The Wahhabi / Khomeinist Islamic Threat and Meaningless Words

It is axiomatic that if you can't diagnose a problem or an illness, than you can't cure it. Thus, when you here Obama call the threat the West faces "violent extremimism," you can rest assured, the threat we face will never die. But the vast majority of those who criticize Obama are little better. Typical is the column in The Atlantic today by Peter Beinart calling for the threat to be labeled "violent Islamic extremists." That is a better, but still nowhere near specific enough to allow for the problem to be dealt with at its core. Like sharks, there are many different schools of Islam, only a few of which pose an aggressive danger to civilization, at least at the moment. Why is that? When our government answers that question, when they put the threat of "violent extremism" in that context, then and only then it can be dealt with effectively by encouraging, through opinion and, if necessary, physical means, the Muslim world to deal with the specifics of their faith that are at odds with civilization.

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The Future of Islam: The King Hearing, Jasser & Geller

Islam is on a collision course with the rest of the world - and indeed, it has been since 622 A.D., when Mohammed made the Hijra from Mecca to Medina, marking the Year 1 in the Islamic Calendar. Many on the left pretend that is not the case, such as Obama, who excuses Muslim aggression by claiming that those who use violence to further the cause of Allah are motivated by a false interpretation of Islam. The precise opposite is true. The violent ones are the true believers in all of the Wahhabi dogma that arises out of a 13th century interpretation of 7th century Islam.

I will grant that there are many schools of Islam, many benign. But over the last half century, the most toxic form of Islam, Wahhabism, has risen to the fore on the back of Saudi petrodollars and is, today, effecting numerous other schools, such as Pakistan's Deobandi school, Turkey's Sufi school and Khomeini's bastardization of twelver Islam and its quietist tradition.

If nothing is done to change the trajectory of Islam, and particularly the Wahhabist wing and those many schools of Islam it has influenced, then at some point in the future, it is inevitable that we will see a resumption of religious wars. These future wars will be fought with modern, and possibly nuclear, weapons, and their cost will most assuredly exceed in blood and gold the sum of all the religious wars fought between Islam and other religions over the last near 1,400 years.

Here are the hard truths about Wahhabi Islam and its ilk that puts it on a collision course with the rest of the world and makes it incompatible with the Western freedoms and modernity:

1. Wahhabi Islam is triumphalist and those who believe in all of its dogma teach and support using violence to spread the faith. They cite to Koranic verse in support thereof. Islam has been the most imperialistic force ever seen in history, spread by the sword and leaving rivers of blood out of Arabia through Egypt, the entire Middle East, all of North Africa, Iran, Portugal, the Indian subcontinent, Sicily, Byzantium (modern day Turkey), Greece, half of Spain, southern France, and throughout south central Europe up to the gates of Vienna, Austria. Our nation's first foreign war - and its longest some-time declared, some-time undeclared war of 31 years - was against religiously motivated Muslims who were attacking American ships in the Mediterranean and enslaving our citizens. Thomas Jefferson, when he asked the ambassador of one of the Islamic regents warring on our nation in 1794 what justified such attacks, was told:

“. . . it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.” He claimed every one of their guys who was “slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise."

That is precisely the same doctrine that is part of the curriculum being taught in Saudi financed Wahhabi madrassas and schools around the world to this day. So, to repeat, the Muslim threat to the rest of the world that has existed since 622 A.D. has in no way abated or been blunted with the passing of time, whether it be counted in decades, centuries or millenniums.

2. On a related note, Wahhabi Islam holds that any land once ruled by Muslims must forever be ruled by Muslims. Thus do you see agitation in Spain and, of course, the mindless genocidal hatred of Jews and Israel.

3. Wahhabi Islam is not merely a religion, but a social and political construct that requires its adherents to dominate their state and impose Sharia law, thus putting the ultimate political power of the state in the hands of Muslim clerics. It requires that Christians and Jews be treated as second class citizens, to the extent they are tolerated at all.

4. Wahhabi Islam is enforced by the sword. It is doctrine that anyone who leaves the faith, such as by converting to Christianity, should be put to death. Likewise, anyone who publicly disagrees with Wahhabi doctrine is an apostate who should be killed. And we see blasphemy laws in the Middle East whereby to criticize Islam or Mohammed can bring about a sentence of death.

5. Violence against women and misogyny are hallmarks of Wahhabi Islam. Honor violence and forced marriages, including with girls as young as nine years old, are issues throughout the Muslim world, including Muslim enclaves in Europe and, to a very much lesser extent, in America. Should a Muslim woman date or marry outside of Islam, she is subject to violence, up to and including murder.

6. Wahhabi Islam in particular promotes separatism, seeking to keep Muslims in foreign lands from integrating into Western society.

7. The Wahhabists are involved in a religous cleansing of the Middle East. Christians in Muslim countries are, to perhaps put it too gently, under siege. The Jews have already been near completely expelled from Muslim majority countries in the Middle East, just as they were expelled from what is now called the "Arab Quarter" of Jerusalem in 1948.

8. Should true Sharia law ever be imposed outside of the Middle East, you will likely see a resumption of something that died out three hundred years ago in the West - trials for, and the slaughtering of, people accused of witchcraft. It occurs with regularity in Saudi Arabia and we see it spreading out in all areas where Wahhabism has gained influence.

I don't pretend to know to what degree all of the above come out of the Koran, as opposed to the Sunna, the Hadith, or simply the overlay of 7th century Arabic culture on Islam. That is a question to ask Muslim reformists.

What is clear is that Islam must either evolve or, eventually, it will involve the West in apocalyptic war. Violence in the name of Christianity, for all intents and purposes, died with the end of the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics in the 1600's and the rise of the Enlightenment. Violence perpetrated in the name of Islam has continued virtually uninterrupted since 622 A.D., only taking a lull of sorts when the military power of the West was such that the Islamic world could not directly compete - and even then there has been continuous aggression on the margins, whether from the Barbary Pirates and their enslavement of 1.25 million Christians, the Turks and their slaughter of a Albanian Christians, the Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda. All that remains is for Muslims who believe in the doctrines enumerated above to get in a position of perceived military parity with the West and Islam will inevitably resume its imperialist expansion. The attempted annihilation of Israel will likely mark day one.

These are existential issues for the U.S. as well as both the Western and Islamic worlds. And our government, which seems wholly intent on whitewashing Islam, is doing a tremendous and dangerous disservice to us all.

Into the breach has stepped Rep. Peter King. He has proposed hearings as to why "moderate Muslims" are not supporting efforts to combat the radicalization of Muslims in the U.S.:

Over the past few years, numerous hearings have already been conducted on Capitol Hill, in both the House and Senate, looking into domestic Islamist terrorism and ‘radicalization'. Unfortunately, those hearings garnered little attention and few tangible results - because they avoided discussing the root causes. Those hearings instead focused only on "violent extremism" a useless concept addressing a symptom and not the disease. Up to now the combined efforts of the forces of political correctness and Islamist pressure groups have dominated the debate and the lexicon.

Recently, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced that he intends to hold hearings to address what he describes as the failure of leaders in the American Muslim community to address the problem of the domestic radicalization of Muslims. King told Politico that "the leadership of the [Muslim] community is not geared to cooperation," and that the goal of the hearings will be "to confront the threat of homegrown terrorism and explore the role of Muslim leaders in dealing with it." He has opened the discourse about some imams and other Muslim leaders who have been less than helpful (if not obstructionists) in counterterrorism investigations.

While limited in scope, the hearings seem likely to bring to the fore many of the issues I've enumerated above. Thus it has raised the ire of Islamists and many on the left who do not want to see any hearings go forward that might possibly shine a light on Dark Ages doctrines of Wahhabi Islam. But surprisingly, it has also been dismissed outright by some on the right as useless.

Enter Dr. Zhudi Jasser. He is a devout Muslim, a former U.S. naval officer, a patriot and the President of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy (AIFD). His goal is to see Islam evolve and to remove the political aspects from its doctrine. He has written strongly in support of Rep. King's hearings. For example:

I am the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). The body of our work in this area can be found at our website, YouTube channel, and peppered amongst the work of so many other thinkers among the anti-Islamist, anti-jihadist movement in the United States over the past decade. Our mission at the AIFD is, "to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state." Terrorism is only one endpoint, one symptom, of a much more protracted complex process of Muslim radicalization. American Muslim radicalization is a natural endpoint of the separatist ideological continuum of political Islam. We are one of the most prominent American Muslim organizations directly confronting political Islam (Islamism) from within the Muslim consciousness. The AIFD is grounded in the need for honest Muslim reform ending the concept of the Islamic state and getting the theocratic instrument of shariah law out of government and out of the central nature of our Muslim identity. That is the only viable solution to Muslim radicalization both domestically and abroad.

King's proposed hearings finally sound like an important beginning to the sadly unchartered public discourse about these issues. Islamist groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council have responded to criticisms defensively citing data (possibly exaggerated) that many plots were broken up by Muslims themselves. There are most certainly many American Muslim heroes. But at the end of the day, those anecdotes are just straw men to divert the discussion of the deep internal drivers of growing American Muslim radicalization. Our nation desperately needs a strategy to prevent the undeniable. Now, liberty-loving American Muslim leaders can publicly acknowledge that responsibility and our representatives in Congress can begin to expose and de-legitimize various mechanisms of Islamist facilitation in the United States.

If there is ever going to be an evolution in Islam, then honestly shedding a light upon all of the issues enumerated above is the first step. But those who believe that Islam cannot evolve are, in the words of Dr. Jasser:

. . . declaring an ideological war against one-fourth of the world's population and expecting to neutralize the Islamist threat by asking Muslims to renounce their faith.

Pam Geller, who blogs at Atlas Shrugs, is one who believes that Islam cannont evolve. Fair enough. While I disagree strongly, her's is not an unsupportable position. That said, she has also taken to making personal attacks on Dr. Jasser in an apparent effort to delegitimize him and his message. That is wrong-headed indeed.

Geller recently made a series of personal attacks against Dr. Jasser in an essay at the American Thinker. Dr. Jasser has responded in the same venue with a detailed and documented point by point refutation. I recommend that you read the entire post.

That said, two points that Geller makes deserve special attention. One, she claims that Dr. Jasser is a closet anti-Semite. Two, she claims that his personal interpretation of Islam lacks any theological underpinning, it has no currency among Muslims, and thus his entire effort at reform is useless.

As to the charge of anti-Semitism, Geller refers solely to an interview that she did with Dr. Jasser in 2007 on her blog-talk radio show. Here is how she characterizes that interview in her January 20 piece at American Thinker:

"And when I interviewed Jasser back in 2007, he referred to Israel as occupied territory in the last five minutes of the interview. He blew his cover."

One, such an interpretation of what Jasser said would seem to defy his entire body of work. Beyond that, as Jasser points out, he used the term "occupied territories" during that interview to refer to Gaza and the West Bank, both of which were occupied by Israel from 2000 to 2005. He did so in reference to a question about the use of chidren's shows in those two locales to teach hatred of Jews - something which he unequivocally condemned.

I can speak to this with personal knowledge. I was on the phone to Pam Geller's show during the entirety of her interview with Jasser and for a few minutes thereafter until she signed off. At the conclusion of the interview - which unfortunately is when the transcript ends - she remained talking for a few minutes. During that post-interview time I distinctly recall her raising Dr. Jasser's use of the term "occupied territories" and asking out loud, "what was that about?" I recall wondering at the time why she didn't just ask Dr. Jasser for clarification if she was confused. And as Dr. Jasser points out, she never asked him to clarify what he said before now charging him with being a closeted anti-Semite. She has made the jump from seeing ambiguity in 2007 to today, when she presents to the public the statement as proof positive of Dr. Jasser's anti-Semitism. I don't know whether she is intellectually very slovenly or she is being deliberately disingenuous for the purpose of delegitimizing Dr. Jasser. It is one of the two, if not both. In either event, my respect for her as well as my trust in her assertions has dropped precipitously.

Two, Gellar asserts that Dr. Jasser's push to reform Islam is superfluous:

"Jasser's Islam does not exist. He does not have a theological leg to stand on." . . .

Jasser has no following among Muslims and doesn't represent any Islamic tradition. So what's the point?" . . .

This is a position that is cynical, dangerous, and unsupported by Islamic doctrine or Western history. It is cynical in that it posits that no change in Islam is possible, thus why even try. It is dangerous because it consigns the future of Islam to those who want to keep it mired in the 7th century and it virtually assures that our children will some day be fighting a cataclysmic and existential, if not genocidal, war.

Most polls of Muslims find support for such things as violence in support of Allah or the murder of "apostates" to be minority positions, albeit sizable minorities. As to Iran, the theocracy's brutal, corrupt regime has delegitimized Islam as a political construct among Iran's youth. So regardless of how the Koran, Sunnah or Hadiths may be interpreted by Wahhabists, a majority does not hold to their positions. This certainly suggests that evolution is possible. The flip side of that coin is that they are not the one's with the guns, and indeed, are more likely at the moment to be targets of violence by the minority of Muslims than we in the West. Thus if Muslims are to have any chance of evolving their religion, they will need significant support from non-Muslims, something that our current administration, the Western left and Geller would deny them. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Two, Geller neglects an important point. Islam in fact came with amendment clauses - the doctrine of itjihad and the saying in the Hadiths that the ummah "can never agree on an error." If those have any meaning at all, then there is more than ample room for Islam to evolve, though it will be a bloody internal struggle indeed.

Lastly, during the 9th through the 11th centuries, Islam was the most advanced and enlightened civilization on earth. That ended with the Mongol invasions. Since then, in the Islamic world, there has never been a Renaissance, a Reformation, or a period of Enlightenment. For Wahhabists, there is only Ibn Wahhab's 17th century spin of Ibn Taymiyyah's 13th century interpretation of 7th century Islam. But history teaches us that that all it takes is one man to reform a religion. What remains is for a Muslim Martin Luther to appear and to make use of itjihad, nailing his 95 theses to the doors of Mecca in order to lead a reformation. Whether we think it likely or unlikely is irrelevant. History teaches us what is possible and the polls tell us that a significant portion of the Islamic world might well be receptive. It is, in any event, in the best interests of the entire Western world - and the entire Islamic world - to lend any such effort our full support.

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The Iranian Revolution, DNI Clapper & The Muslim Brotherhood

Update: After 18 days of demonstrations, the military executed a coup in Egypt today. This is the best possible news for Egypt and the West.

Today, our Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as a "peaceful" and a "largely secular organization". Really. On a related note, today is "Islamic Revolution's Victory Day" in Iran. It was this day in 1979 that the last of the Shah's forces fell. As we ponder the Obama administrations apparent willingness to countenance the Muslim Brotherhood as a benign organization and potential partner for the U.S. in Egypt, it would do well to remember just a few of the highlights from the Iranian Revolution.

Like the Muslim Brotherhood (see, e.g., here, here, here), Khomeini left a long paper trail of books setting forth his true radical Islamist views:

In the 1960s and 70s Khomeini had already talked about almost everything he did. Even in 1944 he talked about how evil democracy and modernity are, how evil the rule of law is. He talked about the establishment of Velayat-e faqih, the rule of Islamic jurists.

Yet, like the Brotherhood of today, as the opportunity to take power presented itself, Khomeini articulated a very benign viewpoint, portraying himself as a freedom lover, willing to tolerate complete freedom of speech, and expressly disavowing any role for himself or the Shia clergy in the government. For example:

"In Iran's Islamic government the media have the freedom to express all Iran's realities and events, and people have the freedom to form any form of political parties and gatherings that they like." Interview with the Italian newspaper Paese Sera, Paris, November 2, 1978

"In the Islamic government all people have complete freedom to have any kind of opinion." Interview with Human Rights Watch, Paris, November 10, 1978

"In Islamic Iran the clergy themselves will not govern but only observe and support the government's leaders. The government of the country at all levels will be observed, evaluated, and publicly criticized." -- Interview with Reuters news agency, Paris, October 26, 1978

The secular opposition to the Shah was disorganized in Iran, but it was widespread, from liberal democrats to labour. "Khomeini worked to unite this opposition behind him by focusing on the socio-economic problems of the Shah's regime (corruption and unequal income and development), while avoiding specifics among the general public that might divide the factions — particularly his plan for clerical rule . . ." And while the Khomeinists were significantly outnumbered amongst many protesters against the Shah, they were by far the most organized.

Khomeini did not reveal his true colors until after taking power, when he became hyper-militant in stamping out all opposition to his theocracy. For example, in his own words:

"Those who are trying to bring corruption and destruction to our country in the name of democracy will be oppressed. They are worse than Bani-Ghorizeh Jews, and they must be hanged. We will oppress them by God's order and God's call to prayer." -- In a talk at the Fayzieah School, Qom, August 30, 1979

"Those who have not voted for the Islamic Republic, it means that they want the previous system. Those who boycott the election so no one votes for the Islamic Republic are seditious. We will treat them like enemies, and we will oppress them. You are enemies that you want to cause trouble. You are enemies that you are conspiring against Islam and against the country. Your comings and goings are controlled. We have been informed that you are in contact with those who want to bring our country back to its previous system. Now that your conspiracy has been proven, we will destroy you all. If you don't stop your evilness, we will mobilize an even higher mobilization, and we will clean out all of you. We will not allow you groups of corrupt people to remain and continue your activities. -- In a message at the end of the month-long Islamic fasting celebration, September 3, 1979

As one observer put it, in terms that parallel the situation in Egypt today:

What began as an authentic and anti-dictatorial popular revolution based on a broad coalition of all anti-Shah forces was soon transformed into an Islamic fundamentalist power-grab," that significant support came from Khomeini's non-theocratic allies who had thought he intended to be more a spiritual guide than a ruler — Khomeini being in his mid-70s, having never held public office, been out of Iran for more than a decade, and having told questioners things like "the religious dignitaries do not want to rule."

Khomeini's consolidation of power between 1979 and 1982 was bloody and deliberate. Khomeini initially threw his entire authority behind secular moderate Mehdi Bazargan as the new head of state while he built up his own, separate revolutionary apparatus loyal only to him. On March 30, 1980, Khomeini arranged for a national vote on whether to replace the monarchy with an "Islamic Republic." The term "Islamic Republic" was left undefined, and it was only after winning the vote with a 98% majority vote did Khomeini have a Constitution drawn up - for a theocracy. And before the next vote on the Constitution, Khomeini moved into full force, crushing the opposition, murdering thousands once associated with the shah, closing down newspapers opposed to a theocracy, and threatening with death any who would vote against him. In the end, it was Khomeini and his "radicals who won. Because they were the most ruthless. They were the most brutal."

Given the organization and popularity of the Brotherhood today in Egypt, there is little reason to think that they could not achieve similar results over time. We should have no misconceptions. As to the nature of the Brotherhood, this from Zhudi Jasser, issued today after DNI Clapper's dangerously ridiculous characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood:

"The Muslim Brotherhood is the antithesis of a secular organization as asserted today by James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence. Clapper's statement presents a significant concern that our primary Intelligence officer has a complete lack of understanding of an organization that presents the greatest threat to the security of the United States. The Director of Intelligence is either grossly naïve or covering up for an ideology that is in an ideological war with the United States and western society.

The Muslim Brotherhood is built on the ideology of political Islam which adheres to a belief in Islamic Supremacy. To be a secular organization the Brotherhood would have to completely disavow the very beliefs that define the organization.

Further, the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to the political process in a post-Mubarak Egypt and throughout the middle-east. Thugs like Mubarak have created an atmosphere that has allowed the Brotherhood to thrive. The United States needs to be active within the country of Egypt countering the ideology of the Brotherhood helping the people of Egypt develop liberty-minded, democratic infrastructure to secure the country's future. We need to demonstrate to Egyptians that freedom does not come in the form of Islamic law or in the rule of theocratic clerics.

Our Intelligence community cannot afford to allow political correctness or this severally mistaken understanding of the Brotherhood to enter the conversation of how we will confront the changes in Egypt."

As we deal with political Islam domestically and abroad it has hundreds of permutations from the most violent (Al Qaeda) to the non-violent (Islamist groups in the west). They all are pursuing the same goal which is the Islamic state based in Sharia Law. This is because they all share the same roots - The Muslim Brotherhood. This very conflict is what defines our American Islamic Forum for Democracy. If America gets this conflict wrong we are doomed to become accomplices in the ascendancy of Islamic theocracy throughout the world which ultimately threatens our national security.

As I wrote below, Mubarak's decision today, refusing to step down, makes a violent revolution exponentially more likely - and nothing would more favor the Brotherhood. Obama should be doing all in his power to encourage a coup by the military that would forestall such an event, and that would allow time for secular opposition to organize prior to elections. Hopefully that would be enough to prevent a repeat of Iran.

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Today's Reading: Totten on Egypt

Michael Totten is one of our most astute observers of the Middle East. He has two articles of note that shed a great deal of light on the situation in Egypt. The first, written in 2005, is Nassar's Biggest Crime wherein he discusses why the Muslim Brotherhood is the dominant opposition in Egypt today and the ramifications thereof, while secular political parties are nascent and disorganized. And do note the parallels between Sadat's strategy and that of el-Baradei, who is today championing the Muslim Brotherhood:

“When Nasser took over,” Big Pharaoh said, “people were angry at Britain and Israel. He nationalized all the industry. He banned political parties. He stifled everything. Banned the Muslim Brotherhood. Banned the Communists. Banned all. When Sadat took over in 1970, he had two enemies: the Communists and the Nasser remnants. So to counter these threats, he did what the United States did in Afghanistan during the Cold War – he made an alliance with the Islamists. He brought back the Muslim Brotherhood which had fled to Saudi Arabia when Nasser was around. He used them to destroy the left.”

“That was part of it,” he continued. “During the oil boom of 1973 a lot of Egyptians went to Saudi Arabia to work. Then in the 1990s, two important things happened. After the first Gulf War, Saudi Arabia began to Saudize its economy and said they no longer needed Egyptian workers. When the Egyptians came home they were contaminated with Wahhabism. Egypt’s economy kept getting worse. Unemployed members of the middle class either sat around and smoked shisha or got more religious. That was when Islamism moved from the lower class to the middle class. Now it is moving even to the upper class.”

“Egypt will get over it after a while,” I said, “just like Iran is getting over it now.”

“That will take 25 years! I don’t have 25 years!”

The Iranian theocracy has been in power for 26 years.

And here is Michael Totten today in PJM, interviewing Abbas Milani, Prof. of Iranian studies at Stanford, about the parallels between Egypt of today and the Iranian revolution of three decades ago:

MJT: I find this very disturbing. Iran in the 1970s—and I guess today, too—was much more liberal and modern than Egypt.

Abbas Milani: Oh, absolutely.

MJT: And yet Iran got this government. If it can happen in Iran, it can certainly happen in Egypt where the middle class is very small and people are not nearly as well educated.

Abbas Milani: And there are a lot more Islamists, and they are much better organized.

MJT: The liberals in Egypt are, what, ten percent of the population?

Abbas Milani: I’m not sure about that, but I do know something about the Muslim Brotherhood.

MJT: Okay, so what do you know?

Abbas Milani: They are extremely well organized.

MJT: Are they moderate? Many experts are saying so now, but I’m skeptical.

Abbas Milani: There are moderate elements within the Muslim Brotherhood. But if the Muslim Brotherhood still stands behind Sayyid Qutb, then no. He, along with Hassan al Banna, was one of its founding fathers. You should read him. He was absolutely uncompromising.

MJT: What about the guys running it now? There is all this talk about how they’re no longer as dangerous as they used to be, that they’ve renounced violence and want a democracy. I don’t really buy it, but some people insist this is the case, that the Muslim Brothers have gone mainstream and we have nothing to worry about.

Abbas Milani: I don’t know the Egyptian scene as well as Iran, so let’s look at the Iranian case. If you look at the whole Islamic movement you can see that there were moderate forces in the early part. There were quietist ayatollahs who took part in the revolution, including some who were senior to Khomeini in clerical status. They had an enormous popular base. They were truly moderate and they truly understood the dangers of Khomeini.

Within this movement was also Fadayan-e Islam, the Islamic terrorist group founded by Navvab Safavi who was very much enamored of the Muslim Brotherhood. He even met with Sayyid Qutb. If you look at how this vast network, that included moderates and radicals, evolved once the revolution came, it was the radicals who won. Because they were the most ruthless. They were the most brutal.

Everything I’ve seen indicates that there are moderate Muslim Brothers, but if the society goes into a protracted struggle, I have no doubt that the radicals would win.

Almost every radical group in the Middle East is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. . . .

Do read both articles in full as they contain a ton of insightful material. My take away, from reading both, is that I am even more convinced that our government should be doing all they can to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of the government while buying time for secular opposition parties to develop and gain a following. It is our last and best hope. But if yesterday's report in the LA Times is accurate, however, the point is moot, and Obama is making a huge mistake.

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Comedy At The Casbah

The inane Katie Couric has opined that that what the Muslim world needs to gain acceptance in the Western World is a good sitcom to shape public opinion, like the Bill Cosby show did for blacks (her words, not mine). No Sheeples Here has the video of Ms. Couric and links to another site, I Hate The Media, where the authors have taken Couric's idea and run with it, proposing some twentyfive possible Muslim sitcoms. It is very clever. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Fatwa Knows Best (The Anwar family learns that their father, a Muslim cleric, has a fatwa for every problem) . . .

5. My Name Is Earl Qaeda (A lovable Muslim loser attempts to make amends to all the people he killed. Oops. Too late.) . . .

7. How I Beat Your Mother (A Muslim man tells his children how he subjugates his wife according to Sharia law) . . .

17. My Favorite Martyr (A would-be Muslim martyr makes friends with a naïve CNN reporter) . . .

22. Sharia Law & Order (Stole a loaf of bread? Cut off their hands. Went outside without your burqa? That’ll be forty strokes with a cane. Suicide bomber? You get 72 virgins)

Meanwhile, Dave in Boca, in a post taking the mick out of WaPo's resident constitutional scholar, Ezra Klein, cites to an old post by Mark Steyn that contains some additional Islamic comedy gold from that great late stand up fatwahist, Ayatollah Khomeini:

. . . for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.

Who knows, maybe Couric is on to something. At any rate, in honor of Khomeini's Islamic lonely hearts advice, it seems wholly appropriate to play this hilarious AC/DC parody, "Dirty Deeds, Done With Sheep."

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Grand Ayatollah Montazeri & The Second Revolution

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri died on Sunday. His burial on Monday, shown in the video above, turned into the largest protest against the Iranian regime since at least June. Here is a report on the burial that appeared on Al Jazzera. If you do not know about Grand Ayatollah, it provides a suprisingly good two minute summation:



Hossein Ali Montazeri, a man deeply respected by Shia Muslims, one of only a handful of Grand Ayatollahs and, until his death, the most senior Shia cleric living in Iran, boasts a unique resume. He was a leading figure and, indeed, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini right hand man, during the 1979 Iranian revolution. He was slated to succeed Khomeni upon Khomeini's death, but instead turned against Khomeini over Khomeini's brutal tactics and his imposition of the the velayat-a-faqi, Khomeini's bastardization of over a millenium of apolitical Shia tradition to establish a theocracy. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was held for several years under house arrest in Qom, where he remained an implacable critic of the regime. Now he has played a central role in igniting the fires of a second revolution.

In the wake of the theocracy's stolen election in June, Montazeri criticized the regime and called for new, fair elections. When the regime responded with brutality to repress demonstrations, Montazeri issued a fatwa declaring the regime un-Islamic and illegitimate, writing:

"A political system based on force, oppression, changing people's votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened . . . and forcing them to make false confessions in jail is condemned and illegitimate."

Montazeri, more than anyone else in Iran, gave legitimacy to what is now a revolutionary movement. And he, more than anyone else, has torn asunder the religious legitimacy of the theocracy in the eyes of the Iranian people. His importance in this second revolution cannot be overestimated. His death will not in the slightest extinguish his influence. Indeed, given Shia's penchant for revering the dead and Montazeri's highly respected standing in the Shia faith, he will now pass into iconic status for those who wish to see the theocracy ended. Thus it is no surpise at all that his burial should lead to the largest single anti-regime demonstration since June. This from the NYT, discusses both the demonstraton-nee-burial and the importance of Montazeri that will continue on long after his burial:

The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.

As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!”

Although the police mostly stayed clear during the funeral procession, some skirmishes broke out between protesters and members of the hard-line Basij militia. As the mourners dispersed, security forces flooded the streets, blocking all roads around the ayatollah’s house, and some militia members tore down posters of him, witnesses said.

The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 87, appears to have put Iran’s rulers in a difficult position. They had to pay public respect to a senior religious scholar who helped build Iran’s theocracy and was once the heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet they are also keenly aware that his mourning rites could set off further protests, especially as Iranians commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, on the Ashura holiday this Sunday.

More broadly, the continuing protests underscore a deadlock between the opposition and the government, which wants to avoid the cycle of martyrdom and mourning for dead protesters that helped create Iran’s revolution, analysts say. . . .

The government made some conciliatory gestures Monday, including a respectful statement of condolence from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that was read aloud at the funeral. The statement hailed him as a “well-versed jurist and a prominent master” and said “many disciples have benefited greatly from him,” according to state-run Press TV.

But the statement also described Ayatollah Montazeri’s break with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 as a mistake. That line provoked jeers and shouts of “Death to the dictator!” — shouts that were audible in video posted on the Internet. In one clip, protesters could be seen shaking their fists and chanting, “We don’t want rationed condolences!”

“Words cannot describe the glory of the funeral,” said Ahmad Montazeri, the ayatollah’s son, in a telephone interview on Monday night. But he added that 200 to 300 Basij members had partly disrupted the ceremony, and that by evening Basij members and security forces had filled the streets and occupied the grand mosque of Qum, preventing the family from holding a planned mourning ceremony there.

The government jammed phones and Internet service through much of the day, and the BBC’s Persian service, a crucial source of information for many Iranians, suspended broadcasts, saying the government had been jamming it since Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on Sunday.

There were also protests in Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s birthplace. Videos posted on the Internet showed large crowds of people chanting “Dictator, dictator, Montazeri is alive!” and “Oh, Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!” Banners in the bright green color of the opposition movement were visible.

The protests in Najafabad, which began Sunday, were apparently set off in part by disrespectful reports about Ayatollah Montazeri’s death on right-wing news sites, including Fars News, which initially referred to him without the title “ayatollah.”

Iran’s hard-liners have long spoken dismissively of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was under house arrest from 1997 to 2003 for his antigovernment critiques. In the months since June’s disputed presidential election, he had unleashed a series of extraordinary denunciations of the government crackdown on protesters, declaring that the government was neither democratic nor Islamic and that Ayatollah Khamenei was unfit to be the supreme leader. He also dismissed the results of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won officially by a landslide, as fraudulent, echoing the claims of opposition leaders.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s criticisms carried a special weight because of his status as Iran’s most senior cleric. And despite the fact that many younger opposition supporters are generally hostile to clerics, his advocacy was meaningful to them.

“It was important that the most senior cleric, politically and religiously, came out and supported the people,” said Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar, a former student of Ayatollah Montazeri who is now a visiting scholar at York University in Toronto.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s defense of Iran’s opposition also helped to unite its religious and secular wings, some analysts say. And he may turn out to be more influential in death than he was in life.

“His death has become a pretext for the movement to expand,” said Fatimeh Haghighhatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament who is now a visiting scholar at Boston University. “He was the only cleric who gave up power and supported human rights, the characteristic that earned him respect from various political factions.”

Michael Ledeen, writing at PJM, notes the reaction of the regime to the protest - a reaction sure to enrage:

the regime is frightened. The supreme leader and his acolytes (Ahmadinejad is less and less visible. Somebody should tell Diane Sawyer) are groping for a way to survive. They seem not to realize that they died before Montazeri, and that nobody cares to mourn them. And so they stagger about, and find the worst possible gesture. As the indispensable Banafsheh tells us:

On Monday evening Saeed Montazeri announced that the Montazeri family was forced to cancel the post-funeral sacrament as the Islamic regime’s forces had invaded the A’zam mosque where the observance was to be held. Saeed Montazeri also added that the Montazeri residence has now been surrounded by various revolutionary guards, members of the Basij, intelligence agents, members of special force, etc.

It is reminiscent of Gorbachev at his most inept, finding a way to be mean enough to enrage the people, but not tough enough to assert his power, thereby provoking that most dangerous of all mass reactions: contempt for his person and his rule.

There is also one other related item to watch. With Grand Ayatollah Montazeri's death, the next most senior Shia cleric is the Iranian-born, Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Like Montazeri, Sistani is opposed to the velayat-a-faqi and, indeed, refused to support the imposition of a theocracy in Iraq. Sistani, reportedly one of the most popular clerics among Iranians today, could in fact play some role in how events transpire in Iran. Sistani had not, as of yesterday, issued a statement on Montazeri's death. One will surely be forthcoming, and may well give some indication of what role, if any, Grand Ayatollah Sistani is willing to play in the nascent Iranian Revolution II. It will be one to watch closely.

Lastly, I have one bone to pick with an otherwise good piece of journalism by the NYT that I quote above. The NYT mistakenly describes the Iranian MSM which totes the line of the theocracy as "right wing." The theocracy in Iran is non-democratic and rules both the economy and its subjects with an iron hand. They are intollerant of dissent. To describe those things as "right wing" is not but pure projection by the NYT's authors.

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Ringside Seat To A Revolution [Updated]

Amateur video posted to the Internet showed thousands of anti-government students chanting slogans and gathering on various campuses. Credible reports of protests emerged from campuses in the central Iranian cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht and Gilan along the Caspian Sea

- Report of 7 Dec. National Student's Day Demonstratons, San Francisco Chronicle

The army is a haven for the nation and will never want to suppress the people at the request of politicians. We shall remain true to our promise not to intervene in politics. But we cannot remain silent when our fellow citizens are oppressed by tyranny.

. . . Therefore, we warn the Guards who have betrayed the martyrs (from the war between Iran and Iraq) and who decided to attack the lives, the property and the honor of the citizens. We seriously warn them that if they do not leave their chosen path, they will be confronted with our tough response. The military is a haven for the nation. And we will defend the peace-loving Iranian nation against any aggression.”

Signatories:

•Pilots and personnel of the aviation division of the regular army (Havanirooz)
•Commanders and personnel of the 31th artillery division of Isfahan of the regular army
•Pilots and airmen of the regular army
•Teachers of the Shaid Satari University of the regular air force
•Officers and staff of the logistics training unit the regular army
•Professors and lecturers of the Imam Ali University for officers of the regular army
•Officers, staff, and commanders of the chief of staff of the regular army

- Statement Released To Iranian News Outlets, 10 Dec. 2009

. . . for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

- President Obama, Speech To The Nobel Committee, 2009

____________________________________________________________

The fuse for a revolution in Iran was lit in June, when the final trappings of democracy in Iran were torn asunder. The latest major events were protests on 7 Dec., Iran's National Student's Day, and a statement released shortly thereafter by members of Iran's military.

The statement from Iran's military is a major event, but by no means surprising. From day one of this nascent revolution, the single most important question has been what will the military do? When I say military, I am not referring to the mad mullah's 100.000 plus praetorian guard, the IRGC, but rather to the regular military which forms the bulk of Iran's forces.

The regime has for years known that they could not count on regular military units to crush internal dissent. Likewise they are keenly aware that it was when the military came out in support of Khomeini in 1979 that the revolution entered its final phase. The Shah's regime fell three weeks afterwards. The letter above does not confirm that Iran's revolution is anywhere near its final phase - particularly given that, unlike 1979, there is also a heavily armed IRGC which, although small in comparison to Iran's regular military, is very potent. The IRGC is so deeply insinuated in the graft and corruption of Iran that the fall of the regime would mean the fall of many of the IRGC heads - literally. Thus the IRGC will fight to the death to keep the mad mullahs in power. That said, the letter does mean that the ever rising brutality of the regime is bringing things to the tipping point. The mad mullahs are stuck now in the vortex between not being able to go too far for fear of bringing out the military against the regime, yet having no other recourse but brute force to keep the regime afloat. In the words of Yeats, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold . . ."

Well, perhaps there is one trick the regime has up their sleeve. During the Dec. 7 protests in Iran, several individuals, perhaps protesters, perhaps IRGC/basij plants, were filmed desecrating a picture of the revolution's father, the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Their faces were never clearly shown. The tape was broadcast repeatedly on state run television in an effort to raise a public backlash against the protesters. It immediately drew denials from the Green movement's leader, Mousavi, and a rebuke to the government issued by Khomeini's grandson who indicated that he thought it quite possible that this was deliberately done by the regime and blamed on protesters.

What started as a simple protest over a stolen election in June has grown to threaten the entire mullah led political system. Protests are occurring with regularity throughout Iran, but their nature has changed. As Amir Taheri noted in the WSJ:

The crowds' initial slogan was "Where Is My Vote?" and the movement's accidental leaders, including former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, tried hard to keep the protest confined to demands such as a recount of the votes and, ultimately, a runoff in accordance with the law.

The slogans of the protestors are no longer about election fraud. Today they include "Death to the Dictator," "Freedom Now," and "Iranian Republic, Not Islamic Republic!" One slogan is a direct message to President Barack Obama: "Obama, Are You With Us or With Them?"

This "radicalization" of the protesters in response to the brutal attempts at crackdown is also noted by the NYT.

Further, according to Taheri, the protesters are "deepening and growing" their movement, reaching out to other elements, such as trade unions, that have their own deep animus towards the regime. Meanwhile, clerics in Qom are fuming at the acts of Khameini and the ever-growing bellicosity and wild claims of Ahmedinejad. He has recently claimed that the return of the Hidden Imam is near, that he is a tool of the Imam, and that only the U.S. is standing in the way of his return. As one mid-level cleric in Qom told Taheri, "by backing such a man, Khamenei has doomed the regime."

Michael Ledeen for his part, covers the same topics in his latest post at PJM, adding that the Iranian economy is in serious disarray, with manufacturing running at 40% of capacity. As he calls it, this is "Code Red" for Iran.

I am convinced that the Iranian regime is, while not the font of all evil, not that far removed from it. I have detailed why many times. As Robert Gates so famously said two years ago, "[e]verywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike." They are the primary source of funds, arms and training for Hamas and Hezbollah and they are the single greatest impediment to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. They have supported coups in Bahrain and Azerbaijan. They are currently supporting a rebellion in Yemen and threatening to destabilize Saudi Arabia. They are occupying land that belongs to the UAE and land that belongs to Iraq. As the U.S. moves out of Iraq, the mad mullahs are once again extending their deadly talons inside that country. They have been responsible for terrorist attacks world wide and are the world's "central banker of terrorism." They near daily threaten to destroy Israel. Their push towards a nuclear arsenal is causing nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East - the penultimate nightmare scenario. Destroying the regime of the mad mullahs and seeing to the establishment of a secular democracy would, one, remove from the world a threat every bit as great as Nazi Germany was circa 1938, and two, would go a long way to stabilizing the Middle East.

What is President Obama doing to promote such a turn of events? The short answer appears to be nothing, covertly or publicly. This makes an utter mockery of Obama's West Point speech, wherein he said "we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights . . ." With the bully pulpit, Obama could be drawing attention to the horrible human rights abuses of the illegitimate government of the mullahs. Yet all we hear is deafening silence.

It seems reasonably certain that Obama thinks that if he speaks with honesty, then the mad mullahs will not cooperate with his attempts to negotiate a resolution to Iran's nuclear program. The reality is that, as the history of Iran since 1979 teaches, the regime is not going to cooperate absent a credible threat of force. Without that, Obama could kiss Khameini's bared rump 100 times on Iranian national television or he could do the morally correct thing and bring pressure upon the regime, showing support for the human rights of the Iranian rank and file. Neither standing alone will change the regime's nuclear trajectory. At least doing the latter would give moral support to the protestors and further the cause of those who are fighting and dying for freedom.

Lastly, as to a credible threat of force, Obama, who spoke so eloquently of the Just War theory in Olso, should understand that, under that theory, not only would force against the mad mullahs be moral, the theory places him under an affirmative moral duty to act against the regime to protect America. But under the current circumstance, that creates a conundrum.

Making a credible threat of force against the mad mullahs - one that could stop their nuclear trajectory in its tracks - could ignite nationalism in an Iranian populace on the brink of revolution. Under these circumstances, it is the duty of Obama to use the bully pulpit - and covert action - to assist and fan the flames of revolution until they succeed. There are a host of things that Obama could be doing in this regard. He could publicly excoriate the Iranian regime for their human rights abuses and the stolen election. He could restore funding to Radio Iran. He could "remove his opposition to various bills in Congress, sponsored by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and others, that sanction companies that sell gasoline to Iran." He could direct our covert operaters to counter the regime's attempts to shut down communications throughout Iran before and during demonstrations. He has, in short, a range of options to bring pressure on the regime and to support the nascent revolution. As Obama said in his acceptance speech to the Nobel Committee, "our actions matter and can bend history . . ." If those are not mere pretty words, then why is Obama sitting in a ringside seat to the revolution rather than entering the ring? Indeed, to do so would seem a moral obligation for our most moralistic of Presidents.

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Glimpses Into Chaos - Iran, 24 June

The Iranian demonstrators of 1979, whose children are demonstrating today, would not have dreamt that the turban was simply going replace the crown and that Iran would go from one repression to another. However, it is not the labelling of a state as "Islamic" that makes it just or unjust, but its structures: does it have sufficient checks and balances between the branches of government, is the leader accountable and replaceable by the people freely; are the people sovereign or the clerics?

Asim Siddiqui, From Imam To Dictator, The Guardian, 24 June 2009

From today's protests in Iran. "Death to the dictator."



This from a CNN Interview with an unnamed woman in Tehran discussing what she saw happening in Iran today:

I was going towards Baharestan with my friend. This was everyone, not just supporters of one candidate or another. All of my friends, they were going to Baharestan to express our opposition to these killings and demanding freedom. The black-clad police stopped everyone. They emptied the buses that were taking people there and let the private cars go on. We went on until Ferdowsi then all of a sudden some 500 people with clubs came out of [undecipherable] mosque and they started beating everyone.

They tried to beat everyone on Saadi bridge and throwing them off of the bridge…. And everyone also on the sidewalks. They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband, who was watching the scene, he just fainted. I also saw people shooting, I mean the security forces shooting on people, on Lalezar. Of course were afraid….

They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre. They were trying to beat people so they would die. They were cursing — saying very bad words to everyone. They were beating old men. And this was exactly a massacre. You should stop this. You should stop this. You should help the people of Iran who demand freedom. You should help us.

And this from a medical student working in an Iranian hospital translated from farsi and posted at The Guardian.

only want to speak about what I have witnessed. I am a medical student. There was chaos at the trauma section in one of our main hospitals. Although by decree, all riot-related injuries were supposed to be sent to military hospitals, all other hospitals were filled to the rim. Last night, nine people died at our hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. They (government) removed the dead bodies on back of trucks, before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded or get any information from them. This morning the faculty and the students protested by gathering at the lobby of the hospital where they were confronted by plain cloths anti-riot militia, who in turn closed off the hospital and imprisoned the staff.

The extent of injuries are so grave, that despite being one of the most staffed emergency rooms, they've asked everyone to stay and help--I'm sure it will even be worst tonight. What can anyone say in face of all these atrocities? What can you say to the family of the 13 year-old boy who died from gunshots and whose dead body then disappeared?

This issue is not about cheating (election) anymore. This is not about stealing votes anymore. The issue is about a vast injustice inflected on the people. They've put a baton in the hand of every 13-14 year old to smash the faces of "the bunches who are less than dirt" (government is calling the people who are uprising dried-up torn and weeds). This is what sickens me from dealing with these issues. And from those who shut their eyes and close their ears and claim the riots are in opposition of the government and presidency!! No! The people's complaint is against the egregious injustices committed against the people.

As this woman indicates, part of the modus operandi of the government is to try to prevent the people whom they have slaughtered from becoming martyrs, with people coallescing around their graves. The dead are carted off and buried, the bodies not returned to their families, and memorials are outlawed. In the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, murdered while standing in the street at a protest on Saturday, it has gone even beyond that, with her family forcibly removed and no longer contactable:

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.

It appears Iran's regime continues its brutal crackdown making large scale use of hired thugs. This from the Guardian:

Newspaper Roozonline has an interview (in Persian) with one of the young plainclothes militiamen who have been beating protesters.

UPDATE: Robert says the man is paid 2m rial per day, which would be about £1220 for ten days of work. A hefty fee, even by UK standards. A reader writes: "You can imagine what that kind of money means to a villager from Khorasan".

The Guardian's Robert Tait sends this synopsis:

The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protestors with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as "Hajji", who has instructed his men to "beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won't be able to stand up". The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly-paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.

Clashes occurred throughout Iran, with possibly the largest being in front of Iran's Parliament building. Hundreds of basij, the theocracy's nazi style "brown-shirt" army of thugs, attacked protestors throughout the day and sped into action whenever groups of ten or more people were seen.

It is now night in Iran and, in what must be the most ironic twist to this revolt, people are acting in the same fashion that Ayatollah Khomeini, father of this theocracy, told Iranians to do three decades ago as a sign of their desire to overthrow the regime. Cries of “Allahu Akbar!” are being shouted throughout Tehran “with deafening intensity.”

A final look at today, with police clubbing men and women on the streets, though no protest is apparent:

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The Regime Turns On Its People - 20 June (Updated)

UPDATE: Fox News is reporting confirmed sightings of tanks entering Tehran streets. This marks a major escalation by the Iran's corrupt theocracy.)

Protestors march on 20 June chanting death to the dictator.



The size of the protests today are not clear. Part of this is because the police have been positioned so as to stop large groups from coallescing. There are clearly thousands of people who turned out to protest, but it is just not possible to say whether these are the hundreds of thousands of past days. The reality may be that Khameini's threat coupled with the regime show of force has in fact done enough to spell the beginning of the end of the protests. Or not. A retired General recently appeared on Fox News who noted that he was in Iran during the period of the 1979 revolution. According to him, this does not merely duplicate what he saw in 1979, but is actually running ahead of the 1979 timeline.

The regime appeared to be responding today primarily with traditional crowd control techniques - CS gas and water cannons. There are persistent claims on Twitter of the regime using helicopters to dump acidic liquids on the protestors that are causing severe burns. And it would seem that the level of violence has in fact increased.

The military has not been called in, but the regime's thugs, the basij, are appearing today armed with guns and there are many reports of protestors being killed, but one example of which is the horrendous video of the murder of an unarmed young girl posted below. Reports on Fox are that up to 50 people across the country have been killed today. Likewise, there are reports of injured all across the country. If what is coming across Twitter is accurate, they are being directed to foreign embassies rather than to hospitals where thugs of the basij are stationed.

Ahmedinejad has been completely silent since his initial comparison of the protests to little more than soccer holliganism. This is interesting, as one of the prime purposes of the presidency is to provide a buffer between the people and the theocracy.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the shrine to the theocracy's founder, Khomeini. Iranian television is reporting nothing of the protests, but this bombing was reported across Iranian news shortly after it happened. Who carried it out is an open question. There was no damage to the shrine but for a window destroyed. This could as easily be an IRGC act to blame on the protestors as it could be an actual act rebellion by a protestor. If the latter, it just drives home the same point that the chants of "death to Khameini" do - that this revolt is now aimed at the theocracy itself.

Mousavi supposedly started to take part in today's protest, but there has been no further word on his whereabouts since the claim that he left his office to join the march. On his web page, he claims that he is ready for martyrdom and calls for a general strike if he is arrested.

Prior Posts:

20 June 2009: Life, Death & Terrorism On Iran's Streets
19 June 2009: Countdown To High Noon
19 June 2009: An Iranian Showdown Cometh - Liveblogging Khameini's Speech At Friday Prayers
18 June 2009: Iran Update
16 June 2009: Iran 6/16: The Fire Still Burning, An Incendiary Letter From Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, State Dept. Intercedes With Twitter & Obama Talks Softly
16 June 2009: Breaking News: Vote Recount In Iran, Too Little, Too Late
16 June 2009: The Fog Of War - & Twitter
15 June 2009: Iran Buys Time, Obama Votes Present, Iraq's Status Is Recognized
15 June 2009: The Fog Of War - & Twitter
15 June 2009: Chants Of Deat To Khameini
15 June 2009: Heating Up In Iran
14 June 2009: Heating Up In IranTehran Is Burning; What Will The Iranian Army Do? (Updated)
13 June 2009: The Mad Mullah's Man Wins Again - For Now
15 April 2008: The Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match (Background On Iran's Theocracy)

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This Day In History - June 3: Tiananmen Protest, Khomeini, and The Goddess of War

350 – After the revolt of Magnentius, Roman usurper Nepotianus proclaimed himself "emperor" and entered Rome with a band of gladiators. His reign in Rome would only last four weeks. Magnentius, hearing of the revolt, sent a force to deal with the Nepotianus and retake Rome. They slew Nepotianus, put his head put on a spear and paraded it about the city.

1140 – Peter Abelard was a famed French scholar, secret husband to the Abbess Heloise and later made into a castrati by Heloise's uncle when the uncle thought Abelard had wronged her. He was found guilty of heresy on this date in 1140. He was responsible for the creation of the Church's doctrine as regards limbo.

1539 – DeSoto claims Florida for Spain. He would then travel overland north through Georgia and into South Carolina before turning West, all the while in search of gold and a passage to China. He died in 1542, having reached the Mississippi River.

1621 – The Dutch West India Company receives a charter to create trading posts and settlements in New Netherlands - parts of parts of present-day New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey.

1658 – Pope Alexander VII appoints François de Laval vicar apostolic in New France - Canada, Acadia, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Louisiana. He was evidently such a zealot and such an enemy of liquor that the other Jesuits petitioned the Pope to name him to the post of Bishop in Petra, a diocese on the Dead Sea, about as far away from them as he could travel.

1665 – James Stuart, Duke of York (later to become King James II of England) defeats the Dutch Fleet off the coast of Lowestoft. It had little effect on the war. Two years later, the Dutch would actually sail up river and raid the Chatham Dockyards in Medway in what was to be a major embarresment for the Crown.

1800 – President John Adams took up residence in a tavern in Washington, D.C.. Construction of the White House wasn't completed until November.

1839 – Governor of Liangguang Province, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroyed 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants. This provided Britain, and more specifically, the British East India Company, with justification to open hostilities with China, resulting in the First Opium War. The British were seeking to force China to open trade, and they succeeded. The war forced an end to China's isolation and is today marked as the start of modern Chinese history.

1885 – Last military engagement fought on Canadian soil occurred when the Cree leader Big Bear escaped from the North West Mounted Police.

1889 – The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.

1937 – The Duke of Windsor abdicated his crown to marry on this date Wallis Simpson, a twice divorced American socialite.

1940 – Was having been declared three weeks prior, the Luftwaffe bombed Paris as German forces closed in. Paris would raise the white flag of surrender ten days later.

1965 – Launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Crew-member Ed White performs the first American spacewalk (EVA).

1968 – Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, attempts to assassinate Andy Warhol by shooting him three times.

1989 – China brings a close to the seven-week old pro-democracy protest at Tiananmen Square. China ordered it troops to open fire on protesters, killing hundreds.

1991 – Mount Unzen erupts in Japan in Kyūshū killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists.

2007 – USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) engaged pirates after they boarded the Danish ship Danica White off the coast of Somalia.


Births

1808 – Jefferson Davis, American politician and President of the Confederate States of America (d. 1889)

1917 – Leo Gorcey, American actor and member of the Bowery Boys (d. 1969)

Deaths

1899 – Johann Strauss II, Austrian composer (b. 1825)

1963 – Pope John XXIII (b. 1881)

1989 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder, with the help of Jimmy Carter of Iran's theocracy, finally goes to meet Allah.


Holidays and observances

Roman Empire – Ancient Roman Festival of Bellona, Roman goddess of war who is described as the companion of Mars. Appius Claudius the Blind vowed a temple to Bellona that was erected on the Campus Martius.

Confederate Memorial Day observed in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Today is the feast day for the Virgin Mary in Russia, Vladimirskaya, and the feast of Saint Paula of ancient Rome who died in 273. A very wealthy woman and mother of four, Paula turned to religion after being widowed at 32. She became a follower of St. Jerome and, indeed, their relationship may have been more than simple friendship. Paula makes an appearnance in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chaucer played upon the relationship between Jerome and Paula in the Wife of Bath's Prologue.

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