A Particular Madness

Ahmadinejad: outside world an unknown phenomenon Elected less than a year ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a president unlike any other. He is doing his utmost to alienate the entire West, mobilising as much military technology as possible, and now enriching uranium in quantities apparently enough for hundreds of nuclear warheads. "This is the result of the Iranian nation’s resistance," he boasts, and the work of "young scientists," adding that the nation does not get its strength from nuclear arsenals, but "relies on the sublime beliefs that lie within the Iranian and Islamic culture." Far from deterring him, the prospect of war, and perhaps Armageddon, is an encouragement. Those who live in democracies have become unwilling or unable to fathom anyone gambling with peace in this way - it took years to realise that Hitler and Stalin meant what they said. A huge leap of the imagination is now required to take the measure of Ahmadinejad.

The son of a blacksmith, he grew up in the provinces, and owes his career exclusively to the Islamic Revolution and membership in the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary body responsible for the regime’s security, the equivalent of the KGB or the SS. Personally he seems honest, a rare quality in Iran where corruption rules, among the clerics especially. At any rate, the ayatollahs parachuted him into the presidency to do their bidding, rather as Boris Yeltsin once promoted the then unknown Vladimir Putin. The analogy is not quite exact, since in Iran power is in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the president has the subsidiary role of ensuring the governing doctrine that "any action that weakens the sacred Islamic Republic is not permissible."

To someone of such limited background and experience, the outside world is an unknown quantity. Ahmadinejad’s religious beliefs are no doubt as sincere as they are narrow, and they prompt regular pronouncements in a messianic style: "The wave of the Islamic Revolution will soon reach the entire world." Or again, "Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi." In the middle of the 10th century, this imam went into hiding, supposedly in a well in Jamkaran, south of Teheran, but it is an article of Shi’ite faith that he will return and herald the End of Days. Ahmadinejad and his cabinet signed a petition to the hidden imam, proceeded to Jamkaran, and threw it down the well for his attention. Similarly unself-conscious, he claimed that while speaking at the United Nations "I became surrounded by a green light," so that for 27 to 28 minutes all the attentive listeners did not blink - the chronological exactitude is a touch a thriller writer might envy. And he closed that speech by urging God to "hasten the emergence of Your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill the world with justice and peace."

History has produced in Iran a volatile compound of self-regarding nationalism and religiosity, a superiority complex that switches easily into its opposite of inferiority and martyrdom. In the national memory, Cyrus, King of Kings, remains a symbol of ruined empire. The Arabs swept in to impose their culture and faith, but they were Sunni Muslims, and Persians maintained their ethnic and national particularity as Shi’ite Muslims.

Nobody projected the accompanying sense of impotence and humiliation more eloquently than Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, writing in the 19th century when Europeans were at their imperialist zenith. In spite of his name, Afghani was a Shi’ite from Persia, but he shaped a mindset for all Muslims that is still influential today. Muslims in his view were backward, but the blame for this lay with other people, and not themselves. Europeans had stolen a march on Islam unfairly. He wrote, "It is science that everywhere manifests its greatness and power. Ignorance had no alternative to prostrating itself humbly before science." For him, science was not the expression of a civilisation, but something Muslims had only to copy as a means to recovering the supremacy that is theirs by right. The reigns of the two Pahlavi Shahs of Iran in the 20th century duly paid attention to science, but not to Islam. The Islamic Revolution now aims to reconcile the two elements. Ahmadinejad’s boast about the "young scientists" doing nuclear enrichment corresponds to the spirit of Afghani.

In another echo of Afghani, Ahmadinejad likes to lament that, "unfortunately, over the past 300 years the world of Islam has been in retreat." But he goes on to emphasise that this is changing, and centuries of humiliation at the hands of Sunni Arabs and infidel Europeans are reversing into the proper honour and glory. The prospects are tantalising. To the north, Russia is now so reduced that it is begging to sell nuclear plants and know-how, even though one day an Iranian atomic bomb might land on its own head. To the west, Saddam Hussein is no more, and Iraq is in no position to wage another war for many years to come. Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states have no genuine military capacity. The Shi’ites are certain in the end to dominate the government in Baghdad, and their power already reaches into Syria, and through Hezbollah into Lebanon.

The United States alone appears to cast a shadow over the Shi’ite future, and so in the rhetoric imposed by the need for honour and supremacy, it is depicted as "arrogant" and the "oppressor." In strict defiance of reality, Ahmadinejad asserts, "Our enemies should know that they are unable to even slightly hurt our nation and they cannot create the tiniest obstacle on its glorious and progressive way." A Revolutionary Guards commander spells it out: "America should accept Iran as a great regional power and they should know that sanctions and military threats are not going to benefit them."

In that same rhetoric of honour, Ahmadinejad calls Israel "a disgraceful stain on the Islamic world" and "a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm." In any case, Israel is doomed to be "wiped from the map" in "a war of destiny." While promoting a holocaust of its own, Teheran is currently hosting a conference to deny that Hitler’s Holocaust ever took place. I cannot prove it, but I suspect that the fury against Israel and Jews has no profound resonance with the population. Historically again, Persians and Jews were natural allies against Arabs. In the days of the Shah, Iran and Israel had close commercial and military ties. Anti-Jewish stereotypes and images of "stain" and "rotten tree" are intended to induce the sense of shame needed to mobilise the faithful to redress it. An Iranian friend told me how on the day when Ahmadinejad promised to wipe Israel off the map, she was incessantly telephoned in Teheran by people saying that he had signed their death warrant, and some of them were in tears.

A nation whose way really is glorious and progressive has no need for a totalitarian security apparatus. The regime makes sure that nobody challenges it. The Interior Minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, is responsible for the summary execution of thousands of political prisoners. To give just two examples, Hojjat Zamani was executed on February 6 in Gohar Dasht Prison in the city of Karaj, near Teheran, and Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi is slated to be executed there in May. The charge against both of them was "enmity with God." I receive by e-mail regular lists of wretched men and women judicially murdered all over the country. Unforgettable among them is Ateqeh Rajabi, a 16-year-old orphan who went to work as a waitress to feed her siblings. Her efforts were called "acts incompatible with chastity." She was forbidden a lawyer, and her judge himself put the rope around her neck. A crackdown on universities is under way, involving purges of staff and students. In absolute control of the media, the regime uses sophisticated equipment to censor bloggers, arresting them by the score.

Western culture has no room in it for evidence of weakness disguised in this way by language as evidence of strength. In Western culture the literal meaning of words counts for more than the psychological vanities or evasions behind them. To us, lies may serve a purpose of glorification or mystification but they cannot be true. To us, expressions of hatred and the threat of extermination and war and the End of Days are indeed what they sound like, to be taken at face value and not as expediencies designed to avert shame and reclaim honour. Again I cannot prove it, but I am confident that Ahmadinejad has no conception that what he believes to be making him a serious person in his culture makes him a dangerous nut in ours. And a danger is what he most certainly is, to us and to himself.

David Pryce-Jones is a veteran British journalist and the author of numerous books, including The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. His latest book, Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, will be published by Encounter this Spring. © National Review (www.nationalreview.com). Reprinted by permission, all rights reserved.

Speculative parallels of historical recollection.

When Hitler could no longer stab West he turned East, and the mythically unstoppable Wermacht ground to a halt upon the vastness of the Russian steppe.

The madness of homo-erotic Nazi Socialism was ripped up by the madness of athiest-humanism Soviet Communism. The nature of Stalinist tyranny morphed militantly and it's future dwindled when paranoid economics turned from bread to bullets. The world, once drunk on the intellectual candy sweets of Communist/Socialism woke to see its absolute moral decay.

The Russian Orthodox Church was saved. There was no way that Stalin would allow the Holy Eucharist in his diabolically influenced presence. It shouldn't be ignored that Stalin was probably wholly possessed by the Devil in the most Biblical and factual example. But now "Uncle Joe" needed the Russian Orthodox to unite his peasant countrymen to fight their great patriotic war. If Hitler and Nazi Socialism had never been, Stalin would've murdered off the Orthodox clergy just as surly as he executed every Catholic Priest and Nun his agents could find. COMMUNISM HATES ALL RELIGIONS EQUALLY...and Stalin was a master at eliminating his rivals one at a time. The "State" was the religion, Stalin was the state, and "Uncle Joe" was the center of worship.

Jews would have eventually been murdered too. There's too much historical evidence pointing to the next intended victims of his sociopathic paranoia to refute this. Death prevented Stalin from executing a Soviet Holocaust in the Gulag/Katyn Forrest fashion.

We may wonder why a man like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is given such a role in History. We wonder why Pope John Paul 2 said that we shouldn't make a big military push into Iraq, and now that we're there, Pope Benedict 16 basically tells us that we'd better not leave Iraq. We wonder about the underground Catholic turmoil in China and why their state run "patriotic" church is playing Apostolic politics against the Vatican.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his gang won't have the means to push West any longer. Exporting terror to Israel and the West is a dwindling prospect. Future Iranian nuclear capabilities are certainly a possibility, but people who have the ability to vote for their leaders are tired of the "WMD" argument. We'll have to wait for the Western nation with the weakest border to lose a big historical capital, or at least a few blocks of it, to a suit case nuke.

A guy like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, given his "soldier" like origin (certainly not of the officer corps quality), will want to make an expansionist stab SOMEWHERE to fulfill his megalomaniacal dreams.

U.S. military has been friendly with both China and Mongolia. Mongolians (those who haven't converted to Islam) have had a long history of warring against Persian Islamic nations. Recently, China had been resurrecting an interest in Mongolian history (sometimes at the expense of traditional Han Chinese identity). The ChiComs continue to severely persecute anything religious in Tibet and whatever tries to grow spiritually (Falong Gong).

Assassination attempts on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won't help...especially if they're unsuccessful. It would only build up his pride and state sponsored cult status. And if he's popped, what stops the power in Iran from grooming another INDOCTRINATED MARTYR WANNABE JUST LIKE HIM? Nazism found Hitler to enable their heresies, but he wasn't the only candidate for the job. Many others desired the role of fuhrer before the "Fuhrer" came on the scene.

You know what might be a good suggestion? What if we re-examine the history of when mankind has gotten down on his knees to pray for God's Divine Intercession? The reasons why there's diabolic wickedness is because there is, in fact, a Satan very hard at work in the world turning the hearts of men against each other.

This diabolic influence is far stronger and smarter than we are...even collectively. The best example a Priest told me of the difference between angelic supernatural ability to our natural ability is about the measure of a man's capability over what a dog may do or think. That's a huge gap...but we have an Ally.

We MUST turn to Jesus and His Army of Saints and Angels, or we're just going to relive last century over and over and over. Wouldn't you like this diabolical tyranny to end? The polarization of mens' hearts is so pervasive that we can't even glimpse into a neighborhood without seeing its effect all over today's issues. The pattern doesn't change because the shadow cannot create a new camouflage. There's no other mold to reinvent possibilities, and prediction should be easier and easier given our technological ability to record and recall.

When do we start to collectively Hope in Jesus? Shouldn't we want diabolic influence to end? Let secular mans' wits come to an end. Those with hollow bosoms haven't the heart to resist nor the tongue to either pray to God or argue against the lies issued from diabolically inspired tongues. This will all end with an Act of God. Maybe a huge rock falling out of the sky will knock the wicked on the head and/or earth quake from the East African Rift will rip the ground from under the sons of satans' feet. We are in His Hands.

The reasons why there's diabolic wickedness is because there is, in fact, a Satan very hard at work in the world turning the hearts of men against each other.
This diabolic influence is far stronger and smarter than we are...even collectively. The best example a Priest told me of the difference between angelic supernatural ability to our natural ability is about the measure of a man's capability over what a dog may do or think. That's a huge gap...but we have an Ally.
We MUST turn to Jesus and His Army of Saints and Angels, or we're just going to relive last century over and over and over. Wouldn't you like this diabolical tyranny to end? The polarization of mens' hearts is so pervasive that we can't even glimpse into a neighborhood without seeing its effect all over today's issues. The pattern doesn't change because the shadow cannot create a new camouflage. There's no other mold to reinvent possibilities, and prediction should be easier and easier given our technological ability to record and recall.

When do we start to collectively Hope in Jesus? Shouldn't we want diabolic influence to end? Let secular mans' wits come to an end. Those with hollow bosoms haven't the heart to resist nor the tongue to either pray to God or argue against the lies issued from diabolically inspired tongues. This will all end with an Act of God. Maybe a huge rock falling out of the sky will knock the wicked on the head and/or earth quake from the East African Rift will rip the ground from under the sons of satans' feet. We are in His [God's] Hands.

Bears repeating, imo. I am sure there was abundant prayer during WWII, and even during the Cold War, but we have (collectively, as a nation) lost track. Abundance makes for complacency, spiritually and otherwise. The Old Testament is rife with accounts of how the Hebrews would embrace God and prosper, only to wander spiritually within a generation or two and suffer.

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