Amir Taheri exposes the deceptions involved in former Iranian President Khatami's taqiyya-laden recent U.S. visit in the New York Post:
Throughout, he presented himself as former president of "Iran," rather than of the Islamic Republic - although, legally speaking, there is no state known as Iran. He also insisted on describing himself as hich-kareh - someone with no official position at all - hiding the fact that he is a member of at least 11 organs of the Islamic Republic, including the all-important Assembly of Experts.Khatami altered more than his identity: He edited Islam into a lovey-dovey cult that abhors the use of force, is uncomfortable with capital punishment, would never fight except in self-defense and actively welcomes other faiths.
He never mentioned his ideological guru, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - knowing that this would revive memories of the hostages seized by the late mullah. Nor the current "supreme guide," Ali Khamenei - who is, according to the constitution in force in the Islamic Republic, the world's only truly legitimate ruler.
He used a vocabulary carefully designed to hoodwink the Americans without angering his fellow Khomeinists back home. The trick was reinforced by the fact that he often said one thing in Persian, while the interpreter said something else in English for the benefit of the Harvard audience.
For example, Khatami would speak of khoshunat, which means "roughness," but the interpreter would translate it into "violence" or even "terror." Thus, the Harvard audience would think that Khatami admits that there may be terrorism in the realm of Islam - while back in Tehran, he would appear talking only about "roughness" and "coercion."
In Persian, he would speak of "sodomy," but the Harvard audience would hear "gay sex." Referring to the leader of al Qaeda, he would say "that gentleman" (Aan Agha) in Persian, but the interpreter would say "Osama bin Laden."
Asked what he thought of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's various outrageous statements, the Hojat al-Islam never mentioned his successor by name. In Persian, he took pains to endorse Ahamdinejad's basic position - but in English he gave the impression that he did not fully agree with his successor.
Khatami was also in total denial about the bloody history of his eight years as president. There was no mention of the 1,347 men and women executed during his two terms. And when it came to the murder of intellectuals and journalists by his henchmen, he pretended that other organs of the Islamic Republic had been responsible, without his knowledge. An Iranian student raised the murder of Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi - and Khatami, with a broad smile, said he wasn't quite sure how the poor woman had died in one of his prisons.
Read it all.
I just read the article in total. An excellent article, with lots of useful information.
Here is something that I can't comprehend.
Harvard: I have read that Harvard (especially the law school) has an over representation of Jews in it's student body.
Conservatives rant against the left, but when I puruse those prominent personalities on the left, what I find are mostly Jews. Like the defender of Islamic terrorists, Michael Ratner and Lynne Stewart,the core and cadre of A.N.S.W.E.R., and then there is Sen Russ Feingold (I'm sure he isn't Methodist) lambasting Bush for using the words Islamic Terrorist.
And if you have followed the Right Wing as long as I have, you will know that they always mention the Jewishness of the left, the socialists and communists.. Maybe not on National Review or Drudge, but on other right wing forums and blogs.
If that be so then the defenders of Islam in the west are Jews. For instance the ACLU is mostly all Jewish, and in their ranks now are Muslims. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International..the same.
The anti Zionist right wing harps on the Jewish identity of most of the neo cons (not all neo cons are Jewish, but the dominant ones, those that drove the push to invade Iraq, those at PNAC are).
While at the same time the most prominent and notorious of left wingers are and have been Jewish.
I guess that even mentioning this makes me an antisemite, but Muslims claim that they are semites, and David Kimche of the Israeli Council for Foreign Relations and former Deputy head of MOSSAD said that "Anyone who is Islamophobic is also an antisemite".
I merely have the temerity to point out facts, and though many don't like the facts pointed out, the facts are confusing because they illustrate an inconsistency..which is that Jews are the people most hated by Muslims and Islam, probably more so than by the NAZI's, at least for a millenia and a quarter longer, yet despite this hatred of Jews by Muslims, some of the most adamant advocates and apologists for the Muslims, and their defenders in court are those whom the Muslims hate so viscerally.
I see the same thing in Israel, demonstrations of Israeli Jews against the government and for "peace", such as Combatants for Peace founded by former Israeli Pilot Yonatan Shapira, an organization that has Palestinian and Israeli Members. Makes as much sense as a chicken forming an alliance with a Fox...
Truly despicable behaviour by people who desperately want to be deluded. I suppose their fear is so intense that they would rather manufacture an artificial fear ("Geo. Bush planned the WTC bombingd to take over the world," for instance).
As for antisemitic poster, Nariz, whose post is nowhere near being on topic, it is in the character of such individuals to hear "Harvard" and think "Jew," to hear "Left-wing" and hear "Jew," to hear "Right-wing" and hear "Jew." An antisemite is one who walks into a room and sees nothing but noses, hears names in introduction and listens only for -steins, -golds, and the like.
Excuse me - I left out the chief part: How despicable of Katami! But his behaviour shouldn't surprise us.
Responding to Robert's article "Lies They Loved At Harvard" Nariz said, ["Harvard: I have read that Harvard (especially the law school) has an over representation of Jews in it's student body."]
Pray tell Nariz what has that to do with anything said in Robert's article? What is your point? Are we left to guess, or are you too ashamed to tell us?
Please tell us how you really feel?
I'm glad we have people like Amir Taheri making the case to American readers that Iran isn't a land ruled on the basis of peace, love and understanding. It is a land where being gay gets to stoned into freshly dug pits and buried. It is a land where advocating real democracy lands you in jail where you are tortured or killed.
And I suppose we shouldn't be concerned if Iran's current regime obtains a nuclear weapons. That's if we aren't concerned about Los Angeles or New York getting nuked.
It's because of articles like this that I keep on visiting JW/DW. I was completely unaware of Khatami's present connections to the centres of power in Iran - whilst, of course, being aware of his past connections - and articles like this mean that I am more fully informed of the manipulative tendencies of people like him and that I have not had to trawl archives and the internet looking for things that I didn't know and didn't know that I didn't know. This site really is a very valuable resource - and, may I say, not just because of the articles posted by the JW/DW staff but also because of the myriad posters who provide links to many other sources of fact and opinion - and not just about islam either, for I have followed many links about many peripheral subjects and learnt much; sometimes I think that we should all get together somewhere and post all our collective knowledge about the strange and exotic highways and byways of of our world and stun it into submission!
legalr,
I think that Nariz has made her point, videlicet that she is surprised to find that so many organisations with large numbers of Jewish members seem to capitulate to islam. I'm not sure that I have understood her aright or if her premise is true, but I think that that was her point. I also think that she may have been extrapolating, in her own style, from the particulars of this posted article to other particulars which she saw as being, in some sense, related to the tenor of the posted article - in other words, she was broadening the debate about the philosophical points, as she saw them, which the article raised by introducing further particulars in support, or in questioning, of the points raised by the article in her mind. This is a perfectly valid extension of the conversation, I think.
Dominic.
The students at Harvard are world class experts at swallowing lies. After all, their famous faculty has invented more of them over the past 30 yrs than even the CIA.
These Harvard kids don't even get that bone-in-the-throat gag reflex when swallowing big ones.
When I found my Fictive Reality Institute, I plan to do clinical studies on the "mendaci host phenomena" on college students students in general, and Ivy League students in particular.
AbuNudnik,
I think that you may be jumping to conclusions here. I have re-read Nariz's posting and I don't see her as anti-Semitic at all - indeed, quite the reverse and worried about those Israelis and Jews elsewhere who seem to be capitulating to, and buying into, islam's PR machine. If I may quote your own blog at you:
"Sympathetic as I am to pacifist goals their methods rarely if ever succeed because only people of good will compromise, agree, accommodate. The evil see goodness as weakness and use it against the good. So good moral people must temporarily quit their jobs from time to time to don a soldier’s uniform.
I think that that is what Nariz is saying is that she is surprised at how many Israelis and Jews elsewhere are falling for the islamic RoP line despite the evidence of the last fourteen hundred years or so that islam hates all Jews. I may be wrong but might I, in all humility, suggest a close re-read of her posting?
Dominic.
Harvard students demonstrated as 'reformist' Khatami carefully defends the practice of killing gays.
Khatami on execution of gays in Iran:
“We’re at a university, the cradle of science, so we can speak of it scientifically...In all schools of thought and in all religions there is punishment and punishment is not a form of violence...Punishment is seen as a response to violence or deviance in society and if there is no punishment in a society a society cannot run effectively...In regards to the fact that is capital punishment a fair reaction to crime this is an issue that has been debated extensively in legal circles and even some states in the United States still maintain capital punishment and even some other countries in the world so the issue of capital punishment is still being largely debated...As an expert of Islamic sciences I tell you that capital punishment is accepted in Islam, but it has conditions that are so stringent that executions should almost never happen. If in fact they are happening in Islamic countries it is because, if it happens excessively in Islamic countries it is a problem of bringing those religious rulings into practice...In regards to the issue of gay people as well as the issue of adultery, the conditions that are required for capital punishment are so
strict that it is virtually impossible to meet...Of course this is my opinion and a lot of people don’t accept my opinion, but I was asked for my opinion so this is what I believe...In many Islamic countries homosexual relationships as well as non-consensual heterosexual relationships have been punishable...There are also others, there are others in the world that have similar views namely important sects of Christianity...So yes you are correct homosexual activity is a crime in Islam...And crimes are punishable...The fact that could crimes be punished by execution is debatable...And that we must differentiate between punishment and violence."
SOURCE: http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/09/khatami_at_harv.html
Anyone know the latin translation of "ignorance is bliss"? Should be a good replacement for "Veritas"
why nobody asked him what he thought about using a 1 year old child as sex toy? I would have asked it. Too bad I am not in USA and i am too old for university
Gov. Romney got it right labelling him a "propagandist" and not worthy of Massachusetts State Police protection.
Nariz, there are certainly some Jews like the ones you describe but generally they are liberal socially not in the "islam lovers" way. Also, there are quite a few conservative Jews especially in GWB's administration. I would argue that GWB got reelected because of Jews.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $20 Million to Harvard and Georgetown University for their "Islamic Studies Program".
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2005/12/13-islamic_gift.html
No wonder they're so eager to entertain muslims. Law schools can smell money like sharks can smell blood.
BTW, that's $20 Million EACH to Harvard and Georgetown, for a total of $40 Million.
Infidel33,
I daresay that the ancients had a similar tag to ours about ignorance being bliss but I know the phrase from Gray - dunned into me as a schoolboy not so many years ago - he of the 'curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea' fame:
"Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
From "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College" by Thomas Gray, written in 1742 [the bold emphasis is mine].
Hope this helps.
Dominic.
Infidel33,
I was tempted to suggest ignotum per ignotius until I looked it up and realised that I had been using it in a slightly wrong way for years.
Dominic.
Infidel33,
I think the original thought comes from Sophocles's Ajax and reads:
"The happiest life consists in ignorance,
Before you learn to grieve and to rejoice.
and apparently Gray was well versed in Sophocles's verse. These lines come from the bit in Ajax where Ajax, recovered from his madness and meditating suicide, addresses his infant son Eurysakes. So there probably is a latin translation but the Greek original may have to do. (Some sources give this as: "of woes thou knowest naught, for ignorance is life's extremest bliss", anyway, it's from Sophocles, Ajax 554-5, but I think that Young's translation has more poetry in English - a purely personal view.)
However, Terence has it, in the Hecyra at 286-7: "nam nos omnes quibus est alicunde aliquis obiectus labos, / omne quod est interea tempus prius quam id rescitumst lucrost - 'if our path ahead is blocked with any trouble, all the time before we find it out is always pure gain'. Which is the same thought but less concise than Gray - or Sophocles, come to think of it.
It's also present in French thought. Montaigne has it (in Essais, Livre I. c. xl ) as, "A quoy faire la cognoissance des choses, si nous en devenons plus lasches? si nous en perdons le repos et la tranquillite ou nous serions sans cela? My French isn't good but I think that that is the same thought.
Undoubtedly, it was Gray who popularised the thought in English, however.
Dominic.
It seems that Harvard has always been trendy.
I'll bet at the receptions that followed they were serving taqiyya on the rocks...
Pretty arrogant of Harvard to use "Veritas" as part of its logo. These iconoclastic fools would not know the truth if it bit them in the ass.
What reason does Nariz have to think that Lynne
Stewart is Jewish?
From Stewart's web page bio:
"Parents:
Irene and John Feltham (4th generation Swedish/German and English/Irish)
Childhood and Adolescence:
Bellrose, Queens
Education:
New York City Public Schools: PS 133 Q, Martin Van Buren High School
Hope College, Holland, Michigan - 1957-1960
...
"
OVERVIEW (updated 6/06)
Hope College is a distinguished and distinctive four-year, liberal arts, undergraduate college, affiliated with the Reformed Church in America. Its great religious heritage is expressed through a dynamic Christian community of students and teachers vitally concerned with a relevant faith that changes lives and transforms society.
Doesn't sound very Jewish to me. Maybe Nariz has some information I don't have, but I think more
likely Nariz has a propensity to "find a Jew under every stone."
This is not the first time I have seen someone
(apparently) misidentified as Jewish in one of Nariz' rants, but I didn't want to go to the trouble of creating an account just to correct Nariz before.
So, yes, I think Nariz is an anti-semite.
Nariz
Put the cap back on the clue and step away.
I should like to have been there for the chance to ask him to clarify a theological paper that his mentor the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is reported to have written about 1993.
Forget about Sodamy or gay sex, Ayatollah Khomeini laid down the correct procedure for sex with goats. This stated the goat was to be killed if a climax was reached and it could be eaten. However it was not to be eaten by the family or neighbours of one who had availed himself of the goats services but by the people of the next village.
Not that I am interested, just curious. Does any know how far away should the next village should be in terms of kilometers?
Ole Ayatolla must have had difficulty being with a real woman. (I am sure not all Muslim women are so ungly they hide under burkas).
If I lived in the next village , I think I would abstain from goat meat.
I am sure a real woman is softer, smells better and is more pleasing than a goat.
Maybe Muslims cannot tell the difference.
The college types , students and professors, seem to have lost sight of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights long ago.
Our forefathers would be ashamed.
Formerly the editor of one of Iran's largest newspapers before the Islamic Revolution, Taheri writes a lot of good stuff which can be found at:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/articles_experts.php
This is the statement Taheri issued on the news that Khatami was getting a visa: http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/19929, the long and short of which was that Khatami's visit would end up serving the purpose of exposing what a vile creature he is and what a vile state he represents.
Not noted in either piece, I understand a couple of US citizens who are exiled Iranian Jews have used Khatami's visit as the pretext under which to file a law suit in connection with the disappearance of some Iranian Jews who were trying to flee persecution in the Islamic Repubic.
I'm kind of new to this Web site, and if the anti-Jewish post by "Nariz" is the norm here, then I'll find other sites to frequent. It's laborious and pointless to carefully point out the evident anti-Jewish bias that suffuses the entire post. So, I'll deal with only the first two statements.
"Nariz": "Here is something that I can't comprehend."
Which translates as: "No, I'm not a bigot, I am just a foolish child; so if what I am about to say sounds asinine, then it's because of my ignorance; and not because I have a bigoted agenda."
"Nariz": "Harvard: I have read that Harvard (especially the law school) has an over representation of Jews in it's (sic) student body."
Forget about the source, (perhaps stormfront.org, or jewwatch.com, or some other hate site), where this bigot has "read" about Harvard: But what does "...over representation (sic) of Jews in it's (sic) student body" mean?
Evidently "Nariz" sees Jewish people everywhere; and such an attitude is properly described as Judeophobic.
Mr. Spencer’s message on his Web site is manifestly undermined by such people at this site; and, such unreasonable comments open up reasonable charges of bigotry directed at this Web site in general.
-Lance,
My advice? Do what I did when I first found this site. Go through the archives, pick a few stories that sound interesting, especially ones that have a fairly large number of responses, and just read random postings. For those contributions you find offensive, look further down the string for responses and counter-arguments. Taking Nariz for a typical poster would have put me off too. He tends to make rather broad generalizations against groups he doesn't like while in the same post, complaining about others (particularily Christians/Catholics/Conservatives) doing the same thing. He's pretty much entrenched in his position as he's entitled to be, of course, but his stances aren't usually shared by most people who comment on this site.
"Mr. Spencer’s message on his Web site is manifestly undermined by such people at this site; and, such unreasonable comments open up reasonable charges of bigotry directed at this Web site in general."
Problem with this is, mohammedans could very easily level the same charge as many of us make absolutely no attempt to vent our disdain, if not outright loathing, of islam. Claims of bigotry tend to be rather subjective and subject to the caprice of the most sensitive. Fear of such claims leads to the kind of politically-correct self-policing of speech that dovetails nicely with the goals of fascists of all sorts that want to see their agendas promoted free of all scrutiny and interdiction. While I do not endorse demonization of anyone who is not a threat to me, or my, or my culture's way of life, I also cannot stand by the censorship of anyone in order to spare someone else's hurt feelings.
No matter how much you try to keep things "clean", someone is always going to find something about which to complain. That's unfortunate, but it's the truth. All one can do is try to counter what someone says that you don't like with a solid argument of your own. Worrying about what everyone else might think about what you say often turns into a full time occupation.