Yesterday, Simon Sideways, a self-proclaimed ‘White activist’, put up a piece on his YouTube channel asking people what they will do when the Muslims finally take over and start forcing people to convert. It was once again the Eurabia myth, that Muslim birth rates are far more than White Europeans, and so in a few decades they will become the majority religion on the continent and take it over. It’s nonsense, although Muslim populations are set to expand and this could cause problems if the alienation and turn of some Muslims to radical theologies continues. He illustrated his prediction by stating that Muslims had established sharia police in Germany, who were forcing both Muslims and non-Muslims to attend the mosques.
I checked this story by Googling it, and it appears to be several years old. From what I’ve uncovered, it appears that a group of seven radical Muslims led by a German convert, Sven Laue, set up an Islamic sharia patrol in Wuppertal in Bavaria in 2014 or 2016. The German police arrested them and charged them under the Basic Law. This is article in the German constitution that forbids anti-democratic organisation and political parties. It’s a product of the denazification after World War II and has been used against neo-Nazi organisations like the National Democrat Party. The German Communist party evaded a ban by dissolving themselves and then holding a special congress at which it was declared that they recognised that society would have to go through a period of democracy. This is standard Marxist dogma, in which society goes through a stage of bourgeois democracy in which the remains of feudalism are cleared away before the workers take over and establish socialism. The seven were acquitted, but there was some kind of appeal, and in 2019 they were convicted and sent down.
The German authorities are as concerned as our political class about the growth of parallel societies. In the 1980s the German trade union confederation accused the Turkish sections of practising separatism while claiming to integrate with ethnic Germans. A few years ago the mayor of one of the German cities with a large Turkish population wrote a book describing their alienation and anti-social behaviour, sometimes violent, towards ethnic German. This was somewhat surprising, as he was a member of the SPD, the German socialist party, who I think expelled him soon after. It hasn’t, however, been only in Germany that vigilante sharia police have appeared. A group of fanatics at Anjem Chaudhury’s mosque in London set one up and posted their exploits on YouTube, before the police pounced on them.
As for forced conversion, Islamic laws forbids the forcible conversion of Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and/or Hindus, although massacres have occurred throughout history. This law was obeyed by the Ottomans in the Balkans. In the 7th century one of the sultans wanted to convert the indigenous Christian population by armed force, only to be told by the majlis, the assembly of Muslim clergy, that it was not permitted. Such toleration does not extend to pagans and atheists, who may be forced to convert to Islam on pain of death.
Sideways seems to have seen or read a garbled, very dated version of the story about the German sharia patrols, probably from an extreme right-wing source. There are problems with the growth of parallel Islamic societies in Britain, France, Germany and no doubt elsewhere, but the Muslims aren’t set to take over Europe and what attempts there have been to set up sharia police are minuscule – there were only seven members of Laue’s wretched outfit – and have not been tolerated by the authorities.
This is an excellent little video that explains Trump’s and the US state and military’s hostility to Iran and the real reasons behind the latest attacks. This ultimately goes back to western imperial control over the country’s oil industry. From 1908 until 1951 the Iranian oil industry was owned and controlled by a British company, Anglo-Persian Oil, now BP. It was nationalised by the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, who was consequently overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The Shah was installed as an absolute monarch, ruling by terror through the secret police, SAVAK. Which the CIA also helped to set up.
Causes of American Hostility
The Shah’s oppression was eventually too much, and he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the American state has resented the country ever since. Iran and Israel were America’s bulldogs in the Middle East, so the US lost an important locus of influence in the region. Iran is now politically independent, and is one of the leaders of the group of non-aligned nations. This was set up for countries that did not wish to align themselves either with America or the Soviet Union, but after the Fall of Communism is now simply for nations not aligned with America. America is also unable to control what Iran does with its own oil, from which American companies are excluded from profiting. Another major cause for America’s hostility may be that Iran and Syria are obstacles to Israel’s territorial expansion and the creation of a greater Israel.
Trump’s Attacks on Iran
The Empire Files is a Tele Sur show dedicated to exposing the horrors and crimes of American imperialism. Presented by Abby Martin, it was originally on RT. In this edition, she talks to Dan Kovalik, a human rights lawyer and author of the book The Plot to Attack Iran. The show was originally broadcast in January this year, 2020, when there had been a series of incidents, including Trump’s assassination of the Iranian general, Soleimani, which many feared would bring about a possible war. As tensions and reprisals increased, many Americans also took to the streets to protest against a possible war. The tensions had begun when Trump unilaterally reneged on an agreement with the Iranians over the enrichment of nuclear materials. Barack Obama had made this agreement with the Iranians, in which they pledged only to enrich it to levels suitable for civilian use but not for the creation of weapons. In return, Obama had agreed to lift the sanctions imposed on them. The Iranians had kept to their side of the agreement, but Trump had abandoned it because he wanted to impose further conditions containing Iran. For their part, it had been a year before the Iranians had reacted to the agreement’s failure. The EU had been keen to keep the agreement, despite American withdrawal, but now were unable or unwilling to do so. Kovalik states that Iran doesn’t want nukes. In the 1950s America and General Electric were helping the country set up nuclear power for electricity production. The Ayatollah Khomeini also issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, condemning them as ‘unIslamic’. The claim that Iran is now a threat to America is based on intelligence, which claims in turn that Iran had a list of American targets in Syria. As a result American troops, ships, missiles and planes were moved to the Gulf. It was also claimed that the Iranians had attacked three civilian ships. Some of these are very dubious. One of the attacked vessels was Japanese, and the ship’s owners deny that any attack occurred. The attack also makes no sense as at the time it was supposed to have happened, the Japanese and Iranians were in negotiations to reduce tensions. Kovalik states here how devastating any war with Iran is likely to be. According to retired General Williamson, a war with Iran would be ten times more expensive in financial cost and lives than the Iraq War. It also has the potential to become a world war, as Russia and China are also dependent on Iranian oil.
Iran Potential Ally, Not Threat
Trump has also re-imposed sanctions on Iran at their previous level before the nuclear agreement. As a result, the Iranians are unable to sell their oil. They are thus unable to buy imported foodstuffs or medicines, or the raw materials to manufacture medicines, which is naturally causing great hardship. Kovalik and Martin are also very clear that Iran doesn’t pose a threat to America. It doesn’t pose a threat to American civilians, and the country was actually a partner with the US in the War on Terror. Well, that was until George W. declared them to be an ‘axis of evil’ along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein. This disappointed the Iranians, whom Martin and Kovalik consider may be potential allies. America wishes to overthrow the current regime because the 1979 Revolution showed countries could defy America and topple a ruler imposed by the US. Although America may resent the country’s freedom to do what it wishes with its oil, the US doesn’t actually need it. America is an exporter of oil, and so one goal of US foreign policy may simply be to wreck independent oil-producing nations, like Iran, Libya and Venezuela, in order to remove them as competition.
The programme also attacks the claims that Iran is a supporter of terrorism. This is hypocritical, as 73 per cent of the world’s dictatorships are supported by the US. This includes the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which in turn supports al-Qaeda and ISIS. Iran does support Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, but most political analysts don’t consider them terrorist organisations. They’re elected. The American state really objects to Iran having influence in its own region, but it is the Iranians here who are under threat. They are encircled by countries allied with the US.
Iran anti-Israel, Not Anti-Semitic Country
Kovalik also personally visited Iran in 2017, and he goes on to dispel some misconceptions about the country. Such as that it’s particularly backward and its people personally hostile to Americans. In fact Iran has the largest state-supported condom factory in the Middle East. Alcohol’s banned, but everyone has it. The country also prides itself on being a pluralist society with minorities of Jews, Armenian Christians and Zoroastrians, the country’s ancient religion. And contrary to the claims of Israel and the American right, it’s got the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel, and Jews are actually well treated. Kovalik describes meeting a Jewish shopkeeper while visiting the bazaar in Isfahan. He noticed the man was wearing a yarmulka, the Jewish skullcap, and went up to talk to him. In answer to his inquiries, the man told him he was Jewish, and didn’t want to leave Iran. He also told Kovalik that there was a synagogue, and led him a mile up the road to see it. Despite the regime’s genocidal rhetoric, when polled most Iranian Jews said they wish to stay in Iran. There’s a Jewish-run hospital in Tehran, which receives funding from the government. After the Revolution, the Ayatollah also issued a fatwa demanding the Jews be protected. The status of women is also good. Education, including female education, is valued and women are active in all sectors of the economy, including science.
Large Social Safety Net
And the Iranian people are actually open and welcoming to Americans. Martin describes how, when she was there, she saw John Stuart of the Daily Show. The people not only knew who he was, but were delighted he was there. Kovalik agrees that the people actually love Americans, and that if you meet them and they have some English, they’ll try to speak it to show you they can. Martin and Kovalik make the point that Iran is like many other nations, including those of South America, who are able to distinguish between enemy governments and their peoples. They consider America unique in that Americans are unable to do this. Kovalik believes that it comes from American exceptionalism. America is uniquely just and democratic, and so has the right to impose itself and rule the globe. Other countries don’t have this attitude. They’re just happy to be left alone. But America and its citizens believe it, and so get pulled into supporting one war after another. They also make the point the point that Iran has a large social safety net. The mullahs take seriously the view that Islamic values demand supporting the poor. Women enjoy maternity leave, medicine is largely free and food is provided to people, who are unable to obtain it themselves. In this respect, Iran is superior to America. Kovalik states that while he was in Iran, he never saw the depths of poverty that he saw in U.S. cities like Los Angeles. These are supposed to be First World cities, but parts of America increasingly resemble the Third World. He admits, however, that the US-imposed sanctions are making it difficult for the Iranians to take care of people.
British Imperialism and Oil
The programme then turns to the country and its history. It states that it has never been overrun, and has a history going back 4,000 years. As a result, the country has preserved a wealth of monuments and antiquities, in contrast to many of the other, surrounding countries, where they have been destroyed by the US and Britain. Iran was never a formal part of the British empire, but it was dominated by us. Oil was first discovered there in 1908, and Britain moved quickly to acquire it for its own military. The oil company set up favoured British workers and managers, and the profits went to Britain. This was bitterly resented at a time when 90 per cent of the Iranian population was grindingly poor. People wore rags, and some oil workers actually slept in the oil fields. Conditions reached a nadir from 1917-1919 when Britain contributed to a famine that killed 8-10 million people. Those, who know about it, consider it one of the worst genocides.
The Iranian oil industry was nationalised by Mossadeq, who gained power as part of the decolonisation movement sweeping the subject territories of the former empires. Mossadeq offered Britain compensation, but no deal was made before he was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. Details of the coup came to light a few years ago with the publication of official records. It was the first such coup undertaken by the intelligence agency, but it set the rules and strategy for subsequent operations against other nations.
CIA Coup
The CIA paid protesters to demonstrate against the government, and they were particularly keen that these were violent. They wished to provoke Mossadeq into clamping down on the protests, which they could then use as a pretext for overthrowing him. But Mossadeq was actually a mild individual, who didn’t want to use excessive force. He was only convinced to do so when the CIA turned the Iranian tradition of hospitality against him. They told him Americans were being attacked. Mossadeq was so mortified that this should happen in his country, that he promptly did what the CIA had been preparing for. The Shah was reinstalled as Iran’s absolute monarch with General Zadegi as the new prime minister. Zadegi got the job because he was extremely anti-Communist. In fact, he’d been a Nazi collaborator during the War. After the restoration of the Shah in 1953, there were some Nazi-like pageants in Tehran. The CIA assisted in the creation of SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal secret police. They gave them torture techniques, which had been learned in turn from the Nazis. By 1979, thanks to SAVAK, Amnesty International and other organisations had claimed Iran was the worst human rights abuser in the world.
Reagan, the Hostage Crisis and Iran-Contra
The attack on the left meant that it was the Islamicists, who became the leaders of the Revolution as revolutionary organisation could only be done in the mosques. The left also played a role, particularly in the organisation of the workers. The pair also discuss the hostage crisis. This was when a group of students took the staff at the American embassy hostage, although the regime also took responsibility for it later. This was in response to the Americans inviting the Shah to come for medical treatment. The last time the Shah had done this had been in the 1950s before the coup. The hostage-takers released the women and non-Whites, keeping only the White men. The crisis was also manipulated by Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. They undercut Jimmy Carter’s attempts to free the hostages by persuading the Iranians to keep them until after the US election. America also funded and supplied arms to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, which left a million people dead. They also supplied arms to Iran. This was partly a way of gaining money for the Contras in Nicaragua, as the US Congress had twice stopped government funding to them. It was also partly to stop Saddam Hussein and Iraq becoming too powerful. Kovalik notes that even in the conduct of this war, the Iranians showed considerable restraint. They had inherited chemical weapons from the Shah, and the Iraqis were using gas. However, Khomeini had issued a fatwa against it and so Iranians didn’t use them.
The pair also observe that Trump is bringing back into his government the figures and officials, like John Bolton, who have been involved in previous attacks on Iran. This raises the possibility of war. Kovalik believes that Trump is a brinksman, which means that there is always the danger of someone calling his bluff. He believes that the American military doesn’t want war, but it’s still a possibility. The American public need to protest to stop Trump getting re-elected as a war president.
Stop War, But Leave Iranians to Change their Regime
This raises the question of how to oppose militarism and support progressive politics in Iran. Iranian Communists, the Tudeh are secular socialists, who hate the Islamicists. They state that it is up to them to overthrow the Islamic regime, not America or its government. They just want Americans to stop their country invading and destroying Iran. External pressure from foreign nations like America through sanctions and military threats actually only makes matters worse, as it allows the Islamic government to crack down on the secular opposition. However, Kovalik believes that the American government doesn’t want reform, but to turn Iran back into its puppet. The video finally ends with the slogan ‘No War on Iran’.
Readers of this blog will know exactly what I think about the Iranian regime. It is a brutal, oppressive theocracy. However, it is very clear that Iran is the wronged party. It has been the victim of western – British and US imperialism, and will be so again if the warmongers Trump has recruited have their way.
Events have moved on since this video was made, and despite Trump’s complaints and accusations of electoral fraud, it can’t really be doubted that he lost the US election. But it really does look like he means to start some kind of confrontation with Iran. And even with his departure from the White House, I don’t doubt that there will still be pressure from the Neocons all demanding more action against Iran, and telling us the same old lies. That Iran’s going to have nuclear weapons, and is going to attack Israel, or some such nonsense.
And if we go to war with Iran, it will be for western multinationals to destroy and loot another Middle Eastern country. The video is right about western oil companies wanting the regime overthrown because they can’t profit from its oil. Under Iranian law, foreign companies can’t buy up their industries. A few years ago Forbes was whining about how tyrannical and oppressive Iran was because of this rule. I think the Iranians are entirely justified, and wish our government did the same with our utilities. I think about 50 per cent of the country’s economy is owned or controlled by the state. Which is clearly another target for western companies wishing to grab a slice of them, just as they wanted to seize Iraqi state enterprises.
And at least in Iran medicines are largely free, and food is being provided to those who can’t obtain it themselves. They’ve got something like a welfare state. Ours is being destroyed. We now have millions forced to use food banks instead of the welfare state to stop themselves starving to death, and the Tories would dearly love to privatise the NHS and turn it into a private service financed through private health insurance. The Iraq invasion destroyed their health service. It also destroyed their secular state and the freedom of Iraqi women to work outside the home.
We’ve got absolutely no business doing this. It shouldn’t have been done to Iraq. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to Iran.
Yesterday’s I, for Monday, 22nd July 2019, also carried a very important piece by Chris Green, ‘Iran conflict could become ‘worse than Iraq war”, reporting the views of Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, on the consequences of war with Iran. The article, on page 6, ran
A full-blown conflict between the US and Iran with Donald Trump in charge as President could prove to be worse than the war in Iraq, a senior Labour MP has warned.
Richard Burgon, the shadow Justice Secretary, said the UK risked being drawn into a conflict between Iran and the US as Mr Trump’s “sidekick”.
Comparing the deteriorating political situation to the build-up to the Iraq war, he said Boris Johnson and Mr Trump could act in concert in the same way as Tony Blair and George W. Bush did.
He called for the next prime minister to focus on “de-escalation” and “conflict resolution” rather than allowing the UK to become “messengers” for the US administration.
“If we end up in a conflict backed by Donald Trump then I think it would not only be comparable with Iraq, in fact it could be even worse than Iraq, and that should really scare everybody,” Mr Burgon told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.
He added: “We need sensible negotiations. We’ve got a really important part of play diplomatically in this. We can use our negotiating weight.
“I think that our government has international respect and this country has international respect in a way that Donald Trump doesn’t.
“I think we need to use that for the purposes of conflict resolution and for the purposes of making sure this doesn’t escalate out of control.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also spoke out about the crisis over the weekend, accusing the US President of fuelling the confrontation by “tearing up” the Iran nuclear deal.
Burgon and Corbyn are exactly right, as I’ve said many times before in posts about the possibility of war with Iran. Iran is like Iraq in that it’s a mosaic of different peoples. Just over 51 per cent of the population are speakers of Farsi, the ancient language of the poet Saadi and the Iranian national epic, the Shah-Nama. But the country is also home to Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Reshtis, Luris, Bakhtiaris and various Turkic-speaking tribes. Some of these peoples have very strong nationalist aspirations for an independent homeland. The Kurds have been fighting for theirs since before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, while there was also a series of jihads by some of the Turkic nomad peoples, after the Iranian government confiscated part of their tribal lands for settlement by Farsi speakers. The Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan is also under very strict military control, and conditions in the camps for the oil workers there are similar to those concentration camps. In addition to a very strong military presence, the inmates are kept docile by drugs supplied by the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While the majority of the population are Twelver Shi’a, there are other religions. Three per cent of the population are Armenian Christians, and there are also communities of Jews and Zoroastrians, the followers of the ancient Persian monotheist religion founded by the prophet Zoroaster/Zarathustra. Tehran also has a church and community of Anglican Christians.
If, God forbid, the US and Britain do invade Iran, the country will descend into a chaos of ethnic violence and carnage exactly like Iraq. But perhaps, due to the country’s diverse ethnic mix, it could even be worse. The Anglican Church in Iran has, naturally, been under great pressure. If we do invade, I’ve no doubt that they will be targeted for persecution, as will the Armenian Christians, simply because their religion, Christianity, will be taken to be that of our forces. They’ll be killed, tortured or imprisoned as suspected sympathisers.
And any war we might fight won’t be for any good reason. It won’t be to liberate the Iranian people from a theocratic dictatorship or promote democracy. It will be for precisely the same reasons the US and Europe invaded Iraq: to seize that country’s oil industry and reserves, privatise and sell to multinationals its state enterprises, and create some free trade, low tax economy in accordance with Neocon ideology. And as with Iraq, it will also be done partly for the benefit of Israel. The Israelis hated Saddam Hussein because he sided with the Palestinians. And they hate Iran precisely for the same reason.
If I recall correctly, Burgon was one of those accused of anti-Semitism, because he said that Israel was the enemy of peace, or some such. It’s a controversial statement, but it’s reasonable and definitely not anti-Semitic. Israel is the enemy of peace. The expatriate Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, very clearly and persuasively argues in his book, Ten Myths about Israel, that throughout its 70 year history Israel has manufactured causes to go to war with its Arab neighbours. It has never been serious about peace. And that’s particularly true about Iran. Netanyahu was chewing the scenery in front of the UN a little while ago, arguing that the Iranians were only a short time away from developing nuclear weapons. It was rubbish, as Netanyahu’s own armed forces and the head of the Shin Bet, their security ministry, told him. In fact, the evidence is that Iran kept to the nuclear treaty Trump accuses them of violating. They weren’t developing nuclear weapons, and commenters on Iran have said that when the Iranians said they wanted nuclear energy to generate power, they meant it. Iran’s main product is oil, and developing nuclear power for domestic use would mean that they have more to sell abroad, thus bringing in foreign cash and keeping what’s left of their economy afloat. And if we are going to discuss countries illegally possessing nuclear weapons, there’s Israel, which has had them since the 1980s. But as they’re the West’s proxies in the Gulf, nobody talks about it or censures them for it. Presumably it’s anti-Semitic to do so, just like it’s anti-Semitic to criticise or mention their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
I think Burgon, or someone else like him also said that conquering Iran would not be as easy as defeating the Iraqis. The Iranian economy is stronger and more developed – it was under the Shah the most westernised and industrialised national in the Middle East. And its armed forces are better equipped.
I am not impressed by their seizure of our tanker, but I think it’s simply a case of tit-for-tat after we seized theirs off Gibraltar. And despite the noise from the Tories about calming the situation down, there are strong forces in the Trump’s government and the general Republican party agitating for war. Just as I’ve no doubt there is also in the Iranian government.
Such a war would be disastrous, and the looting of the nation’s industries, resources and archaeological heritage would be simply massive theft. And the destruction of the country’s people and their monuments, as happened in Iraq, would be a monstrous war crime.
The warmongers in the Republicans and Tories must be strongly resisted, and thrown out of office. Before the world is thrown into further chaos and horror.
A further two oil tankers have been destroyed by mysterious explosions in the Persian Gulf in addition to those that were blown up a week or so ago. As I write nobody has come forward to claim responsibility. But Trump and the Tories already know who’s responsible: Iran. According to Mike’s account of this, the evidence for this is that the Iranians removed a mine that had attached itself to a tanker. Oh yes, and the United Arab Emirates claimed that the explosions were the work of a ‘sophisticated state actor’. And that’s it. Now it seems contrary to commonsense to me that the Iranians would be responsible for the bombings, if they had helped get rid of an explosive device. But as the saying goes, ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. Against this monumental lack of evidence, Corbyn has been one of the few voices of sanity against Trump and the Tories screaming that the Iranians must be responsible. He’s asked for more evidence and for Britain to ease tensions, rather than join the military escalation after Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran. So the usual right-wing loudmouths, hypocrites and warmongers, like former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, have immediately denounced him as siding with the Iranians. According to them, he’s some kind of traitor working for them against us, because he appeared several times on Iran’s Press TV.
Well, as Mike pointed out in his article about this, Corbyn did appear on Press TV. But as various people on Twitter have pointed out, he stopped going on it and taking their money in opposition to its ‘anti-West bias’. And far from turning a blind eye or worse to Iran’s atrocious record on human rights, he called 51 early day motions against the Iranian government on this issue. He is the seventh in the number of MPs, who have made the most condemnations of Iranian human rights abuses, ahead of 648 other members of the House. See the tweets reproduced in Mike’s piece by Tory Fibs. And the peeps on Twitter have also supported Corbyn’s call for more evidence by pointing out how their previous accusations of responsibility for attacks by various countries have also been false. Jewish Voice for Labour reminded people about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the Americans claimed that the Viet Cong had attacked an American warship as a pretext for entering the Vietnam War. The truth was that they hadn’t. It was an outright lie. Chuka Umunna’s Flip-Flops pertinently tweeted
The people slagging off Jeremy Corbyn for this tweet are the same people who cheered for the Iraq War when Tony Blair, George W Bush and John Bolton insisted Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Don’t be fooled again.
A war with Iran will make the war with Iraq look like a pillow fight.
And Nadeem Ahmad tweeted
Jeremy Corbyn was right about Iraq, Libya, Syria, Palestine and he is right about Iran.
Britain needs Corbyn to be our Prime Minister.#Iran
They’re absolutely right. As Greg Palast pointed out in his book, Armed Madhouse, the Gulf War and the invasions of Iraq have had precious little to do with protecting democracy or advancing human rights. Saddam Hussein had zero weapons of mass destruction. It was purely about advancing western multinational corporate interests. The Neocons wanted to seize Iraq’s state industries and remove its tariff barriers, in order to create the kind of low tax, free trade economy based on absolute private industry they want for America. And the Americans and Saudis both wanted to seize Iraq’s oil reserves. The Neocons also wanted him gone because he supported the Palestinians against the Israelis.
The result of this has been absolute chaos and carnage. Before Hussein’s overthrow, Iraq was one of the most prosperous and secular states with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. Christians and other religious minorities were tolerated and had a higher degree of equality than in other Arab states. Healthcare and education were free, and women were also free to pursue careers outside the home. After the invasion, Iranian industry was comprehensively devastated as the state enterprises were privatised and sold to the multinationals and the Americans and Saudis seized the oil industry. They had it written into the country’s constitution that the oil industry could not be renationalised. The removal of the tariff barriers meant that the country’s domestic industry was deluged by cheap foreign products dumped on their markets. Their businesses could not compete, and there was a wave of bankruptcies. Unemployment shot up to over 60 per cent.
The secular state collapsed, so that women once again found it difficult and dangerous to pursue a career. Healthcare has been privatised. And there was civil war between Sunni and Shi’a to the point where Peace Walls of the type used to separate Loyalist and Republican communities in Northern Ireland had to be put up for the first time in Baghdad. The American army and mercenary companies ran amok. The mercenaries ran prostitution rings and shot Iraqi civilians for sport. The American army collaborated with Shi’a death squads in killing Sunnis. The invasion created the conditions for the rise of Daesh and their creation of an extreme theocracy. They destroyed precious archaeological and cultural monuments and treasures, including historic mosques and churches. This is apart from the destruction caused by the American forces, including Babylon when they occupied it. In Mosul Daesh filmed themselves destroying the pre-Islamic artifacts in the museum. They also went on a reign of terror killing Sufis, Shi’a and oppressing Christians and Yezidis, as well as executing gays and ordinary Muslims, who wanted to live in peace with those of different faiths. The Yezidi women were seized and sold as sex slaves. At least a quarter of a million people were killed as a result of the allied invasion, and seven million displaced.
And this is all set to repeat again in Iran. Only it may very well be worse, as Chuka Umunna’s Flip-Flips has pointed out.
Iran is a mosaic of different peoples. The majority religion is Twelver Shi’a, and 51 per cent of the population speak Farsi, the country’s official language. But there are also Kurds, Baluchis and Arabs, as well as other ethnic groups speaking languages relating to Turkish. Three per cent of the population are Christian Armenians, and there are also Zoroastrians, who practise the ancient monotheist religion of the Persian Empire, and Jews. There are also Baha’is, a religion founded in the 19th century, but which is regarded as a heresy by many Muslims and viciously persecuted by the regime. There is also an Anglican church in Tehran, whose clergy and congregation are indigenous Iranians.
Now I have absolutely no illusions about the Iranian regime. It is a theocracy, which limits women’s roles and rights. There is massive corruption, and trade unions, strikes and political opposition are all banned. The oil workers in the Arab-speaking part of the country are kept in conditions described as those of concentration camps, and kept docile by drugs supplied and distributed by the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards.
But the country does have a democratic component. Four seats in the country’s parliament, the majlis, are reserved for the non-Muslim minorities, and women possess some rights. Below the Supreme Leader, the religious head of state, is an elected president. Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was the most industrialised and advanced economy in the region, and I have no doubt that it is still one of the leading nations in the region today. And there is growing popular discontent against the theocrats and their corruption.
And the American Neocons would dearly loved to invade the country. Some of this doubtless comes from the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah, who was the West’s ally in the Middle East. The Shah had gradually become an absolute monarch after the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, in the 1950 in a CIA and British backed coup. He was overthrown because he dared to nationalise Anglo-Persian Oil, which later became BP. I don’t doubt that the Americans, Saudis and general western oil interests want to seize the Iranian oil industry, just like they wanted Iraq’s. I also don’t doubt that they’d like to get their mitts on the 51 per cent of the Persian economy controlled by the state and the bonyads, the Islamic charitable foundations. They and the Israelis also wanted to topple the Iranian state because they are vehemently hostile to Israel and support the Palestinians.
And you can’t trust anything the Israelis says about Iran either.
A few years ago, Netanyahu was jumping up and down in front of the UN and anybody else, telling them that the Iranians were close to creating nuclear weapons to be used against them. It was all a lie, as even the head of one of Israel’s spy agencies, the Shin Bet, and several of their generals said. And despite the propaganda, Iran actually treats its Jewish citizens quite well.
And the American Neocons very definitely want to invade Iran.Â
In the 1990s the Neocons drew up a list of seven nations they wanted to overthrow, including Libya, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Iran. It’s a plan that’s been carried out by successive American leaders, including Barack Obama and the ‘Queen of Chaos’ herself, Hillary ‘Killary’ Clinton.
If the West invades, the result will be exactly the same as the invasion of Iraq. There will be massive economic dislocation, the state and bonyad sector will be privatised and seized by multinationals. The oil industry, once again, will be looted and seized by the Americans and Saudis. The economy will collapse and there will be massive unemployment. And the country will also descend into a massive civil war between the various ethnic groups. The Kurds in the north have been fighting a war of independence in the north since before the Islamic Revolution. And some of the nomadic, Turkic-speaking peoples have also fought similar wars after their ancestral lands were seized for Farsi colonization. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will die or be forced out of their homes. Jews, Christians and other religious minorities will also be persecuted in the religious backlash.
And the country’s immense archaeological and cultural heritage will be placed in danger.
Iran is an ancient country with a history going back almost to the origins of civilisation itself. This was shown in the 1950s with the excavation of Hasanlu, a settlement that dated back to the 9th century BC.
The ancient settlement of Hasanlu.
For centuries the Persian Empire was one of the superpowers of the ancient Near East, conquering the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires and challenging Egypt. The conquests of the Persian emperor, Cyrus, including Babylonia and Jerusalem, are recorded in the Cyrus Cylinder. This is in the British Museum, but was loaned to the Iranians a few years ago.
The Cyrus Cylinder
Among other monuments are a series of reliefs celebrating the exploits of the ancient Persian emperors at Behistun. These include a depiction of Darius receiving foreign dignitaries.
Iranian Relief showing the Emperor Darius
Other reliefs show the symbols of Zoroastrianism, the country’s ancient, indigenous religion, and its god, Ahura Mazda.
Persia continued to be a major centre of culture, art, science and literature after the Islamic conquests. Great literary works include the Shah-Nama of Firdawsi, his epic of the country’s mythic history, the poetry of Sa’adi and the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khaiyam. But Khaiyam was also a leading mathematicians and scientist. Persian artists also excelled in the miniature and book illustration, as the illustration below shows. It’s of the Prophet Mohammed attended by angels. Islamic law forbids the depiction of the Prophet, so Persian artists showed him with his face veiled.
Iran also has some of the most spectacular and holiest mosques in Shi’a Islam, which include similar depictions of Mohammed and Ali, the First Imam. Iranian art was also major influence on the Moghul art of India, and for centuries Farsi was also the language of diplomacy in parts of India.
It’s possible to go on and on about Iran’s rich culture and heritage, which is threatened by Trump’s and the Tories accusations, accusations which seem to be leading up to a pretext for war.
The Iranian state is perfectly capable of terrorism. In the 1990s they bombed a cafe used by Kurdish nationalists in Berlin. And more recently they attacked a British warship, and captured its crew before releasing them.
But there is no evidence they’re behind these attacks. It looks like the Americans and the British Neocon right in the Tories are trying to foment a war fever against Iran. But every opportunity should be taken to prevent a war, which will lead to further, massive carnage and bloodshed in the Middle East, the destruction of the Iranian economy and industry, and what democratic freedoms the Iranian people do possess. As well as the destruction of priceless archaeological monuments and treasures of art, literature and architecture, which will not only impoverish Iran, but also human culture globally.
Against these horrors, Corbyn is quite right to demand further evidence.
All the illustrations with the exception of the Cyrus cylinder come from Royal Persia: Tales and Art of Iran, Carella Alden (New York: Parents Magazine Press 1972).
Joan Ryan is one of the chairs of Labour Friends of Israel, and a week or so ago lost a vote of ‘No Confidence’ brought by her constituency party because of her continual undermining of her party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and attacks and smears on other Labour activists and members.
Such as her utterly baseless and malicious complaint to the party that Jean Fitzpatrick was an anti-Semite. This was simply because Fitzpatrick had come to her stall at the Labour Party Conference last year, and asked her a question Ryan couldn’t answer. She asked her what Labour Friends of Israel were doing to achieve the two-state solution, and how would this be possible with the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. She also said that she believed the LFI had money and influence, because a friend’s son had got a good job at Oxford Union on the basis of having worked for them.
Ryan, of course, couldn’t give a straight answer, was deeply embarrassed, and then decided that instead of talking about Oxford University, Fitzpatrick had claimed that her friend’s son had got a job in the City of London. Which was anti-Semitic, because anti-Semites believe the Jews dominate banking.
It was all rubbish, and even Ryan and her cohorts at the stall didn’t know whether it was really anti-Semitic. But they decided that as it had made them feel uncomfortable – the delicate snowflakes – then it must be.
After she lost the motion, Ryan reacted with her customary grace and conciliatory attitude. Well, no: she ranted about how it was all down to Trotskyites, Communists, Stalinists and the hard left. And the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn responsible for bringing her down were obviously anti-Semitic, ’cause PressTV was in there filming the proceedings.
PressTV is the Iranian state news agency. The Iranian theocracy is a deeply reactionary, oppressive regime. It has reduced its country’s working people to grinding poverty, denied them union rights and in the camps for the oil workers in Khuzestan reduced them to slave workers, like those in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Women are denied many of the basic rights they enjoy in the West. Gays are given the choice between execution and undergoing sex-change surgery. And the regime is extremely hostile to Israel, and expresses this in deeply unpleasant, genocidal rhetoric. However, Iran’s remaining domestic Jewish population, like the Zoroastrians, are actually treated well.
Below is the PressTV video on the vote by Roshan Muhammed Salih. And unless I’ve missed something, it’s actually reasonably impartial and well balanced. It begins by describing the vote as another incident in the battle for the soul of the Labour party, and states quite rightly that it was brought by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn against her.
It quotes Ryan as saying ‘I love Enfield and the people who live there. There is nowhere else I’d rather live and work’. It also says that she is chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and that before the vote was taken there were speeches both for and against.
Salih stated that one of the speakers on behalf of the motion was a local Jewish woman, who said that all the media had been attacking Corbyn, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with anti-Semitism. She added that Corbyn is critical of Israel oppressing the Palestinians, and that was what Benjamin Netanyahu is scared of: that if a Labour government comes to power, this might force peace on Israel. He goes on to say that another pro-Corbyn speaker spoke against Ryan personally. He asked what had really been sowing division in the party, and concluded that it was Joan Ryan.
He reports that Ryan herself spoke in her own defence, trying to rally support by declaring that Nelson Mandela was a strong influence on her when she was growing up, and quoted him as saying that it was possible to change the world with your own hands. However, this didn’t save her, and there were cheers when the results started coming in. He notes that this meant much to pro-Corbyn members. Her future now hangs in the balance, although she says she won’t resign. The video homes in on her tweet stating that she is ‘Labour through and through’ and stands for ‘Labour values’. He ends by saying that the battle for Labour’s heart is far from over.
In this snippet at least, there’s no loud denunciations of Jews, no anti-Semitism. It quotes the Jewish lady stating that the anti-Semitism accusations against Corbyn are all about Israel and not about anti-Semitism. Which is correct, though a view which is angrily denied and shouted down, again with cries of ‘anti-Semitism!’ from the Israel lobby. But that shows the Israel lobby’s vicious prejudices and biases, not those of the people they accuse.
So while the Iranian regime is deeply unpleasant and hostile to Israel, their coverage of the ‘No Confidence’ vote looks very much like proper, impartial journalism. It’s the kind of journalism that is conspicuous lacking in the lamestream media, and which we could do with more of. Despite the howls of outrage and anger by Ryan and those like her.
This is a very short video from the Iranian state news service, Press TV. It’s about a couple of minutes long. It was put up on the 2nd of November 2017, just a couple of weeks ago, and reports the call by the Palestinian authority for Britain to apologise for the Balfour Declaration, and recognise an independent Palestinian state.
It was the Balfour Declaration that pledged Britain to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine ‘without prejudice to the Arabs’. This part of the Declaration was soon broken, and while Britain tried to give at least the appearance that it was maintaining an even hand between the Jewish settlers and indigenous Arabs, in fact it favoured the European Jewish colonialists.
In fact the British government has refused to apologise for the Declaration, and said that it was ‘proud of it’. This little bit is accompanied by everyone’s favourite braggart, Old Etonian, and lethally incompetent ego maniac, Boris Johnson. He’s shown chuntering away, but it’s silent so normal folks don’t have to put up with his god-awful braying, blustering voice.
The clip also includes a brief interview with Richard Silverstein in Seattle, who notes how the Declaration led to the disinheritance of the Palestinians, and describes the recognition of an independent Palestine as ‘a no-brainer’. He believes that the importance of the Balfour Declaration was overstated, and says that there isn’t much of a case for paying reparations to the Palestinians, as Britain didn’t pay the Israelis for what they had suffered under the Mandate either. He also puts Palestine into the wider context of colonial politics and oppression, saying that Britain treated the Arabs in Palestine the same way it treated its other colonial possessions in India, across the Middle East and Africa.
Political and Corporate Corruption in Iran
I’ve previously refrained from putting material up from Press TV, because I heartily despise the Iranian government. It’s an extremely authoritarian state, which oppresses ordinary working people and its constituent ethnic minorities for the benefit of the mullah-merchant princes. These are members of the ulema, who also have extensive links to the merchants of Tehran bazaar and their own business interests. There’s a special term in Farsi, the ancient language of Persia, for the merchant-mullahs, and the ulema currently running the country definitely don’t like. I think they had the last journo or political dissident jailed for using it. There is also a massive underground Christian church in Iran, which, unlike its Chinese counterpart, is very much unknown in the West. It’s very heavily persecuted, contrary to various Hadith and passages in the Qu’ran, where Islam’s Prophet states that ‘there should be no compulsion in religion’. And I shall blog about that little injustice further, as it says as much about the cynical use of religion by the American military-industrial complex to advance their interests.
Iran Diverse and More Tolerant than Expected
I am also very much aware of the bloodcurdling nature of the Iranian rhetoric about Israel, and how former president Ahmedinejad’s speeches have been very plausibly interpreted as advocating the complete destruction of the state of Israel. However, Iran’s remaining Jewish community is quite well treated. I also understand that the country’s ancient Zoroastrian community, who were the country’s official religion under the Persian Empire, is also tolerated and respected. About three per cent of the Iranian population are Armenian Christians, who historically took refuge in Iran to escape persecution elsewhere in the Middle East.
It’s a very diverse country ethnically. Only 51 per cent of the country speaks the official language, Farsi. Other ethnic groups include Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Reshtchis and various tribes speaking languages related to Turkish. The Iranians I’ve met have been very relaxed and matter of fact about the different religious monuments and places of worship that are scattered across their ancient nation. I was asked a few years ago by a Shi’a Muslim Iranian friend if I’d ever seen the Christian churches, that had been built around the Black Sea. There is an Anglican church, whose membership is composed of indigenous Iranians in Tehran, and I personally know people, who have been sent Christmas by Muslim friends, which they purchased in this church.
In short, whatever I think of the mullocracy, the country itself has always struck me as modern, tolerant and cultured. The last should come as no surprise. This is the nation that produced the great poets Firdowsi, who composed the epic history of the Iranian nation, the Shah-Name, and Saadi. Looking through the library, I found an English translation of the latter illustrated by none other than Private Eye’s Willie Rushton. Iran’s government are not its people.
The Balfour Declaration against Wishes Diaspora Jews
But I’ve decided to reblog this piece, because what it has to say about the Balfour Declaration is important. With the Declaration, Britain gave away land, which was not ours to give, and which we had absolutely no right to give away. I’ve already blogged about the way the majority of Britain’s Jewish community at the time were dead against the Declaration. They had absolutely no wish to move once again to another foreign country. They wanted to be accepted for what they were – Brits, like everyone else. The only difference is that they were of a different religion, Judaism.
I’ve also read the same thing about Hungarian Jewry, in a book I borrowed on the history of Judaism a couple of decades ago from one of my aunts. The book’s author, if I recall correctly, was a Christian priest, who admired the Jews and hated anti-Semitism. It stated there that most Hungarian Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century considered themselves ‘Magyars of the Israelitish religion’. You can see that by the way Stephen Fry talks about his Jewish grandfather. He was a Hungarian Jew, but Fry always talks about him as a ‘Magyar’ – the ethnic Hungarians’ term for themselves. Georgy Ligeti, the avant-garde composer, whose weird pieces Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres formed part of the sound track to Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, is also of Hungarian Jewish heritage. He has said in an interview that his family’s surname was originally something very German or Yiddish, but that they changed it to a Hungarian equivalent out of patriotism and national pride. Which disproves so much of that awful, vile bilge Viktor Orban and his wretched Fidesz party are either claiming or insinuating about the country’s remaining Jewish population.
And I’ve blogged before about how Tony Greenstein, one of Zionism’s greatest critics, has pointed out that the Yiddish-speaking Jewish masses in pre-War Poland supported the Socialist Bund, and wanted to be accepted as equal citizens with the same rights as their gentile Polish compatriots. Britain’s Jews were not isolated in wishing to remain in their ancestral European countries. They were part of the mainstream. A mainstream that the Israel lobby in the Tories, the mainstream media, and spurious anti-racism groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the squalid, malicious libellers of the Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour Party, are desperately trying to conceal and obscure. Heaven forfend if you try to mention this, or that the Zionists occasionally collaborated with Nazis and their fellow-travellers to persecute diaspora Jewry. They get terribly upset and start ranting that you’re an anti-Semite.
Suppression of Alternative Media by Western Neoliberal Elite
I also reblogged this because it was from Press TV. I despise the Iranian government, but I also heartily despise the way the American political-military-industrial caste is now trying to suppress alternative news sources. This means going after RT, because, er, they actually do their job as journos and cover issues like racism, growing poverty, the crimes of empire and the exploitative nature of capitalism. And so they’ve created another Red Scare, in which RT is the secret hand of Vladimir Putin corrupting American politics. And the Tories over here are doing exactly the same.
The Censorship of Alex Salmond by the Beeb
Alex Salmond now has his own show on RT in Britain. I can’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t, and at least one good reason why he should: the Beeb heavily censored and deliberately misquoted and then edited out his own words at the Scots independence referendum t’other year. Nick ‘Macclesfield Goebbels’ Robinson asked Salmond if he was worried that the big financial houses would leave Edinburgh for London if Scotland got its independence. Salmond gave him a full answer, stating that he was not worried, and was confident that this would not happen. He quoted various sources from within the financial sector.
Oops! Salmond wasn’t supposed to do that. So over the course of the day, the footage was carefully edited down so that it first appeared that Salmond gave only a cursory reply without much substance. Then it was edited out completely, and ‘Goebbels’ Robinson blithely told the camera that Salmond had not answered his question.
Which was a sheer, blatant, unashamed lie.
Apart from this, Salmond as the former leader of the Scots Nats is in a particularly good position to take up a job for RT. Scotland has always had particularly strong links with Russia. I can remember attending an academic seminar on this when I was hoping to do a degree in Russian at one of the unis in Birmingham. That went by ’cause I didn’t get the grades. I can also remember being told by an aunt, whose husband was Scottish, and who had very pro-Soviet opinions, that the Russians were particularly keen on the works of Rabbie Burns. It was part of the curriculum when they learned English.
This has not stopped Theresa May urging Salmond not to take up the job. Which just follows all the Tories, like Boris Johnson’s equally demented father, who criticised the Labour party because some of their MPs and activists appeared on RT. While conveniently ignoring the various Tories, who had.
So more hypocrisy and scaremongering. No change, there then!
Galloway and Press TV
George Galloway also has, or had, his own show in Press TV, and is an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights. I’ve been wary about him ever since he launched the Respect party, and the way the media monstered him when he saluted Saddam Hussein for his indefatigueability. But I’ve developed a considerable respect for him since then, because so much of what I’ve heard him say about the neoliberal elites and their warmongering attempts to start a conflict with Russia is absolutely correct.
The Anti-Muslim Right and al-Jazeera
The Republicans in America and the anti-Islamic right also hated Al-Jazeera. The Qatar-based broadcaster is supposed to be another source of evil propaganda and disinformation, this time covering for ‘radical Islam’. I think this might be because Al-Jazeera, like RT and Press TV, are showing us in the West what we are doing in the Middle East. Like the hundreds of thousands our bombs are killing, and the millions, who are being thrown out of their homes and forced into refugee camps and exile. The masses, who don’t have food, water, electricity and medical care, because the secular welfare states that have provided this have been destroyed in pursuit of big profits by the multinationals. Just like their people are being persecuted and butchered by sectarian killers, and their women and children enslaved by those savages in ISIS as Daesh tries to roll back the gains they have made. And yes, there has been a Muslim Feminist movement. Just like there has been one in Christianity and Judaism. But you count on Tommy Robinson and the English Defence League not to tell you that. Just as you can count on ISIS, with the backing of the Saudis, in trying to destroy it. Or at least leave it severely restricted.
The War on Domestic Alternative News
And once the elite have finished with the alternative news networks, they’ll try and finish off domestic American and British alternative news sources. Like The Young Turks, the Jimmy Dore Show, the David Pakman Show, Sam Seder’s Minority Report and Democracy Now! in the US. As well as the alternative, left-wing bloggers and vloggers, Google and Facebook are trying to marginalise as ‘fake news’. They’ve even developed algorithms to take traffic away from these sites. I’ve a very strong suspicious Mike’s been hit with it over here, as have several other bloggers. If I remember correctly, they’ve even tried to censor Tom Pride of Pride’s Purge, claiming he wasn’t suitable for children as his material was ‘adult’. It was, but only in the sense that you had to be a mature adult, who actually thought about the issues, to read it.
And once the people at the margins are suppressed, the elite are going to go for the mainstream.
And all we can expect from the mainstream broadcasters is more propaganda denying the reality of poverty, of climate change, of the misery created by the destruction of the welfare, the privatisation of the NHS over here and the refusal to implement single-payer in America, and the sheer, catastrophic lies about how climate change isn’t really occurring.
And as the media gets censored, the brutality of the police and the military will get worse. Black Lives Matter has raised the issue of the cavalier way some cops kill Blacks for the slightest of reasons. But recent arrests and brutalisation of White protesters have also demonstrated that this casual thuggery is also moving towards the White population as well. Counterpunch a few weeks ago put up a piece about a secret US forces report, which predicted that in the next couple of decades, US policing would become more militarised. The army would be used to quell the riots and disturbance that would break out thanks to poverty and increased racial friction.
Orwell’s going to be proved right. In 1984 he asks what the future will be like. The chilling, famous reply is: a jackboot stamping on a human face. Forever.
Without any alternative media to protest, because they’re all in jail or hiding on trumped up charges of treason.
Instead, we’re going to be treated to the lies of shills and hacks like ‘Goebbels’ Robinson and ‘Arnalda Mussolini’ Kuenssberg. And fed racist, Tory drivel by the Murdoch media, the Weirdo Barclay Twins and Paul Dacre.
I found this poem by the Arab Sufi poet, Ibn Farid, who lived from 1182 to 1235 in the anthology of religious texts, Sacred Books of the World, by A.C. Bouquet (London: Pelican 1954). The Sufis are Islamic mystics, like the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey. There are a number of different Sufi orders, rather like the monastic orders and lay brotherhoods of Christianity, and the Whirling Dervishes are just one of them.
The Sufis have a reputation for religious tolerance and syncretism. The teachings and practices of various orders may include elements drawn from the other religions around them. It’s also been claimed that where Islam has been spread peacefully by their preaching, rather than jihad, relations between Muslims and the non-Muslim population are much more peaceful and amicable.
The poem below is on the value of the other, non-Muslim religions, and illustrates this spirit of tolerance and syncretism.
Virtually no hand but mine tied the infidel’s girdle: and if it be loosed in acknowledgement of me, ’twas my hand that loosed it.
And if the niche of a mosque is illuminated by the Qu’ran, yet is no altar of a church made vain by the Gospel:
Nor vain are the books of the Torah revealed by Moses for his people, whereby the Rabbis converse with ~God every night:
And if a devotee fall down before the stones of an idol-temple, there is no reason for religious zeal to take offence;
For many a one who is clear of the shame of associating others with God by means of idolatry, is in spirit a worshipper of money.
The warning from Me hath reached those whom it hath sought, and I am the Cause of the excuses put forth in every faith.
Not in any religion have men’s eyes been awry, not in any sect have their thoughts been perverse.
They that heedlessly fell in love with the Sun lost not the way, forasmuch as its brightness is from the light of My unveiled splendour. And if the Magicians adored the fire – which a history tells us was not quenched for a thousand years –
They intended none but Me, although they took another direction, and did not declare the purpose they had formed.
They had once seen the radiance of My light, and deemed it fire, so that they were led away from the True Light by the rays.
And but for the screen of existence, I should have said it out: only my observance of the laws imposed on phenomena doth keep me silent.
So this is not aimless sport, nor were the creatures created to stray at random, albeit their actions were not right.
Their affairs take the course according to the brand of the Names; and the wisdom which endoweth essence with diverse attributes caused them to take that course in consequence of the Divine Decree.
ISIS really hate the Sufis, considering them part of the juhailiyya, or age of non-Muslim darkness and barbarism that afflicts everyone except them. The Sufis are especially despised for their fatalism, their believe that whatever happens is due to the Will of Allah, and Daesh are doing their level best to exterminate them, along with other persecuted religious groups, in Iraq and Syria.
And no wonder, if their great poets offer a way of religious dialogue, mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence. All ISIS and al-Qaeda have had to offer is hate, repression and bloodshed. A hatred that’s also expressed in the racism and bigotry of Western clowns like Donald Trump.
Let’s hope the way of peace and tolerance, like that expressed by Ibn Farid, prevails against the people of violence and butchery.
Armenian Gospel Book from the Monastery of Gladjor, c. 1321
Today is the centenary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. This was a series of massacres carried out by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian people. The Armenians had risen up, like the other, majority Christians subject nations in the Balkans across the Black Sea to gain their freedom from the decaying Turkish empire. To counter this, the last Turkish sultan, Talat Pasha issued a firman ordering that the Armenians should be rounded up and slaughtered. 1.5 million Armenians, men, women and children were butchered.
The Pope caused controversy earlier this week when he marked the massacres, calling it the first genocide of the 20th century. I’m not sure if this is quite true, as I think about ten years or so previously the German colonial authorities in East Africa had also organised a genocide of the indigenous Herrero people. The occasion has a wider, European significance than just its attempt to exterminate the Armenians. Hitler noted the way the other European powers remained silent and did not act to stop it. This convinced him that they also wouldn’t act to save the Jews when the Nazi state began to persecute and murder them in turn. As he said ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’
Denial of Genocide by Turkish Authorities
Unfortunately, the genocide is still controversial. Robert Fisk in his article in Monday’s Independent discussed the Turkish government’s refusal to recognise the massacres as a genocide. Pope Francis’ comments sparked outrage amongst the Turkish authorities, and the Vatican’s ambassador to Turkey was summoned to meet the prime minister. Fisk himself recalled the abuse he had received from Turks outraged by his discussion of the genocide. He stated he began receiving mail about the issue when he personally dug the bones of some of the Armenians out of the sands of the Syrian desert in 1992. He stated that some of the letters were supportive. Most were, in his words, ‘little short of pernicious’.
In Turkey any discussion or depiction of the Armenian genocide as genocide was brutally suppressed. A few years ago, the Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, was killed for writing about them. Liberal Turks, who wish their nation face up to this dark episode of their history, have been imprisoned. The great Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, was sent to jail a few years ago. His writing on the genocide was judged to be ‘insulting to Turkish nationhood’, a criminal offence.
Fatih Arkin, Turkish Director, on Movie about Genocide
Dink’s assassination has, however, acted to promote a greater discussion and awareness of the genocide, and a large number of both Armenians and Turks are now pressing for the Turkish government to recognise it as such. Indeed, the Turkish-German film director, Fatih Arkin, made a film about the genocide, The Cut which premiered in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, in January.
In the interview below, Mr Arkin talks about he was moved to make the film following Dink’s assassination, and the number of Turks, who also join with the Armenians in demanding their government officially recognise the atrocity. Among those is the grandson of one of the leading perpetrators. What is interesting is that the film received a wide release in Turkey with no opposition or move to ban it.
Fisk on Turks Who Saved Armenians
This seems to show a new openness amongst the Turkish people as a whole about the genocide. And Fisk in his article notes that there many courageous and humane Turks, who refused to comply with Sultan’s orders, and saved Armenians. He stated in his article that these included at least one provincial governor, as well as lesser Turkish soldiers and policemen. Fisk felt that the Armenians should compile a list of these heroes, not least because it would make it harder for politicians like Erdogan, the country’s prime minister, not to sign a book of condolences, which included their names.
And these men were courageous: they risked their lives to save others from the carnage. There is absolutely no reason why they should not also be commemorated. In Judaism, I understand that righteous gentiles, who save Jews from persecution, are commemorated and believed to have a part in the olam ha-ba, the world to come. There is a section of the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, which displays the names of such righteous gentiles, who saved Jews during the Third Reich.
The Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda, from a Syriac Evangelistary
Massacre of Syriac Christians as Part of Wider Pattern of Massacres
The massacre of the Empire’s Christian minorities was not confined to the Armenians, although they are the best known victims. Other Christian peoples, including the Syriac-speaking churches in what is now Iraq and Syria, were also attacked and massacred, in what has become known as ‘the Day of the Sword’. The massacres also spread into Iran, where the Christian communities there also suffered massacres. They too deserve commemoration.
Peaceful Relations between Christians and Muslims Normal in Ottoman Empire
Historians of the Turkish Empire have pointed out that the Armenian genocide, and similar massacres committed by the Ottoman forces in the Balkans during the nationalist wars of the 19th century, were largely the exception. For most of the time Christian and Muslim lived peacefully side by side. Quite often Muslims and Christians shared the same cemeteries. And in one part of Bosnia, at least, the local Roman Catholic church stood bang right next to the local mosque. There were even a small group of worshippers, who seem not to have differentiated between Christianity and Islam.
There’s a story that one orthodox priest, while officiating mass at his church, noticed a group of people at the back wearing Muslim dress. He went and asked them why they were attending a Christian church, if they were Muslims. The people replied that they didn’t really make much difference between the two faiths. On Friday, they prayed at the mosque, and on Sunday they went to church.
Historical Bias and Nationalist Violence by Christians in 19th century Balkans
Historians of the Balkans have also pointed out the dangers of religious bias when discussing the various nationalist wars in the 19th century. In the 1870s the Ottoman Turks committed a series of atrocities suppressing a nationalist uprising in Bulgaria. This outraged public opinion in England, and provoked the Liberal prime minister, Gladstone, to demand that the Turks be ‘thrown out of Europe, bag and baggage’. Other British and American observers noted that atrocities were hardly one sided. Christians also committed them, but these were ignored by the West. One author of a book on the Balkans I read back in the 1990s argued that the various atrocities committed in this period were caused not so much by religious differences, but from nationalism, and so were no different from other atrocities committed by other countries across the world, and in western Europe today as part of ethnic and nationalist conflicts, such as Northern Ireland.
British Empire and Atrocities in Kenya
Other decaying empires have also committed horrific atrocities, and attempted to cover them up. It was only after a very long legal campaign, for example, that the British government admitted the existence and complicity in the regimes of mass murder, torture, mutilation and internment in Kenya to suppress the Mao Mao rebellion. See the book, Africa’s Secret Gulags, for a complete history of this.
ISIS and the Massacre of Christians
The commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians, and by extension the other Christian subject peoples of the Ottoman and Persian Empires at the time, has become pressing relevant because the persecution today of Christians in the region by the resurgent Islamist movements, like ISIS, and Boko Haram in Nigeria. Yet these groups differ in their attitude to the massacre of non-Muslim civilians from that of the Turkish government. The official Turkish attitude has been silence and an attempt to suppress or rebut the genocide’s existence. This points to an attitude of shame towards them. ISIS, which last Monday murdered 30 Ethiopian Coptic Christians, shows absolutely no shame whatsoever. Far from it: they actually boast about their murder and enslavement of innocent civilians.
Conversion of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians by Force, and Murder of Civilians Contrary to Muslim Law
I was taught at College that their actions contravene sharia law. Islamic law also has a set of regulations for the conduct of warfare, which rule out the conversion of the ‘Peoples of the Book’ – Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians – by force. Nor may women, children and non-combatants be harmed. And this has been invoked by the ulema in the past to protect Christian and other minorities in the Ottoman Empire. In the 17th century one of the Turkish sultans decided he was going to use military force to make the Christians in the Balkans convert to Islam. He sought approval for his course of action from the majlis, the governing assembly of leading Muslim clerics, who issued legal opinions on questions of Muslim law and practice. They refused, on the grounds that it was un-Islamic. The sultan backed down, and his planned campaigns against his Christian subjects were abandoned.
ISIS Also Butcher Muslims and Yezidis
Nor do ISIS, and similar Islamist movements limit themselves to attacking Christians. We’ve also seen them butcher and enslave the Yezidis, as well as other Muslims, simply for being the ‘wrong’ type of Muslim. For ISIS, they, and only they, represent true Islam. The rest are part of the ‘juhailiyya’, the world of darkness and ignorance, who must be fought and conquered.
Need to Commemorate All Victims of Atrocities
The Armenian genocide and its victims should rightly be remembered, as should so many other holocausts since then. Not only is this owed to the victims and history itself, but also to stop similar massacres occurring. And we need to remember that the capacity for such evil is not confined to particular nations, but can be found throughout history and humanity.
This is another piece from The Young Turks that I found on Youtube. I’ve blogged recently about how the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Republicans in America have been criticising Obama because of his negotiations with Iran in order to stop them developing nuclear weapons. Netanyahu and the Repugs have been attempting to scare the American public by lying to them about how the Iranians are on the verge of developing nuclear weapons that can be launched at Tel Aviv, New York or Los Angeles.
It’s all lies. According to the international atomic energy authorities, Iran is not developing nuclear arms. Their nuclear research programme is doing exactly what the Iranians claim: it’s purely for domestic power production.
This, however, has not been good enough for the Repugs. A few days ago a group of 47 Republican senators, under the leadership of Tom Cotton, wrote a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, stating that they intended making sure that any treaty between their nation and the Iranians would have no congressional ratification. Without this, it would merely be a presidential agreement, which they were also determined to modify or disregard completely in subsequent administrations.
Here’s the video giving The Young Turks’ take on the letter.
The Turks’ anchor, Cenk Uyghur, is absolutely right on this. It is outrageous, and borderline treasonous for the Republican to undermine the leader of their own nation simply on behalf of another country, regardless of whether that nation is Israel, Canada, Germany or Siam. Worse, these people actually seem to be campaigning for another war.
And Uyghur here makes another good point: the Neo-Con Repug leadership are all chickenhawks. None of them have ever fought in a war, and in fact most of them actively dodged the draft. Dick Cheney is a case in point. He had it deferred seven or eight times because he ‘had better things to do.’ There’s a long list in the book, Confronting the New Conservatism, of Dubya and the other Repugs who similarly squirmed out of serving in Vietnam. The book quotes Conservative critics of the Neo-Cons, including high-ranking military personnel, to show that they don’t understand the Middle East and deeply resent the diplomats, generals and senior officers that do.
And these people won’t be sending their sons and daughters to die out in the desert. The people who’ll do the dying will be spouses and children of Mr and Mrs regular American.
A few years ago there may have been an argument for a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Ahmedinijad was a millennialist, who believed that the End Times were upon us. He was part of a group of Twelver Shi’ah, who believed that the return of the Mahdi, the ‘Rightly-Guided’ Twelfth Imam, was imminent. The Shi’ah differ from Sunni Muslims in that they believe that Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali, was the true successor to the prophet. Ali’s descendants were the Imams, who were the true spiritual guides and rulers of the Muslim community. The precise number of Imams venerated differs from Shi’ah sect to sect. Some believe that there were only seven. The majority of Iranians are Twelver Shi’ah, who believe that there were twelve rightly guided imams. The last imam went into occultation – that is, vanished from the world, after going to a well in the ninth century. Twelver Shi’ah believe that he will reappear to fight the forces of evil just before the end of the world.
Ahmedinijad was one of those, who believed that the twelfth imam’s return was imminent. He renovated the well at which the imam is believed to have vanished. Before then it was quite neglected, although it was a site of pilgrimage for some Shi’ah. It’s now been extensively restored and is the centre of a complex of religious buildings devoted to spreading the faith. Even liberal papers over here, like the Independent, were afraid that Ahmedinijad’s religious convictions would lead him to start another war in the mistaken belief that he was hastening the way for the return of the imam.
Ahmedinijad is not the only political leader to have dangerous millennial beliefs. Similar concerns were expressed in the 1980s about Ronald Reagan because of the way he surrounded himself with extreme right-wing Christians, who also believed that the End Times were upon, following Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth. They saw the millennial conflict as between America and the Soviet Union, representing the forces of Satan. And there was a similar fear that Reagan would start a nuclear war as part of a programme to hasten Armageddon and the return of Christ.
Ahmedinijad and Reagan are both gone, and the current elected Iranian leader rather more liberal. As I’ve also blogged, any attempt to avoid further war in the Middle East is well worth pursuing, given the bloody chaos that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq. Apart from the massive general bloodshed and loss of life that has resulted from the West’s invasion of Iraq, it has resulted in the religious cleansing and attempted extermination of Christians and other religious minorities, like the Yezidis, from their ancient homes by ISIS. Iran is already the eighth worse country in the world for its persecution of Christians. I don’t want it joining the North Korea, Somalia and Iraq as the very worst, just as I don’t want any more people, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Yezidi, Buddhist or whatever, to die just to enrich the multinationals and boost Netanyahu’s election chances.
America and Iran have a real chance of making the Middle East just a little bit more stable, and pushing the forces of death and war back just that little bit. It’s monstrous that it’s being scuppered by Repugs and their attempt to join forces with the hardliners in the Islamic Republic.
I was saddened and disgusted by recent reports of the persecution of Christians in Iran. The Iranian regime is cracking down on evangelical Christianity. Worship, preaching and Christian literature in Farsi is forbidden, churches have been closed and their pastors arrested. The most notable of these are Pastors Youcef Naderkhani and Abedini. They have been imprisoned and sent to the notoriously brutal Evin prison, where their captors are placing them under considerable pressure to convert to Islam. This is not the first time by any means that the Revolutionary regime has persecuted Christians. The Ayatollah Khomeini promised freedom for all religions in Iran, not just Islam. Despite this, the son of the Anglican bishop of Tehran was murdered in the 1980s, apparently by agents of the regime. Several Armenian clergy have also been killed.
Persecution of Christians in Iran down the Centuries
The persecution of Christians in Iran goes back centuries. The church was persecuted under the Sassanid emperors. The Mongols, after their conversion to Islam in the 12th/13th centuries persecuted and destroyed a flourishing Nestorian church that had spread across central Asia to China. Then in the 20th century there was the Armenian massacres. Although this was launched by the Ottoman Turks, it extended into Iran, where members of the Armenian minority were butchered by the Kurds. The massacres were not an isolated event, but part of a ‘Day of the Sword’ that also saw other Christian minorities attacked and murdered across the Middle East. The British traveller, Robert Byron, records an appeal by a Syriac mar in Iraq for help against the jihad declared against his people.
Persecution of Baha’is in Iran
Christians are certainly not alone in being persecuted in Iran. The most severe persecution has been inflicted on the Baha’is. These are, like the Admadis, considered an Islamic heresy, and are therefore regarded as outside the dhimmi designation that provides a limited tolerance for Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. Because one of the religion’s foundes, Bahaullah, was exiled by the Turkish authorities to Haifa, there is now a large body of conspiracist theorising that falsely accuses them of being an Israeli plot to undermine Islam. In Iran there have been a series of pogroms that have killed an estimated 50,000 Baha’is. Baha’is have been imprisoned, tortured and female believers gang-raped in order to force them to renouce their beliefs. Baha’is travelling to Iran have been forced to sign documents stating they have left the faith in order to enter the country. Any mention of this persecution inside Iran is also strictly forbidden. A Western businessman with dealings in Iran and Iranian friends and business partners was arrested when he returned to the country after writing a book on the pogrom against the Baha’is.
Muslim Iranians Outraged against Khomeinist Regime’s Violence and Persecution
This intolerance and persecution is not shared by many Iranian Muslims. John Simpson in his book on Iran records that the congregation for the funeral of the Anglican bishop’s son included the Christians’ Muslim friends and colleagues. The Shah was a thug and a tyrant, but older Iranians who lived under his rule state that they all considered themselves Iranians, regardless of individual faith. Iranian Muslims did have Baha’is and Zoroastrians amongst their friends. The rioting and demonstrations against the cartoons of Mohammed published in Denmark outraged many genuinely liberal and tolerant Iranians. The Iranian correspondent for the British magazine, Private Eye, reported a counter-demonstration against the riots at the remains of the Danish embassy the day after it was razed by a mob. Their members included many whose patriotism and love for their country cannot be denied. One of these was the quadroplegica veteran of the Iran-Iraq. This man was a mouth-painter, and painted a picture of Our Lady, who is also a revered figure in Islam. The magazine also noted that the blog of one of the Basiji commanders, who helped organise the riots and destruction, was flooded with comments from Iranians denouncing his actions. One even said that it was people like him, who were responsible for the suspicion and hatred of Islam in the West.
Life and Prayer of Simeon of Persia
The prayer is by Simeon of Persia, alias Simeon Barsabba’e. He was bishop of Ctesiphon, and was martyred there in 341 during the campaign against Christianity by the Persian Emperor, Shapur II. Just as the contemporary Iranian regime accuses Christians of treachery and disloyalty, so Simeon and his fellows were then. Amongst other crimes, he was accused of plotting treason in correspondence to the Roman emperor, Constatius II. He was ordered to convert to Zoroastrianism, but refused. He and a large number of other Christians were thus executed on Good Friday, 341. After his death, his sister, the virgin St. Pherbutha, was accused of witchcraft and martyred with her sister and another woman. The two bishops, St. Shahdost, and St. Barba’shmin, who succeeded Simeon to the see were also martyred in 342 and 346 respectively. The prayer by Simeon of Persia describes his despair at seeing his church destroyed and its people turned against him. Yet he is determined to continue in his faith so that he will win the crown of glory in heaven, where there will be no earthly persecutors.
‘Give me this crown, Lord; you know how I long for it,
for I have loved you with all my heart and all my being.
When I see you, I shall be filled iwth joy and you will give
me rest. I shall no longer have to live in this world and see
my people suffering, your churches destroyed, your altars
overthown, your devoted clergy everywhere persecuted,
the weak defiled, the lukewarm turned from the truth, and
my flock, that was so large reduced at the time of testing to
a handful.
I shall not see the many that seemed to be my friends
undergo an inward change, become hostile and seek my
death; or find those that were my friends for a while taken
from me by persecution, at the very time when the killers
are snapping their fingers at our people and lording it over
them.
Yet I mean to persevere in my vocation like a hero and
to walk bravely along the parth marked out for me, so that I
shall be an example to all your people in the East. I have
had the first place at table, I will have the first place too
whien it comes to dying; I will be the first to give my
blood. Then with my brethren I shall enter on that life in
which there are no cares, no anxiety, no solicitude, a life
where there is neither persecutor nor persecuted, neither
oppressor nor oppressed, neither tyrant nor victim of
tyranny. No threatening kings, no blustering prefects shall I
see there. No one there will cite me before his tribunal or
upset me with repeated menaces; there will be no on eto do
me violence or bully me.
I shall stumble no more, when once I have gained a
firm footing in you, the Way we all must walk in. My
weary limbs will find their rest in you, for you, Anointed,
are the Oil that is to anoint us. The grief in my heart will
be forgotten when I drink of you, the Chalice of our
salvation. The trears in my eyes you will wipe away, OJoy, O
Consolation’.
We pray that this current persecution will soon cease without the deaths of pastors Naderkhani, Abedini, and the other clergy and worshippers, as will the attacks on other religious minorities, such as the Baha’is and liberal Muslims. We pray that the pastors and other Christians and prisoners of conscience will soon be freed from jail, to live freely. We pray that God will sustain the pastors and their community in their faith, and that soon all Iranians will live in peace and friendship, regardless of their faith.
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