Wafa Sultans are blossoming all over. May there be ten thousand more. Sharia Alert from The Sunday Telegraph, with thanks to Mackie:
She is the female figurehead of what she hopes will become a new Iranian revolution. Now, after almost 25 years in exile, the world is beginning to beat a path to her door.Maryam Rajavi wants those who visit her near Paris to know what sort of regime Iran's mullahs are running.
As the leader of the largest exiled Iranian opposition group, she talks angrily of the 15-year-old boy flogged to death for eating during Ramadan, and the girl of 13 buried up to her neck and stoned for a similarly trivial "crime".When she describes the punishments meted out by Iran's rulers, a picture of the limp bodies of two hanged men suspended from a crane is projected onto a screen.
She waves a large bound book that, she says, contains the names of 21,676 people who have died resisting the clerical regime. Another 120,000 people have been executed since the mullahs took power in 1979, she claims. Now Iran's rulers are trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
"We have always said that a viper cannot give birth to a dove, but nobody believed us," she told the Sunday Telegraph. "Only a fraction of the true nature of this regime, which is a brutal dictatorship of religious fanaticism, has come to public attention."
Read it all.
I think I heard of her, at least. If "the largest exiled Iranian opposition group" the Telegraph means the Mujaheddeen-e-Khalq, as I think, then we should remember that they are not very nice people themselves, and that several countries list them as a terrorist group. Even so, mine enemy's enemy is my friend, and in front of the eschatological violence of Ahmedinajad, even the Marxist brutality of the MeK becomes a comparatively secondary issue. And a Communist tyranny would probably be less cruel, especially for Iran's women, than the current refinement of cruelty disguised as religion.
The MeK was backed by Saddam, and its secular credentials, insofar as de-fanging Islam, are suspect. It is needless to back them. If there is enough of an upheaval in Iran, the alternative could well be a non-Islamic one. Unless the MeK explicitly states its opposition to Islam (unlikely, given their sanctuary in Arab Iraq), they should not receive any support whatsoever.
With all this just last week I saw US President wanna be Wesley Clark asking...."Who are we to say Iran can't have nuclear weapons?" How about people with common sense.
The more upheaval in Iran, the more problems on the fringes of the empire, from Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs, with their own grievances (and the Arabs of Khuzistan live where much of Iran's oil is locted, which means that were a series of ethnically-based revolts to break out, the one that would have to be put down most thoroughly would be that in Khuzistan, and no doubt the Iranian government would have to de-arabize the area by moving out many of the Arabs and moving Persians in. It just cannot afford to lose the oil of Khuzistan.
A free Kurdistan, having moved from autonomy to the desired independence, could inspire unrest among Kurds in Iran -- an unrest that the United States should encourage (no, not with moving in American troops -- there has been entirely too much of that. Military supplies to the Kurds and air cover would be quite enough). And that in turn would be observed by, taken in by, other communities unhappy with rule by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
"Stability" should not be the American goal. All kinds of instability, ethnic and sectarian, all over the Muslim countries, should not be discouraged. No matter how often it is repeated, with a tone of solemn certainty, that "stability is our goal" it still makes no sense. The implication -- that instability leads to a decline in oil production -- is not proven. If anything, countries will be desperate to protect their oil production facilities, and to pump as much as they can to earn hard currency to pay for any internal or external strife. And besides, more instability in the oil market is not undesirable always and everywhere.
In fact, threats of such instability, at the margin, are good. They force governments, they force the American government, to finally start being very serious about all kinds of energy programs, and all kinds of taxes to promote the use of energy sources other than "unstable" oil, an oil for which, by the way, the real costs -- the costs for example of the war in Iraq -- need to be internalized, and reflected in the price, and taxes at the pump would be one way to do that. The real price of gasoline, that is, should be charged, and hence made clear, and hence have effects on economic choices, to all consumers.
And there is one more thing. That is the Matthew-Simmons "peak oil" estimate, and all the other estimates pooh-poohed by too many, the same kind of people who pooh-pooh warnings about irreversible environmental damage. Why are we all waiting to the last minute? If 2010 is not the year of "peak oil," after which production goes down, but rather 2012, or 2015, so what? It is obvious that that day is coming, soon, and obvious as well that the demand for oil keeps going up. Apparently nothing but complete and total disarray and near-panic will get our governments to do what they should be doing if they were run by enough people of sense.
So bring on that "instability" in order to weaken, from within, through division and every kind of internecine strife, the camp of Believers, the camp of Islam. And use the spectacle as a teaching tool -- teaching the entire Western world, that needs lesson after lesson, what Islam is like, what Muslims at war are like, with each other, not to mention with Infidels. And finally, let that "instability" help create conditions that will force changes in oil policy.
But, one last lone voice says, what about a complete loss of, say, the Saudi oilfields? Don't be silly. If a gigantic source were to be in danger of being seized by, say, an Al-Qaeda regime, a regime which would be bad not because it would cease to sell oil (it wouldn't), but only because even more of the proceeds would go to fund violent Jihad, while today the Al-Saud spend most of their money on the other instruments of Jihad, such as funding mosques and madrasas and Muslim propaganda, and either directly or indirectly employing, or making the beneficiaries of Saudi largesse that tends not to be forgotten, a small army of Western hirelings (journalists, academics, former diplomats, former intelligence agents, businessmen eager to win Saudi favor, former government officials including members of Congress and ex-Presidents).
In such a drastic case, the one that is always presented as the doomsday scenario that is supposed, in its "where-will-it-all-end" predictions, to stop all thought and make everyone meekly accept, without more, the policy of "stability" in the Middle East (and indeed elsewhere in the Muslim-controlled lands).
Bring on all kinds of instability. Or rather, do nothing to stop it. It will bring itself on. And Infidels should be happy to reap the benefits.
From the article:
Well there isn't any moderate Islam, but it seems churlish to nit pick. There is such a fine line between those who pay lip service to moderate Islam and apostates.
and all the other estimates pooh-poohed by too many, the same kind of people who pooh-pooh warnings about irreversible environmental damage.
The pooh-poohers should be well and truly pooh-poohed.
If this is just a fraction of the brutality caused by the the Iranian mullahs, I'd hate to see the full extent of it. An the so called "moderate" Muslims want the common sense thinking people of the Free World to think that Islam is a religion of peace.
Balderdash!!!
"Wafa Sultans are blossoming all over."
Is this sarcasm? I don't see Maryam Rajavi at all similarly.
Is Maryam Rajavi the same as Maryam Namazie, also an Iranian who criticizes Islam (unfortunately, she is a communist... but I agree even that is better than Islam)? See a tape of her here:
http://hmmh.blogspot.com/2006/03/another-video-by-muslim-woman.html