Iran’s Second Islamic Revolution?
Iran’s Second Islamic Revolution?
Last week, Ali Gharib made the important point that what’s happening in Iran is thus far not a rejection of the Islamic republic, but a struggle over its founding principles. Reviewing Moussavi’s formal statement Saturday, Gary Sick described it as diagnosis of “a revolution gone wrong,” writing that Moussavi has “issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic.”
In an especially good post, Spencer Ackerman flagged a key passage from Moussavi’s statement:
If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.
This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism.
As Spencer notes, that last bit is a pretty clear rebuke to those Western critics who, in criticizing the brutality of the Iranian regime, have tried to present Islam and democracy as irreconcilable.
Speaking of which, conservative scholar-activist Martin Kramer, in a comically mendacious (and, as usual, Rashid Khalidi-obsessed) dispatch, tries to argue that the “events in Iran have left Obama’s simplistic mental map of the Middle East, first learned from a few Palestinian activists and an old Hyde Park rabbi, in shreds.”
But, in fact, what is in shreds is the representation of Islamism — peddled for years by Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and ideologically affiliated think tanks and publications — as wholly and irretrievably hostile to modernity, to human rights, and to democracy. Having spent years vilifying the Islamist discourse of struggle and sacrifice as deployed by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, these pundits have now been pantsed by the Iranian demonstrators deploying the very same discourse on behalf of freedom and reform. Moussavi has declared himself “ready for martyrdom” — will conservatives now condemn his “death cult“?
The point here is not to call out those whose skewed analysis of the Middle East strongly informed America’s disastrous and costly attempt to implant democracy there by force. Okay, that’s part of the point. But the larger part is to note how significant it is that the Iranian clerical-dictatorial regime is being challenged from within Islam, and that a very credible scholarly-religious critique that has long been suppressed by the regime now seems to have found a vehicle in Moussavi and the movement around him.
Even in the best outcome, I think it’s likely that the Iranian government will continue to be, in key respects, Islamist-controlled (matching the Islamist-controlled government in neighboring Iraq.) But it’s important to understand that this, much more so than any Western-imported concept of “secularism,” has the potential to really spur the already vigorous debate in the region over the arrangement of a fair and just society, by underscoring Islamism’s contribution to that debate. As with President Obama’s wise caution in regard to the demonstrations, the most productive thing the U.S. do, while continuing to voice support for human rights, is to get out of the way and make space for the debate to occur.
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THE POISON OF A TERRORIST STATE
(CREATING THE TERRORIST MYTH)
Under the excuses being that the process of law is to cumbersome, that the normal safeguards, in the law for the individual are not designed for an (Insurgency/War on Islam/War on Terrorism), and that the terrorist (IFF) Islamic Freedom Fighters, deserves to be treated as an outlaw anyway, The Empire Terrorist State and its forces are acting far outside International Law, Morality, and Human Rights, that as it is written in the Tso Chuan, “If bees and scorpions carry poison, how much more will a hostile State! Even a puny opponent, then, should not be treated with contempt.” Then they, (IFF), must be feared, and death with, the methods are shooting them on the battlefield, not treating them as soldiers without uniforms and having the recognized International rights of prisoners of war, but as a new and totally unique aberration, A Terrorist, a Jihadists Terrorist, and not an (IFF) Islamic Freedom Fighter. A prisoner that neither falls under the Laws of the State, nor the International Laws to receive the Treatment of Legal Combatants, but much as The Count De Monte Cristo, with years of imprisonment/incarceration, in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Pakistan, or some other unnamed hell hole of the damned. Without evidence, the Right of Habeas Corpus, with one set of false allegations after another being changed, based upon confession make under torture or enhanced interrogations, or simply do not bring specific charges, it is simply detainment as the case is being built, with the passage of time, evidence and people tend to and are lost, and forgotten, and may be released when the war is over or maybe never.
(The Tactic of Terrorism)
In Russia they have a saying, if there is a fly in your soup, it is better to separate the two before you start eating, what is Terrorism? There exists (2) two types of Terrorism, State Terrorism and Terrorist tactics of the oppressed Freedom Fighters, Terrorism is not War, it is an important TACTIC of war, a tactic that will continue to exist as long as politicians and rulers forget moral principles, allowing the factors that create Freedom Fighters and Terrorist Tactics as those politicians and rules live and exist, as the Vampires the Blood Suckers of Society, by corruption, graft, greed, lawlessness, poverty, and suffering of the Mass, (The Seven Deadly Sins Incarnate in the Power of THE EMPIRE), two separate and unequal societies Main Street, and Wall St., those that have and those that have not, the rich and powerful, and the poor, and weak. And, the day will never come when the Morally Corrupt Empire Leadership will understand that (To Those That Much Is Given, Much Is Expected), but as British Lord Acton famously said, power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely, The Empire Terrorist State Leadership the Hampton (VIPI’s) Very Important People Indeed, living in the belief that the world and life are simply unfair, and this is a dog eat dog world, and only the strong are meant to survive.
(State Terrorism)
And example is in fact the (AIE) American Israeli Empire, simply know as the Empire or Empire Terrorist State, using tyranny of arbitrary exercise of power, as a Empire Terrorist State, outside the law and therefore forfeiting the right to be called a legal government but a Rogue Terrorist State, and which cannot expect those weaker States or People to obey the established laws but must revert to the laws of nature, and the prime law of survival, if the State is Immorally, functioning outside all International legal law and moral code, than Immoral acts against the State based upon the Law of Survival are an act of Self-Defense. The Empire Terrorist State with great efficiency exerted STATE BASED TERRORISM, against Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now in (Af-Pak), the act of a larger stronger State invading a smaller Weaker State, and this would neither be an arbitrary, small, or wrong distinction. What has the Empire Terrorist State been pursuing in both Iraq and (Af-Pak) Afghanistan and Pakistan, the proliferation of democracy, or the defeat of terrorism, and the answer is neither, it is about maintaining the Status Quo, its about Markets and Resources, its about the establishment of the (1) One World Government the Hierarchical Structure, with the Empire Terrorist State at its apex. The consequences of this Morally Wrong, State Terrorism, whether one believes in a Deity, Karma, Fate or that in the end Right always prevails just like the mess of World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the (Af-Pak) War will be left to the rest of the civilized “Spheres of Influence” put together to clean up, and that will be in the very near future, if a Nuclear War is yet avoidable.
(Terrorism Act of Self-Defense)
The Tactic of Terrorism exist due to the fact that it is the Only tactic when the very few, face the very many, when the very weak meet the very strong, if it is the only weapon in the quiver of arrows that may have any effect that may make the wrongs being perpetrated upon them right, good can be made out of evil acts as long as the ends justify the means, the abomination of Empire State Terrorism upon that of the weaker parts of humanity, are acts of Empire State Terrorism against, the basic human rights, common to mankind, and is the greater evil, making the act or use of the tactic of Terrorism an act of self defense. The Empire Terrorist State created the acts of Tactical Terrorism, those that act in Self-Defense, those victims of the Empire Terrorist State did not create the Empire Terrorist State but simply responded in kind. “If bees and scorpions carry poison, how much more will a hostile State!
TRIATHLON
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm