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Amil
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Joined: 12 Jun 2004 Posts: 91
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Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:12 am Post subject: Is America a Bully? |
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Is America a Bully?
By: Amil Imani
I admit that America is not perfect. Tyrants and populists such as Castro and Chavez in the neighborhood and Iran’s Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong-II on the other side of the world call America the Big Bad Bully. In a way, to be name-called by “world leaders” like these fellows is a Compliment. But, when those who owe their very life to the American “Bully” vilify America and Americans, a response is definitely in order, since remaining silent is often taken as conceding to the accusations. Consider for a moment this patronizing and insulting piece by B. R., published in a London tabloid.
“Were I a Kerry voter, though, I’d feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military-lovin’, sister-marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-lothin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land ‘free and strong.’”
And this “tribute” comes to us courtesy of our trans-Atlantic “friends.” If this is what our “friends” say about us, then it is understandable that a whole slew of our ill-wishers trip over one another to vilify us. Many French, for one, never seem to miss an opportunity to berate and betray us. The Russians are just too happy to do all they can to pain us, in a perverse way of trying to cover their own misery. And of course the Islamists and the mullahs portray America as a brain-dead Great Satan tool of Zionism.
To make matters worse, a vociferous clique of local leftists with a suicide wish are doing all they can to take the country with them to the grave they so earnestly seek. These self-appointed squatters of the higher-ground, on both sides of the Atlantic, are riding so high on their high horse that they are blind to the realities down on earth.
It is a fact that the spiteful Europeans are mired up to their eyeballs in problems that hold every promise of spelling their doom before very long. Instead of focusing on solving their own problems, many Europeans place them at America’s doorstep. These “wise” Europeans find it their high calling to lecture and deride us at every opportunity.
To understand what is going on, we need to take a quick look at some of the quirks of the human mind. Venting, blaming, and loathing provide mental relief, at a price. Venting can be a relatively harmless way of expressing frustration, a get-it-off-your-chest exercise, the kind of thing people do with friends, at a bar or on a psychotherapist’s couch, for instance.
Yet, when it comes to blaming and loathing, the picture changes considerably. It is common for people to blame themselves, deservedly or not, for their problems. It is also not uncommon for people to actually loath themselves. In extreme cases, the self-loather may destroy his own life. Therefore, loathing is a dangerous energy that must find expression. It is by far safer for the person to discharge his loathing venom on others, particularly at others who are not likely to retaliate.
America has become a safe and convenient target for both the calculating as well as the mindless loather.
Why America? Because America is big enough, powerful enough, successful enough to be envied by every large and small, also-ran and failed individual and nation.
If you are a mercenary journalist who is paid by the word to boost circulation, you had better pick on somebody big enough for your story to fly. You can’t pick on Bangladesh or Haiti. People would laugh you out of town if you do, long before the publisher gets around to firing you.
Another reason is that saying and writing nice things is not provocative, gets no one’s attention and is unlikely to get published. If you want to be heard, you need to say nasty things, as nasty as you can and preferably against the biggest target that you can attack and get away with it.
Furthermore, by being venomous you become the voice for the frustrated, resentful and envious. A few words to our European friends are in order.
Your leftist gadflies deride America’s way of life while extolling the virtues of your present political and social model. They claim that your model is the wave of the glorious future and it will be adopted by the rest of the world. Strangely enough, ordinary Europeans don’t seem to think so. Demographic trends show that most Europeans don't even believe in the European ideal in sufficient numbers to want to pass it on to the next generation. According to the European Commission, the average birth rate for the European Union as a whole is now 1.4 children per woman, which is well below the 2.1 replacement rate. According to Germany's Federal Statistics Office, more people died in that country in 2005 than were born.
Not only is Europe declining in number, it is aging as well. According to the US Census Bureau, Europe in 2000 had the highest percentage of people aged 65 and older in the world, and this figure is set to double by 2050. Who is going to work and pay for all the entitlement programs you have become accustomed to?
Economists forecast that European budget deficits will skyrocket as governments strain to reconcile declining tax bases with millions of elderly people who force up spending on pensions, health care, and other services.
Politically, Europe is not much better off. Der Spiegel, a leftist German magazine, recently made the following observation:
"Europe has become a continent of political crises with governments in Italy, France, Britain and Poland all suffering from paralysis or a lack of voter approval. Is the continent about to abandon its integration project and return to the old era of national rivalry?"
Question: Weren’t these “sister-marryin’”, “gun-totin,’” “red-necks” Americans who, not too long ago, left their “sisters-wives” behind, picked up their guns and came over and saved you from the Nazis? Weren’t there tens of thousands of these same fellows who never made it back home? Did these “foreigner-despisin’” Americans, by tens of thousands, leave their limbs in the trenches of Europe out of contempt for foreigners?
The people you call “moronic muppets” must have earned this designation not only for not demanding war reparations, but for generously giving Europe billions of dollars to help it get back on its feet. In your ethos, generosity of heart is considered moronic?
No sooner were the Nazis defeated, than the Soviets Communists annexed some of the continent and prepared to swallow the rest. Again, it was this “military-lovin’” American nation that paid the lion’s share of the bill to defend you against the Soviets’ menace while you greedily made money and provided a comfortable life for yourselves under the shield of the American forces.
Sadly enough, dear Europeans, you are victims of your own delusions. America is not the Big Bad Bully. The really Terrible Bully is Islamism, and it’s right in your midst eroding your social and political fabric bit-by-bit. You don’t need to fantasize about your future. Your future is already playing out in the Islamic lands.
Dear gadfly European, to check out your future, you only need to visit the Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, which is one of the most civilized countries that fell to the sword of the Islamists. While you are there, see for yourself how Iran is quivering under the stone-age rules of Sharia. Attend a public hanging, not an uncommon event.
The man’s crime, you may ask?
Homosexuality, you are told.
Try hoisting a poster demanding gay rights and see what happens. If you do, you run the risk of being hanged right there and then as another homosexual. The seriously “gay-lothin’” are the Islamists. They are the very same people who are busily laying the groundwork to perform similar barbaric spectacles in your cities and towns before very long. That’s your future as more and more Islamists invade your countries and supplant human rights with Islamic Sharia.
Although I wish you the best of luck, I fear that this time around America can’t help you. You are on your own. Say whatever you like about America, while your voice is not yet stilled. Regrettably, your slurs about America seem like the last words of an ungrateful doomed people. |
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cyrus Site Admin
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Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:15 pm Post subject: Beware of Mullahs Bearing Gifts |
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Beware of Mullahs Bearing Gifts
By: Amil Imani
Iran ’s mullahs have repeatedly indicated their willingness and ability to help restore order in Iraq , on the condition that the United States packs up and leaves the region. The mullahs have also pledged on their Boy Scout’s honor, although they have never been Boy Scouts, that their nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes. As a further gesture of goodwill, these self-appointed custodians of Allah’s earth are volunteering to serve as unpaid policemen of the entire Gulf region, protecting vital U.S. interests, just like the Shah did before them. Sounds like a great gift package from the kind-hearted do-gooders of Allah.
Beware of mullahs bearing gifts! The mullahs are diehard adherents of the Islamists’ eleventh commandment “Thou shall not lie or dissimilate (tagyyeh), deceive or cheat (ketman) unless they serve a higher purpose.” And to these devoted faithful, there is no higher purpose in the world than serving Allah’s biding, as they like it and as they interpret it.
Keep in mind that the very name “Islam” means “submission,” unquestioning submission to the will of Allah.
Qur’an 33:36, "It is not fitting for a Muslim man or woman to have any choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option."
And in the Quran itself, Allah gives these fellows their mandate: Cleanse the earth from all kuffar (infidels), and help usher in the golden rule of Islam over a corrupt world. This high-purpose strategic goal of Islamization legitimizes any and all tactics.
Qur'an 8:39 "Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah."
Allah, in his kindness, leaves a bit of wiggle room for the unbelievers. Those who refuse to convert or whose life is spared may live under the rule of Islam by paying poll taxes.
Qur’an 9:29, "Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender, paying the protective tax in submission."
These men of Allah are urged to use every “stratagem of war,” to kill and take the disbelievers as captives. The ones they do not kill, mostly women and children, they take as booties of war and slaves. These devotees of Allah have been and continue to be among the most persistent practitioners of slavery.
Qur’an 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."
“Every stratagem,” means every stratagem. No heinous act is out of bounds for these savages. They place children, for instance, in the backseat of a car bomb so that it could be waved through checkpoints without inspection. Then, the adults park the car in the midst of a shopping crowd, run out of the car and detonate it with the children inside. Horrific? Shocking? Absolutely barbaric? These are the same people who used thousands of Iranian children as minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq war to clear a path for their more valued armored vehicles.
And as for Iran ’s mullahs’ unyielding drive to acquire the ultimate weapon, it is in obedience to the command of the Quran. And “terrorism,” abhorrent to the civilized world, is explicitly enjoined on the faithful.
Qur'an 8:59 "The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy."
And for those who advocate retreating to the safety of “fortress America ,” the following warning should dispel their vain hope. Europe is already partly invaded, and America and other infidel lands are next.
Qur'an 13:41 "Do they not see us advancing from all sides into the land (of the disbelievers), reducing its borders (by giving it to believers in war victories).
It is worse than appeasement to negotiate a “deal” with the Iranian theocrats because any deal struck with these mullahs is only another ruse for them to further their plans. The UN resolutions are nothing more than pieces of paper good for fire, they can pass them all they want, president Ahmadinejad proclaims belligerently. These Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah, the Qur’an the same charter that they hold in one hand while slashing the throat of an innocent infidel and yelling joyously “Allah is the greatest” the whole time.
To the misguided “Supreme Guide,” mullah Ali Khamenei of Iran , a few words are in order. The civilized Iranians, descendants of Cyrus the Great, find you, mulla Ali, and your cabal of Islamists guilty of heinous crimes. A partial list of charges is given below.
Domestically
* You do not represent the Iranian people. You are a usurper of power. You are guilty of transforming a noble nation into a world pariah.
* You are denying and violating a long-suffering people all its human rights.
* You are guilty of beating, imprisoning and torturing a few dozen women who braved participating in a peaceful demonstration pleading for equal family rights, on the recent International Day of Women.
* You systematically beat, imprison, and torture all manners of citizens, from school teachers to students to union workers, for daring to raise their voices against the plight to which you have subjected them.
* You savagely beat and haul to your dungeons of torture and death over a thousand of the tens of thousands of teachers who had recently gathered in front of the parliament requesting nothing more than their back pay and living wages.
* You direct systematic genocidal measures against all non-Shia religious minorities, with Baha’is as prime target.
* You arrest some Christians, even your Quran calls “People of the Book,” for observing Christmas.
* You implement barbaric practices of stoning, hanging and amputations for those who are convicted of crimes in your kangaroo courts without due process. You even imprison those few lawyers who rise in the defense of the innocent.
* You plunder, mismanage and dole out Iran ’s national wealth with the result that the great majority of the people are living in poverty. Iranian women are forced into prostitution to survive or simply sold as sex slaves in Persian Gulf states.
* Your fascist misrule of nearly three decades has driven millions of Iran ’s best children to four corners of the world. Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranians are compelled to continue the exodus, depriving Iran of the sorely-needed talents at home.
* You spend a fortune on the nuclear program that you claim is only aimed for peaceful purposes, while turning Iran into little more than a gas station nation, with its precious oil wealth squandered and its facilities on the verge of collapse through neglect.
* You have created a suffocating social atmosphere that has driven masses of the people to the use of hard drugs as a way of numbing their pain.
Internationally
* You look far and wide to support any and all terrorists. Your delusional theology mandates the creation of horrific conditions in the world so that your Hidden Imam is compelled to appear and establish his rule.
* You spare no efforts at sabotaging any settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis. You arm and train all Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any and all that come.
* You direct similar criminal schemes on your eastern flank, in Afghanistan . You consider any democratic system as the enemy of Islamofascism, and rightfully so.
* You work ceaselessly, expand Iran ’s stolen funds, and do all you can in support of your Shia co-fascists Hezbollah in Lebanon .
* Your hands are dripping with the blood of thousands of Iraqis, victims of your bloodthirsty kin mercenaries aiming to kill a budding democracy in Iraq next door.
* You supply your mercenaries with armor-piercing projectiles for killing and maiming the coalition forces in Iraq . Your cowardly killing by proxy, using these roadside planted bombs, has taken the lives of nearly 200 Americans.
* You interpret the highly subdued reactions of the coalition to your savage actions as indications of weakness. So, you find it in yourself to venture into direct confrontation by capturing lightly-armed British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters.
Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic ummeh. It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as “Ofooli,” setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as “Tolooi,” rising-living order. They are in no mood of negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
And to you, the misguided mullah Ali Khamenei, don’t be fooled by the sycophants who misinform you. Don’t threaten the West by either as-yet-to-come online nuclear weapons or your fantasized sleeper cells. You will be terribly disappointed when Iranian expatriates everywhere will be among the very first to help the authorities find your sleeper cells, if any actually exist, and put them into permanent sleep.
Freedom may suffer retreats periodically and tyranny may advance occasionally. Yet, free people everywhere will meet any challenge and pay any price to safeguard the precious treasure of freedom for themselves and the finest bequeath they can leave for the next generation.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America . Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran . He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com |
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cyrus Site Admin
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Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 4993
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Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:13 pm Post subject: Re: Beware of Mullahs Bearing Gifts |
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Michael Ledeen wrote: |
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTU3OWEwZTg2NTcxNmFlZTk1MDZiZjExMWIzZjdjZjc
How to Deal With the Mullahs [Michael Ledeen]
It's one of the best discussions I've read in quite a while. Elegant AND passionate, which isn't easy:
Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic ummeh. It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as "Ofooli," setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as "Tolooi," rising-living order. They are in no mood of negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
It's by Amil Imani, and you should read it all , from the Iranian blog. |
cyrus wrote: | Beware of Mullahs Bearing Gifts
By: Amil Imani
Iran ’s mullahs have repeatedly indicated their willingness and ability to help restore order in Iraq , on the condition that the United States packs up and leaves the region. The mullahs have also pledged on their Boy Scout’s honor, although they have never been Boy Scouts, that their nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes. As a further gesture of goodwill, these self-appointed custodians of Allah’s earth are volunteering to serve as unpaid policemen of the entire Gulf region, protecting vital U.S. interests, just like the Shah did before them. Sounds like a great gift package from the kind-hearted do-gooders of Allah.
Beware of mullahs bearing gifts! The mullahs are diehard adherents of the Islamists’ eleventh commandment “Thou shall not lie or dissimilate (tagyyeh), deceive or cheat (ketman) unless they serve a higher purpose.” And to these devoted faithful, there is no higher purpose in the world than serving Allah’s biding, as they like it and as they interpret it.
Keep in mind that the very name “Islam” means “submission,” unquestioning submission to the will of Allah.
Qur’an 33:36, "It is not fitting for a Muslim man or woman to have any choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option."
And in the Quran itself, Allah gives these fellows their mandate: Cleanse the earth from all kuffar (infidels), and help usher in the golden rule of Islam over a corrupt world. This high-purpose strategic goal of Islamization legitimizes any and all tactics.
Qur'an 8:39 "Fight them until all opposition ends and all submit to Allah."
Allah, in his kindness, leaves a bit of wiggle room for the unbelievers. Those who refuse to convert or whose life is spared may live under the rule of Islam by paying poll taxes.
Qur’an 9:29, "Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender, paying the protective tax in submission."
These men of Allah are urged to use every “stratagem of war,” to kill and take the disbelievers as captives. The ones they do not kill, mostly women and children, they take as booties of war and slaves. These devotees of Allah have been and continue to be among the most persistent practitioners of slavery.
Qur’an 9:5, "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war."
“Every stratagem,” means every stratagem. No heinous act is out of bounds for these savages. They place children, for instance, in the backseat of a car bomb so that it could be waved through checkpoints without inspection. Then, the adults park the car in the midst of a shopping crowd, run out of the car and detonate it with the children inside. Horrific? Shocking? Absolutely barbaric? These are the same people who used thousands of Iranian children as minesweepers during the Iran-Iraq war to clear a path for their more valued armored vehicles.
And as for Iran ’s mullahs’ unyielding drive to acquire the ultimate weapon, it is in obedience to the command of the Quran. And “terrorism,” abhorrent to the civilized world, is explicitly enjoined on the faithful.
Qur'an 8:59 "The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy."
And for those who advocate retreating to the safety of “fortress America ,” the following warning should dispel their vain hope. Europe is already partly invaded, and America and other infidel lands are next.
Qur'an 13:41 "Do they not see us advancing from all sides into the land (of the disbelievers), reducing its borders (by giving it to believers in war victories).
It is worse than appeasement to negotiate a “deal” with the Iranian theocrats because any deal struck with these mullahs is only another ruse for them to further their plans. The UN resolutions are nothing more than pieces of paper good for fire, they can pass them all they want, president Ahmadinejad proclaims belligerently. These Islamists go by their 1400-year-old charter of Allah, the Qur’an the same charter that they hold in one hand while slashing the throat of an innocent infidel and yelling joyously “Allah is the greatest” the whole time.
To the misguided “Supreme Guide,” mullah Ali Khamenei of Iran , a few words are in order. The civilized Iranians, descendants of Cyrus the Great, find you, mulla Ali, and your cabal of Islamists guilty of heinous crimes. A partial list of charges is given below.
Domestically
* You do not represent the Iranian people. You are a usurper of power. You are guilty of transforming a noble nation into a world pariah.
* You are denying and violating a long-suffering people all its human rights.
* You are guilty of beating, imprisoning and torturing a few dozen women who braved participating in a peaceful demonstration pleading for equal family rights, on the recent International Day of Women.
* You systematically beat, imprison, and torture all manners of citizens, from school teachers to students to union workers, for daring to raise their voices against the plight to which you have subjected them.
* You savagely beat and haul to your dungeons of torture and death over a thousand of the tens of thousands of teachers who had recently gathered in front of the parliament requesting nothing more than their back pay and living wages.
* You direct systematic genocidal measures against all non-Shia religious minorities, with Baha’is as prime target.
* You arrest some Christians, even your Quran calls “People of the Book,” for observing Christmas.
* You implement barbaric practices of stoning, hanging and amputations for those who are convicted of crimes in your kangaroo courts without due process. You even imprison those few lawyers who rise in the defense of the innocent.
* You plunder, mismanage and dole out Iran ’s national wealth with the result that the great majority of the people are living in poverty. Iranian women are forced into prostitution to survive or simply sold as sex slaves in Persian Gulf states.
* Your fascist misrule of nearly three decades has driven millions of Iran ’s best children to four corners of the world. Hundreds of thousands of educated Iranians are compelled to continue the exodus, depriving Iran of the sorely-needed talents at home.
* You spend a fortune on the nuclear program that you claim is only aimed for peaceful purposes, while turning Iran into little more than a gas station nation, with its precious oil wealth squandered and its facilities on the verge of collapse through neglect.
* You have created a suffocating social atmosphere that has driven masses of the people to the use of hard drugs as a way of numbing their pain.
Internationally
* You look far and wide to support any and all terrorists. Your delusional theology mandates the creation of horrific conditions in the world so that your Hidden Imam is compelled to appear and establish his rule.
* You spare no efforts at sabotaging any settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis. You arm and train all Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any and all that come.
* You direct similar criminal schemes on your eastern flank, in Afghanistan . You consider any democratic system as the enemy of Islamofascism, and rightfully so.
* You work ceaselessly, expand Iran ’s stolen funds, and do all you can in support of your Shia co-fascists Hezbollah in Lebanon .
* Your hands are dripping with the blood of thousands of Iraqis, victims of your bloodthirsty kin mercenaries aiming to kill a budding democracy in Iraq next door.
* You supply your mercenaries with armor-piercing projectiles for killing and maiming the coalition forces in Iraq . Your cowardly killing by proxy, using these roadside planted bombs, has taken the lives of nearly 200 Americans.
* You interpret the highly subdued reactions of the coalition to your savage actions as indications of weakness. So, you find it in yourself to venture into direct confrontation by capturing lightly-armed British sailors and marines in Iraqi waters.
Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic ummeh. It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as “Ofooli,” setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as “Tolooi,” rising-living order. They are in no mood of negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
And to you, the misguided mullah Ali Khamenei, don’t be fooled by the sycophants who misinform you. Don’t threaten the West by either as-yet-to-come online nuclear weapons or your fantasized sleeper cells. You will be terribly disappointed when Iranian expatriates everywhere will be among the very first to help the authorities find your sleeper cells, if any actually exist, and put them into permanent sleep.
Freedom may suffer retreats periodically and tyranny may advance occasionally. Yet, free people everywhere will meet any challenge and pay any price to safeguard the precious treasure of freedom for themselves and the finest bequeath they can leave for the next generation.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America . Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran . He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com |
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cyrus Site Admin
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Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: A Call to Moderate Muslims |
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A Call to Moderate Muslims
By: Amil Imani
Dear Muslims, your right to think for yourself and choose what you believe was denied to you from birth. In return, your mind was crammed, without let up, with constant threats of dreadful punishments if you tried to retrieve your right and promises of glorious rewards if you meekly accepted the collaborative action of your parents, relatives, and the vested-interest clergy.
You became a Muslim by the accident of birth, although, above all else you are a human being. You have the right and the obligation to examine the belief implanted in you and to decide for yourself if it is the guidance you want.
This is the 21st century. The vast planet earth of the time of Muhammad has shrunk into a global village. The greatly diverse and disparate peoples of the world are now neighbors in the same village. This new tribe of the global village is facing immense challenges and opportunities. The resources and the talents of the various clans can no longer be squandered on internecine fighting. Every member of every clan, irrespective of gender, race, or any other consideration is entitled to full citizenship, a just citizenship that bestows privileges and demands responsibilities.
Radical Islam claims to be the true Islam and strives to force humanity into submission to a system of beliefs and practices of Sharia which are anathema to freedom. Even Muslims who do not agree with the extremist Islam are intimidated, pressured into silence, and condemned to death.
“The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing,” said Albert Einstein. It is incumbent upon every Muslim to arise and counter Islamism. In this courageous effort, the non-Islamist Muslims can count on the unflagging support of free people.
The problem facing humanity today is reminiscent of an earlier and equally sinister practice of slavery in America . A handful of northern whites, motivated by the high human ideals of freedom and justice, rose against slavery. They were the abolitionists who believed that slavery was evil. The abolitionists risked a great deal fighting to free the terribly wronged black people. Over time, the movement gathered momentum, more and more black people shattered the shackles of slavery and banded with more and more awakened non-slaves to put an end to the horrific scourge of slavery.
Free people are committed to defend the rights of Muslims to observe peaceful Islam because they believe in the sanctity of freedom. By standing for Muslims’ legitimate human rights, free people also guard their own freedom.
Today’s scourge is the radical Islam that denies the non-Muslims as well as the moderate Muslims the inalienable right of freedom. They are denied freedom to choose whom and how to worship, how to live in harmony with people who make different choices, and how to pool together in overcoming the myriad of challenges that demand humanity’s united and best efforts.
While the moderate Muslims are generally silent, either out of fear, lack of organization, or apathy, the Islamists work around the clock and around the world to further their agenda. Hardly a week passes without a Grand Mufti or an Ayatollah issuing pronouncements in support of radical Islam. The rank-and-file Islamist clergy, for their part, transmit these fatwas and edicts to their flocks in mosques and hammer them into the minds of impressionable children in madressehs. Through this grass-root process, radical Islam is recruiting greater and greater number of adherents. On the one hand, the Islamists engage in acts of violence to disrupt the functioning of societies, while on the other they cleverly exploit the freedom they enjoy in non-Islamic lands to subvert them from within.
As a moderate Muslim you can no longer remain a spectator in the existential clash of Islamism with freedom. The best guarantee for you to practice Islam as a religion of peace is to rally with those who are guardians of freedom. You also need to examine what kind of life the Islamists aim to impose, by whatever means they can, on everyone.
Even a partial brief examination of what constitutes radical Islam should be enough to persuade every righteous Muslim to oppose and defeat it.
The great majority of Muslims are not adherents of the radical line. Yet, because the Islamists wage their war under the name of Islam, they receive immense direct and indirect support from the rank-and-file ordinary Muslims. It is this support of moderate Muslims that keeps the Islamists alive. And it is the Islamists who intend to show no mercy to any and all who do not share their theology, be they Muslims or not.
The brand of Islam that the Islamists hold sacred, whether of the numerous Sunni or many Shia varieties, is replete with beliefs and practices that range from the absurd to the profane. It is a great travesty to any human to be forced to adopt the entire package of the Islamists’ dictates.
The Islamists have searched the scriptures and have selectively chosen those statements and precedence that they could use to legitimize their violent and primitive agenda. The Jihadists, for instance, claim that the Quran itself urges them to make jihad, “jahedoo fee sabeil-u-llah,” make jihad for the cause of Allah. The word “jihad” has, at least, two vastly different meanings. It means exertion. It also stands for making war, and it is the latter that the jihadists invoke as their mandate.
The Sunni radicalism is directed by a host of movements such as Wahabism, Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood. For now, however, let us take a brieflook at a Shia radicalism based on the teachings and pronouncements of the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, a man revered by the world’s Shia as “Imam,” a title that has been exclusive to the twelve successive descendants of Muhammad who headed the sect. Shia theologians as well as the rank-and-file faithful view Khomeini’s writings and sayings as religiously authoritative, illuminating, and binding. It is instructive to list a few of these from the most-revered and exalted cleric who have been the father of Shia radicalism and a point-man in the war against all people he deemed as infidels.
“Islam alone is to govern.”
“We must give rise to repeated crises, and give a new and better value to the idea of death and martyrdom... If Iran disappears in the future, it is not important, what is important is to drown the whole world in a situation of crisis.”
“Those who want to set up democracy want to drag our country into corruption and perdition. They are worse than the Jews. They must be hanged. They are not men. They have the blood of animals. Be they damned.”
“All the laws in the world, except those of the Islamic republic, come from a handful of idiotic syphilitics. They are null and void. Islam does not recognize any other law but its own in the world.”
This man of great adulation and emulation of the Islamists, Khomeini, was indeed a bloodthirsty as well as an ignorant person who issued great many dangerous and absurd pronouncements that are taken as edicts and laws to be followed by the faithful. Some examples are:
He gave orders to the Iranian Air Force to destroy American satellites, and to the Ministry of Agriculture, to flood the Iranian market with Iranian wheat so as to make the economy of the “Great Satan” become weak. Iran has always been an importer of wheat.
A great deal of Khomeini’s adjudications are concerned with matters such as the way to urinate and to defecate; what is pure and what is impure; women and their periods; sexuality with animals.
The hatred of Khomeini for the Jews surpassed that of Hitler. He proclaimed:
“ Israel must burn to ashes.”
It is from this command that his devoted pupil, the fascist president Ahmadinejad, gets his marching orders to “wipe Israel off the map.” Before Ahmadinejad, another president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, mullah Ali Akbar Refsanjani, announced that a nuclear exchange will destroy Israel while the Islamic world can tolerate and survive the damage.
This sort of Armageddon thinking and agenda is not exclusive to the Shia Islamists. The Sunni jihadists’ program is just as regressive, oppressive, and violent.
In conclusion, dear moderate Muslim, if this is not your Islam, if you do not subscribe to its tenets and plans, and you do not want to live under the barbaric provisions of Sharia, then you need to speak up, rise up, and actively confront it. You can be assured that the free people of the world are committed to join ranks with you to defeat radical Islam.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com |
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Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 11:18 am Post subject: The Missing Moderate Muslims |
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The Missing Moderate Muslims
By: Amil Imani
“I am already against the next war,” read the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. I long to tell the driver: the next war is already here; Islamists are waging it in every corner of the globe and the “moderate Muslims” are either actively supporting them, placing the blame on the West, or simply looking the other way. This war aims to wipe out everything that free people cherish, including the right of expressing their sentiments. Banishing war has been the perennial dream of mankind’s best, while its worst have been frustrating its realization. To renounce war unilaterally and unconditionally is surrender and death.
Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential of inflicting more suffering and destroying more lives than any before it. Ruthless Islamic forces are advancing rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom are acquiescing and retreating. Before long, Islamism is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal of cleansing the earth of all non-Muslims. Any and all means and weapons are to be enlisted in the service of this final holy war that aims to establish the Islamic Ummeh.
But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racist, bigot, hatemonger and much more.
But where are all the peace-loving moderate Muslims that supposedly are in great majority? The Muslims who are neither jihadists themselves, nor do they support them? I and others, time and again, have been calling upon them to stand up and show the world that they oppose the fanatical Islamists. It is small comfort even if the vast majority of Muslims are not fanatic radicals, when they do nothing to demonstrate their position. It is instructive to recall that it is invariably a minority, and more often than not a very small minority, that launches a campaign of death and destruction.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of the non-Muslims to believe that one can be a Muslim moderate, given that Islam is radical at its very core. To be a moderate Muslim demands that the person explicitly renounce much of the violent, exclusionary, and radical teachings of the Quran. By so doing, the individual issues his own death warrant in Islamic countries, is condemned as apostate if he lives in a non-Islamic land and may even earn a fatwa on his head.
It is deadly, in any confrontation, to assess the adversary through one’s own mental template, because the two templates can be vastly different from each other. People in the West are accustomed in relativistic rather than absolutistic thinking. To Westerners, just about all matters range from black to white with an array of gray shades between the two poles. To Muslims, by contrast, nearly everything is in black and white and with virtually no shades of gray. The former type of thinking is typical of more mature minds, while the latter is that of young children and the less-enlightened.
This absolutist thinking is enshrined in the Quran itself. When the starting point for a Muslim is the explicit fanatical words of Allah in the Quran, then the faithful are left with no choice other than literally obeying its dictates or even taking it to the next level of fanaticism. Good Muslims, for instance, do not shake hands with women, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it. Although the Quran stipulates that men are rulers over women, good Muslim men take it upon themselves to rule women not much better than they treat their domesticated animals.
All extreme systems operate outside of the constraints of checks-and-balances and according to the principle of negative feedback loop. That is, once it starts, the extreme becomes more and more extreme until self-destructs and takes the larger system down with it. Cancer is a case in point. It begins with only a few cells. Left unchecked, the few cells continue expanding and stop only with the death of the host.
Fanatical Islam may indeed be a minority. Yet it is a deadly cancer that has metastasized throughout the body of the world. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off.
Dozens of Islamist shooting wars of lesser and greater bloodletting are presently raging in the world, aided and abetted by the “moderate Muslim” majority. The so called moderate Muslims, even if they exist, are complicit in the crimes of the radicals either by providing them with funds, logistics, and new recruits or by simply failing to actively confront and unequivocally renounce them.
As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.
In Germany of the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hot-headed fools. Before long, the hot-headed few cowed in the dismissive masses and as a result millions lost their lives.
The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt with its large block of representatives in the parliament, but also wages its deadly campaign through its hundreds of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.
The Wahabis finance thousands of madressehs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical footsoldiers for the Petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.
The end-of-the-world believers of the bomb-aspiring Iran’s Khomeinism are busy establishing the Shia hegemony in an arc extending from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea.
The Al Queda and dozens of its like-minded jihadists relentlessly carry their barbaric campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union republics, the Russian federation, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe, as well as other lands.
I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.
Is “moderate Muslims” an illusion? The only viable alternative for peaceful people of Islamic background, therefore, is to leave the bondage of violent Islam altogether and join ranks with humanity’s free.
The selected puppet president Ahamadinejad boasts that Iran’s mullahs’ nuclear train has no reverse gear and lacks brakes. He should harbor no illusions. The non-Islamist masses of Iranians will not docilely submit to the mullahs’ maniacal plans. It is the unmatched force of freedom that has no reverse gear and it is the force fully capable and determined to bring the mullahs’ train to a screeching halt before it is armed with the Armageddon nuclear weapons they so doggedly pursue.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com |
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