Iranian Alert -- May 1, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- "Americans for Regime Change in Iran"

The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 5.1.2004 | DoctorZin

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Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

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Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

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What the President Might Say
It is about more than just Fallujah.

By Victor Davis Hanson
April 30, 2004, 8:33 a.m.
National Review

We are presently engaged in a world war for our civilization and its vision of a just and humane society. Our values will either endure this present struggle and indeed be invigorated by the ordeal, or like once great civilizations of the past we will stumble in the face of barbarism and lose all that we hold dear. Across the world in places as diverse as Madrid, Fallujah, Kandahar, Thailand, Amman, and Bali agents of intolerance and religious fascism seek to terrorize and thereby eventually destroy the promise of a free and tolerant mankind. We must be as determined to defeat them as they are to destroy us.

Americans believe that freedom and consensual government — far from being the exclusive domain of the West — are ideals central to the human condition and the shared aspirations of all born into this world. That is the great hope we embrace now in Iraq, that as we rout those who advocate fundamentalism and intolerance, millions of others will gain confidence and join the struggle for democratic change. But until then, even as we speak, millions, sometimes in fear and silence, are watching our present efforts. They are uncertain of the outcome. They wait to pledge their allegiance to the victor, hoping, but not yet convinced, that we can defeat those who would impose tyranny and intolerance on any who would seek to reform and escape from their present misery.

What are the values for which hundreds of Americans have now fallen in Afghanistan and Iraq? They are not new or hard to fathom, nor are they the easily caricatured images of American popular culture. Rather they are the same principles for which Americans died at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, and Pusan: the guarantee of free association and expression, the tolerance of different ideas, a respect for the rule of law, and the right to enjoy equality under the aegis of consensual government. So this is what we believe in and this is what we have made it our mission to preserve.

Make no mistake: As we learned on September 11, our enemies do not merely disagree with us. They demand our very destruction for what we believe and who we are. Against savages who knock down skyscrapers and blow up innocents, we understandably speak of a war against terror. Indeed we are fighting against cowardly and cruel people who behead, desecrate, blow up, and know only how to harm and torture the innocent — never to create or build a just society.

Yet terror is only a method that our enemies employ out of cowardice and weakness. We do not battle the car bomb, suicide belt, or roadside explosive, but rather the people and their patrons who use them. In truth, their creed emanates from radical and lawless groups in the Middle East who have hijacked a sacred religion, imbued it with hatred, and now seek to direct the frustrations of thousands against the United States because they are terrified of our success at home and our global power and influence abroad. To the degree that we seek to lead the world into the 21st century, bin Laden, al Qaeda, their kindred terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and their sympathetic supporters residing in Syria, Iran, and Lebanon kill to bring us all back to the 8th.

We believe we can win this war of ideas and values with more, not less, freedom and with greater knowledge and understanding, not a retreat into the dark prejudices of our enemies. So we in America stand willing to help kindred reformers in the Middle East, working in tandem to promote freedom, elections, the equality of women, and guarantees of protection for those of differing ideas and religions.

This is not rhetoric, but the record of history. America has shown in the past — through its sacrifices to free Afghanistan from Soviet dominance, to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, to prevent the genocide of the Kurds and Shiites, to ensure that Bosnians and Kosovars were not exterminated in Europe, to feed the starving in Somalia, and to provide Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians billions of dollars over a quarter-century of partnership — that our promises of help are not mere boasts but are backed by concrete aid in both peace and war. And this too is not new. In Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq Americans have died to eradicate totalitarianism and autocracy and sought to leave liberal societies in their place. It was not just the courage of millions in Eastern Europe who won freedom from the Soviet Union, but also a half-century of determined resistance by the United States that brought down that evil empire and thus allowed a freed Russian people to pursue their natural destiny of peace and prosperity.

OUR GLOBAL STRUGGLE
But let us not delude ourselves either. This present struggle cannot be won entirely through material largess and moral support. Tragically, victory will come only when fanatical killers such as the al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters in Iraq are either eliminated or routed and their odious ideas exposed and discredited for the pure hatred they purvey.

So this brutal war is worldwide. And it is not an insurrection, not a police matter, and not just a terrorist incident. In places like Afghanistan and Iraq, we have battled against regimes, whether theocratic or autocratic, fundamentalist or secular, that have brutalized their own people, aided and abetted terrorists on their soil, and sought to harm the Untied States and its interests through such surrogate forces. All these extremists and their state patrons must be identified and then defeated militarily if their ideas are to lose currency and their adherents credibility.

This global war may be lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it cannot be won there. It is a struggle to the death with Islamic fascists and their patrons, pitting, on the one side, the majority of those who believe that a modernizing and liberal Middle East can be enriched and ennobled by Islam, against, on the other, a small but zealous group of dedicated killers who would destroy Islam by claiming that it seeks only to destroy non-Muslims.

It has now been nearly three years since we were attacked in a time of peace by the al Qaeda killers, through the aid of their Taliban patrons. Yet this war against the fundamentalists had in fact been going on for nearly a quarter century before the fall of the World Trade Center and the bombing of the Pentagon. Across the world in little known places in Lebanon, East Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, Americans have for years been murdered by extremists from the Middle East and the countries who harbored and gave them sanctuary — in the same manner that hundreds more have been murdered recently in Turkey, Spain, and Morocco, and thousands of others saved in the nick of time in London, Paris, and Jordan.

From that bitter experience we have learned an equally bitter lesson: that the Islamic fascist, the terrorist, and the mass murderer cannot be talked to, parleyed with, or appeased, but only defeated — for they view magnanimity as weakness, and conciliation as decadence. Indeed their mantra is not merely that the West cannot fight, but that it won't. To those critics who claim that we started this war too early, I fear instead that we have replied far too late. Thousands of Americans, Afghans, Kurds, and Shiites killed in the last two decades would agree.

So at last we have woken up from our slumber at the eleventh hour, and after the murder of 3,000 of our own we have taken on the difficult and unpopular task of bringing the war against our enemies closer to their haunts than our own homes. In a mere three years, two of the worst regimes in the world have been crushed, terrorists on their soil scattered, and consensual governments are now in the making. Extremists in Pakistan, Libya, and Iran have taken note, and there are now pressures for democratic reform throughout the Middle East. Three things are so far indisputable: Every time the United States has confronted these cowardly killers, we have defeated them overwhelmingly; where we have created conditions of security and confidence moderates have stepped forward to participate in the birth of freedom; and when even for a moment we have hesitated or appeased, innocents have died and we have lost precious time and support.

We cannot cease until Syria, Iran, and Lebanon join the family of nations, expel the terrorists from their soil, and part company with those who would seek to destroy the West. As we have seen in the case of Libya and Pakistan, such a rejection of evil need not come through military invasion. Rather, it can come through our enemies' careful calculation that continued support of terror along with efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction lead ultimately not only to a military confrontation with the United States, but also to blackmail, instability, and chaos at home.

Our critics ask, have we made mistakes in this terrible war so far? Of course. We can all argue and parry over the lack of our preparedness on September 11, the number and nature of our troops that should be committed to the reconstruction of Iraq, and the degree to which our knowledge of weapons of mass destruction comprised a long- or short-term threat to the United States. I welcome that discussion, for it is only from audit and self-critique that liberal societies such as our own profit from their errors and press on to victory.

Yet at some point, we of diverse views and opinions — Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative — must transcend our own points of departure to unite in marshalling the will to finish the task in Iraq and to ensure that the Middle East is no longer a sanctuary from which to launch deadly attacks on the United States and its interests — but rather one that offers employment, stability, and justice to its deserving citizens.

VICTORY IS POSSIBLE
How will we know we have won? Whom exactly are we fighting? What are the tactics and strategies we must employ to defeat the enemy?

These perplexing questions have bothered Americans since September 11, and indeed they should distress us inasmuch as our enemies seek to attack from the shadows, often disclaiming their responsibility for the very murders they commit and waging a war without fronts, uniforms, rules, or conventional soldiers. They hope to avoid a rendezvous with the conventional and deadly military power of the United States and instead kill so many of our civilians, interrupt so much of modern life, and keep the world so much on edge that tired and disheartened citizens acquiesce to their demands and allow them to tyrannize the Middle East.

Yet today, Islamic fascists use terror and stealth so that tomorrow they will have the power to wage a greater war with greater weapons and more openly. In response, sometimes we will meet and crush their supporters on the battlefield; other times we will round up their agents at home and abroad. Yet again in this multifaceted war we will send out the warning that those nations who offer money, sanctuary, and ideological support for these killers can no longer hide through disavowal and slander but instead will be confidently defeated by the United States.

This is no mere boast. Remember at one time most of us asked how we could defeat those as powerful and wicked as the Nazis when by July 1941 their terrible rule stretched from the English Channel to the outskirts of Moscow, from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert, with millions more impressed by the power of their hateful ideology and fearful of its reach. And yet four years later not a Nazi activist and open adherent was to be found, so completely had the United States and its allies destroyed the power and refuted the ideas of Hitler.

So it will be too when Islamist terrorist cells are rounded up in Europe and in the United States; when their havens in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq are completely eradicated; when their sponsors in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon abandon their cause; and when freedom and prosperity are offered to millions as an alternative to both Islamic fascism and autocracy under which it can alone thrive.

More challenging still, our own military — as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan — is so skillful, so adept in accomplishing its mission that it can defeat the enemy abroad with the appearance — I emphasize again the appearance — of so far not incurring costs of the magnitude we saw in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. But it would be a terrible mistake, in this age of our greatest affluence and leisure, to trust in such a misconception, to turn our attention inward precisely when the best citizens of our nation are fighting so well and so long and hard in such difficult places in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We must support them with all the material and spiritual aid we can muster. We must think of them daily, hourly and hold them in our prayers. We must make the needed sacrifices here at home to ensure that the unpleasant and often deadly task we have entrusted to them can be accomplished with every full measure of our love and support.

What would such sacrifice and responsibilities entail? All Americans with pride and confidence must confront in spirit and speech those who would caricature and misrepresent our struggle — that it is unnecessary, that it is wrong, that it is against Islam rather than the distorters of Islam. Yes, Americans must take on this new apparent phenomenon of anti-Americanism, learn about it, and then refute it with all their being, explaining that it is the United States who preserves the peace, whether that be in the Persian Gulf, the Korean Sea, or on the Mediterranean.

We seek no tribute, no colonies, no blackmail for ensuring that the seas are open and nations are free to pursue their own destinies without fear of attack by their neighbors. Whether it is stationing troops in the Balkans or in Japan, or providing billions of dollars in help for the victims of AIDS, or being a loyal and militarily powerful ally to Europe and a friend to large nations like Russia and India or protectors of the smaller like South Korea, the United States is a proven force for good in this world. And so the world depends on us to defeat those who would bring it back from the present horizons of modernism, global prosperity, and new friendships to the rule of the jungle of the Dark Ages.

OVERCOMING DEPENDENCY
More concretely, we must wean ourselves from the imported petroleum of the Persian Gulf, whose dollars so often fuel and subsidize the fundamentalists who have killed thousands and wish to kill still thousands more Americans. Let us in a bipartisan manner agree on a new energy strategy aimed precisely to curb the appetite for imported oil that has so often served as our own nemesis.

Surely conservatives can agree to reasonable mileage standards for new cars that will have the eventual practical effect of reducing our nation's daily consumption of oil. By the same token, surely liberals can agree to explore our own Arctic Circle for known petroleum, under careful environmental scrutiny to ensure that such resources are extracted with more care at home than they are currently extracted abroad, in areas where our own environmental protocols have no sway.

We Americans cannot expect to drive cars that consume more gasoline than they need nor demand of others to tap their own fragile environment for resources that we desire but would not do the same for at home. Meanwhile, we must enter on a new Manhattan project, a similar wartime effort to find new sources of energy to fuel our transportation, homes, and commerce, so that never again can agents of destruction and barbarism seek to hold the United States hostage, and use the fruits of our own commerce from which to buy the very weapons to destroy us.

At a time of war across continents and against tens of thousands of killers, we are running huge trade imbalances and an unsustainable annual deficit. These debts are often the historical wages of war, due in large part to the destruction wrought by the murderers of September 11 and the subsequent dislocations and costs needed for new security measures.

But if our economy is to remain strong — as it must to provide for our soldiers in battle — then Congress must accept compromises on both spending and taxation. We can neither spend nor tax our way out of our present difficulty, so let us agree that no Democrat shall propose another dollar of spending without providing for an addition dollar of revenue; no Republican shall cut another dollar of taxes without guarantees of a like reduction in spending. This war is not entirely one of ideas or bullets, but also one of money and influence. To win, the United States must reestablish its reputation as not only the most powerful and richest country in the world, but also the most financially sober and prudent. We owe our soldiers in the field no less.

Finally, this is not just a struggle to defeat the Islamic fundamentalists, but to establish the principle that the United States in a moment of its greatest success, material wealth, and power can still make terrible sacrifices that throughout the ages have always been the cost for the freedom and security of its citizens and friends abroad. What Osama bin Laden, and those who actively support him, have started, we in the United States most surely will finish.

http://nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200404300833.asp

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Thaw Brings Indiana Jones Back to King Darius's Court

April 29, 2004
The New York Times
John Noble Wilford

After 25 years' absence, Western archaeologists are trickling back into Iran, resuming their study of the Persian empire of 2500 years ago.

Their numbers are expected to swell as a result of a new openness towards foreign scholars, proclaimed by cultural leaders last August at a conference in Tehran.

"We were told that Western researchers are welcome to Iran," said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. "Part of Iran at least is very interested in improving relations with the West, and believes that scholarship and research play an integral role in that."

As a gesture of good faith, the institute announced this week that it was returning a set of 300 ancient Persian clay tablets to the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation. They were described as the first archaeological items to be shipped back since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah.

The tablets, inscribed with cuneiform writing from about 500BC, were among tens of thousands of such documents discovered by Chicago archaeologists that were lent to the institute in 1937 for translation and study. Thousands of tablet fragments were returned in 1951.

Archaeologists venturing back to Iran said they recognised the unsettled political conditions of the Middle East. Excavations by foreigners are suspended in Iraq and curtailed in several other countries.

American universities are negotiating long-term agreements for Iranian excavations. Various teams are already surveying ancient irrigation in the Khuzestan region near the Iraq border; investigating Bronze Age remains in central Iran; and digging at a prehistoric site near Persepolis, the old Persian capital.

"This is the new frontier of Near Eastern archaeology," Dr Stein said.

Work has also been started or planned by archaeologists from Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. The Germans are excavating ancient copper production sites on the Iranian Plateau. The French are digging at a site associated with the Persian ruler Cyrus I.

The hardened clay tablets being repatriated date from the middle of the reign of Darius I, 509-494BC.

Although the inscribed writing is cuneiform, a script developed more than 5000 years ago by the Sumerians in what is now Iraq, the words are Elamite, an early language of what is now Iran.

Dr Matthew Stolper, a Chicago professor and specialist on ancient Iran, said most of the tablets were no larger than a modern credit card, each recording one transaction.

They came from Persepolis and contained details of the inner workings of the Persian government. Some of the seal impressions left in the clay indicate the existence of some previously unknown administrative offices of the empire and the identity of leaders of some parts of the empire.

From the tablets, researchers have learned how much labourers in Persia were paid - even their daily ration of barley and beer - that workers were brought in from distant parts of the empire, such as Greece, Egypt and Central Asia, and details about the system under which foreign delegations were authorised to travel across the land.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/30/1083224589128.html

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'Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Jewish Control of Hollywood'

April 30, 2004
Middle East Media Research Institute
MEMRI

Throughout the first two weeks of April, the Iranian TV station Al-Alam aired a documentary titled Al-Sameri wa Al-Saher. The series purports to explain how the Jews control Hollywood by the directives set out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The following are excerpts from the documentary: [1]

The False Myth About the Murder of Six Million Jews

"The most important film produced under Zionist guidance in the 60s was called Operation Eichmann. This film completed the false myth about the murder of six million Jews in the hands of the Nazis.

"But the film producers did not mention his provocative trial on December 17 1961. This is because of what Eichmann said about the German Jews' expulsion and killing: 'I was only carrying out the orders of the Zionists. They asked me to gather the Jews in a specific place in the world, using expulsion or murder. First, their target was Poland, then Madagascar, but in the end they chose the Middle East. If I am guilty of the so-called

killing of 6 million Jews then the Zionist leaders are much guiltier than I am. This is because they wanted to silence the world under the pretext that if they had stayed in Germany they would have been killed. Because they don't have a country they are forced to occupy other people's land. And that is what they did.' The Zionist authorities finished the trial quickly to avoid further commotion. They hanged Adolf Eichmann in 1962 so the secrets of the collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis would remain hidden.

"The plot of the film [Funny Girl] served to introduce the ugly Jewish actress Barbra Streisand, who played the role of Fanny Brice. Films portraying a positive image of the Jews appeared in early 1980's. Among those were the third version of The Jazz Singer, The Shout from 1981 directed by Valentino, and the film Tootsie, in 1982, directed by Sydney Pollack.

"The movie Yentl which Barbra Streisand starred in and produced in 1983, dealt with the Zionists' wish to benefit from feminism, the new women's movement, as time goes by.

"Awarding Driving Miss Daisy the Oscar for best picture in 1989 strengthened this conservative Jewish trend. The film Driving Miss Daisy tells of an old Jewish woman and her black driver. In the beginning, the old woman hates the driver, but in the end she establishes a friendly relationship with him.

The Jews Control of the Music, Movie, and Arts Industries

"Dr. Muhammad Madad Bour, university professor: 'Modern music was invented by the Christians, but the Jews took control over its industry. Cinema was invented by the Christians – Edison or the French Lormier brothers – but the Jews took control over its industry. The same goes for painting. Modern painting was invented by the Christians. The Christian message is very clear but the Jews control all the exhibitions. The art trade market is in their hands.

"'Note that generally they have never been creative. Note the factories, there are no Jews there. But on the other hand, we see that most management and service companies in the West and most banks are held by Jews.

"'They wrote the human rights laws, so they can do what ever they wish. They worked to destroy the holy places, reject religion, religious schools of thought, and morale. They suggested in their protocols that people's beliefs should be destroyed, so the people would have no faith and then they would become their captives and putty in their hands.

Globalization Means 'Judaize the World'

"'One of their short-term plans is establishing this Zionist state. In fact, the Israeli plan is a short-term one within the greater plan - globalization. First, they say globalization, and then they will begin to Judaize the world. Today, there is competition in trade and economic globalization without taking justice into account. Those who struggle against this plan are the non–Jews. The Jews defend the globalization, from which the poor suffer and so they resist it.'

"Nader Taleb Zada, producer: 'In the 20th century, we witnessed the establishment of a superpower, two, or more. Cinema had to make progress in a way that benefited them. So, it was only natural that cinema should fall in the hands of the World Zionists, imperialism, and the very wealthy, who are mostly Jews, and of course Zionists.

Jews Use Films to Spread Plagues

"'Today, using cinema, one can infiltrate all homes. Using cinema, one can enslave many of the skills and powers.'

"Majed Shah Huseini, critic: 'Today, many new films dictate the same concepts. One of these methods is presenting religious concepts through cinema, according to the biblical approach, like Satan, Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell. Toady, these concepts appear in many films; I don't want to mention which because I don't want to promote Hollywood films. But it is obvious that many viewers are familiar with many of these films. A different issue is that their moral perspective is superficial. They spread tolerance and disregard of morality amongst other nations but not among themselves. They know that by doing so they are spreading a plague. They, of course, protect themselves from it, but they have no objection to spreading this plague among others, be the consequences as they may.

"'Their other position relates to science fiction. They always create imaginary threats to Earth on which we safely live. They speak of alien creatures, occurrences in outer space, and metaphysical catastrophe that will happen and affect our lives. Hollywood cinema, and to a great extent the Jewish companies in Hollywood, are trying very hard, using extraterrestrial threats, to portray a certain image of stability in the world.

"'In [Independence Day] the first catastrophe occurs in Iraq. Meaning, this force struck the first blow on an Arab Muslim country. Now, America, as a representative of the planet, is required to do something against this threat from outer space. This is how they dictate to the viewer that America is the savior and that it is the only one who needs to save everyone and the others are unimportant.'

"The Matrix was a meeting point between Hollywood and Jewish Zionist fundamentalism. In using The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers tried to embellish the ugly image of the State of Israel and to introduce the Zionist society as a utopian future society. The plot for The Matrix is derived from the teachings of Gush Emunim, or the fundamental Zionists. The agents' purpose in The Matrix is to arrest the resistance leader, Morpheus, in order to eliminate the Zionist resistance movement by obtaining the entrance code to its network. In the film The Matrix, Zion is regarded as the only sanctuary and as the center of human resistance in the third millennium. The film indirectly suggests to the viewers that all other beliefs and ideologies are null and void. This is the Zionist racism, which wants everything for itself and does not conceive of non-Jews as deserving to live and prosper. This is only a miniscule part of the proof of the political, religious, and biblical aspects of The Matrix.

"'This is the fundamental Zionist Jews' way; they try to distribute the idea of biblical justice and to rebuild the Holy Temple by using the traditional extremists. But still there remain people around the world who do not let them lurk in the dark. Likewise, history shows that the peoples don't let oppressors go unpunished.

"'The Korean War proved that any individual who is not of the American white race is considered by the American rulers and Hollywood producers as of backward culture and as a source of fear for Western society. Hollywood, ever since wealthy Jews had created it, has worked to cultivate this perception using its various films.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Guarantee Zionist Victory

"'This is because it saw this perception as in total compliance with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and as a guarantee of the Zionist victory. With time, this perception created new sources of fear: beginning with Arabian Bedouin tribes and ending with alien creatures coming from outer space and always landing in American cities.

"'Each time, their death was described in a more fanciful and gleeful way in accordance with the first and ninth protocols:

"'The best results that can be achieved through our control of non-Jews are obtainable through violence and assassination, not through academic debates, because by nature, truth is with the mighty. We will resist any plot against us and kill mercilessly anyone who turns to armed struggle in an attempt destabilize our country."

"The Arabs are portrayed in [Lawrence of Arabia] as inept, stupid, and illogical facing technology and new inventions. This ploy fits the content of the fourteenth protocol regarding the non-Jewish nations: "Non-Jewish nations must not forget that they are worthless and cannot understand the depth of issues. Only we, the Jews understand political issues. God prepared us for this through the torments our generations have been through."

"In the film Lawrence of Arabia, an emphasis is put on one of the Zionist goals written in the first of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that is the role the Zionists and their agents play in sparking riots or revolutions under the slogan of liberty around the world.

"In this film, Lawrence was sent to the Arabs for that purpose: 'Political liberty is only an ideology that has no external existence. But every one of us must know how to derive benefits from this trap so they can draw the masses and thus wipe out the opposing ruling party.'

"When the Zionists convened their special congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, a group of Czarist Russian policemen set fire to the congress hall. The Jews taking part in the congress fled out of fear of the fire. The policemen collected the documents, lists and protocols of the meeting that were lying on the desks and transferred them to Moscow. They found among these writings what was later called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols were divided into 24 parts and included the satanic Jewish ideas of taking over the world using a Jewish government, after destroying all of Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the pope's reign, and Islam."

---

[1] Al Alam (Iran), April 2004.

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD70504

[DoctorZIn]

Torture Ban in Iran: "Mullahs' PR Ploy is Dead on Arrival"

April 30, 2004
IranExpert
Hamid Namvar

If there were a contest as which country in the world is "the wonderland of the dark side", Iran under the mullahs' rule would have won it hands down. Just a quick look at the recent news headlines about Iran, would erase any doubts.

No, I am not referring to dozens of UFO citing in Iran, and, no, I am not talking about a court ruling in Tehran declaring that the United States should pay million in compensation to the mullahs. I am talking about the mullahs' head of Judiciary, the Iraqi-born Shahroudi, declaring that from now on torture is banned in Iran.

Implicit in this statement, is the obvious admission that indeed torture to extract confessions for made-for-TV shows has been a common practice in Iran. One may ask what the meaning of this statement is given the fact that while the utterly anti-democratic Constitution of the mullahs' regime bans torture, and still the most barbaric medieval forms of torture, have been exercised on Iran's political dissidents in the last two and half decades?

Shahroudi's audience obviously is not the Iranian crowd; it is the mullahs' EU trade partners. The same EU which, as it was announced last week, has about $23 billion annual trade with the mullahs. The same EU which for the second time running chose not to censure the clerical regime's human rights violations. The same EU which is aiding the mullahs to get away with their nuclear weapons program.

Increasingly embarrassed by its inaction in the human rights front and as reports of ill-treatment of many political prisoners continue to get out - with many of them in immediate need for medical treatment - the EU needs a huge fig leaf to cover its ugly deals with Iran: Trade contracts in exchange for its silence.

And see how empty-handed the EU is that all it could get so far is an empty declaration form one the most fascist figures of the mullahs' regime. For sure, one should expect that as new EU delegations go to Tehran, they would heap praise on this regime, no matter how brutally Iranian students are suppressed, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.

As the mullahs' become more isolated at home, they will be ever more eager to put out the "going out of business Sale" for the EU to see. The give-away deals are reported every day. Just a few days ago IRNA reported that Iran has granted Total of France a .3 billion energy deal. And Britain announced today that, despite sanction on selling military parts to Iran, they are selling parts for military planes to the mullahs.

As major EU governments shed humanitarian tears for Iraqi people, they look the other way when the mullahs kill, rape, maim and suppress; they provide them with anti-riot gears and military hardware; they give them the diplomatic cover to crackdown on students and women; and then their diplomats in Tehran tell foreign reporters that there is "no serious opposition" to the mullahs. They enthusiastically assist the mullahs' campaign to bury the democratic opposition under a medieval suppression so that in the next breath they can claim there is no opposition.

Well, would they succeed? No, never.

Since our Constitution Revolution in 1906, the Iranians' fight for democracy has been always intertwined with facing up those foreign governments rushing to preserve the status que at the expense of democracy movement in Iran. The support of two great powers of the time, Britain and Russia, did not deter the Iranians during the Constitutional Revolution.

Britain which owes all of its industrialization and economic success to plunder of our oil wealth has historically been a staunch ally of the mullahs. And right now under the tacit approval of the British forces in the Southern Iraq, the mullahs are spreading their network there. The sly Brits are advancing their plan of having a friendly Islamic Republic eventually taking power in Iraq, while Washington gets the body bags.

Today as Iranian men and women, students and teachers, young and old, are standing up to this regime, we have a huge responsibility to expose the EU's reprehensible dealings with Iran which is legitimizing the mullahs' reign of terror, and compromising the human rights of Iranian people.

http://www.iranexpert.com/2004/democracy30april.htm

[DoctorZIn]

RSF Calls for Law be Applied and Jailed Journalists Freed

April 30, 2004
Reporters Without Borders
rsf.org

Reporters Without Borders welcomed an order by head of the judiciary Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi that the law should be applied and abuses halted in the Islamic republic's prisons and courts, and urged the authorities to free 12 illegally imprisoned journalists.

The international press freedom organisation also called for the journalists to be compensation for their imprisonment and the abuses they have suffered.

The Iranian press on 28 April published orders from the head of the judiciary addressed to the courts, police and security forces telling them to respect the law.

"During arrests or questioning, blindfolding, restraining pestering and insulting of detainees must be avoided. (...) Agents carrying out interrogation should not hide their faces, nor stand behind the accused backs, nor take them to secret locations (...) Any form of torture to extract a confession is banned (...) The directive added added that arrests and investigations "should be on the basis of clear legal charges. Lawyers must be present at trials" and "unnecessary imprisonment" avoided.

In the light of these statements, real official recognition of systematic violation of the law and the generalised practice of torture, Reporters Without Borders demands the release of journalists who had been illegally imprisoned :

Reza Alijani, editor of Iran-e-Farda and 2001 laureate of the Reporters Without Borders-Fondation de France press freedom award, has been imprisoned since 14 June 2003 along with Hoda Saber, publisher of Iran-e-Farda and Taghi Rahmani, journalist on Omid-e-Zangan. Held in solitary confinement for no reason, these three journalists have been deprived of their identity for nearly 11 months. Their lawyers have not even been able to see their files.

Ensafali Hedayat, independent journalist imprisoned on 16 January 2004, was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison. He has appealed the decision and paid the bail asked for and should therefore have been released, at least until the appeal court verdict.

Siamak Pourzand, independent journalist sentenced to eight years in prison, is has been detained since November 2000. Aged 74, he has been put under heavy psychological pressure and tortured during interrogation. After spending months in solitary confinement, Pourzand is currently in hospital.

Ali-Reza Jabari, journalist with the monthly Adineh, imprisoned since 17 March 2003, was sentenced to three years in prison and 253 lashes. Arrested for infringement of morals, it appears that his relations with the Association of Iranian Writers and his outspokenness were behind his arrest. Aged over 60, Jabari, who has heart problems, is held with common-law prisoners and has been treated even more harshly since a website posted a letter describing his prison conditions.

Hassan Yussefi Echkevari, theologian and journalist on Iran-e-Farda, he has been imprisoned since 5 August 2000. He was sentenced to seven years in prison without even attending his own trial. An insulin-dependent diabetic, he suffers from haemorrhage of the eyes and needs intensive care.

Akbar Ganji, journalist with the daily Sobh-e-Emouz, sentenced to six years in prison, he has been in custody since 22 April 2000. On 13 January 2001, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In May, his sentence was reduced on appeal to six months. But on 15 July 2001, the Supreme Court overturned this verdict and sentenced him to six years.

Iraj Jamshidi, editor of the financial daily Asia, in prison since 6 July 2003 and held for months in solitary confinement, has still not been tried.

Abbas Abdi, journalist on the daily Salam, in custody since 4 November 2002, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison along with Hossein Ghazian, of the daily Noruz, imprisoned since 31 October 2002. Some of the charges against these two journalists were dropped on order of the Supreme Court in April 2003, but the court did not rule on the rest of the charges against them.

Mostafa Sabti, publisher of the weekly Gorgan-e Emrouz, arrested on 19 March 2004, is serving a sentence of three months for defamation, which should put him in the category of "unnecessary sentences" mentioned by Shahrudi.

The statements made by the head of the judiciary reflect the recommendations made in his 2003 mission report by Louis Joinet, head of the working group on arbitrary detention and by Ambeyi Ligabo, UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion. International pressure has undeniably played a part in this astonishing turnaround in the Islamic Republic. Now it only remains for the recommendations to be applied.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10230

[DoctorZIn]

Islam's Interpreter

April 29, 2004
The Atlantic Online
Elizabeth Wasserman

Bernard Lewis talks about his seventy years spent studying the Middle East—and his thoughts on the region's future.

In the foreword to an Arabic edition of one of Bernard Lewis's recent books, published by the Muslim Brotherhood, the translator included a few words of ambiguous praise for the author. Lewis was, he wrote, "one of two things: a candid friend or an honorable enemy," but certainly not one to dodge the truth.

In the West, critics' views on the eighty-seven-year-old known as "the dean of Middle Eastern scholars" are more clear-cut. Conservatives tend to hail him as a priceless gem—the only scholar both erudite and honest enough to tell us the inflammatory truth about the condition of modern Islam. Leftists, particularly among his peers in academe, tend to regard him as a servant of imperial power, prone to making demeaning generalizations about Middle Eastern society, and arrogant enough to consider himself an objective scholar. The rift has deepened as Lewis's influence on Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of current White House policy in the Middle East, has become public knowledge.

For those who only know Lewis from his post-9-11 celebrity, From Babel to Dragomans, a newly published collection of Lewis' essays from the 1950s to the present, is a handy guide to his intellectual roots. Lewis's academic career spans seven decades—he enrolled in the University of London's School of Oriental Studies in 1933. A genuine scholar of Orientalism, unabashed by the recent denigration of the field by post-modernists, he believes in rigorous linguistic training, prodigious reading of primary sources, and a no-stone-unturned approach to scholarship. Before he became a national celebrity for telling us "What Went Wrong," Lewis delved as enthusiastically into such topics as the relative merits of donkeys and camels for medieval pilgrims, derivations of the Persian word for eggplant, and property law in the tenth-century Muslim provinces.

There is no doubt that Lewis's harsh critique of modern Islam stems from a deep affection for the civilization that it once was. As a student visiting Turkey in 1938, by a stroke of luck he became the first Westerner permitted to enter the Imperial Ottoman Archives. His recollection of the experience says much about his sentiments toward his field: "Feeling like a child turned loose in a toy shop, or like an intruder in Ali Baba's cave, I hardly knew where to turn first."

Lewis's two trademark preoccupations, historiography and the nuances of language, permeate his writings. The book includes a detailed essay on the evolution of propaganda in Islam, and several discussions of the meaning and uses of "history" in Muslim tradition. In an essay on Islamic revolution, he points out the absurdity of referring to Islamists as "fundamentalists." "Fundamentalist" is an American expression denoting belief in the literal divine origin of scripture–something that all Muslims, militant or otherwise, believe about the Koran. Lewis is not just being picky; language is a crucial issue in Islam. Analyzing Osama bin Laden's appeal, Lewis explains: "The first and most obvious reason for his popularity is his eloquence, a skill much admired and appreciated in the Arab world since ancient times."

Representatives of the West, Lewis says, need to pay more attention to the way they communicate with the Middle East, where their every word and signal are scrutinized for signs of weakness or uncertainty. If one had to sum up in one phrase his message to U.S. policymakers, it would be the title of his September 16, 2001, op-ed in The Washington Post: "We Must Be Clear." In trying to understand the intentions and capacities of the United States, Lewis writes, Middle Easterners have two guides: "The first is history... In this the record is not encouraging. The second is their current dealings with U.S. statesmen, soldiers, and diplomats, and the interpretations they put on what is said to them and what is asked of them." With clarity, firmness, and a show of resolve, there is "only a possibility" that the U.S. will win local support, Lewis concludes. "Without them there is a certainty of failure."

Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and the author of more than two dozen books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

We spoke by telephone on April 15.


—Elizabeth Wasserman

---

Bernard Lewis

Your title chapter, "From Babel to Dragomans," examines the history of dragomans—or translators—who mediated between the rulers of Islam and the West, and the near impossibility of achieving anything resembling direct, honest communication between the two civilizations. It's almost comical to read about some of the mishaps that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but I wonder, how much clearer is the dialogue between the West and the Middle East today?

In the late sixteenth century, not a single person in England knew any Turkish, and certainly not a single person in Turkey knew any English. They had to proceed by two-stage translation. The intermediate language was Italian, which was then the most important European language for international communication. So texts were prepared in Turkish, translated into Italian by an interpreter employed by the Turkish government, translated into English by a translator employed by the English government, and then the reply would go back by the same route. Seeing the three sets of documents side by side is quite a fascinating experience. It alerted me to some of the problems of diplomacy by translation and interpretation. What was quite clear is that there was a pattern of systematic and deliberate mistranslation. I looked into this problem in later periods and right into modern times, and it's still there.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about using "soft power," as we did in the Cold War, particularly through the mass media—channels like Radio Sawa and the Middle-Eastern Television Network. Are we getting closer to winning the propaganda battle?

We have a better opportunity of doing that now than ever before, thanks to the miracles of modern communication. But I don't think we're using that opportunity. There is some improvement, but generally speaking, I see a failure of communication. Simple translation isn't good enough. Even accurate translation may be misleading, because in different cultures we use the same word with different meanings. There is a great danger of misunderstanding. This became clear during World War II, when there was massive propaganda directed towards the Middle East—propaganda from the Axis, from the Americans and the British, and from the Soviets. All of them had their Arabic broadcast programs, and even at the time, it was obvious that there were serious discrepancies between what was said and what was heard and understood. I don't think the problem has improved—if anything it's gotten worse.

Do you have a prescription?

I think the first thing is better linguistic training. For example, when I listen to the broadcasts from the media people who are in Iraq at the present time, they almost always mispronounce the names of Iraqi towns. One town which has been very much in the news is spelled in Latin letters N-a-j-a-f, and I hear one announcer or newsreader after another, even those who are calling from over there, say Na-jaf' (emphasis on the second syllable). Well it isn't Na-jaf', it's Na'jaf (emphasis on the first syllable). Anyone who's ever heard an Iraqi pronounce the name will know that. The fact that this sort of name is systematically mispronounced is really alarming. One wonders who they've been talking to.

Do subtle errors like this shame us in the eyes of people there?

I would say so. It also makes people like me wonder how much we can rely on what we are being told when they don't even know how to pronounce the name of the place.

In a 1957 lecture about tensions in the Middle East you said that Westernization, in spite of its benefits, was the chief cause "of the political and social formlessness, instability and irresponsibility that bedevils public life of the Middle East." I wonder, as you were writing nearly a half century ago, which particular aspects of Westernization you were referring to?

First of all, let me say what I mean by Westernization. This process was not mainly imposed by Western imperial rulers, who tend to be very cautious and conservative, tampering as little as possible with the existing institutions. It was done by reformers in the independent Middle Eastern countries. Enthusiastic reformers who recognized the success and power of the Western world and wanted to get the same for their own people—a very natural and very laudable ambition. But often with the very best of intentions, they achieved appalling results.

What I had in mind in particular was two things, both tending in the same direction. In the old order, the traditional Islamic Middle Eastern society was certainly authoritarian, but it was not despotic or dictatorial. It was a limited autocracy in which the power of the ruler, the Sultan or the Shah or the Pasha, whoever he might be, was limited both in theory and in practice. It was limited in theory by the Holy Law—the Divine Law to which the ruler was subject no less than the meanest of his slaves. It was also limited in practice by the existence of strong entrenched interests in society. You had the merchants of the bazaar, powerful guilds. You had the country gentry. You have the bureaucratic establishment, the military establishment, and the religious establishment. Each of these groups produced their own leaders—leaders who were not appointed by the State, who were not paid by the State, and who were not answerable to the State. These, therefore, formed a very important constraint on the autocracy of government.

Then came the process of modernization or Westernization, which for practical purposes are the same thing. It enormously increased the power of the central government by placing at its disposal the whole modern apparatus of surveillance and control: first the telegraph, later the telephone; the possibility of moving troops quickly, first by train then by truck or by plane. So the central government was able to assert itself and enforce its will even in remote provinces in a way that was inconceivable in earlier times. The effect of this was to weaken or even eliminate those intermediate powers that limited the autocracy of government.

When people look at the kind of regime that was operated by Saddam Hussein and say, "Well, that's how they are, that's their way of doing things," it is simply not true. I mean, that kind of dictatorship has no roots in either the Arab or the Islamic past. It, unfortunately, is the consequence of Westernization or modernization in the Middle East.

What about the ideological aspect of Westernization? Why is it that well-to-do Middle Easterners who have studied or traveled extensively in the West in the past century seem by and large to return with extremist political ideas rather than constructive ones?

I wouldn't say rather than, I would say as well as. As you know, they started coming at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to study at Western universities and other educational establishments. Naturally, as students do, they learned more from their fellow students than from their professors, and they picked up the ideas that were current at the time—liberalism, nationalism, and the like. These had a very mixed impact. Some of them were very beneficial. But some of them turned out to be harmful.

Some Western observers look at the Islamic governments and organizations of today and conclude that humanism, modernization, tolerance, reform—the things that made up our Enlightenment—are anathema to Islam. Are these observers right?

They are not anathema to Islam—on the contrary, Islam has its own humanistic traditions— but they are certainly anathema to those whom we have gotten into the habit of calling the Islamists. I don't like the term; I think it's misleading. I prefer to use "Islamic fundamentalists," though that's also a loose analogy.

What about democracy? How compatible is it with Islamic law and custom?

Well, there are certain elements in Islamic law and tradition which I think are conducive to democracy. The idea that government is contractual and consensual, for one thing. According to the Islamic Treatise on Holy Law, the ruler comes to power by an agreement between the ruler and his subjects. This is bilateral. Both sides have obligations. It is also limited. The ruler rules under the Holy Law, which he cannot change and which he must obey. So these two elements, I think, of consent and contract, also have the element of limitation, and can be very conducive to the development of democratic institutions. There is also a deeply rooted rejection in traditional Islamic writing of despotism or dictatorship, of the capricious rule of the ruler without due regard to the law and to the opinion of the various groups in society.

What do you make of the thesis that Islam is another version of the anti-liberal, anti-modern dogmas of the twentieth century? Some pundits have been using the term "Islamo-fascism" to describe the ideology of bin Laden and his ilk. Do you think that the militant form of Islam stems more from recent utopian movements than from Islamic tradition?

No, I don't. There is an Islamic saying, "The first to reason by analogy was the devil." Certainly there is a Fascist element in the Islamic world, but it's not in the religious fundamentalists. It's rather in people like Saddam Hussein and his regime and the Syrian regime. These were directly based on the Fascist regimes. We can date it with precision: in 1940, the French government capitulated and a collaborationist regime was established in Vichy. The rulers of the French colonial empire had to decide whether they would stay with Vichy, or rally to De Gaulle. And they made various decisions. Syria and Lebanon were at that time under French mandate, and these French officials stayed with Vichy, so Syria and Lebanon became a center of Axis propaganda in the Middle East. That was when real Fascist ideas began to penetrate. There were many translations and adaptations of Nazi material into Arabic. The Ba'ath party, which dates from a little after that period, came in as a sort of Middle Eastern clone of the Nazi party and, a little later, the Communist party.

But that has nothing to do with Islam. The Islamists' approach is quite different from that and has its roots in the history of Islam. Though, of course, it is also influenced by outside ideas. I would not call it Fascist. I would say it is certainly authoritarian and shares the hostilities of the Fascists rather than their doctrines.

You make the point in your book that outsiders attempting to study the Middle East, or any foreign culture for that matter, are handicapped by a tendency to think in terms of the intellectual, social, and political categories of our own society. Can you give some examples of how this has led us astray?

In a number of different ways, but particularly in the way we evaluate their actions and determine responses to them. This problem is not peculiar to the West. We see it happening in the Islamic world, too. For example, they see free debate and open criticism in America today, and since no such thing is possible in their society, they see this as weakness and disunity.

You mention that the reason that the Arab-Israeli conflict appears to be the central preoccupation in the Arab world is that it's the only local political grievance that people can discuss freely in the open forum.

It is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live—the poverty, unemployment, oppression—having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage.

Do you think that if freedom of speech were introduced in the region the popular preoccupation with Israel would fade?

It would become less exclusive and less important. Obviously, like everyone else in the world, these people are most concerned with their own immediate problems. For the Palestinians, of course, the main problem is the Arab-Israel thing, but people in other countries would, I think, be more concerned with their problems at home if they were allowed to discuss them, which they are not.

You attribute some real importance to the Israeli problem in your article on the Pan-Arab movement. You write that popular support for a unified Arabia was weakened considerably by the conflict with Israel. Can you explain how?

The conflict with Israel produced a great sense of failure in the Arab world. Remember that in 1948 there was no Israel, and the Jewish population of Palestine was a little more than half a million. The United Nations in '47 adopted a resolution for the partition of the former British mandate in Palestine into three: A Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone in Jerusalem. A couple of weeks later the Arab League met, formally denounced this resolution, and resolved to prevent it by any means including force of arms. The Arabs were confident it would be a simple matter; we know that from the literature of the time. After all, five Arab states with armies were attacking a community of just over half a million establishing a new state in the debris of the British mandate.They thought it would be a walkover. It turned out that it was quite the reverse. And that was a cause of terrible humiliation. They were only half successful. They prevented the establishment of the Arab state but not the establishment of the Jewish state, and this, of course, rankled terribly and continues to do so.

And this discredited the idea of a unified Arab state?

No, it didn't discredit the idea, but it did show that on this one occasion, when the Arab league reached a decision and a number of Arab states tried to enforce it, the result was a total failure.

Do you think that there is any prospect for unification in the future?

I think it grows less and less likely, because many of these states were quite artificial when they were created. But they are now quite old, relatively speaking, and each of them has developed a strong group of interests, a sort of intersecting network of careers and interests. I mean, if you have twenty Arab states, you will have twenty embassies in Washington. If you have only one state, you will have only one embassy. Think of all those diplomats out of a job.

The bureaucratic imperative.

Yes, the bureaucratic and all the other interests. The result is that although many efforts have been made to bring Arab states together, they've all failed. There was the union between Egypt and Syria, which was proclaimed amid rejoicing as the first step toward Pan-Arabism. It fell apart. There was the union between Egypt and the Sudan; it fell apart. There was the attempt to create a united Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. All three of these states had even written in their constitutions that they were part of the greater Arab Maghreb. They all fell apart. Each time two or more Arab states tried to unify, they fell apart. So it seems to me that the prospects for a united Arab state are about as good as the prospect for a united Latin America.

What about the opposite—further partition into ethnic or religious subdivisions? What about, for example, the talk of dividing Iraq in three?

No, I don't think that would be a good idea. I don't think one should go in the opposite direction. Iraq is now more than half a century old, and I think there is a sufficient sense of common identity and interest. I don't think fragmentation is a good idea.

In general?

In general. We saw the dangers of that in Lebanon.

You've offered your own unorthodox prescription for Iraq. In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal in October of last year, you suggested that Iraq implement a monarchy—a Hashemite monarchy based on the constitution of 1925—as a transitional government. How did you come up with that idea?

It seemed to me that one of the key problems in creating a new Iraq is how to have a regime that would be recognized as legitimate by the people and that would provide a valid system of succession in the supreme office. The monarchy in Iraq worked better than in most other places. Many Iraqis look back to it now as sort of a golden age. And I thought that a possibility would be to restore the Hashemite monarchy—that is, the old dynasty with its constitution, which was fairly liberal and which provided procedures for amendment. It seemed to me that that would be a way of getting some kind of legitimacy and some procedure for succession other than the normal ones—assassination, coup d'état, insurrection, civil war, murder, or the ruler nominates his son to succeed him. This last is what happened in Syria and this is what Saddam was obviously planning to do in Iraq. It seemed to me that the old monarchy was a better arrangement than that, given that it would be a monarchy in the British or Scandinavian style: a very limited, more or less figurehead monarchy, allowing the development of genuinely democratic institutions. But obviously they didn't want to go that way.

What basis exists in that region for a civil society organized on secular principles? What kinds of institutions exist apart from Islam?

The word secular is a Western term. It has only recently been imported into the Middle East. The idea of Church and State as two distinct institutions which can be either joined or separated is a Western and more specifically a Christian idea. In the past, if you talked to Muslims about separation of Church and State the usual answer you'd get was, "Oh, this is a Christian remedy for a Christian disease"—and therefore of no relevance to them. Now I think that they are beginning to realize that perhaps they have contracted the Christian disease and that it might be a good idea to try the Christian remedy.

What is the Christian disease?

The mixing of Church and State. That is, when the Church uses the State to enforce its doctrine, and the State interferes in the affairs of the Church. This is what brought on the great wars of religion in Europe. The idea of separation of Church and State was intended to protect both: to protect religion from State interference and to protect the State from religious interference.

So the old perception was that Islam was immune to that problem because Church and State, so to speak, are organically combined?

Exactly. That's no longer true. For example, what they have now in Iran, for the first time, is a theocracy—a country which is actually run by the professional men of religion. This is totally unknown in the Islamic past. They now have the functional equivalent of a Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops, and above all, an inquisition that punishes heretics. One hopes that they may in due course have a reformation.

You write that Islam assigns a "central religious importance" to "history and accuracy"—to a greater degree than we do in the West. What is the connection between religion and historical accuracy?

This has been a characteristic of Islamic civilization from the very beginning. For them, history has a religious importance because, according to Muslim teaching, after the revelation of the Koran, divine guidance passed to the prophet and to his successors and heirs. History is a way of knowing the working out of God's plan for humanity. Therefore, it's important to preserve the memory of the past and it's important that that memory be accurate. In the great age of Islamic civilization, in the period that in Europe we call the Middle Ages, the amount of historical literature is enormous, not in quantity alone, but also in quality and sophistication. It's vastly better than anything we find in the European world since Ancient Greece and Rome.

What has become of history and accuracy in the modern Middle East?

In more modern times, concern for accuracy has unfortunately given way to a desire to be right. There are two aspects to this. One is what you might call the psychological aspect—the difficulty of confronting and describing unpleasant facts. The other is censorship—the fact that most countries in the Muslim world, not all, but most—are under authoritarian regimes of one sort or another, where there are strict limits on what you are able to say in print.

But the concern for history is very much still there. I'll give you an example. In 1980 to 1988, a war was fought between two Middle Eastern Muslim states, Iraq and Iran. Both carried on intensive war propaganda using all the modern devices at their disposal. This propaganda made frequent allusions to history. And when I say allusions, I mean just that. I don't mean that they told stories from history; I mean a quick passing reference to a name, a date, a place, in the sure knowledge that it would be picked up and understood by the target audiences. They talked particularly of events of the seventh century, when the Arabs conquered Iran and when there was a religious struggle between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is a society where even simple, ordinary people will pick up these allusions.

In 1957, discussing what role the U.S. ought to play in Middle Eastern affairs, you recommended a policy of "masterly inactivity." You wrote: "We of the West can also do something to help on non-political levels but should beware of proposing solutions that, however good, are discredited by the very fact of our having suggested them." You seem to have changed your mind since then.

I don't think masterly inactivity is desirable at the present moment. With the way things have developed since, we cannot but involve ourselves. But I think our policy should still be, as far as possible, to let them do it their way. For example, I don't see our idea of imposing a constitution on Iraq as a good one at all. Let them work it out and let them take their time over it. Democracies cannot be created overnight.

Are you optimistic about the state of things there?

I'm cautiously optimistic about what's happening in Iraq. What bothers me is what's happening here in the United States.

Do you mean the controversy over the occupation? The pressure to pull out?

Yes, because the message that this is sending to people in that region is that the Americans are frightened, they want to get out. They'll abandon us the same as they did in '91. And you know what happened in '91.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2004-04-29.htm

[DoctorZIn]

IRAQI CLERICS FEAR AMERICAN WITHDRAWAL OF FALLUJA

By Safa Haeri
Posted Friday, April 30, 2004

PARIS 30 Apr. (IPS) The United States agreed to withdraw their forces from Falluja, the Iraqi Sunni-dominated city now becoming the symbol of Iraqi resistance to the “occupation” forces. As a result senior Iraqi clerics, including Ayatollah Kazem Ha’eri, have signalled their separation from the hard line positions taken by Hojjatoleslam Moqtada Sadr, the young Iraqi Shiá cleric who has declared war on American forces.

Officially, almost all Iraqi political parties and religious circles have welcomed the American decision, but informed sources said, speaking privately, that some senior Shi’a, and moderate Sunni clerics have expressed concern, fearing that the decision to evacuate Falluja would encourage other hard line mullahs, mostly Moqtada, to emulate and create a “new Falluja” in other parts of the war-ravaged nation.

According to Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Ha’eri, the younger brother of Ayatollah Kazem, Moqtada “has no right” to declare jihad, or holy war against the Coalition forces in the name of Mr. Ha’eri.

Speaking to the French news Agency AFP, Mohammad Hussein, who is living in Iran and is considered as the official spokesman for his brother, has declined to confirm if Mr. Moqtada Sadr is representing Ayatollah Ha’eri, as he claims.

In recent declarations, Mr Moqtada Sadr, who is now hiding in the holy city of Najaf at the head of the 2 000 to 4 000 strong men Mahdi Army, has reiterated that he is the official representative of Ayatollah Kazem Ha’eri and has declared holly war on American forces.

Mr. Mohammad Hussein Ha’eri rejected the claims and said that not only Moqtada has no right to declare holly war, but also none of the high-ranking Iraqi clerics, Shi’a or Sunni, have pronounced such a fatwa, or religious edict.

Informed Iranian sources said that Thehran has realised the dangers a turbulent and uncontrollable man like Moqtada can present for Iranian policy in Iraq. Tehran has decided to abandon him and has urged all the parties over which it has substantial influence to do so.

The “honey moon” between Moqtada Sadr and the Islamic Republic of Iran started several months ago after the young Iraqi cleric, known for his fierce anti-Iranian positions, was invited to Tehran, where he met most of the important Iranian rulers. This included Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who now is the Head of the Expediency Council, an influential decision-making body that works as a supra-governmental institution controlled by the conservatives, Ayatollah Ha’eri and some commanders of the Revolutionary Guards involved in Iraq.

“Moqtada left Tehran pockets full of money and arms against the promise to turn Iraq into a hell for the occupation forces, but mostly the Americans”, informed sources said. They added that in order to give him enough religious weight he became the representative of the hard line Ayatollah Ha’eri who, in earlier statements, had taken strong anti-American position and had called on the Iraqi people to stand up to the “American and Jews infidels trying to grab the land of Islam and its wealth”.

ENDS IRAQ SADR 30404

http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2004/april/iraq_sadr_30404.shtml

[TheLion]

Excellent piece by Hanson. This is the first time I have read one of your threads. Most informative!

[DoctorZIn]

For those who can't get enough of the Iranian UFO reports, check out the comments at the Imperial Iranian Air Force forum ...

http://www.iiaf.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=955

[windchime]

Bump!

[DoctorZIn]

Egypt and Iran to Set Up Council

May 01, 2004
Gulf Daily News
gulf-daily-news.com

CAIRO -- Egyptian and Iranian business leaders agreed yesterday to set up a joint council, anticipating an increase in commerce opportunities once their governments decide to restore diplomatic relations.

The presidents of the chambers of commerce in the two countries signed the agreement in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh on the sidelines of an Islamic business conference, the official news agency Mena said.

Egypt and Iran have not had diplomatic ties for 25 years but earlier this year officials in both countries said a restoration of relations was approaching.

However, Egyptian officials said Egypt still demanded that Iran changed the name signs on a Tehran street named after the man who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The momentum for change appears to have dissipated since hardliners won Iranian parliamentary elections in February.

The Egyptian news agency quoted Khaled Abu Ismail, the president of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, as saying the new business council would hold its first meeting within two months.

"The council will try to restore economic impetus between the two countries and open new areas of co-operation," he added.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=80511&Sn=BUSI

[DoctorZIn]

Iranian Women Hold Gathering in Tehran to Protest Portrayal of Women on National TV

April 30, 2004
Payvand
Syma Sayyah

The Women Cultural Center (WCC) in Tehran along with several other women organizations and groups helped arrange a gathering for those who wished to express their disgust or dismay towards policies for the projection of women’s role on Iran’s National Television Programs.

This meeting was held on Wednesday 28th April, 5-7 pm at Tehran Press House, and despite all odds started almost on time. One thing that caught my attention was the significant number of men, many of them young, who were present there. They had come to express their solidarity on this issue, since the degrading representation of women on national TV is definitely an insult to men as well as women.

“Some TV Time must be allocated to Civil Society & NGOs involved in Women Issues”

“Switch off your Television, and Show your Disapproval of NIRT Policies”

“Women denounce women’s roles on TV series”

The WCC Speaker at the beginning of the meeting addressed the audience, which consisted of truly a cross section of women (if not of Iran yet definitely of Tehran), and thanked the Reporters Society for allowing this meeting to be held at their center. She then said that we were there to express our objection and opposition to the unrealistic and non artistic roles that are shown in our TV series. Yet this is not something new on Television, no where can we see the real, active and positive roles that women have been playing, in all aspect of daily lives, in the past 25 years, in any of the TV programs. Television women characters have nothing in common with the real women in our society, in social, artistic, emotional, intellectual or even family aspects of life of the nation. This trend is a movement that reached a point and we have a duty to bring it out into the open.

Next several women expressed their opinion, and this has been reported –more or less- by several other web sites (their references are given at the end). One of the speakers said that some may wonder why we have gathered here, but their surprise is not Why Now but rather Why Not Earlier? Indeed!

All I can say is that all types were well represented. We had ordinary women, traditional women, modern women, educated, less educated, young and not very young, all saying the very same thing. All objected to the unrealistic portrayal of themselves and their sisters, mothers, friends, cousins, neighbors, colleagues, dreams, hopes, thoughts and aspirations on Iranian television. All the speakers were aware that most people watch TV not only as their main source of information but also for entertainment. This powerful tool that indirectly teaches a particular kind of ‘moral education’ can have devastating effect on minds of the most vulnerable members of the society, mainly children and the very young. Everyone in one way or another expressed their kind of horror of the fact that policy makers use this tool to suppress and hold back a whole nation, via this stupid and silly portrayal of women, who are generally represented as weak, silly, unable to think for themselves, useless without a man, and could possibly not have inspiration higher than having a man before marriage and then a child afterwards. Their only dream and hope is pleasing the man of their lives. If they cannot bear a child then they must be at fault, and must prove their love by not only agreeing but participating in finding their husband another wife! These women even if they hold a newspaper they do the cross-words only. They never have any serious discussion except gossiping.

All types of real women of this nation from all aspect of lives have the same agenda. They want to be taken seriously. They are well educated if not better, and they want what is their right, a serious place in society which they have gained with hard work and dedication - what they need is representation of this achievement in our national television station.

What pleased me most about this meeting, from the beginning to the end, was not only hoping but actually experiencing in practice and for real that women Can and Will Work together, despite all efforts by some forces to the contrary, in order to improve the well being of themselves, which is none other than the men of this nation and the nation itself, given that they consist of half of the its population.

The time has come for change and change is coming so fast that nothing can stop it now; awareness has reached the Critical Mass! Well done to all those that who have or who will join this force, this new fresh breeze of fresh air which soon will become a serious wind, soft swift and effective and yes, unstoppable. Wait and see!

http://www.payvand.com/news/04/apr/1204.html

[DoctorZIn]

Rafsanjani Accuses US of Trying to 'Bulldoze' Cities

May 01, 2004
AFP
The Peninsula

TEHRAN -- Influential former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused the United States yesterday of believing it could force Iraqis into submission by bulldozing their cities, and expressed fears for the fate of the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Rafsanjani, who heads the powerful Expediency Council in predominantly Shiite Iran, was speaking during a sermon at weekly Friday prayers here broadcast by state radio.

“The Americans are at the gates of Najaf and they have already demonstrated that more often than not they use force, rather than their heads, thinking that by bulldozing a city people will give up.

“If the religious leadership of Najaf had not warned them, they would have done the same thing there that they did in Fallujah,” a reference to the bloody three-week long US marine siege of a Sunni hotspot west of Baghdad in which hundreds of Iraqis and scores of marines have been killed.

US troops have been massed outside Najaf for the past three weeks, laying siege to wanted firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who is holed up there along with elements of his Mehdi Army militia.

Rafsanjani said that “if we do not solve the Iraqi problem, it will become worse than the Palestinian problem, becoming a cancer in the region.”

Iran is insisting on a rapid withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Iraq.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=May2004&file=World_News2004050194955.xml

[DoctorZIn]

Iran Rejects US Terror Tag

May 01, 2004
Agence France-Presse
news.com.au

Iran today shrugged off as deceptive and repetitious a United States terrorism report condemning the Islamic republic as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iranian dailies reported.

"The latest US accusations against Iran are repetitious, worthless and deceptive and are another example of Washington's propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.

Asefi pointed to Iran's arch-enemy's support of Israel, which Iran does not recognise, saying: "As the main supporter of the Zionist regime, whose documented terrorist activities have invoked hatred throughout the world, the US is actually promoting terrorism and is in no position to reprimand anyone.

"Iran's policies toward Iraq have been transparent, and today it remains fully committed to restoring peace and security in that war-torn country as well as the entire region," he added.

On Thursday, the United States again condemned Iran as the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism".

As in previous years, the State Department identified Iran as the chief exporter of terrorism in its annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report, accusing it of fomenting terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East, particularly against Israel.

"Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2003," the report said, maintaining that Tehran's intelligence and security services were responsible for supporting extremist groups and that the country had failed to meet pledges to act against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

Iran's "Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security were involved in the planning of and support for terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups that use terrorism to pursue their goals", it said.

The most egregious of these actions were Iran's continued funding of and arms transfers to Palestinian "rejectionist groups", its attempts to thwart the efforts of the US-led coalition in Iraq and its refusal to turn over Al-Qaeda operatives it says are in custody, according to the report.

Washington broke diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1980 after hardline university students stormed its embassy in Tehran, taking 444 people hostage.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9442457%255E1702,00.html

[DoctorZIn]

KumaWar Launches Iran Hostage Rescue Mission

April 30, 2004
DreamStation
dreamstation.cc

With 25th anniversary of the Iran Hostage Crisis, Kuma/War, has launched its newest mission, Iran Hostage Rescue, based upon the April 24, 1980 failed attempt to rescue 53 American hostages held in Tehran.

To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Iran Hostage Crisis, KumaWar, an online game service featuring accurate re-creations of real-world events, has launched its newest mission, Iran Hostage Rescue, based upon the April 24, 1980 failed attempt to rescue 53 American hostages held in Tehran.

Built from the U.S. military’s actual mission plan, players command a squad of Delta Force operators, the most deadly and well-trained special forces outfit in the world. While the historical mission ended in tragedy in the Iranian Desert, KumaWar re-creates the Iran hostage night rescue mission as it was intended to occur; players will secretly enter Tehran, storm the U.S. embassy, rescue the hostages and bring them home -- any way they can.

In accurately reconstructing the 1980 mission, KumaWar utilized contemporary images, official documents, and personal accounts, including interviews with Antonio Mendez, former CIA officer and author of Spy Dust. Mr. Mendez received the CIA Intelligence Star for Valor in 1980 for secretly exfiltrating from Tehran 6 Americans hidden in the Canadian embassy. An interview with Mr. Mendez is featured in the video news show that accompanies the KumaWar Iran Hostage Rescue mission.

In the coming weeks, subscribers can expect a second Iran Hostage Crisis mission which further explores the doomed rescue, and another intense Fallujah mission: Fallujah Abizaid Attack, which re-creates the February assassination attempt made on General John P. Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

KumaWar is available for download and free trial at url=http://www.kumawar.com]www.kumawar.com[/url] and can be purchased for a $9.99 per month subscription fee.

Kuma Reality Games is offering a free subscription to everyone with a “.mil” email address until June 30th.

http://www.dreamstation.cc/news/video_games/id3758

[DoctorZIn]

Iran Seeks Foreign Investment For Petrochemical Sector

May 01, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
Hashem kalantari

TEHRAN -- Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Saturday his country's petrochemical sector is well below regional and global levels in term of development and needs foreign investment and knowhow.

Iran is the second, after Saudi Arabia, in the Persian Gulf region in development in this sector with a cumulative production worth $2.7 billion in the Iranian year to March 20 of which $1.2 billion was exported, said Zanganeh. He was speaking on the sidelines of Iran's 6th international petrochemical conference.

He said Iran is in negotiation with the Saudi petrochemical company Sabic for an investment of around $500 million.

"Saudi Arabia is interested in investing in Iran's petrochemical sector, negotiations have advanced well and they will soon finalize," said Zanganeh without giving further details.

He said Iran plans to raise production value in the sector to around $20 billion over a period of about a decade.

Iran is making preparation to attract around $11 billion in domestic and foreign investments on a joint venture basis in the country's fourth development plan (2005-2009).

The state National Petrochemical Co. projects the total investment in the course of the current third development plan (2000-2005) will amount to around $10 billion.

The bulk of the investment will be in the Persian Gulf port of Asaluyeh (Pars special economic energy zone), Boushehr province, close to the giant South Pars gas field. There are major 10 projects under way now.

Iran considers the petrochemical sector the key element of its drive to raise its non-oil income by relying on its vast natural gas reserves as feedstock ranked second in the world after Russia.

In its drive to expedite the development of the sector, the state National Petrochemical Co. pledged to provide both local and foreign investors with their needed natural gas at an affordable rate.

http://news.nasdaq.com/news/newsStory.aspx?&cpath=20040501ACQDJON200405010543DOWJONESDJONLINE000011.htm

[DoctorZIn]

Young Quake Victims in Need of Care

May 01, 2004
Belfast Telegraph
Gary Grattan

It is four months this week since the tragic earthquake that claimed the lives of 43,000 people and orphaned over 2,000 children in Bam, Iran.

The extent of the damage is still visible.

Families are struggling to live in what has become a tented city, getting by with the little they have recovered from the rubble of their homes, while still grieving the loss of loved ones.

Amid this devastation, UNICEF and its partners are working tirelessly to address the needs of the affected population.

One vital intervention has been to establish child care centres in the city, places that provide practical and emotional support for children.

UNICEF currently supports 16 child care centres, providing tents, basic furniture, colour pencils, puppets and games.

As well as supplying resources for these centres, UNICEF trains counsellors on how to work with traumatised children.

A number of tents have been set up to hold psychosocial sessions for slightly older children.

In these sessions, children receive group therapy and learn to express their fears through drawing and writing.

Dianne Whyte, UNICEF's fundraising manager for Northern Ireland, said: "Many young people are still experiencing nightmares, suffering headaches and anxiety attacks as a result of their fear.

"Care and counselling can help this to be overcome, especially now while communities are dealing with the trauma together."

"The support from the Northern Ireland public has been immense, donations are making these positive activities help to restore Bam's hopes for the future."

If you would like to help, donation should go to: UNICEF Children of Iran Earthquake Appeal, PO Box 616, Belfast, BT5 7YP.

ggrattan@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=517118

[DoctorZIn]

Iran Oil Min: US Sanctions Hurt Both US And Iran

May 01, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
Hashem Kalantari

TEHRAN -- Iran 's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Saturday that the U.S. trade and economic sanctions against Iran hurt both countries but haven't been able to stall Iran 's development in the oil and natural gas sector.

Speaking to the press on the sideline of a two-day petrochemical conference which began Saturday, Zanganeh said what the sanctions have done is to damage both Iran and the American companies.

He said the sanctions have kept U.S. companies out of the lucrative Iranian oil and gas sector and have also raised project costs for Iran by narrowing the circle of competition.

"I am not claiming that we have not incurred any losses. When the competition market is tightened we incur damage as well," he said.

He said Iran is paying higher than usual prices on its projects due to the absence of major American companies in the energy sector.

He said Washington will eventually have to drop the sanctions against Iran , since "in my opinion one can't change (a country's) economy through politically-based sanctions."

http://online.wsj.com/public/us