Islamists:
They Hate Zionism,
They Hate Imperialism,
They Hate Capitalism,
and the American Empire Hates Them
-- How Bad Can They Be?
by Elmer Swenson
So say a lot of leftists, in Europe especially where Left-Islamist cooperation is gaining ground -- to the alarm of conservatives like this secular Muslim quoted below.
... In Britain, the new Marxist-Islamist alliance is the offspring of the so-called anti-war coalition set up two years ago to prevent the liberation of Iraq. The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard Left groups: communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castroists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labor party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as Watermelons (Green outside, red inside). The chairman of the coalition is one Andrew Murray, a former employee of the Soviet Novosty Agency and leader of the British Communist Party. Co-chair is Muhammad Asalm Ijaz of the London Council of Mosques.A prominent member is George Galloway, recently excluded from the Labor party, who is under investigation for the illegal receipt of funds from Saddam Hussein. Galloway heads a list of candidates backed by several radical leftist groups, notably the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), as well as the Muslim Association of Britain, the British branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a dozen Palestinian groups financed by Yasser Arafat ... [from "Europe's Islamist Alliance," Amir Taheri, July 12, 2004 [1]
But there's another strain of thought that holds that the answer to the question above is Islamism can be "plenty bad" -- that the movement known as Islamism or "political Islam" [2] is a religious re-incarnation of 1930s-style Fascism with the same potential for oppression and bloodletting. British journalist/author Christopher Hitchens broke with the Left over the issue and now spends much of his time holding forth on how Leftists are fools and worse to make common cause with "Islamofascism".
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them. ... From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? ....[from http://slate.msn.com/id/2109377/ )]
Sometimes forgotten in all this is the fact that Islamists and Leftists have been allies before [3] -- in an alliance so successful (for the Islamists) it led to one of the great revolutions of the 20th Century: the mass, popular 1979 revolution against the Shah of Iran that brought an Islamist regime to power, where it remains today.
So not only do Islamism and the Left have a track record of working together, there's also a two-decade history of "real, existing" Islamism to examine in Iran, and plenty of translated speeches and writings by the Iranian revolution's beloved leader/founder/theoretician (the Ayatollah Khomeini), to help explain it all. [4]
How does the Left's defense of Islamism pan out point-by-point when you compare 1930s Fascism with contemporary Islamism -- Islamism in the form of government policies and leader's pronouncements from the Islamic Republic of Iran?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Islamic Republic hasn't expanded its borders -- but not for lack of trying. "Imam" Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, the undisputed leader of the Iranian revolution and Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic until his death in 1989, was frank in his plans to unite with Iraq and the other Gulf states in an Islamic Republic. During the Iran-Iraq war he said
If the war continues and if in the war Iran defeats Iraq, Iraq will be annexed to Iran; that is, the nation of Iraq, the oppressed people of Iraq, will free themselves from the talons of the tyrannical clique and will link themselves with the Iranian nation. They will set up their own government according to their wishes -- an Islamic one. If Iran and Iraq can merge and be amalgamated, all the diminutive nations of the region will be joined. [Khomeini, 21 June 1982] [5]There is good evidence the Islamic Republic was behind assorted terrorist kidnappings and killings in Lebanon in the 1980s, and bombings in Kuwait and Argentina in the 1980s and 90s. [6] http://216.26.163.62/2003/me_iran_11_07.html
Nor did Khomeini take a back seat to Fascists in his earlier writings about violent world conquest.
Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and 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. [Khomeini, circa 1942] [7]
Or love of war:
War is a blessing for the world and for every nation. It is Allah himself who commands men to wage war and to kill. The Qur'an commands: "Wage war until all corruption and all disobedience [of divine law] are wiped out!" [Khomeini, 12 December 1984.] [8]
Fascism and Islamism share a love of death. Spanish fascist general Mill?n Astray (who supported Hitler in hopes an Axis victory would lead to a new Spanish Empire in Africa) coined the slogan "Viva la Muerte!" (Long live death) [9] with its obvious and creepy similarities to comments like these by Khomeini
Dying does not mean nothingness: it is life. [10]
If you have any tie or link binding you to this world in love, try to sever it. This world, despite all its apparent splendor and charm, is too worthless to be loved ... What do you possess in this world that makes you so attached to it? [11]
The Islamist cult of the Istishhad ("self-martyrdom," usually expressed as suicide-homicide terror bombing), now in full flower in Palestine and Iraq, doesn't date from time of the Prophet and his companions but is a 20th Century phenomenon. It got its start with the legions of basij, Iranian children urged by Khomeini to volunteer for the Iran-Iraq War. They died by the thousands clearing Iraqi minefields, each with a wooden "key to paradise" hanging from their necks.
So, yes, the death toll from Islamist terrorism can't begin to compare with Nazi Germany's, but is it because of its gentle nature or its lack of means ... so far? Might not that death toll exceed Hitler's if radical Islamists got their hands on nuclear devices?
The original Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah (February 1979) did have a broad nationalist/leftist/religious base. But as the months went by it was systematically thinned out by the Islamists. Political parties that did not support the concept of "rule by the jurist," i.e. by Khomeini, were driven from the political scene one by one.
The Islamic government banned dozens of periodicals, arrested political leaders, and shut down the country's universities (strongholds of the left) for two years; the Islamic thugs known as hezbollah attacked, beat and occasionally killed protestors, smashed news kiosks, looted bookstores, ransacked student offices. [12] Several thousand members of the strongest guerilla group, Islamic leftists known as Mohahedin-e Khalq, were executed.
A confident and energized movement of nationalists, socialists, students and workers was reduced within a few years to prisoners, exiles, and the demoralized and silent. [13]
This wasn't because Khomeini had a change of heart about his erstwhile allies. He told his followers what he thought of the Left before the revolution in a letter:
I hate and despise these treacherous groups, whether Communist, or Marxist, or those diverted from the Shi'i religion ... I consider them traitors to the country, to Islam and to the [Shi'i] faith. [14]It's just that he didn't tell his leftist allies what he thought of them until the Shah was overthrown and he didn't need them any more.
I repeat for the last time: abstain from holding meetings, from blathering, from publishing protests. Otherwise I will break your teeth. (October 1979) [15]
Khomeini's hostility and the left's confusion weren't just a question of trickery. Khomeini regularly denounced imperialism -- unlike some other Islamists (see below) -- but he had different definition of it than the left. He didn't mean it in the general sense of any group subjugating or denying the right to self-determination to another. Western imperialism in Muslim lands was an abomination; but the other way around was not imperialism, it was a moral duty for Muslims (see quotes above). So, too, for conquered peoples to fight Western imperialism was to struggle against oppression, but for them to fight Islamic rule was wickedness. Arguing to the contrary was heresy.
As for what social class the Islamic Revolution represented, some scholars see it dominated by small business proprietors (or people who came from that family background) [16], much like the old Fascist parties. Others think the revolution's core support came more from those who had been "dislocated, dispossessed, and declassed," rather than any particular class, and that contrary to conventional wisdom, historical research now shows the same went for the Fascist groups of the 1930s. [17]
Islamists believe in equality -- the equality of Muslim men, or at least of all "true" Muslim males. Like Fascists, they consider human equality or equal rights an alien concept. Amongst the legal inequalities institutionalized by the Islamic Revolution are ...
In both the Islamic Republic and the Third Reich the head of state was not a president but the "leader" - rahbar in farsi and fuehrer in German -- chosen for life.
As for poverty, Khomeini certainly talked about the plight of the poor, but once in power didn't give particularly high priority to doing anything about poverty, as demonstrated by his exasperated remark to Iranians complaining of soaring food prices:
`I cannot believe that the purpose of all these sacrifices was to have less expensive melons.`
-- Khomeini July 5, 1979 broadcast on National Voice of Iran. [19] (Melons were not the only foodstuff out of reach of the poor [20]
Despite its wealth of oil and natural gas, in the 25 years since the revolution not only has the Iranian standard of living dropped, [21] but inequality has gotten worse. [22]
The Iranian Islamists did proudly used the word revolutionary ... but then so did the Nazis and Fascists.
The Italian Fascists boasted of their `revolutionary intransigence,` and the Nazis contrasted their revolution, the revolution of the German Volk, to `the subhuman revolution` of 1789. Iran's revolutionaries similarly take great pride in the historic mission of the Islamic revolution. [23]
Islamic Supreme leader Khomeini scoffed at the civil libertarian attitude of governments (i.e. secular governments) towards the average schlub ...
What he wants to do in the privacy of his homes, drinking wines .... gambling, or other such dirty deeds, the government has nothing to do with him. Only if he comes out screaming, then he would be prosecuted, because that disturbs the peace.IslamIslam and divine governments are not like that. These [governments] have commandments for everybody, everywhere, at any place, in any condition. If a person were to commit an immoral dirty deed right next to his house, Islamic governments have business with him.
has rules for every person, even before birth, before his marriage, until his marriages, pregnancy, birth, until upbringing of the child, the education of the adult, until puberty, youth, until old age, until death, into the grave, and beyond the grave. [24]Like Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic has a religious morals police. They have the right to inspect homes to be sure immoral activities, like wine drinking, are not taking place (in recent years reports are these "guards" have pretty much given up on morality in favor of collecting bribes from Iranian party goers). [25]
Here's what supreme leader Khomeini had to say about the Jews:
We must protest and make the people aware that the Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world. Since they are a cunning and resourceful group of people, I fear that -- God forbid! -- they may one day achieve their goal, and that the apathy shown by some of us may allow a Jew to rule over us one day. [26]
The main victim singled out by the Islamic Revolution for special attention were not Jews but the Bahai, a group that fundamentalists like Khomeini considered apostates who must reconvert to traditional Islam or pay the ultimate price. [27]
So arguably were the Fascist states exploited by their wealthier neighbors. The biggest and worst Fascist country, Nazi Germany, was subject to occupation of its Ruhr industrial heartland and payment of $35 billion in reparations to allied victors France and the United Kingdom after World War I. Germans thought the reparations too large to be payable and the occupation harsh and oppressive, and so did many non-Germans. The post-World War I Weimar Republic of Germany was famous for its hyperinflation and economic meltdown, which made its people quite a bit poorer than its victorious enemies and sometime occupiers, France and UK. Traditionally Prussian Germany was poorer than its neighbor and enemy France, and it industrialized much later than its enemy Britain. [28]
Few political movements don't fight against exploitation and subjugation of their own people. What makes a movement progressive is opposition to exploitation of everyone.
Actually many 1930s-era Fascist parties had close ties with clerics.
It's important to consider that the alliance between the Left and Islamism in Iran, temporary though it was, was an aberration. In other places like Egypt (where Islamists drove leftists from university campuses) and Afghanistan (where mujahideen guerillas defeated the Soviet-backed government), the Left and Islamists were enemies from day one. That Islamists and the Left get along so well in Europe may be explained by their traveling in different worlds. If the left ever started to make significant inroads among immigrants from Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt, the peaceful relations could change in a hurry.
It's also important to bear in mind the Left's underestimation of Islamists in Iran was no aberration at all. Everyone seems to make that mistake. (How can you take seriously someone who proclaims: "For every problem Islam is the solution!") When talking about who his enemies were before he was overthrown, the Shah of Iran talked about communists and guerrillas but didn't even mention Islamic fundamentalists or Islamists. His feared SAVAK security force concentrated their persecution on the Left rather than Khomeini's network - the Coalition of Islamic Societies. [30]. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat used the Islamists of the Jama'at Islamiyya associations [31] to eliminate the student left.
Israel famously cultivated the forerunner of Hamas as a competitor to Yassir Arafat's al Fatah movement [32] http://www.counterpunch.org/hanania01182003.html
All came to regret their decision, to put it mildly - the Shah driven to exile and an early grave, Sadat sparyed with bullets in his reviewing stand, Israelis being blown up by the hundreds.
It's not outlandish for Leftists, tired of being left out of the action, to have hopes in the back of their minds of converting young Islamists. Hopes that angry young Muslims will realize that "the solution" has to go beyond what can be found in a holy book and 1000-year-old collection of narratives, and that when these Muslims search for other more ... up-to-date strategies, they'll perhaps look to the movement that fights on behalf of Muslims against discrimination and Western exploitation -- i.e. from the Left.
For anyone harboring such hopes, it's important to hear what another extremely influential Islamist, Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, had to say. To Qutb, leftists are not unfamiliar, nor potential allies, nor simply misguided. They are "enemies of mankind" with whom no compromise is possible.
Islam ... is the only Divine way of life ... those who deviate from this system and want some other system, whether it be based on nationalism ... class struggle, or similar corrupt theories are truly enemies of mankind!And their talk of fighting imperialist exploitation is nothing but a devious falsehood"
Enemies of the Believers may wish to change this struggle into an economic or political ... struggle so that the Believers become confused concerning the true nature of the struggle and the flame of belief in their hearts becomes extinguished... We see an example of this today in the attempts of Christendom to try to deceive us by distorting history and saying that the Crusades were a form of imperialism. The truth of the matter is that the latter-day imperialism is but a mask for the crusading spirit, since it is not possible for it to appear in its true form, as it was possible in the Middle Ages.... These treacherous deceivers are liars! [33]
Anyone finding this enmity suprising has only to go back to the `Islam is the solution` slogan above - it's not just simplistic, it's total. With the solution to every problem, there's no room for anyone else's -- in fact, no room for any other (as Sayyid Qutb says) "morals, manners, values, ... standards of the society, [or] aspects of knowledge ..." [34]
Yes, Islamists want to replace Zionism, imperialism, and capitalism, but not because the concepts violate human dignity, self-determination or rights, but because they violate God's, and must be replaced with God's rule, with (to repeat Khomeini) "commandments for everybody, everywhere, at any place, in any condition." [35]
In short, there is no room in the Islamist world for the Left for the same reason there is no room for Capitalism or Imperialism - it's not Islam.
Although Islamism's end goal is radical and austere in the extreme (no music, no mixing of the sexes, etc.), their strategy is often (if not always) gradualist. Islamists talk of being practical, working in stages, planning for the future. [36]
So when you hear talk about "social justice" or "freedom" or attacks on "anti-human" policies from Islamists, just think of it as stage one. To find out what happens a few stages on, ask Iranian leftists -- the ones still alive.
[1]
Hitchen's article in Slate: "Bush's Secularist Triumph" by Christopher Hitchens
Some other examples of Islamist-Left support/cooperation/stupidity:
Ken Livingstone, aka "Red Ken", the Labor Party mayor of London.
Ward Churchill, academic badboy, provocateur and native wannabe in Colorado:
Excerpt: `.... Meet the "Terrorists ... Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said ... following their successful operation on September 11.
Roger Garaudy, French Communist author turned Muslim celebrity and Holocaust-denier.
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal terrorist, "professional revolutionary", and playboy.
"How did the far Left manage to slip into bed with the Jew-hating Right?"
David Aaronovitch June 28, 2005
[2] "Islamism is a political ideology derived from the conservative religious views of Muslim fundamentalism. It holds Islam is not only a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal, economic and social imperatives of the state.
[3] See the book Tell the American people : perspectives on the Iranian revolution / edited with introduction and chronology by David H. Albert. Movement for a New Society, 1980.) Also Michel Foucault's rapturous exposition on Ayatollah Khomeini's `political sprituality` (Eribon, Didier Michel Foucault, Paris 1989, pp.305-306) gave the revolution considerable support and enthusiasm.
[4] Quotations of Khomeini in this essay come primarily from Islam and Revolution : Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Translated and Annotated by Hamid Algar. Mizan Press, Berkeley, 1981 [5] Khomeini, 21 June 1982, [Iranian broadcast] in FBIS VIII, I 1-3, 22 June 1982. Quoted in Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War, Westview Press, 1988 p.164.
[6] How much of what Iran has done outside its borders is "exporting revolution" and fighting American hegmony and Zionism, and how much Islamist expansionism is open to interpretation. Most Lefties will approve of the help Iran gave Lebanon's Hezbollah in driving the Israeli army out of south Lebanon. Most won't approve of the (at least) 64 assassinations or attempted assassinations of Iranians abroad as of 1996. (The Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation by Sandra Mackey, 1996. p.373)
Lebanon: The presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Iranian aid in Lebanon built up the Shi'a Islamist group Hezbollah and made possible
Kuwait: "On 12 December 1983, six weeks after the attacks on the multinational forces in Lebanon, a chain of explosions had rocked the Gulf state of Kuwait. Six key foreign and Kuwaiti installations were the targets in what might have been the worst terrorist attack of the century had the bombs' rigging not been faulty. Six people died and more that 80 were injured."
.... Sheikh Jaber al Ahmad al Sabbah, the Emir of Kuwait, revealed that his government had been threatened with further terrorist attacks if the men were not released. Tehran Radio meanwhile broadcast regular warnings from the al-Dawa, threatening grave consequences should the defendants be harmed. (source: Hostage, by Con Coughlin pp.78-9) .... Six of the perps "were sentenced to death ... but the Emir of Kuwait did not sign their death sentence and the men were never executed." Famous hostage Terry Anderson was told that he and the other hostages had been abducted to gain the freedom of their seventeen comrades in Kuwait." Argentina: "A former Iranian secret service agent has accused Iran of planning a 1994 bomb attack on a Jewish cultural centre in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.
`Witness C` told a Buenos Aires court via video-link from Germany that Iran attacked the centre thinking it was a base for the Israeli secret service. [7] Kashf al-Asrar, aka Secrets Unvieled, by Ruhollah Khomeini, Qom 1986. (Originally published in Qom in 1942 and reprinted in Teheran in 1980 and 1983)] Translation quoted in: Amir Taheri, Holy Terror, London 1987, p.226-7.]
[8] From an address by Khomeini to fundamentalist
militants from more than 30 countries gathered at his house in Jamaran Tehran on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, 12 December 1984. Quoted in Holy Terror by Amir Taheri. p.113].
[9]
`... Andr? Glucksmann: there is a direct connection between the Islamic suicide bomber and the general serving under Franco who shouted out in front of the University of Salamanca: `Long live death!` This is the connection that I was trying to grasp.
Liss Gehlen/Jens Heisterkamp: `Long live death!`?
Andr? Glucksmann: At the opening of the University of Salamanca, one General Mill?n Astray shouted `Viva la Morte`. Miguel de Unamuno, who was in charge of the occasion, was a conservative, the prot?g? of Franco?s wife, a philosopher of the right. He reproved the general for this impermissible, unacceptable statement, and added: `You, my general who has lost an eye in the war, are a handicapped man not because you have lost an eye but because you have shouted ?Long live death???.
It is precisely this slogan which you hear from Islamic suicide bombers .... `
from: ""Bin Laden, Dostoevsky and the reality principle: an interview with Andr? Glucksmann " Posted on 04/26/2003 8:32:19 AM PDT by Leisler
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/900806/posts
[General Astray] ... openly claimed that he wanted to establish a fascist government in Spain. At a speech in Salamanca on 12th October 1936 he told the audience: "Catalonia and the Basque Country are two cancers in the body of the nation! Fascism, Spain's remedy, comes to exterminate them, slicing healthy, living flesh like a scalpel."
During the Second World War Astray was a great supporter of Nazi Germany. He encouraged men to join the Blue Division that fought with the German Army on the Eastern Front. Astray hoped that an Axis victory would lead to a new Spanish Empire in Africa.
After the war Astray went into retirement. Mill?n Astray died of a heart-attack on 1st January 1954.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPastray.htm
[10] (Brumberg, p.125, source: `Khomeini Delivers Oration,` broadcast on Teheran Domestic Service 4 May 1979, FBIS-MEA-79-089, 7 May 1979)
[11] from Lectures on the Supreme Jihad by Ruhollah Khomeini, in Islam and Revolution translated by Hamid Algar, p.357
[12] Bakhash, Shaul The Reign of the Ayatollahs p.123
[13]Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah by Moin p.242, 278)
[14] Sahifeh-ye Nur, vol I, by Khomeini p.229. Quoted in The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran
by Hamid Dabashi. New York University Press, New York and London, c1993. p.475
[16] October 22, 1979, Qom, Iran, quoted The Shah and the Ayatollah : Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution by Fereydoun Hoveyda, 2003, p.88
[17] "The key social carrier of the Revolution thus seems to be a section of the petite bourgeoisie (sons and daughters of shop keepers, small merchants, and peasants) ..." Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution by Martin Kramer; "Repetitions in the Iranian Revolution" by Michael M.J. Fischer. p.122 [18] Turban for the Crown : The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Arjomand Oxford University Press, 1988. p.197
[19] Resaleh Towzih al-Masael (Clarification of Questions) by Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini. Translated by J. Borujerdi with a Foreword by Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi.
Westview Press/ Boulder and London c1984]
[20] "see the FBIS for typical broadcasts, especially GBIS-MEA-79-L30, July 5, 1979 v.5 n.130, reporting broadcasts of the National Voice of Iran. quoted in The Government of God p.111. In another speech Khomeini patently explained to Iranians the foolishness of worrying about standards of living: `Does it seem reasonable for a person to shout for his stomach and them give up his life, is this reasonable? Could anyone which his child to be martyred to obtain a good house? This is not the issue. The issue is another world. Martyrdom is meant for another world. This is a marytdom sought by all of God's saints and prophets ... The people want this meaning.` [21] Economist, Feb 14, 2004
[22] "The gap between the rich and the poor had, in fact, grown wider rather than been narrowed since the shah's ouster." In the Name of God : The Khomeini Decade by Robin Wright c1989. p.133
[23] Turban for the Crown : The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Arjomand. p.204 (Arjomand cites authors Nolte 1969: p.281; Baechler 1975: 10 n.15, but I don't have complete names or titles.)
[24] Statement to students in Najaf, 28 September 1977. Found in Khomeini, Sahifeh-ye Nur, vol.I p.234-235
[25] The Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation by Sandra Mackey, 1996, p.371
[26] Islam and Revolution : Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Mizan Press, Berkeley, 1981. p.127,
[27]
`The Bahais are not a religion but a secretive organization plotting to subvert the Islamic Republic.` (Speech by Khomeini quoted in Ettelaat, 29, May 1983. Quoted in Khomeinism : Essays on the Islamic Republic by Ervand Abrahamian c1993. p.124)
[28] A History of the Modern World, by R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, 1971. p.824-825
[29] Turban for the Crown : The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Arjomand. p.208-9
[30]
The Spirit of Allah : Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution by Amir Taheri, c1985. p.186 [31] Le Prophete et Pharaon by Gilles Kepel, p.151)
[32] http://www.counterpunch.org/hanania01182003.html "Sharon's Terror Child : How the Likud Bloc Mid-wifed the Birth of Hamas" By RAY HANANIA].
[33] Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, p.51, 159-160)
[34] Statement to his students in Najaf, 28 September 1977. Found in Khomeini, Sahifeh-ye Nur, vol.I p.234-235) Quoted in: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran by Hamid Dabashi; New York University Press, New York and London, c1993
See also Milestones by
"There are many practical obstacles in establishing God's rule on earth, such as the power of the state, the social system and traditions and, in general, the whole human environment. Islam uses force only to remove these obstacles so that there may not remain any wall between Islam and individual human beings."
The system of Islam "system extends into all aspects of life; it discusses all minor or major affairs of mankind; it orders man's life" [p.74, 32]
[p.72]
[35] Milestones by Sayyid Qutb p.107
[36] Islamic Government Khomeini in Islam and Revolution translated by Hamid Algar p.132-3.
"Muslim clerics: does Ken believe in killing gays?"
New Statesman, July 19, 2004 by Peter Tatchell
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4697_133/ai_n6153613
"`Some People Push Back,` On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" by Ward Churchill (Chair (now-ex-chair) of Ethnic Studies at University of Colorado Boulder.
They [the 9/11 terrorists] did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."
A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" - now proudly emblematized by the United States - against the "Islamic East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago....
As to those in the World Trade Center . . .
True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire ... If there was a better, more effective, ... penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it. ...
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html
"Roger Garaudy, Old Communist, New Muslim, Opportunistic Extremism" By Hooshang Vaziri
PARIS 17 MARCH [1998] (IPS) Roger Garaudy, a French philosopher formerly Communist turned Muslim was recently fined in a Paris Court to 120.000 French Francs [roughly $20,000] fine because in a recent book "Political Myths of the State of Israel", in which he contested the existence of gas chambers in Hitler's Germany as well as the number of the Jewish population eliminated by the Germans in different concentration camps and elsewhere.
".... At a time when to be communist was synonymous with being modern and progressive, Garaudy wrote a book called Communism and Resurgence Culture. When he had drunk deeply from this trough, another resurgence occurred, this time in Iran. Garaudy had been a welcome guest in Iran during the rule of the Shah and he carried a symbol of Iranian hospitality wherever he travelled in the form of a credit card with which he could make unlimited purchases", Vaziri recalls.
Then came the Islamic revolution. The Shah left and Garaudy became a Muslim. ...."
http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles/vaziri_garaudy.html
"'Jackal' book praises Bin Laden"
news.bbc.co.uk (Last Updated: Thursday, 26 June, 2003)
`.... A convert to Islam since his imprisonment for three murders, Sanchez preaches "revolutionary Islam" - which is the title of his book - as the new, post-Communist answer to what he calls US "totalitarianism". ....
..... In the words of Sanchez himself: "From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies."
.... Revolutionary Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and Islam is the only "transnational force capable of standing up the enslavement of nations".
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Carlos_the_Jackal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3022358.stm
"THE AXIS OF TERROR, Carlos the Jackal pledges alliance to Osama bin Laden"
by Amir Taheri, Weekly Standard, November 24, 2003
`.... One question worth exploring in all this is whether Carlos is really a Muslim. .... his knowledge of Islamic doctrine, theology, history, and political philosophy is almost nonexistent. He thinks the first four caliphs were members of a dynasty known as the "Rashidis," and he confuses Hajjaj Ibn Yussef, the brutal governor of Kufa, with Mansur al Hallaj, the mystic who was crucified for blasphemy.
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/700
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22369-1671715,00.html
(More an article about the association of Leftist and Neo-Nazis in the service of "anti-zionism", than Leftists and Islamists.)
The goal of Islamism is to re-shape the state ...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism
One of the main rallying points of the Islamic revolution was also a long time cause celebre of the left - the 1953 overthrow by the CIA of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh (famed for his nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and the reinstallation by the U.S. of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
and from transcripts of Iranian broadcasts of Khomeini done by the FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE ( "... a United States government operation which translates the text of daily broadcasts, government statements, and select news stories from non-English sources around the world. One report with translations is issued for each of eight world regions for each day...." see: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/FBIS.html),
and used by various authors.
(Hezbollah : Born With a Vengeance by Hala Jaber. pp.82, 100,
113)
"Hezbollah financed its enterprises without any contributions from the official Lebanese authorities. None of its schemes would have been possible without the backing of Iran. ... `To deny the Iranian aid issued to Lebanon's Hezbollah would be like denying that the sun provides light to the earth. Who can deny such a thing?` says Sheikh Subhi Tufeili, Hezbollah's first leader. ... Hezbollah is coy about revealing the sums it has received from Iran.
... Reports have spoken of figures ranging from $5 to $10 million per month, but it is possible that Hezbollah received larger sums. It is only in recent years (after 1989) that Iran has decreased its aid."
(Hezbollah : Born With a Vengeance by Hala Jaber. p.150)
From: Hezbollah : Born with a Vengeance by Hala Jaber, c1997. p.127-129
More than 80 people died and 200 people were injured in the attack. ... "
From: "Iran blamed for Argentina bomb" BBC News
Last Updated: Thursday, 6 November, 2003, 00:22 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3245641.stm
Open Democracy" | 31 - 3 - 2003 | Liss Gehlen/Jens Heisterkamp
see also: "Message to Muslim Students in North America" by Khomeini, July 10, 1972. quoted in Islam and Revolution I, p.210
Imperialism of the left and imperialism of the right have joined hands in their efforts to annihilate the Muslim peoples and their countries; they have come together in order to enslave the Muslims peoples and plunder their abundant capital and natural resources."
see also Khomeinism : Essays on the Islamic Republic by Ervand Abrahamian, c1993.
Admittedly, since Islamism's superior group was religious not ethnic, the inferiors could change their status join by converting - something the "undermench" could never do.
This point is also made in Hannah Arendt's Origin of Totalitarianism.
`Khomeini to the Craftsmen` broadcast on Teheran Domestic Service 13 December 1979, FBIS-MEA-79-242) (Quoted in Reinventing Khomeini : The Struggle for Reform in Iran by Daniel Brumberg, p.124-5
There's also the question of whether the Iranian revolution was a new, post-secular kind of revolution as some of its enthusiasts supposed. Mass upheavals by the lower classes, led by the religious were far from unprecedented ...
Generally speaking, the Islamic Revolution has this in common with peasant rebellions: it draws on corporate solidarities and communal and kin ties and consequently has many conservative and defensive features. In Mexico, there was the massive peasant rebellion of 1810 led by Father Hidalgo and Father Morelos, both parish priests. In the 1830s in Spain, we have the Carlists..." Turban for the Crown : The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Arjomand. p.196.
The situation of the Bahai's in Iran
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, the Baha'i
community there has been systematically harassed and persecuted. The Baha'i
faith is not one of the religions recognised under the Constitution [Article
13 of the Constitution states: "Zoroastrians, Jewish and Christian Iranians
are the only recognised religious minorities who, within the limits of the
law are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies and to act
accordancing to their own canon in matters of personal afffairs and religous
education".]. At least 201 have been executed, most during the 1980s and
apparently in connection with their religious beliefs. Bahai's are not
permitted to meet, to hold religious ceremonies or to practice their
religion communally. Baha'i buildings, sites and centres have been
confiscated and closed; private and business property of individual Baha'is
has been confiscated, and Bahais have been dismissed from government posts
and schools. ..."
From: Amnesty International "IRAN : Dhabihullah Mahrami: Prisoner of Conscience" 1 October 1996
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE130341996?open&of=ENG-2D2
".... A strong faction within SAVAK considered the hayats [Khomeini's network for Islamist propaganda and agitation in Iran] to be potential allies in the fight against both the Communist and the so-called Islamic Marxist guerrilla groups. The mullahs made ample use of this delusion on the part of some leading SAVAK policy makers to escape the worst effects of the SAVAK-led repression of the 1970s. Even during the revolution the mullahs succeeded in deceiving successive governments in general and SAVAK in particular by claiming that they shared the regime's anti-Communist sentiments ... "
see also: Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah by Baqer Moin, Thomas Dunne Books, c2000
Milestones by Sayyid Qutb. p.102 [e.g.: Islam "does not face practical problems with abstract theories, nor does it confront various stages with unchangeable means." p.56 ]
Abrahamian, Ervand Khomeinism : Essays on the Islamic Republic
Arjomand, Said Amir The Turban for the Crown : the Islamic Revolution in Iran by Oxford University Press, 1988
Bakhash, Shaul, The Reign of the Ayatollahs : Iran and the Islamic Revolution by New York, Basic Books, 1984
Benard, Cheryl and Zalmay Khalizad, "The Government of God" : Iran's Islamic Republic Columbia University Press 1984.
Chubin, Shahram, Iran and Iraq at War, by Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Westview Press, 1988
Hoveyda, Fereydoun The Shah and the Ayatollah : Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution by 2003
Iran at the Crossroads Edited by John Esposito and R.K. Ramazani
Jaber, Hala, Hezbollah : Born With a Vengeance by Hala Jaber.
Khomeini, Ruhollah, Kashf al-Asrar, (Secrets Unvieled), Qom 1986. (Originally published in Qom in 1942 and reprinted in Teheran in 1980 and 1983)]
Khomeini, Ruhollah, Lectures on the Supreme Jihad in Islam and Revolution translated by Hamid Algar
Khomenei, Ruhollah, Islamic Government, Guardianship of the Jurists, 1970 (pagination is from Islam and Revolution : Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini)
Khomeini, Ruhollah, Towzih al-Masa'el (Questions Clarified), 1961
Kepel, Gilles, Le Prophete et Pharaon
Mackey, Sandra, The Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation by 1996
Moin, Baqer, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah by Thomas Dunne Books, c2000
Palmer, R.R. A History of the Modern World, by R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, 1971.
Qutb, Sayyid, Milestones, The Mother Mosque Foundation, 1981
Schirazi, Asghar, The Constitution of Iran by Tauris, 1997
Sciolino, Elaine, Persian Mirrors : the Elusive Face of Iran by c2000
Tell the American people : perspectives on the Iranian revolution / edited with introduction and chronology by David H. Albert. Movement for a New Society, 1980.
Taheri, Amir The Spirit of Allah : Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution, c1985.
Wright, Robin, The Last Revolution c2000,
Wright, Robin, In the Name of God,