Mehdi Mozaffari (born 1939) is a professor at Aarhus university in Denmark. He was graduated from Sorbonne University in 1971 and worked at the University of Teheran from 1973 to 1978, when he and his family had to flee from the Islamic revolution. This excerpt is translated from his book Islamism: An Oriental Totalitarianism. If anybody would like to interview Mozaffari, I will gladly assist in helping you get in contact with him; write me at nicolaisennels@gmail.com.
“Violence in various forms of repression, assassinations, executions, hangings, strangulation, flogging, stoning and terrorism, is an Islamist government’s usual method, whether in the case of Saudi Arabia, Iran or Afghanistan under the Taliban. These horrific acts are, despite their cruelty, not comparable with the Holocaust or the Gulag. Now, we must ask whether the difference is fundamental, or a question of degree. It is obvious that today’s Islamist totalitarian regimes cannot compare with Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia in terms of the extent of violence and their capabilities. But if you look at what the Islamist regimes and related groups (Al Qaeda) have done, it becomes clear that it is rather a matter of degree than of substance. Each time Islamists have had the opportunity to use methods similar to the Nazis and Stalinists, they did so as much as possible.”