hello hello hello again,
Kaboom! I'm hoping we'll meet again,
Arabs and Persians,
Sunnis and Shiites,
All on top again,
Right where we belong Kaboom!
The Mahdi here to help
With the Boom-Boom Bomb
And then lots and lots of Holy Kaboom!
Yada da da da da,
Lots of Holy Kaboom, my sanctified sweethearts!

Life thereafter a wonderful dream!
Oh, goody-goody!
Life just a wonderful dream! (Kaboom!)
No radioactive winds near or far (Kaboom!)
No retaliatory missiles daring to ream,
Allah's Heaven-Sent Miracle-Screen.
None at all,
Not even from a Jew-manned submarine,
When life's all a wonderful dream!

And so thanks to you know who,
Not just Allah or Mahdi but little Mahmoud too,
No longer left a single Jew,
To make Muslims any more go boo-hoo-hoo.
Yes, life nothing but a wonderful Dream!

Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da,
Kaboom! Kaboom! yada da da da da.

Our Critics' Judgment about this Headbanging Heavy-Metal Signature Song?

Well, to go by Kaboom-Kaboom's popularity in Islam, it seems we're are all in for a whirring whirligig time in the Middle East, wouldn't you say?. . . faced soon with unleashed Shiite Martyrdom out of Iran, and the Miraculous Mahdi-Messiah sure to arrive on the streets of Tehran just as his personal vassal, Mahmoud the Merrymaker, announces the great Islamic nuclear force is ready for . . . well, ready for what?

Who knows?

And, just in case unzipped Mahmoud starts hearing the Mahdi's telepathic voice telling him it's time for Apocalypse Now, Old Boy! we have some questions. Such as will the Allah-Blessed ABM-Screen really fend off several hundred nuclear warheads launched in retaliation by means of Israeli land-based missiles, Israeli cruise-missiles, submarine missiles, and super-sonic fighter-bombers not easy to detect with radar, if at all? Not to forget, of course, the radioactive winds that follow Apocalypse Kaboom! Yes, here, there, and everywhere all over the Middle East and points further afield: North Africa, Pakistan, the Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union, Bangladesh, India, and --- depending on the winds --- beyond all those lands. Or is the Personal Vassal of the Messianic-Mahdi himself --- to reappear for Shiite Muslims, but to appear for the first time for Sunni Muslims --- convinced the Mahdi will magically keep the kabooming and radioactive dust swirling only over Israeli territory, and for that matter, not touch an Israeli Arab or any Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank?

Read on, and you'll find out.

3. Consider The Psychological Impact Now of the Two Polar Phases in Islamic History

Islamic Beliefs, Expectations, and Worldviews in the Long Phase of Hard Power

It's easy to set out what this widely shared mentality happened to be for Islam's first 1000 years of existence.

In that long upswing of conquest, expansion, and military rule --- the Ottoman Turks at the very gates of Vienna, Austria as late as 1689 --- Muslims all grew accustomed to associating the credos and certitudes of Islam with its secular power, prestige, and influence. They ruled over vast empires that, at one time, stretched from southern France, Spain, and southern Italy clear across North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Empire, and into India under the Arab; later, under the Moguls in India and further to the East all the way to Indonesia; in between, under the Ottomans, in most of Southeastern Europe, Hungary, and parts of Russia. In these Muslim empires, slavery was rife --- about 11 million tropical Africans enslaved by Arab and later Ottoman traders, roughly the same number as were seized and transported to the New World by the European powers after 1600 --- and simultaneously, subject peoples were humiliated and forced to pay special taxes if they didn't convert to Islam.

Was it worse for subject peoples in Christian empires?

It all depends. Yes, for the native Americans in the New World, far better for India's Hindus and the Middle East's Arabs in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For that matter, until the emergence of liberal secular democracies in the late 18th and 19th century --- only in Northwest Europe and in the English-speaking countries, mind you --- worse for Jews too.

Topsy-Turvy Worldviews and Mindsets in the Modern Era

The modern era has been a lengthy, strung-out series of Muslim failures and debacles in the face of modernizing challenges and opportunities. It's been collapse on a vast unrelieved scale. From 1700 on, one Muslim empire and society after another fell further and further behind the Western secular states that began to industrialize rapidly in the late 18th and 19th century, both in economic progress and military prowess; and later, more humiliating still, behind Japan and eventually Israel, India, China, the rest of Pacific Asia and East Europe as well as Brazil and Mexico in contemporary Latin America.

The upshot of these endless, head-wrenching failures and decline, psychologically speaking, in Islam? A key question, the most important of all that can be asked about Muslim countries these days. The key answer: a collapse of inherited beliefs, expectations, and confidence that Islam was destined to rule the world, that's what. In their place, there's been a harrowing growth of intellectual dismay and bewilderment, compounded by