MULLING THE MULLAH DILEMMA
Op/Ed - New York Post 8.11.2003
Democrats may not have finished bashing the Bush folks for having eliminated Iraq (news - web sites) as a threat, but it's none too early to consider another uncomfortable truth: Something will have to be done soon about Iraq's belligerant Islamist neighbor - Iran.
Certainly, there's plenty of time to figure out what .
Nor would it be at all surprising to learn that American agents have already been "in country" for some time, clandestinely.
But the status quo in Tehran is growing ever more untenable, from an American point of view. And time isn't exactly on the West's side.
First, Tehran admits it has "in custody" several senior al Qaeda operatives, possibly including the terror network's No. 3, Asif al-Adel. But the mullahs have spurned U.S. requests to hand them over.
If Iran is detaining top al Qaeda thugs, are the detentions really just "protective custody" from America? It certainly wouldn't be the first time Iran has been accused of providing a safe haven for al Qaeda.
Then there's Iran's nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Islamic republic is aggressively pursing atomic weapons.
Iran claims that its nuclear plants are for peaceful purposes. But the country's vast reserves of oil easily meet its energy needs.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that "Iran appears to be in the late stages of developing the capacity to build a nuclear bomb."
Compounding that threat is Tehran's unveiling last month of the Shahab-3 missile, which can reach Israel. The L.A. paper also reported that the North Koreans "are now working on a longer-range Shahab-4 [for Iran] and providing assistance on designs for a nuclear warhead."
Then, of course, there's Iran's longtime, relentless support for terrorism.
Iran's proxy militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah - a terrorist group responsible for the murder (among many, many others) of 241 U.S. Marines in 1983 - continues to launch attacks against Israelis, the latest coming just over the past few days.
And Hamas - partly financed, armed and trained by Iran - is behind some of the bloodiest suicide bombings against civilian targets in Israel.
Meanwhile, a number of radical Shi'ite clerics in Iraq are believed to be taking orders from Tehran. And the mullahs continue to make trouble with inflammatory TV and radio broadcasts into Iraq.
For now, Iran seems to know just what it can get away with across its Western border. Perhaps the government fears intervention now that some 150,000 U.S. troops are within just a few days' trek of Tehran and President Bush (news - web sites) has made it clear "states that support terror will be held accountable."
Of course, it may be that the days of the hard-line Islamist regime are numbered anyway; regime change in Iran may come from within. Consider:
* Its population is young (mostly born after the '79 revolution) and restive.
* Its reformist politicians are increasingly willing to challenge the hard-liners - for instance, over murdered Canadian journalist Zhara Kazemi.
* Thousands of its students have risked their lives to protest the mullahs.
Surely, Iran's theocratic thugs must be dismayed, to say the least, that a grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini (who took power in the revolution of 1979), attacked it last week as "the worst dictatorship of the world." On a visit to Iraq, Hossein Khomeini also praised the U.S. overthrow of Saddam.
On the other hand, the hard-liners have a large and brutally effective security apparatus. Regime change may well require direct military intervention.
Prudence dictates that Americans, as the old adage advises, hope for the best - but plan for the worst.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=106&ncid=742&e=4&u=/nypost/20030811/cm_nypost/mullingthemullahdilemmaThe War on Terror: A War for Human Rights
August 11, 2003
FrontPageMagazine.com
Robert Spencer
The Indonesian terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), demonstrated last week that the war on terror is not just an effort to prevent recurrences of September 11; it is a struggle for human rights.
As JI celebrates (yes, celebrates) its murder of fifteen people and the wounding of 150 more in a suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last Tuesday, as well as the death sentence given Thursday to JI member Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, the “smiling bomber” who murdered 202 people in Bali last October, it is instructive to remember that JI is doing all this killing for the Sharia.
The Sharia is the classic code of Islamic law that mandates stoning for adulterers and amputation for thieves, disallows a rape victim’s testimony in her own case, and hamstrings freedom of conscience by prescribing death for apostates from Islam and those who have blasphemed the Prophet — an offense that Christians in Pakistan and other beleaguered minorities in the Islamic world have found to be distressingly elastic. Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda’s southeast Asian affiliate, dreams of the day when the Sharia holds sway over the entire world, or at least its own corner of it.
Jemaah Islamiyah is fighting to create a Sharia-ruled Islamic megastate in Southeast Asia, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, southern Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, and the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. In a certain sense it’s fitting that they see blowing up innocent people as a viable means to attain this end, for the utopia that group members envision is just as brutal and unreasoning. There have been numerous indications of that recently in places where the Islamic law that JI reveres is already (in varying degrees) in force:
- The supreme court of Afghanistan on Thursday upheld death sentences for two journalists, Sayeed Mahdawi and Ali Reza Payam. Their crime? Criticizing what they called the “holy fascism” that still holds sway in Afghanistan, and asking: “If Islam is the last and the most complete of the revealed religions, why are the Muslim countries lagging behind the modern world?”
- A court in Pakistan on Tuesday sentenced another man, Bashir Ahmed, to death for making “derogatory remarks against the Holy Prophet and his companions.”
- Women’s groups in Malaysia protested, thus far in vain, against a decision by that country’s Sharia court that men could divorce their wives by leaving a message on their mobile phones.
- The Jordanian parliament rejected on Islamic grounds a measure that would have given women the legal right to file for divorce, as well as another that would have led to stiff penalties for “honor killings”: the barbaric murder of young women by family members who believe that they have committed adultery, thereby shaming the family honor. Many young women have even been murdered after being raped, since traditional Islamic law allows a rape charge to be established only by the testimony of four male witnesses who saw the act itself.
- In Iraq, Muslim authorities in the Shiite holy city of Najaf overruled, also on Islamic grounds, the appointment by American authorities of a woman judge, Nidal Nasser Hussein. Afrah Najem, who like Nidal Nasser Hussein is a female lawyer in Iraq, knows that she has hit the mother of all glass ceilings: “Ours is an Islamic society that would not tolerate a woman judge.”
Draconian blasphemy laws, appallingly loose divorce laws (for men only), a totalitarian resistance to self-criticism, institutionalized brutality and oppression of women — these are the features of the Sharia law that forms the centerpiece of JI’s dream state. Their path to this utopia is stained with the blood of the nightclubbers, businessmen and bystanders that JI is rejoicing over having slaughtered in Indonesia.
Donald Rumsfeld has declared that the United States will not accept an Islamic state in Iraq. One may hope that this indicates that the human rights component of the war on terror has at least some advocates in high places. For the events recounted above illustrate why everyone who values freedom and basic human rights should oppose the Sharia, whether it is implemented in whole or part, not just in Iraq or Indonesia, but everywhere that it hinders the liberty of human beings — including Saudi Arabia.
Like a peevish schoolmarm, the judge who sentenced Amrozi scolded him for perverting Islam and jihad. But it is unlikely that any of the Muslim onlookers who cheered and shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great) when Amrozi entered the courtroom were brought to a moment of theological reckoning by the judge’s lecture. After all, moderate Muslims still have not answered the nagging question of why, if Islam forbids terrorism and the Qur’an teaches nonviolence, have so many devout Muslims around the world misinterpreted it so thoroughly and repeatedly. Where are the moderate Muslims who can teach not Western non-Muslims, but their fellow Muslims that Islam is peaceful?
If the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim advocacy groups really want to demonstrate that “Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy and forgiveness that should not be associated with acts of violence against the innocent,” let them definitively renounce the Sharia for which Jemaah Islamiyah kills, and which brings anything but peace and mercy to those who must suffer under it. Let them work to create in the United States a truly moderate Islam that accepts the principles of Western secular society and coexistence with non-Muslims. If they do not do this, it is clear: history will judge them as being on the wrong side of this great struggle for the rights of mankind.
Robert Spencer is author of "Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith" (Encounter Books) and Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (coming this September from Regnery Publishing). An Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation, he writes frequently on Islam in a wide variety of publications.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9319