This MEMRITV footage of the Iranian missile test (via LGF, with thanks to Junk — I can’t find it at MEMRITV; has it been taken down?) begins with the test commander intoning:
In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful.
O Messenger of Allah!
O Messenger of Allah!
O Messenger of Allah!
The “rasool Allah” is, of course, Muhammad. This past weekend I spoke at FreedomFest, and on a panel on “The Future of the Middle East” one of my fellow panelists, economist Warren Coats, insisted that the conflicts in the Middle East today are not religious, but purely political. I explained in turn that Islam rejects any distinction between the sacred and secular, and is inherently political as well as religious.
And here we have the specter of an Iranian military commander invoking Allah and Muhammad while testing Iran’s missiles — a clear indication of how the Iranians see their conflicts with America and Israel as religious. This is a key to their motivations and their goals that we ignore or downplay to our own peril.