Friday, August 18, 2006

Iran's Ahmadinejad and Why His Dogmatic, Politically Charged Religious Worldview Strikes So Many Resonances in Global Islam: 5th in a Series

"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 . . . Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly." -- Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia in the Keynote Speech at the Islamic Summit Conference of 2003



"Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, Nasrallah announced on October 22, 2002: "if they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."[4][5] The New York Times qualifies this as "genocidal thinking"[6], whereas the New York Sun likens it to the 1992 Hezbollah statement, which vowed, "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."[7] Michael Rubin qualifies his goal as genocide too, quoting Nasrallah ruling out "co-existence with" the Jews or "peace", as "they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."

"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli. (New Yorker, Oct. 14, 2002)



"Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled or incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of other countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world.. .. But those who study Islamic Holy \War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. . . . Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless.

"Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]?

"Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur'anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight.

"Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim." -- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Revolutionary Founder of Clerical-Fascist Iran and the most influential Shiite cleric in the last 1000 years.



PART ONE:
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

A Reminder: What the Current Series on Iran Is About

Both today's article and the one last week deal, as it happens, with the same high-octane topic --- the screw-loose religious fanaticism of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and both, as it also happens, are part of a long series on Iran's nuclear ambitions and their weighty implications for the Middle East and US foreign policy. Our chief concern: can a terror-state --- armed with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and led, since July 2005, by a frenzied cocksure religious zealot who favors Holy War and praises death by martyrdom --- be reliably deterred by the US and others in, say, the ways the Soviet Union was during the cold war?

Deterred from What?

Another key question, no? The answer: deterred from several things that would threaten major American interests and regional stability in the Middle East.

Among those threats --- though probably the least likely --- is that Iran's clerical-fascist regime would use the nuclear weapons in a surprise first-strike against Israel or against US military forces in the region. Even though that threat can't be ruled out, implementing it would entail sure-fire national suicide for Iran by means of Israeli or American nuclear retaliation, and the likelier threats lie elsewhere. Above all, a nuclear-armed Iran might pursue a series of aggressive foreign and military policies charged with reckless, high-risk gambles of the sort, say, that Hitler or the Japanese militarists tempted fate with at the start of WWII. Such hazardous long-shots, to be precise, like trying . . .

  • To dominate the Middle East;

  • To multiply Iran's long-standing nurture and support for jihadi terrorist movements like Hezbollah and Hamas in reckless adventurous ways;

  • To encourage those terrorists to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons or maybe with crude radioactive suitcase bombs, and maybe US allies in Europe or elsewhere . . . including the US itself. Hezbollah itself, recall, is a global terrorist movement that has been operating in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Latin America for over two decades now . . . long before anybody ever heard of al Qaeda

  • And, not least, to make Iran the benighted, oil-rich head of global jihadi Islamist movements everywhere, whether Shiite or Sunni.



Wait! ---don't the two major groups of Muslims fear and hate one another? Yes; but then inflamed Islamo-fascists are still fascists and Muslims, and both Shiite and Sunni terrorists share frenzied jihadi aims and a common enemy: Jews, Israel, Jew-dominated America, Jew-run globalization, the US's running dog Western allies, Orthodox Russia, hateful Hindu India, pagan Buddhist Thailand, the Christian Philippines, and of course treacherous Muslim collaborators in power and elsewhere.

Those who think that an all-inclusive jihadi alliance is impossible might ponder why the Communist Soviet Union ended up as a key ally in World War II of democratic and capitalist Britain and America.

What Stable Deterrence Entails

We know a lot about the conditions that underpinned stable nuclear deterrence during the cold war between the super-powers, such as rational decision-making by the deterring and target-states. Will these complex conditions --- mental, political, military, and technological --- apply to a nuclear-armed Iran that's led by a rabid religious zealot, actively supports jihadi terrorists in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and elsewhere, and will likely tap its oil-riches to try placing itself at the head of all global Islamo-fascist terrorist movements?

We have to be honest. No simple at-the-ready answer is possible here.

Posted by gordongordomr @ 01:03 PM PST [ continue ]

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

What Explains President Ahmadinejad's Wild Acclaim in the Islamic World: 4th in a Series on Iran

(i.) "Destroy! Explode it! Your weapon restores my country's honor.
Resist! Explode! Shake! Destroy!
Your weapon restores my country's honor."
-- Hezbollah Celebrates Civilians' Casualties



(ii.) "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 . . . Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly." -- Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia in the Keynote Speech at the Islamic Summit Conference of 2003



(iii.) "For most shame societies, even the mildest insult must be avenged with death, because now everyone knows that you have been insulted, and without the death (or blood) to wipe it out, honor cannot be restored.

"When a culture determines that the avoidance of shame is necessary no matter what the cost, the result is a culture of fanaticism, bizarre behavior in the name of "honor"; and simultaneously within the culture, the oppression, subjugation, and humiliation of women and others perceived as "weak" (and therefore "shameful") is a high priority. Additionally, the shame culture will always perceive the guilt culture as "weak" and inferior."



(iv.) "Wary of restive populations back home, and aghast at the toll in heavily Muslim southern Lebanon, a special session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference also called for an investigation into Israel's "violations" of international law and demanded the Jewish state pay compensation.

"But it was Ahmadinejad, his hardline views on Israel reinvigorated by public backing from Iran's supreme clerical leader, who animated the emergency meeting as it strove to get the Muslim world's voice heard above the diplomatic din . . . . "Ahmadinejad has clearly struck a chord in parts of the Muslim world. He was treated like something of a rock star during a recent visit to Indonesia, particularly on college campuses." Source

This, the 4th article in an ongoing buggy series, continues our probing analysis of Iran and its nuclear programs: specifically, whether a nuclear-armed terror-state --- led by a president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who's a screw-loose religious zealot --- can be successfully deterred from aggressive foreign and military policies, including upped support for jihadi terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

More To the Point, Today's Analysis

. . . completes the argument that was left hanging fire at the very end of the last article. Its overarching topic: what explains the sky-rocketing popularity all over Islam --- at any rate among the illiterate and semi-literate massed-morons of the Arab street and its equally volatile, unhinged counterparts elsewhere --- of this crackpot Iranian leader whose mind is cock-a-hoop with a bevy of buffoonish and dangerous theocratic beliefs?

Those manic beliefs, recall, were dissected at length in the previous buggy article. Convinced that he's the personal vassal of the Messianic Mahdi --- AKA, the Hidden Imam --- Ahmadinejad believes fervently, with unscrewed, single-minded conviction, that the peek-a-boo Savior-Spook's return is just over-the-horizon and that his job as Iranian president is chiefly to hasten its blessed occurrence . . . immediately following which, according to the Shiite sect he's a member of, there will burst upon the earth the long-awaited Apocalyptic Showdown full of chaos and destruction that will see stubborn infidels exterminated, sinful Muslims forced to repent, and pure true-believing Muslims lavishly rewarded with a life-on-earth that will be free of pain, doubt, and misery. A clutch of preposterous, padded-cell fantasies only, you ask? Hardly. Nor just the blowhard rantings of an escaped loony-bin denizen either.

As Ahmadinejad told the media not long after he took office last summer (2005),

"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country. Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society. Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems," he added, newspapers and local news agencies reported."

As mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad acted faithfully in conformity with his addled cocksure convictions. He spent lavish funds improving the roads from nearby Qum to a mosque where, he claims, the Let's-Pretend-Spook has had his hideaway the last 1000 years at the bottom of a deep well . . . Ahmadinejad himself, so the press reports, having frequent telepathic chitchats with the Hide-and-Seek Savior. Similarly as mayor, he devoted himself with customary cuckoo relish to drawing up detailed plans and funding them to improve the avenues in central Tehran, the better, you see, for the jubilant pop-eyed throngs to go ape and celebrate their salvation when the Hidden Spook goes skyhooting out of his well and headtrips pell-mell to materialize in full Messianic drag at the very heart of downtown Tehran. . . . no doubt to be embraced and slobbered over by his ecstatic personal vassal.

There is a slight problem for the rest of us who don't believe in ghosts and theocratic miracle-workings.

After a 1000 years of such lonely, hide-and-seek solitude, you can't but wonder whether the poor Mahdi's brain might not have been water-logged by all the damp drip-drip in the ancient well and maybe gone as loony in the long interval as Ahmadinejad himself has in just a few decades of earthly existence. Whatever, assuming you're not decked out in a strait-jacket, you have to wonder no less whether you'd want a world in which a deranged religious nut has nuclear weapons at his disposal as part of his glorious plans to hasten the final Apocalyptic Showdown with his religion's devilish enemies . . . the vast majority of the world's population, at least in their impure, unenlightened status as infidels.

How Today's Argument Unfolds:

Recall, again, that the previous buggy article --- the 3rd in this Iranian series --- set out the slop and swill that comprise the theocratic rubbish-pile of Ahmadinejad's ultra-orthodox Shiite beliefs about the Mahdi and Apocalypse Soon. The current analysis continues that line-of-thought, looking at the long-term causes of his rocketing rise to celebrity-status all over the Islamic world . . . now rivaled as the latest and greatest Strongman Savior of Islamic pride, honor, and power in the world only by the even more meteoric lift-off to the claimant role of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Iran's terrorist spin-off in Lebanon.

  1. In Part One, some introductory comments as a transition from the previous article unfold quickly. The thrust of its remaining analysis shows how Ahmadinejad's rabid acclaim can't be explained just by all his blustering twaddle and whirling weirdo behavior over the last year. The deeper roots lie elsewhere --- in a rippling psychic syndrome, rife all over the Islamic world, that's marked by bewilderment at Islam's economic backwardness, military weakness, and lack of prestige and awe, and by the sizzle of slow-burn shame, fast-burn humiliation, and crackling resentments that directly ensue.

  2. Part Two then probes the nature of this widely shared mind-set full of mental dismay, emotional distress, and raging urges for revenge against the villains and evil tormentors who are responsible, so the conspiratorial lunacies have it, for Islam's multitudinous troubles . . . above all, the repeated failures now hundreds of years old of any Islamic society anywhere to grapple effectively with the galloping tumultuous changes posed by both modernity and ever more intrusive globalizing forces.

  3. Part Three sets out some hard evidence, including recent survey data of Islamic attitudes in several Muslim countries, that adds to our earlier evidence . . . not least, some startlingly graphic comments of prominent Islamic spokesmen that reinforce the buggy analysis about the nature of the jarring, hyperkinetic mental outlook, full of conspiratorial lunacies and bug-eyed urges for revenge, that's now rampant everywhere in Islam. [Addendum: August 1st, 2006: What with the length of the first two parts, prof bug has decided to highlight the hard evidence and the buggy analysis of it in a separate article that will follow in a day or two.



 

PART ONE:
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
WHAT EXPLAINS AHMADINEJAD'S SKY-HIGH ACCLAIM IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES AROUND THE WORLD



Even in Sunni countries, Ahmadinejad's joyful celebrity appears to have leapt to Alpine heights . . . at any rate, among the fickle, incendiary and crudely ignorant masses of the Arab street and their bubbleheaded counterparts elsewhere in Islam. Witness these testimonials reported in May 2006:

"Iran is looking for a leadership role in the region," Prince Faisal [of Saudi Arabia] told journalists at a meeting in Washington Friday. Mr. Ahmadinejad has soared to great popularity, both in Iran and in the Arab world, an anomaly for a Persian Shi'ite leader to find such support among Arabs and Sunnis.

The Iranian president found support at home when he abolished the change every spring to daylight savings time that Iran had adopted since 1990. His antics of "wiping Israel off the map" and denying the existence of the Holocaust won him points among certain Muslim circles. But it is his defiant stance over Iran's nuclear ambitions, his facing up to the U.S. and major European powers, which gained him much popular support in the Arab and Islamic world. "Ahmadinejad is popular in the whole Muslim world, from Indonesia to Nigeria, as the man who says 'No' to the West," a senior diplomat told UPI.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's meteoric rise to political stardom "is something that went beyond his wildest dreams," said a diplomat. Khomeini was popular only among Shi'ites, whereas Mr. Ahmadinejad's popularity has spread beyond Shi'ites, into the majority mainstream Sunni branch of Islam. No one in Iran dares to challenge him," a senior diplomat told UPI. His popularity does not mean the regime is popular.

Needless to add, this mass celebrity and the manic hopes attached to it by rampaging street mobs, frantic publicists, and bigoted closed-minded clerics --- Ahmadinejad's popularity similar, in most respects, to the recent, sudden burst into prominence out-of-nowhere of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, his new rival for the title of Strongman Muslim Champion-of-the-Year --- reflect a cluster of charged high-coiled sentiments that the dictators of those Sunni countries don't share. If anything, the dictators are frightened by the madcap Iranian President and his crony terrorist chum in Lebanon, not to mention scared as well by his screwball eschatological hokum about the imminent return of the Messianic Mahdi and an Apocalyptic Showdown that will immediately ensue --- or, come to that, by the concrete threats that Iran's nuclear programs and its long-standing support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and terrorist-supporting Syria pose for the Sunni-ruled countries.

To Explain Ahmadinejad's Current Hero-Status, A Problem Rears Up Suddenly

Namely?

Well, however sound the analysis of the previous few paragraphs happens to be --- note: found in the previous buggy article --- it deals mainly with the ephemeral, up-to-date causes of Ahmadinejad's popularity. The profounder, far more deeply rooted reasons for his soaring status as No. 1 --- or possibly, No. 2 --- on the Hit Parade of Muslim Celebrity-Supermen remain to be uncovered.

As sources of his red-hot acclaim, you see, it's not enough to point to Ahmadinejad's lunatic harangue at the UN General Assembly last year and the attendant angel-sent illumination that he claimed had suffused his heaven-ordained presence, or his long rambling letter --- full of religious abracadabra inviting George W. Bush to convert to Islam --- that he posted earlier this year, or the racist and garbled letter, which any neo-Nazi anywhere could have penned, that he sent just recently to the Chancellor of Germany. Not enough, either, to highlight his crackpot conspiratorial views of Jews and Israel and his luridly repeated Holocaust-denial, along with recurring threats that Israel will soon be wiped off the map . . . however joyfully these deliriums are received almost everywhere in Islam these days, the dominant Muslim views of Jews now indistinguishable from Hitlerian racism. Nor enough, even, to find that raging, wild-eyed Muslim mobs --- whenever they're not busy, anyway, burning Christian churches and torching embassies to protest Danish cartoons, or slaughtering infidels in Nigeria because of a Miss World Contest, or massacring Buddhists in Thailand or Hindus in India or Christians in East Timor and Sudan and Russia, or rapturously shooting their guns heaven-way at the latest news that Hamas or Islamic Jihad has Kaboomed an Israeli café or market --- go ape and make whoopee whenever a fist-shaking leader of a Muslim country engages in rabid bombast and nuclear braggadocio that defy the powerful Western countries as well as Russia, India, and China.

Posted by gordongordomr @ 12:12 PM PST [ continue ]