Its been nearly a year since the July 11 installation of a reformist President, Masoud Pezeshkian, to walk back their nation from the precipice of war and de-escalate the looming nuclear conflict not only between themselves and Israel as proxies of their patrons America and Russia, but also the specter of direct war between America and Russia.
With Trump’s bombing of imaginary nuclear weapons in Iran with real ones, both to build a Riviera of casinos on the graves of the Palestinians and to destabilize and sabotage the democracy movements in Iran and Israel, the coming Age of Tyrants and centuries of wars of imperial dominion ending in human extinction is made both more certain and more immediate.
We may not have the six to eight hundred years of dehumanized quasi slavery under brutal totalitarian and fascist states which I have long predicted; we may have hours, for those who would enslave us linger over buttons which like an evil genie in a lamp call to them, whispering; “Set me free, and I’ll make you powerful.”
This act has not only aligned America with Israel in her plans of imperial conquest and dominion of the Middle East as Greater Israel which include the invasion and Occupation of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen as well as the whole of Palestine, but possibly a war of mutual annihilation with Russia. Russia is a wildcard in all of this, for the Iranian Dominion is her only true ally and vital to the strategy of Putin in the re-conquest of the former Soviet Empire, the Middle East, Africa, and the Mediterranean versus Turkey’s plans to re-found the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the abandonment by France of her own empire. Yes, the Chinese Communist Party is both an ally and a competitor of Russia, and sends soldiers to Ukraine as does her ally North Korea, but this cooperation is limited by the fact of near parity for neither Russia nor China can control the other. Iran, however, is a Russian client state and though powerful through Hezbollah and the four nations she controls, Syria having been liberated which proves that Russia is not invincible and can be defeated, Iran needs Russia and Russia benefits greatly from her relationship with Iran.
So, we have here a system of balances of Israel and the Arab-American Alliance versus the Iranian Dominion and her primary Russia. Trump has just demonstrated the instability of multiple focal alliances, because he and his partner in war crimes Netanyahu have just attacked Russia’s key regional ally Iran, and Putin owns Trump. Russia’s captured state of Vichy America just went rogue, and I don’t expect Putin to behave any differently than when he was the kingpin of the East Berlin black market if a top crime syndicate sub boss attacked a key ally.
When is the enemy of my enemy not my friend? When he is also an enemy of other friends whom I cannot give up.
Trump cannot disavow either Israel or Russia, and Russia cannot allow this situation to stand. Putin must retaliate, and will find it very difficult to limit the consequences to conflict between our proxies Iran and Israel. Trump will try and fail to keep his support for Netanyahu’s imperial conquest and total war against the Iranian Dominion and Palestine separate from his support for Russia’s imperial conquest of Ukraine and alliance with Iran in her existential wars of survival and dominion in the Middle East. How and when this system of alliances and grand strategies collapses into ruin, chaos, and the horrors of war remains an open question, but that it will collapse is now certain and a fait accompli.
All that remains to be seen as events unfold is whether or not civilization collapses with it, and if the genie of nuclear annihilation can be kept in its bottle.
As written by Simon Tisdall in The Guardian, in an article entitled No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences: rump has fallen slap bang into the trap laid for him by Netanyahu. His reckless gamble makes a nuclear weapon for Iran more, not less, likely; “Bombing will not make Iran go away. US bombs will not destroy the knowhow needed to build a nuclear weapon or the will do so, if that is what Tehran wants. The huge attack ordered by Donald Trump will not halt ongoing open warfare between Israel and Iran. It will not bring lasting peace to the Middle East, end the slaughter in Gaza, deliver justice to the Palestinians, or end more than half a century of bitter enmity between Tehran and Washington.
More likely, Trump’s rash, reckless gamble will inflame and exacerbate all these problems. Depending on how Iran and its allies and supporters react, the region could plunge into an uncontrolled conflagration. US bases in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the region, home to about 40,000 American troops, must now be considered potential targets for retaliation – and possibly British and allied forces, too.
Trump says he has not declared war on Iran. He claims the attack is not an opening salvo in a campaign aimed at triggering regime change in Tehran. But that’s not how Iran’s politicians and people will see it. Trump’s premature bragging about “spectacular” success, and threats of more and bigger bombs, sound like the words of a ruthless conqueror intent on total, crushing victory.
Trump, the isolationist president who vowed to avoid foreign wars, has walked slap bang into a trap prepared by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – a trap his smarter predecessors avoided. Netanyahu has constantly exaggerated the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear threat. His alarmist speeches on this subject go back 30 years. Always, he claimed to know what UN nuclear inspectors, US and European intelligence agencies and even some of his own spy chiefs did not – namely, that Iran was on the verge of deploying a ready-to-use nuclear weapon aimed at Israel’s heart.
This contention has never been proven. Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear bomb. Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa banning any such programme. Netanyahu’s most recent claim that Iran was weaponising, made as he tried to justify last week’s unilateral, illegal Israeli attacks, was not supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or US intelligence experts. But weak-minded Trump chose to believe it. Reading from Netanyahu’s script, he said on Saturday night that eliminating this incontrovertible nuclear threat was vital – and the sole aim of the US air assault.
So, once again, the US has gone to war in the Middle East on the back of a lie, on disputed, probably faulty intelligence purposefully distorted for political reasons. Once again, as in Iraq in 2003, the overall objectives of the war are unclear, uncertain and open to interpretation by friend and foe alike. Once again, there appears to be no “exit strategy”, no guardrails against escalation and no plan for what happens next. Demanding that Iran capitulate or face “national tragedy” is not a policy. It’s a deadly dead-end.
Iran will not go away, whatever Trump and Netanyahu may imagine in their fevered dreams. It will remain a force in the region. It will remain a country to be reckoned with, a country of 90 million people, and one with powerful allies in China, Russia and the global south. It is already insisting it will continue with its civil nuclear programme.
These events are a reminder of how profound is official US ignorance of Iran. Unlike the UK, Washington has had no diplomatic presence there since the revolution. It has had few direct political contacts, and its swingeing economic sanctions have created even greater distance, further diminishing mutual understanding. Trump’s decision to renege on the 2015 nuclear accord (negotiated by Barack Obama, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU) was a product of this ignorance. Ten years later, he is trying to do with bombs what was largely, peacefully achieved through diplomacy by his wiser, less impulsive, less easily led predecessors.
Peace seems more elusive than ever – and Netanyahu is celebrating. The US cannot walk away now. It’s committed. And, as Netanyahu sees it, he and Israel cannot lose. Except, except … Iran cannot somehow be imagined away. It still has to be dealt with. And the reckoning that now looms, short- and long-term, may be more terrible than any of Netanyahu’s scare stories.
Iran previously warned that if the US attacked, it would hit back at US bases. There are many to choose from, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere. The Houthis in Yemen say they will resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The strait of Hormuz, so important a transit point for global energy supplies, may be mined, as happened in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. The result could be a global oil shock and markets meltdown. And Iran is still reportedly firing missiles into Israel, despite claims in Jerusalem that most of its ballistic missiles bases have been destroyed.
Reacting to Trump’s attack, Iranian officials say no options are off the table in terms of retaliation. And they say they will not negotiate under fire, despite a call to do so from the British prime minister, Keir Starmer. Rejecting Trump’s unverified claims about the total destruction of all nuclear facilities, they also insist Iran will reconstitute and continue its nuclear programme. The big question now is whether that programme really will be weaponised.
Two radical longer-term consequences may flow from this watershed moment. One is that Khamenei’s unpopular regime, notorious for corruption, military incompetence and economic mismanagement, and deprived of support from Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, may crack under the strain of this disaster. So far there has been little sign of an uprising or a change in government. That’s not surprising, given that Tehran and other cities are under bombardment. But regime collapse cannot be ruled out.
The other is that, rather than surrender the cherished right to uranium enrichment and submit to the Trump-Netanyahu ultimatum, Iran’s rulers, whoever they are, will decide to follow North Korea and try to acquire a bomb as quickly as possible, to fend off future humiliations. That could entail withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and rejection of the UN inspections regime. After years of trying to play by western rules, Iran could really finally go rogue.
The supposed need to acquire nukes for self-defence is a grim lesson other countries around the world may draw from these events. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is the biggest immediate danger to the future of the planet. What Trump just did in recklessly and violently trying to eliminate an unproven threat may ensure the proven danger of a nuclear-armed world grows ever-more real.”
All of this has disturbing historical precedents, including a Big Lie as the just cause of war. As written by Mohamad Bazzi in The Guardian, in an article entitled Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie: The Iraq war was built on a lie. Now history is repeating itself; “In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now infamous banner on the carrier’s bridge that proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished”. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history.
As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion’s aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration’s repeated attempts to connect Hussein’s regime to al-Qaida.
Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran’s top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months.”
Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a “spectacular military success” and said the sites had been “totally obliterated”. Trump added that his goal was to stop “the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed?
US intelligence officials, along with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America’s intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
Gabbard also noted that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was “at its highest levels” and “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons”. That’s largely because, in 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated in 2015 between Tehran and six world powers. Under that agreement, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for relief from international sanctions. A few years after Trump tore up the deal that was signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, Iran began to enrich uranium up to 60% purity – a short step away from the 90% level required for a nuclear device.
Still, in a report issued last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog that has monitored Iran’s main nuclear enrichment sites for years, said it found no evidence that Tehran was actively developing a weapons program. The agency criticized Iranian officials for failing to provide access to some sites and to cooperate with UN inspectors, especially over Tehran’s past secret nuclear weapons program, which is believed to have ended by 2003. Despite these criticisms, the IAEA report said it had “no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear program”.
Recent US intelligence assessments found that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon and was up to three years away from being able to develop an actual warhead and deploy it on a missile. (Under pressure from Trump, who said twice last week that Gabbard’s testimony to Congress in March was “wrong”, the intelligence chief changed course on Friday to say that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon “within weeks to months”.)
Of course, there’s one state in the Middle East that has an active nuclear weapons program: Israel, which doesn’t acknowledge having a nuclear arsenal. But in January, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute identified Israel as one of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, and estimated that it currently has 90 warheads.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Netanyahu continues to insist that Iran was dashing to produce a nuclear weapon. “The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear – was absolutely clear – that they [the Iranians] were working in a secret plan to weaponize the uranium,” Netanyahu told the Fox News anchor Bret Baier (who hosts one of Trump’s favorite news shows) in an interview on 15 June. “They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months and certainly less than a year.”
Netanyahu’s statements echo the exaggerated intelligence and sense of fear peddled by the Bush administration ahead of the US invasion of Iraq – and it’s exactly the kind of open-ended conflict based on lies that Trump promised voters he would avoid as president. In September 2002, Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in a CNN interview that “there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly” the Iraqi regime could acquire nuclear weapons. “But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” she added in a reference that would be repeated by other US officials, including Bush himself.
Not surprisingly, Netanyahu had also lobbied the Bush administration to attack Iraq – and insisted that the Iraqi regime was developing a nuclear bomb. After his first term as Israel’s prime minister, Netanyahu testified before Congress as a private citizen in September 2002, warning of the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iraq. “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu confidently told Congress. He added: “Once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons.”
Netanyahu, who has always had a flair for the extravagant soundbite, also claimed that Hussein no longer needed one large reactor to produce nuclear fuel, but could do so “in centrifuges the size of washing machines” that could be hidden throughout Iraq.
The Israeli leader was not only wrong about Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction, but he also insisted that a US war on Iraq would be a boon for the Middle East and would inspire Iranians to rise up against the Islamic republic. “If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Netanyahu said. “I think that people sitting right nextdoor in Iran, young people and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots, is gone.”
It’s also important to remember that Netanyahu has practically made a career out of warning that Iran is years (or months) away from developing nukes. Over the past 30 years, he regularly issued some variation on this threat – and often wildly overestimated how close Iran was to having a bomb. In 1992, as a member of Israel’s Knesset, Netanyahu cautioned that Iran was “three to five years” away from developing a nuclear weapons capability. In 1996, as prime minister, he addressed a joint session of Congress and urged the US to “stop the nuclearization of terrorist states”. He added, “The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.”
In February 2009, as leader of the Likud party and a candidate for prime minister, Netanyahu told a congressional delegation visiting Israel that Iran was “probably only one or two years away” from developing a nuclear weapons capability – attributing the claim to Israeli “experts” without offering other evidence. The conversation was summarized in a US state department cable released by WikiLeaks.
Later in 2009, when he was back in office as premier, another leaked cable revealed that Netanyahu told a separate group of visiting members of Congress that “Iran has the capability now to make one bomb” or it “could wait and make several bombs in a year or two”.
But the most memorable example of Netanyahu exaggerating the threat of Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon came in September 2012, when the Israeli leader took to the UN general assembly podium armed with a cartoon-style drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse. Netanyahu warned the world that Iran was enriching uranium so quickly that it was on track to be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear device within months. He then used a marker pen to draw a red line across the cartoon bomb, to highlight the stage of the nuclear process where he claimed Iran had to be stopped. Netanyahu warned that Iran could produce a working weapon by the following spring or “at most by next summer”.
Nearly 13 years after Netanyahu stood before the world to cry wolf about Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, he used the same pretext – that Iran is “within a few months” of having a bomb – to launch a devastating war against Tehran. Netanyahu then successfully pulled the US into the conflict, promising Trump a quick victory if the US used its 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs to destroy Fordow, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear facility.
Unfortunately, Trump heeded the siren call of a US ally who has spent decades manipulating intelligence and public fears to exaggerate the nuclear threat posed by Iran. And the people of the Middle East will pay the highest price for yet another reckless war built on a lie.”
As written by Robert Reich in his Substack newsletter, in an article entitled The Dogs of War: What’s really going on; “Friends,
The United States is now at war with Iran.
A single person — Donald J. Trump — has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and done it without the consent of Congress or our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people.
Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused.
I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Even if our president was a wise and judicious man, surrounded by thoughtful advisers with impeccable integrity and wisdom, this would be a highly dangerous move.
Last night I spoke with a number of people experienced and knowledgeable about American foreign policy and politics. Here, in brief, is what I asked and what I learned.
1. Why is Trump taking us into war with Iran?
It’s possible that he believes the attacks give him more bargaining leverage with Iran. But a more likely explanation is that the attacks fit perfectly with Trump’s desire to divert attention from his multiple failures at home: the on-again-off-again tariffs that have spooked financial markets while eliciting no meaningful concessions from other nations (especially China). An immigration crackdown that’s been stymied by federal judges. The so-called “big beautiful bill” that’s in deep trouble in the Senate. Trump’s embarrassing tiff with Musk. His failures to achieve peace in either Ukraine or Gaza. And last weekend’s record-breaking “No Kings” demonstrations as compared to his scrawny military parade.
Besides, there’s nothing like a war to help a wannabe dictator like Trump justify more “emergency” powers.
2. Is (or was) Iran building a nuclear weapon?
No one knows for sure. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community [IC] “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Iran’s growing stockpile of enriched uranium could allow it to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Experts differ in how long Iran would need to make a usable nuclear weapon out of the fissile material.
In the face of such uncertainty, it’s useful to recall George W. Bush’s claims of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that proved bogus — at a cost of 4,431 American lives, 31,994 Americans wounded in action, and an estimated 295,000 Iraqi lives.
3. Is Trump getting good information and advice?
Unlikely. He told reporters on Friday that Gabbard was “wrong” to say that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon but he didn’t say where he was getting his intelligence from. In May, Trump fired his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and dismissed half the professionals at the National Security Council (the Middle East section went from 10 staffers to five).
Trump is being advised on Iran by a close-knit group of political advisers and ideologues, none of whom has deep knowledge of Iran or the Middle East. All are totally loyal to Trump. (They include JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East who was formerly a luxury real estate developer; Lieutenant General Dan (Razin’) Caine, now serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Erik (“The Gorilla”) Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM); John Ratcliffe, CIA director, who served in the first Trump administration and was previously a Texas congressman and a small-town mayor; and Steve Bannon.)
As a result, he’s probably getting decent advice about what’s good for Trump but not about what’s good for America or the world. It’s an inevitable consequence of purging from the government anyone more loyal to the United States than to him. Besides, Trump listens only to information he wants to hear.
4. Will Iran now cave and agree to destroy its remaining stockpile of enriched uranium and allow inspectors to confirm that the stockpile is gone?
No. Not one of the experts I spoke to thought this likely. Iran doesn’t trust the United States or Israel, and it doesn’t want to give up its potential nuclear capacities.
5. Have the bombings wiped out Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons?
Unlikely. Trump claims that the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” but who trusts Trump to tell the truth, or to be told the truth?
Iran has buried its uranium-enrichment facilities deep underground and distributed them to many locations. Iranian officials acknowledge that three sites were attacked but did not describe the extent of damage.
In any event, America does not have good intelligence about how long it will take Iran to get the three targeted sites back to running order.
6. What’s the worst Iran can now do to the United States in retaliation?
It could wholly or partially close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which about a fifth of global oil must pass. While it was not completely closed during past conflicts, Iran possesses the capabilities to significantly disrupt or halt traffic with mines, anti-ship missiles, and air defense systems. This would cause oil prices to soar in the United States and Europe (helping Big Oil but not American consumers).
Iran could also engage in a range of terrorist actions directed toward the United States. No one knows the extent of any “sleeper cells” in the U.S. or in Europe. The mere possibility could give Trump more license to restrict civil liberties.
7. Will the American public “rally around the flag” and support Trump in this war?
Some Americans clearly will. But a drawn-out war in Iran will be deeply unpopular. A recent YouGov poll found that only 16 percent of Americans thought the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran; 60 percent said it should not.
Trump promised no foreign entanglements and lower consumer prices. But this war could prove to be the largest foreign entanglement in years, and the attacks will almost certainly raise oil and gas prices.
8. Will he send in American ground troops?
On balance, the experts I consulted with thought Trump eventually would send in troops if Iran retaliated and the conflict escalated. Last night he explicitly threatened more action against Iran if it did not return to diplomatic efforts: “If they do not [make peace], future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
More than anything else, Trump has an abiding need to save face, he hates to lose, and he likes nothing more than conflict. He was willing to send the active military into California to stop trumped-up protests. He’ll likely be willing to send them into Iran.
The war will not be over quickly. Iran and its extensive networks in the Middle East could keep hostilities going for months or years, at a substantial cost of human life.
9. What’s Congress likely to do now?
I hope Democrats will use the War Powers Act to force a vote on the war, putting Republican lawmakers in the awkward position of voting for a war that’s immensely unpopular and can easily go very badly.
10. Bonus question: Where does the phrase “dogs of war” come from?
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Mark Antony (in Act 3, Scene 1) says: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war” — signifying that war unleashes chaos and violence.
Now that the bombing has begun, there’s no telling where this will end.
Be strong. Be safe. Hug your loved ones.
Persian
۲۲ ژوئن ۲۰۲۵ آمریکا با بمباران ایران به ورطه سقوط میافتد
تقریباً یک سال از انتصاب مسعود پزشکیان، رئیس جمهور اصلاحطلب، در ۱۱ ژوئیه میگذرد تا ملت خود را از پرتگاه جنگ دور کند و از درگیری هستهای قریبالوقوع نه تنها بین خودشان و اسرائیل به عنوان نمایندگان حامیانشان، آمریکا و روسیه، بلکه از شبح جنگ مستقیم بین آمریکا و روسیه نیز بکاهد.
با بمباران سلاحهای هستهای خیالی ایران توسط ترامپ با سلاحهای واقعی، هم برای ساختن ریویرای کازینوها بر روی مزار فلسطینیان و هم برای بیثبات کردن و خرابکاری در جنبشهای دموکراسی در ایران و اسرائیل، عصر قریبالوقوع مستبدان و قرنها جنگ سلطه امپریالیستی که به انقراض بشر منجر میشود، قطعیتر و نزدیکتر شده است.
ممکن است ما ششصد تا هشتصد سال شبه بردهداری غیرانسانی تحت حکومتهای توتالیتر و فاشیست وحشی که مدتها پیشبینی کرده بودم، نداشته باشیم؛ ممکن است ساعتها وقت داشته باشیم، زیرا کسانی که میخواهند ما را به بردگی بگیرند، روی دکمههایی پرسه میزنند که مانند یک جن شیطانی در یک چراغ با زمزمه به آنها میگوید: «مرا آزاد کنید، و من شما را قدرتمند خواهم کرد.»
این اقدام نه تنها آمریکا را در برنامههایش برای فتح امپریالیستی و تسلط بر خاورمیانه به عنوان اسرائیل بزرگ، که شامل حمله و اشغال ایران، عراق، لبنان و یمن و همچنین کل فلسطین میشود، با اسرائیل همسو کرده است، بلکه احتمالاً جنگی برای نابودی متقابل با روسیه نیز در پیش دارد. روسیه در تمام این موارد یک کارت وحشی است، زیرا سلطه ایران تنها متحد واقعی اوست و برای استراتژی پوتین در فتح مجدد امپراتوری شوروی سابق، خاورمیانه، آفریقا و مدیترانه در مقابل برنامههای ترکیه برای تأسیس مجدد امپراتوری عثمانی پس از ترک امپراتوری خود توسط فرانسه، حیاتی است. بله، حزب کمونیست چین هم متحد و هم رقیب روسیه است و مانند متحدش کره شمالی، سربازانی را به اوکراین میفرستد، اما این همکاری به دلیل برابری نزدیک محدود است، زیرا نه روسیه و نه چین نمیتوانند یکدیگر را کنترل کنند. با این حال، ایران یک دولت وابسته به روسیه است و اگرچه از طریق حزبالله و چهار کشوری که تحت کنترل دارد، قدرتمند است، اما سوریه آزاد شده است که ثابت میکند روسیه شکستناپذیر نیست و میتوان آن را شکست داد، ایران به روسیه نیاز دارد و روسیه از رابطهاش با ایران سود زیادی میبرد.
بنابراین، ما در اینجا سیستمی از موازنهها بین اسرائیل و اتحاد عربی-آمریکایی در مقابل سلطه ایران و روسیه اصلیاش داریم. ترامپ به تازگی بیثباتی اتحادهای کانونی متعدد را نشان داده است، زیرا او و شریکش در جنایات جنگی، نتانیاهو، به متحد کلیدی منطقهای روسیه، ایران، حمله کردهاند و پوتین ترامپ را در اختیار دارد. ایالت ویشی آمریکا که روسیه آن را تصرف کرده، به تازگی سرکش شده است و من انتظار ندارم که پوتین رفتار متفاوتی نسبت به زمانی که پادشاه بازار سیاه برلین شرقی بود، داشته باشد، اگر یک رئیس فرعی سندیکای جنایی به یک متحد کلیدی حمله میکرد.
چه زمانی دشمن دشمن من، دوست من نیست؟ وقتی او همچنین دشمن دوستان دیگری است که نمیتوانم از آنها دست بکشم.
ترامپ نمیتواند اسرائیل یا روسیه را رد کند و روسیه نمیتواند اجازه دهد این وضعیت پابرجا بماند. پوتین باید تلافی کند و محدود کردن عواقب آن به درگیری بین نیروهای نیابتی ما، ایران و اسرائیل، بسیار دشوار خواهد بود. ترامپ تلاش خواهد کرد و موفق نخواهد شد تا حمایت خود از فتح امپراتوری نتانیاهو و جنگ تمام عیار علیه سلطه ایران و فلسطین را از حمایت خود از فتح امپراتوری روسیه در اوکراین و اتحاد با ایران در جنگهای وجودیاش برای بقا و سلطه در خاورمیانه جدا کند. اینکه چگونه و چه زمانی این سیستم اتحادها و استراتژیهای بزرگ به ویرانی، هرج و مرج و وحشت جنگ فرو میریزد، همچنان یک سوال بیپاسخ است، اما اینکه فرو خواهد پاشید، اکنون قطعی و یک عمل انجام شده است.
تنها چیزی که با وقوع رویدادها باید دید این است که آیا تمدن نیز با آن فرو میریزد یا خیر، و آیا میتوان غول نابودی هستهای را در بطری خود نگه داشت یا خیر.
No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences, Simon Tisdall
Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie
Mohamad Bazzi
The Dogs of War: What’s really going on, Robert Reich
Israel’s assumption US would get drawn into Iran war is being put to the test,
Julian Borger
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/18/israels-iran-war-us-join-trump
Trump undecided on joining war on Iran as Khamenei warns him not to attack
‘I may do it, I may not do it,’ US president says as Tehran reportedly prepares to strike US bases in response
Analysis
US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is Trump’s biggest gamble yet as president, Patrick Wintour
What a difference a week makes: Trump falls into the Netanyahu trap
Andrew Roth
Why Trump bombed Iran – podcast
‘This friend of ours will soon be an enemy’: how Iran became Israel’s foe
The warmongers were wrong about Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Now watch them make the same mistake about Iran, Owen Jones
The Guardian view on Trump bombing Iran: an illegal and reckless act
Editorial
Iran, a retrospective of my liberation struggles in solidarity with her people
July 11 2024, Victory Iran: Why Does Iran Have a New President, and What Does This Mean? At the Edge of Total War With America and Israel, Iran Realigns and De-Escalates
How very interesting this set of Russian Doll puzzles each nested within others, complex, nuanced, obscured, relational and interdependent, in Iran’s game of concealed intent and surprise revelations, wherein true power can wear the mask of opposition and all moves must be weighed on two fronts; internal in balancing the Islamic purity from which the theocratic regime’s power derives with the human rights of its citizens, especially those of women, and external in the nuclear brinksmanship with America and with Israel in confronting the genocide of the Palestinians and the Israeli imperial conquest and dominion of her neighbors generally in an escalating regional conflict.
Herein the symbolic and perfunctory tit for tat retaliations between the Arab-American Alliance in regard to our mad dog proxy Israel and the Dominion of Iran which includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen has become a theatre of the Third World War as her ally Russia attempts to re-found her empire.
This was the true reason for the assassination of Iran’s former President, opening move in the realignment of Iran and de-escalation of the nuclear front with America and the war for the Rights of Man with Israel which threatens to engulf Lebanon once again. I wish to never come to the attention of whomever assassinated President Raisi, very like that of Prigozhin, with so deft a hand as to leave not even the shadow of his passing on the tides of history.
Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian was elected to change all of this; end the patriarchal sexual terror and control of women which makes Iran a pariah in the international community, of which torture, mutilation, and rape as punishments for hijab violations, education, or other acts of defiance and independence by uppity women and the slave trafficking of often very young women through temporary marriage licenses which fund the syndicate of mullahs are two primary issues, end the brutal repression of dissent and campaign of terror against journalists and freedom of speech, press, and protest for redress of grievances, as well as re-engagement with America through nuclear disarmament process and stepping back from the abyss of total war with Israel.
Such liberalization may signal the birth of a democracy in Iran, and her transformation from an enemy to an ally in the cause of our universal human rights, both within and beyond Iran. We shall see.
In this moment I welcome President Masoud Pezeshkian as a brother and ally in the cause of Becoming Human.
News of the 2024 regime change in Iran
Masoud Pezeshkian: the former heart surgeon who became president of Iran
The Guardian view on Iran’s moderate president: modest hopes must be acted upon | Editorial
The Guardian view on the women of Iran: still resisting repression | Editorial
Who was Ebrahim Raisi and what were his policies at home and abroad?
The Seed of the Sacred Fig review – Mohammad Rasoulof’s arresting tale of violence and paranoia in Iran
Persian
11 جولای 2024 پیروزی ایران: چرا ایران رئیس جمهور جدید دارد و این به چه معناست؟ ایران در آستانه جنگ تمام عیار با آمریکا و اسرائیل قرار دارد و تنشزدایی میکند
چقدر جالب است این مجموعه از پازلهای عروسک روسی که هر کدام در درون دیگران، پیچیده، ظریف، مبهم، رابطهای و وابسته به یکدیگر، در بازی نیت پنهان و افشاگریهای غافلگیرکننده ایران، که در آن قدرت واقعی میتواند نقاب مخالف را بر تن کند، در درون دیگران قرار گرفته است. دو جبهه؛ درونی در ایجاد توازن بین خلوص اسلامی که قدرت رژیم تئوکراتیک از آن ناشی میشود با حقوق انسانی شهروندانش، بهویژه حقوق زنان، و بیرونی در پرتگاه هستهای با آمریکا و با اسرائیل در مقابله با نسلکشی فلسطینیان و تسخیر امپریالیستی اسرائیل و تسلط بر همسایگانش به طور کلی در یک درگیری منطقه ای در حال تشدید.
در اینجا انتقامجویی نمادین و آشکار بین ائتلاف عربی-آمریکایی در رابطه با نیابت سگ دیوانه ما اسرائیل و سلطه ایران که شامل عراق، سوریه، لبنان و یمن میشود، به عنوان متحد او به صحنه جنگ جهانی سوم تبدیل شده است. روسیه تلاش می کند تا امپراتوری خود را دوباره تأسیس کند.
این دلیل واقعی ترور رئیس جمهور سابق ایران، حرکت گشایش در همسویی مجدد ایران و تنش زدایی از جبهه هسته ای با آمریکا و جنگ برای حقوق بشر با اسرائیل بود که تهدید می کند یک بار دیگر لبنان را در برگیرد. آرزو میکنم هرگز مورد توجه کسی قرار نگیرم که رئیسجمهور رئیسی، بسیار شبیه به پریگوژین، با دستی چنان ماهرانه که حتی سایه مرگ او را بر جزر و مد تاریخ ترور نکرد.
رئیس جمهور جدید ایران مسعود پزشکیان برای تغییر همه اینها انتخاب شد. پایان دادن به ترور جنسی مردسالارانه و کنترل زنان، که ایران را در جامعه بینالملل منحوس میسازد، شکنجه، مثله کردن، و تجاوز جنسی به عنوان مجازات نقض حجاب، آموزش یا سایر اعمال تجاوزکارانه و استقلال طلبانه توسط زنان بداخلاق و تجارت برده اغلب زنان بسیار جوان از طریق جواز ازدواج موقت که به سندیکای ملاها کمک مالی می کند، دو موضوع اصلی است، پایان دادن به سرکوب وحشیانه مخالفان و کارزار ترور علیه روزنامه نگاران و آزادی بیان، مطبوعات و اعتراض برای جبران نارضایتی ها، و همچنین باز هم تعامل با آمریکا از طریق فرآیند خلع سلاح هسته ای و عقب نشینی از ورطه جنگ کامل با اسرائیل.
چنین آزادسازی ممکن است نشان دهنده تولد یک دموکراسی در ایران و تبدیل آن از یک دشمن به یک متحد در راه حقوق بشر جهانی ما، چه در داخل و چه در خارج از ایران باشد. خواهیم دید.
در این لحظه از رئیس جمهور مسعود پزشکیان به عنوان یک برادر و متحد در راه انسان شدن استقبال می کنم.
February 3 2024 Biden’s Presidential Campaign Becomes a War of Imperial Conquest Against the Dominion of Iran
In reply to the victorious Red Sea campaign of allies like myself of Palestine, a counter blockade of Israel’s war crime of blockading humanitarian aid to Gaza, Biden the Baby Killer has launched a broad multistate regional conflict of imperial conquest against the Dominion of Iran, triggered by the deaths of American soldiers at the hands of Iranian allies or proxy forces.
This is horrible, the murders of our guardians at Tower 22 and a crime for which its perpetrators must be held responsible and brought a Reckoning; but so also is the Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. When Netanyahu and Biden are removed from power as war criminals, and the rain of death our taxes pay for in Gaza silenced, there will be time to pursue justice for the victims of this conflict; all the victims, regardless of what nation claims to act in their name as legitimation of war and the centralization of power.
Why do we sink or seize any ship carrying arms to Israel?
We contest the freedom of the high seas for any nation which funds and arms crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.
America’s abandonment of the principle of our universal human rights under the command of President Biden is a historic betrayal of all that we love and hold dear as truths which are self-evident, and this is Biden’s re-election campaign of cruelty, amorality, and imperial terror.
This wave of strikes against Iran’s Axis of Resistance and its nonstate forces is merely Biden’s attempt, confronted with hostile crowds of his fellow Democrats at re-election campaign rallies, to divert us from the fact that in sponsoring Israel’s war crimes he has made us all complicit in genocide and crimes against humanity.
And this we must resist.
January 29 2024 Where Do We Go From Here? As the Gaza War Becomes A Great Powers Proxy War and a Theatre of World War Three, and the Arab-American Alliance With Our Colony Israel Versus the Iranian Dominion of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen With Their Key Ally Russia Make A Wishbone of the Holy Land
Much fluttering of diplomatic fans and rattling of sabers has attended the news of the missile strike in Jordan against American forces of imperial dominion, to which my first reaction was this; Confusion to the Enemy is a game which can be played by limitless numbers of players.
It is the reaction to this event, as if it were new and transgressive because American soldiers have died, which disturbs me now, and has provoked my interrogation of the escalation of regional conflict.
Biden has reacted to the news with a vow of vengeance, and I now consider the Gaza War to be a regional conflict and Great Powers Proxy War which has become a theatre of World War Three. And I am very much afraid that we are about to march off a precipice from which there is no return.
If you really want to end this war, if peace, equal power, and mutual respect for each other’s humanity is your goal and not the use of others lives in service to your own power, use BDS or any means necessary to break the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and silence the bombs of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Ever curious how things look from the perspectives of others, I include herein those of the eminent historian of current events Heather Cox Richardson and of the power brokers themselves as questioned by The New York Times.
Our ideas diverge wildly from one another on many points, but such discontiguous and asymmetrical gaps can become spaces of free creative play and transformative change, just as boundaries may become interfaces.
First, Biden calls the missile strikes against America’s armies of Occupation and imperial dominion “despicable”, which of course may be said of any willful deaths of fellow human beings in war or otherwise, as is true for the Israeli mass murders in Gaza which they reply to. But he also calls them “wholly unjust”; I gather he would also call Little Bighorn an unjust reply to Wounded Knee, or any other victorious act of liberation struggle by an indigenous people against an imperial oppressor.
Biden’s unhinged diatribe against the idea of human rights and the equality of all human beings includes a spurious threat to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing”. Clearly he means only the murderers who are not his instruments of terror and dominion, as he continues to fund, arm, and authorize Israel to kill thousands of women and children merely because Hamas claims to act in their name as a strategy of subjugation, much as Netanyahu and his loathsome regime claim to act in the name of all Israel and of Jewish peoples everywhere in service to their own power. I would say there are no good guys here, but numberless innocents and civilians whose lives are being instrumentalized by various forces like chips at a roulette table.
Heather Cox Richardson argues the side of the imperial oppressors Israel and America when she reduces the conflict in this moment to an attempt by the Iranian Dominion to sabotage the creation of a viable Palestinian state, when nothing could be further from the truth. What Iran, and the freedom fighters of Hezbollah, Hamas, and dozens of other entities, polities, and organizations whom I have been fighting alongside in the Red Sea Campaign and other direct actions by placing our bodies between death and its victims as we are able, what we want is independence and sovereignty for the Palestinians, whereas Netanyahu is pursuing his Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem and the client state Biden has proposed would be a puppet regime governed by Israel.
Like the authors of the New York Times article, I too would like to see the establishment of a Palestinian state; but one which is owned and controlled by and belongs to the Palestinians. I like and endorse many of their ideas; a Stage One prisoner exchange and the freeing of hostages.
Stage Two involves the creation of a viable state co-owned by its citizens though not one burdened with connections to or like Frankenstein’s monster stitched together of unlike parts from the carcasses of the Palestinian Authority or other Quisling or proxy regimes either under Iranian or Israeli control, and I believe what our true goal in a new nation must be if it is to endure and be just is a secular state in which Jews and Muslims may act as guarantors of each other’s rights and be each other’s liberators and not each other’s jailors, a nation not of masters and slaves but of equals which will require total separation of church and state both in Israel and in Palestine. This is why I speak of the liberation of Israel and the liberation of Palestine as inherently linked together.
Stage three of this plan, the recognition of a sovereign and independent Palestine, requires regime change as well as institutional and systemic reimagination and transformation of the state of Israel, which means America uses defunding the Israeli military and other Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction to bring change and democracy to Israel as a precondition of the Liberation of Palestine.
So while my stages of change may look like theirs, the results and ideal end states are radically different. I too wish to end the war, but I also wish for a future United Humankind wherein we each of us may perform our uniqueness in ways wherein no one’s happiness is harmed by anyone else’s.
What must be done? To this final question I wish to amplify the voice of Bernie Sanders, as always the moral compass of our nation. Only these points must I object to; first, I have been fighting the state of Israel and to bring change to Israel for a very long time now, since 1982, and have worked with allies from many of the forces involved now in this great liberation struggle, and I cannot say that Hamas was the sole responsible perpetrator of October 7; it is complex and absolutely involved complicity on the part of the state of Israel. Israel, Hamas, and several other groups have mutually infiltrated each other, in a cultural environment where loyalties are often transactional or relativistic, and this horrific crime may also have been orchestrated by an unknown party for unknown purposes, which has spies, saboteurs, influence peddlars, power brokers, puppets and puppetmasters, inside Mossad, the IDF, the Netanyahu regime, and their deniable assets among extremists and Zionist terrorists and assassins; and this is true also of Hamas which is an Israeli created and sponsored front organization as well as a genuine anticolonialist revolutionary group, and this may be said of any group of human beings in the region who hold or control power. This does not count crime syndicates, mercenaries, warlords, and traditional clan chiefdoms. Complex, ambiguous, multidimensional, and shifting; such is the Middle East.
Second, Bernie, may he be Beloved of the Infinite, states that Israel and all states have the right of self defense, and in this I cannot concur. There is no right of self defense against a people you are Occupying.
January 3 2024 On the Manufacture of Just Causes For War: Case of the Bombing of the Anniversary Ceremony For Qassem Suleimani In Iran, America’s Greatest Ally in the Fight Against ISIS Assassinated By Order of Traitor Trump To Sabotage Iran’s Democracy Movement
Unknown enemies of peace have in this moment of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the attacks on Lebanon as the opening move of a regional war of imperial conquest and dominion as a theocratic Jewish crusade, have chosen to put out the fire with gasoline and bombed the anniversary ceremony for one of the most beloved figures of Iran and the Shia world, Qassem Suleimani, once America’s greatest ally in the fight against ISIS, assassinated on this day four years ago by order of Traitor Trump to sabotage the anti-theocratic and anti-patriarchal Democracy movement which has spread from Shiraz, where we stormed the palace of the head mullah in 2019, to the whole of the nations Iran now controls; Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, and even crossing sectarian lines to destabilize Afghanistan and her patron Pakistan.
The design and objective of all of this is to prevent an Arab Spring which will liberate the region from patriarchal theocracy and the tyranny of military dictatorships; to create forms of casus belli or just cause for war. Totalitarian states of all kinds must create such enemies if they do not exist, and exploit divisions and fears, in order to centralize power to authority and the carceral state.
Fear, power, force; the Wagnerian Ring by which we are dehumanized, falsified, and commodified by authority and those who would enslave us.
So very useful for bringing the Iranian Dominion fully into the war with Israel, this; and to the secret puppetmasters of this event I now warn, be careful what you wish for, and whisper as the charioteer was so tasked to Roman emperors during their parades of triumph; “All glory is fleeting.”
As I wrote in my post of January 4 2020, Cry Havoc: Consequences of the American Assassination of the Iranian and Iraqi Shiite Military Leaders; As the consequences of this event ripple outward through the medium of time, multiplying possibilities. alternate futures, transforms of ourselves and our shapings of one another, the true magnitude of the American assassination of the Iranian and Iraqi Shiite military leaders will unfold.
It is a seed of destruction, but of who?
Trump has cried havoc and loosed the dogs of war; but such agents of death, once free of their leash, know no master and may devour us all.
An age of Chaos dawns, and we are abandoned to its whims and to its wantonness as it seizes and swallows the mighty, disrupts and changes power relations and structures of social form, bringer of death as an aspect of Time but also of transformation and rebirth.
Chaos which I celebrate as a principle, but which must be wielded as a dangerous and multidimensional force with great forethought and caution as we play the Great and Secret Game, for action and reaction always strike in both directions.
The magnificent Guillermo del Toro, in his gorgeous work Carnival Row which explores themes of racism and inequality among war refugees in the nation which failed to defend them from their conquerors and in harboring them finds itself confronted with an alien people as neighbors amid squalor, poverty, and social destabilization, much like many nations in our world today, depicts the formation of an alliance between two leaders of rival factions:
“Who is chaos good for?”
“Chaos is good for us. Chaos is the great hope of those in the shadows.”
Yet I cannot overstate its peril.
As I wrote in my post of January 12 2020, A re energized democracy revolution throughout Iran brings the theocracy of the mullahs near its fall in the wake of the government’s mistaken destruction of a civilian aircraft and its lies about its responsibility for the tragedy; After more than two months of massive protests in Iran against the rule of the mullahs, larger than anything seen since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah over forty years ago which brought the Shiite theocracy into power and includes massacres of hundreds of protestors but also open battle in Shiraz and other major cities between the government’s forces of repression and the people of Iran united in the cause of liberty, that no government may stand between man and God nor enforce compulsion in matters of faith, a re-energized democracy revolution brings the theocracy near its fall in the wake of the government’s scandal of murder and failed coverup.
The Islamic Republic’s mistaken destruction of a civilian airliner bearing 82 Iranian citizens among its dead, and the subsequent lies the government told its people regarding its responsibility for the tragedy, has redirected public outrage from America over the assassination of its national hero Qassem Suleimani back to the government and its tyranny of faith and global provocations, shattering a temporary alliance of pro and anti government forces which had aligned to resist American imperialism and the invasion expected to follow Trump’s unprovoked attack.
There has been much speculation regarding Trump’s motive for the Suleimani assassination, both a war crime and an act of war. Sadly, the motives are obvious; Trump ordered the murder of Suleimani from personal jealousy, as well as a diversion from his impeachment for his treasonous and criminal subversion of America and a ploy for the support of the Republican politicians in the pay of plutocrats of war.
As Trump concedes the defeat of America by the Taliban and begs peace after 18 years of pointless war in Afghanistan, he sought to inflate his ego by killing a military genius who was victorious in battle against both the Taliban and ISIS, keeping Iran free from foreign influences and who acted as an important American ally against two of our most implacable enemies.
Telling friend from foe was never a long suit for the Republican party of war, nor the disambiguation of self-aggrandizement from our national interest for our President.
As I wrote in my post of January 28 2020, Protests and Repression in Iraq: America and Iran are now equal ogres of foreign imperialism; As mass protests continue to disrupt Iraq in two interdependent movements, the Revolution for democracy and liberation from sectarian government corruption and the malign influence of Iran’s theocracy, and the resurgent nationalism which unites Shia and Sunni polities against Trump’s groundless and criminal murder of Iranian regional hero Qasem Soleimani and second in command of Iraq’s military forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, both relentless and victorious warriors in the fight against ISIS and the Taliban and the most effective allies America had in our struggle against those two greatest of our common enemies and in the regional war on terror, we find ourselves at a strange impasse, who looked to America for help in founding a true secular democracy in Iraq, free of the grip of warlords, semifeudal clan chieftains, and especially the force and repression of armed divisions of faith, for America and Iran are now equal ogres of foreign imperialism.
Casting out both of our benefactors, who are also our adversaries, is a perilous thing and also a sad one, for there are many possible futures in which a liberated Iraq can work constructively with both America and Iran toward a better society and peace throughout the Middle East.
Iran has not always nor in every case been a malign or oppressive force; Hezbollah especially has been a benevolent shield against Israeli militarism and conquest, and I call them my brothers as I did long ago in the days of our resistance in Beirut. This does not mean that I endorse the new government which seized power in Lebanon two days ago, in which pro-Iranian proxies have eliminated plurality of representation in an attempt to co- opt the Revolution and subvert democracy, and which the people will resist.
Nor is America merely the plutocratic fist within the Israeli glove, acting solely from greed and commercial interests to control the strategic resource of oil. Indeed, many of us see ourselves as inheritors and agents of the historic mandate to export the American Revolution, storming the gates of our prisons to bring freedom and equality to all humankind. And primary in this is the principle of freedom of conscience and of faith, that no government may use coercion in matters of faith or in our autonomy and direct personal relationship with the Infinite.
The difference between ally and nemesis, between a nation or any social group as a force of tyranny and authoritarian control or on the reverse side of the coin that of resistance and liberation, is often in how one uses or redirects that force.
In the struggle of good and evil in the human heart and in the public sphere of nations and of history, that which limits us is evil. Efforts by the state to put us in a box of rules severs our connections with each other and with the Infinite, and disfigures the soul by limiting our possibilities for authentic being, which we must each discover for ourselves.
He who stands between the Infinite and each of us serves neither.
September 16 2023 Revolt Against Theocracy and Institutionalized Patriarchal Sexual Terror in Iran: Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Mahsa Ahmini
Mass Protests in Iran and throughout the world on this anniversary of the martyrdom of Mahsa Ahmini in the cause of liberty and women’s rights of bodily autonomy
After more than three years of revolutionary struggle in Iran against the rule of the mullahs, larger than anything seen since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah over forty years ago which brought the Shiite theocracy into power and includes massacres of hundreds of protestors but also open battle in Shiraz and other major cities between the government’s forces of repression and the people of Iran united in the cause of liberty, that no government may stand between man and God nor enforce compulsion in matters of faith, a re-energized democracy revolution brings the theocracy near its fall in the wake of the government’s scandal of murder and failed coverup.
Mahsa Ahmini is all of us, and we may read our future in her fate should we fail to act in solidarity as guarantors of each other’s universal human rights. In Iran and in America and throughout the world, forces of change are gathering as we refuse to abandon each other.
Comes the whirlwind, and with it escape from the legacies of our history and a reimagination and transformation of the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
As I wrote in my post of September 20 2022, Revolt Against Patriarchy and Theocracy, Not In America This Time But In Iran; In glorious defiance of state sexual terror and patriarchal theocracy, the women of Iran have seized the streets in mass protests throughout the nation and challenged the fearsome and brutal Revolutionary Guards and morality police in several direct actions, a protest movement which may become a general revolt.
Iran is still shaken and destabilized by the echoes and reflections of the near-revolution in its vassal state of Iraq, and as in the chaos of the Battle of Shiraz in December of 2019 in which I fought, mass action provides windows of opportunity in which to bring a reckoning to police and other enforcers of tyranny and to the hegemonic elites whose wealth, power, and privilege they serve, but while we failed to cast those who would enslave us down from their thrones on that occasion three years ago, this time may be different.
For this time we have a martyr, and one who was a member of the Kurdish people, a semi-autonomous nation with vast oil wealth, American and other international support, a dream of independence and a modern army to win it with, and famous for her women warriors and the social equality of genders.
I hope this will be enough to tip the balance; from the moment of Mahsa Amini’s death, the democracy movement against theocracy and patriarchy in Iran has become linked with the independence struggle of Kurdistan as parallel and interdependent forms of liberation struggle.
Patriarchy cannot survive if half of humankind refuses to be unequal to and subjugated by the other half.
The secret of force and control is that it is hollow and brittle; authority loses its legitimacy simply by being disbelieved, and force finds its limit in disobedience and refusal to submit.
As I wrote on the occasion of a previous visit to Iran to make mischief for tyrants in my post of December 2 2019, Battle of Shiraz: the democratic revolution against theocracy in Iran is now an open war; For two weeks beginning Friday November 15 through Monday December 2, Iran’s major city of Shiraz was engulfed in open war as the democracy revolution against the theocratic rule of the mullahs moves into the stage of direct challenge of its military and other tools of state control.
By the count of the neighborhood militia leaders who have now organized themselves into a kind of rebel government, there are 52 or 53 dead among the citizens killed by the police and military throughout Shiraz, plus nine killed in the intense fighting in the Sadra district in which an elite revolutionary unit, myself among them, directly attacked the fortress of the region’s chief mullah on Sunday November 17.
What began as a peaceful protest and a shutdown of the city by abandoning cars in the streets turned quickly to open battle after police shot and killed Mehdi Nekouyee, a 20 year old activist, without cause. Soon armed bands of laborers stormed the police station he was killed in front of, leaving it in flames and marching on other government strongpoints as their ranks swelled.
Throughout the next three days the luxury shopping district on Maliabad Boulevard was largely destroyed, some 80 bank branches and several gas stations set on fire. The Qashqai minority of Turkic nomads and weavers who in Shiraz are an important mercantile polity declared independence and repelled successive waves of attacks by heavy weapons units and helicopter assault cavalry against their outlying district of Golshan. As they are a people virtually unknown to the outside world, I’ve included some pictures.
But the most important revolutionary action of November in Iran was the seizure of the chief mullah of Shiraz and his palace-fortress. An action whose meaning is central to the motives and binding purpose of the secularists who are fighting for democracy and to liberate Iran from the autocratic regime of the mullahs, this was a glorious victory which exposes the hollowness of theocratic rule.
Widely regarded as corrupt, nepotistic, and xenophobic patriarchs, the mullahs, like Catholic priests, were once sacrosanct from personal responsibility and protected by a perceived mantle of piety; so the primary mission of the revolution is to expose their venality and the perversion and injustice of their rule. A task made hideously easy in this case by the pervasive network of pedophile sex trafficking authorized by the mullahs and a major source of trackable income in the form of licenses they sell for temporary “pleasure marriages” in which consent is an imprecise concept. And that’s just one visible part of the vast iceberg of greed and immorality of their regime.
In Iran, the fight for democracy and freedom is also a fight against the patriarchy.
As I wrote in my post of October 13 2022 Embrace What You Fear and Be Free: Case of the Resistance Against Patriarchy in Iran and America; A glorious resistance has swept the world as half of humankind refuses to submit to the authority and power of the other half, a revolt against Patriarchy and an evolutionary shift in consciousness which will transform our possibilities of becoming human; two stunning examples are the mass protests in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the face of brutal repression, murder, torture, and mind control in Soviet-model psychiatric prisons, and the electoral fight for bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and gender equality here in America.
The women of Iran and other theocratic patriarchies are fighting to free themselves from the same kinds of systemic dehumanization the Republicans are attempting to impose in America as subversion of democracy. We need only look to Iran and Afghanistan to see the fate which awaits us all if we do nothing to resist the weaponization of faith in service to power by those who would enslave us.
Here I question the use of fear by authority and how we may resist subjugation in revolutionary struggle through embrace of our fear as seizure of power.
Marina Warner explores the uses of fear in our topologies of authorized identities and their transgression as revolutionary struggle against internalized Patriarchal oppression in her marvelous and insightful No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, which maps our Animus while its companion volume, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, does the same for our Anima; together some of the finest writing on the dyadic masculine and feminine forces of which human being is made.
Patriarchy is a system and structure of institutionalized sexual terror, one which authorizes identities of sex and gender. The intricacies and diabolical mechanisms of its operations and processes have been described in exhausting detail in the decades since Simone de Beauvoir’s founding work of 1949 The Second Sex; here I wish only to reference it as a system of fear with which all humankind must struggle for self-ownership, autonomy, and authenticity.
Our fears are signposts and anchorages of our shadow self, that which we must swallow but are loath to do, as Nietzsche said of the Toad which embodied his darkness, and which William S. Burroughs was cursed to bear as the avatar of a monstrous god. Feelings of disgust, revulsion, terror, violation, and seizure by the alien and the unclean; these are signs not of warning but of welcome to the secret truths of ourselves which we must discover and embrace.
Sometimes we must let our demons out to play.
As I wrote in my post of October 27 2022, Triumph of the Mahabad Autonomous Zone and the Free State of Kurdistan Over the State Terror of Iran’s Regime of Mullahs: the Iranian Revolution Against Theocracy and Patriarchy; We celebrate the triumph of the Mahabad Autonomous Zone and the Free State of Kurdistan, where the women of Kurdistan, Iran, and Iraq have together in solidarity against the Patriarchy and the state terror of theocracy won an island of liberty in a vast sea of darkness.
It is a darkness now being challenged in street fighting and open mass protests throughout Iran to overthrow the brutal regime and sexual terror of the mullahs in the restoration of a free society of equals, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, a revolution of women as a slave caste which like America’s #metoo movement and the historic struggle for women’s rights of reproduction and bodily autonomy now being waged in our elections finds echoes and reflections worldwide as a tide of change.
It falls to each of us in this moment to choose a future for ourselves and for humankind, and stand in solidarity with the half of humanity enslaved and dehumanized by the other half; for men to abandon unequal power and the subjugation of women and to join their loved ones, mothers, sisters, partners, daughters, and friends in liberation struggle for a better future and a free society of equals, for the women of America and the women of Iran to unite in common cause and action with women everywhere, and for us all, wherever human beings hunger to be free, to act in solidarity as a United Humankind to free ourselves from the legacies of our history and from systems of oppression and unequal wealth, power, and privilege.
If we do this simple thing, act in solidarity for the liberty of us all, those who would enslave us will fail. Force and control are fragile when authority has no legitimacy and is disbelieved, and when orders are disobeyed. Disbelieve, disobey, and refuse to submit, and we become Unconquered and free.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
December 8 2022 The Women of Iran Bring a Reckoning to Patriarchy and Theocratic Sexual Terror
The people of Iran have seized their power in a glorious General Strike in support of mass actions of liberation struggle against patriarchy and theocracy throughout the nation, a resistance which has become a regional democracy movement which began as a protest by the women of Iran against the legal right of men to hunt and kill them for refusing to submit to their authority and wear its symbol the hijab, a faceless black shroud of living death and depersonalization.
What kinds of patriarchal sexual terror, dehumanization, enslavement, and chasms of evil does the hijab symbolize?
How did the institution of morality police in Islamic societies begin?
As written by Mustafa Akyol in New Lines Magazine, in an article entitled The Dubious Roots of Religious Police in Islam: The Islamic concept of ‘commanding the right and forbidding the wrong’ is applied across the Muslim world to curtail personal liberties and police morality, but this interpretation is questionable; “n Sept. 16, 2022, thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Iran chanting, “I will kill those who killed my sister.” They were referring to Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman arrested a few days earlier by Tehran’s “Gasht-e Ershad” (literally “guidance patrol,” also known as the “morality police”) on charges of insufficiently covering her hair. She died in detention, following blows to her head, with bruises on her corpse. The popular anger sparked by this atrocity soon turned into nationwide civil unrest, which is still ongoing at the time of writing, undertaken bravely by people from all walks of life, despite the brutal response by security forces.
Over the weekend, it was reported (or misreported) that Iran had decided to scrap its morality police, which would mark a major concession to the protest movement, if it were true. A number of Iranian analysts have since clarified these reports were likely misguided and Iranian state media has formally denied them.
But why does Iran have a “guidance patrol” in the first place? Is this institution really a requirement of Islam, as the Iranian regime claims? These questions are important for the future not only of Iran, but also the broader Muslim world, because Iran is not the only country which employs religious police: They are also active in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Malaysia and the Aceh Province of Indonesia. Their strictness may vary, but they all act on the assumption that Islamic religious requirements — as they define them — should be enforced by the state. Thus women should be forced to cover up, alcohol drinkers should be punished and “subversive” books must be banned. In the 1990s, during their first reign in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement went as far as destroying all musical instruments (and punishing their players), chess boards and even kites. Today, back in power for the second time, they claim to be milder but the observable differences are minimal. No wonder female university students in Afghanistan, who are forbidden to receive an education if they do not wear a full-body cover, or burqa, chant the same slogans as the protestors in Iran: “Woman, life, freedom!”
Meanwhile, in many other Muslim countries from the Arab world to Pakistan, there may be no distinct religious police per se, yet the regular police — or its “adaab” (decency) units — still inspect and punish religious misdeeds, such as dancing “seductively” on TikTok or eating or drinking in public during daylight hours in the holy month of Ramadan.
To many Muslims living in the West, especially those accustomed to civil liberties, all these religious dictates often seem baffling. What is the point of any religious practice, many may think, if it is not freely chosen? They might also recall the oft-quoted phrase from the Quran, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) and conclude that any compulsion in religion must therefore be a deviation from the “real Islam.” Yet to question religious coercion in Islam requires a much deeper discussion, because its advocates have long justified it with two authoritative references: the Quranic duty of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” and the institution known as the “hisba.”
Let’s begin with the Quran. Variations of the phrase (or references to the concept of) “al-amr bi-l-maaruf wa-n-nahy ani-l-munkar” (“commanding the right and forbidding the wrong”) appear in eight separate verses (3:104, 3:110, 3:114, 7:157, 9:71, 9:112, 22:41, 31:17), either as a feature of true believers or a duty incumbent upon them. The first of these verses, 3:104, is probably the most definitive, as it calls for a specific group to carry out the duty: “Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: they are the ones to attain felicity.”
It is on the basis of this verse that Saudi Arabia’s religious police, popularly known as the “mutawa,” call themselves the “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” (Since 2016, their powers have been curbed, but by royal decree rather than religious reform per se, and only as an excuse for deepening authoritarianism on the political side.) Similarly, the Taliban has its “Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” The Iranian “guidance patrol,” too, is based on Article 8 of the Iranian Constitution, which proclaims the same concept of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” to be “a universal and reciprocal duty.”
Yet there is a crucial question that all these religious police forces appear to have answered all too quickly: What is “right” and what is “wrong”? How do we know? Who decides it? And do these interpretations of religion really correspond to all the religious commandments and prohibitions of Islam?
These questions are pertinent, not least due to the terminology found in the Quran. The word used for the “right” that is to be “commanded” is “maaruf,” which literally means “the known,” implying conventional ethical norms. The concept existed well before Islam, as pre-Islamic Arabs used the term maaruf for commonly known ethical values, such as gentleness and charitableness. Hence the Arab lexicographer Ibn Manzur (d. 1312) defined maaruf as “things that people find beneficial, likable.” Its opposite, “munkar,” he defined as abhorrent things that offend human conscience.
Due to this elusiveness of vice and virtue, there emerged different views in the early centuries of Islam about the duty, as examined by Michael Cook, whose 700-page book, “Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought,” is the most comprehensive study on the topic. As Cook notes, the earliest commentators on the Quran did not necessarily interpret the duty as religious policing. Instead, some understood it “as simply one of enjoining belief in God and His Prophet.” One such commentator was Abu al-Aliya (died 712 CE), who was among the “tabiun,” or the first generation after the direct companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who reportedly described the duty as “calling people from polytheism to Islam and … forbidding the worship of idols and devils.” A little later, Muqatil ibn Sulayman (died 767 CE), whose three-volume book is one of the oldest commentaries on the Quran, similarly defined the duty in limited terms. For him, “commanding the right” meant “enjoining belief in the unity of God,” whereas forbidding wrong meant “forbidding polytheism.”
A political interpretation of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” also emerged in the early centuries of Islam. In this view, the duty primarily involved speaking out against tyrants and even launching rebellions against them. In fact, as Cook observes, “it was quite common in the early centuries of Islam for rebels to adopt forbidding wrong as their slogan.” Among the advocates of this stance were the rationalist Mutazilites, who blamed their traditionalist opponents for preaching that “obedience is due to whoever wins, even if he is an oppressor.”
This idea of quietist political obedience was indeed established by certain hadiths, or narrations attributed to the prophet. “He who insults a ruler,” one of them read, “Allah will insult him.” Another one ruled: “Listen to the ruler and carry out his orders; even if your back is flogged and your wealth is snatched.” With such guidelines, the Hanafi scholar Imam al-Tahawi (died 933 CE) in his widely accepted statement of the Sunni creed, wrote, “We do not permit rebellion against our leaders or those in charge of our public affairs even if they are oppressors.” There was also a legitimate rationale beneath this doctrine: Early civil wars in Islam, caused by rebellions, had proven disastrous. But seeking peace only in obedience — as long as the ruler upheld the basic tenets of Islam — built an authoritarian political culture that has endured in the Sunni world to the present day.
On the one hand, then, “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” proved to be a politically modest duty in Sunni Islam. On the other, it was fervently enforced against sinners and heretics. The Hanbalis, who were often the most hardline Sunnis, were the leading example.
In the 10th and 11th centuries in Baghdad, the Hanbalis became notorious for plundering shops or homes to seek and destroy wine bottles, breaking musical instruments or chess boards, challenging men and women who walked together in public and disrupting Shiite practices.
Conceptually, this full-scale religious imposition was accompanied by the equation of “maaruf” (the known good) with all the commandments of the Sharia. The third-century Sunni Quranic exegete al-Tabari reflected this view when he argued, in Cook’s paraphrasing, “‘commanding right’ refers to all that God and His Prophet have commanded, and ‘forbidding wrong’ to all that they have forbidden.” In other words, the duty required the enforcement of all piety, and the punishment of all impiety, at least in public eyes. (The privacy of the home, meanwhile, was generally respected, thanks to the Quranic directives against spying and entering homes without permission.)
To get a sense of this expansion of enforcement, one needs to look at the very beginning of the story: the Quran. It decrees many commandments to its believers, and expects obedience from them out of their belief in God and hope for salvation in the afterlife — not out of any earthly coercive measure.
For example, believing in God is the very first commandment of Islam, yet the Quran threatens unbelievers or apostates only with the wrath of God in the afterlife. Similarly, Muslims are commanded to pray and fast, and to abstain from drinking or gambling, but the Quran does not specify any punishment for violations of these commands. The Quran also orders Muslim women to dress modestly but, again, decrees no earthly consequence for those who don’t.
By contrast, the Quran does decree earthly punishments for five specific misdeeds, four of which later became enshrined in Islamic law as “al-hudud,” or “the boundaries” of God. These are murder or injury, banditry, theft, adultery and false accusations of adultery. All are to be punished corporally, as was the norm in the Quran’s historical context.
The pertinent question for our discussion is this: Why does the Quran penalize theft but not, say, giving up prayer? The Quran itself gives us no answer. But we can reasonably infer the difference: Theft is a punishable crime, in almost every society, because it violates another person’s rights. Prayer, on the other hand, is a private connection between a person and God, which harms no other person when it is not performed. (The same is true, in fact, for all matters of faith and worship. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”)
Yet the Quran was only the beginning of Islamic law. In the first few centuries that followed it, the scope of earthly punishments grew dramatically, often based on hadiths, most of which came from solitary reports (as opposed to widely transmitted ones) and were hence open to doubt. (Apostasy became a capital crime, for example, due to the report, “Whomever changes his religion, kill him.”) Almost all religious commandments also turned into enforceable laws, due to the latter-day interpretation of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong.”
This was how giving up the daily prayers, for example, became a grave crime, as the prominent 11th-century jurist al-Mawardi explained in his book, “al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah” (“Ordinances of Government”), a standard Sunni text on Islamic political theory:
If the person abandons [the prayer], claiming that it is not an obligation, then he is a nonbeliever; and the same ruling as that governing the apostate applies—that is, he is killed for his denial, unless he turns for forgiveness. If he has not done it because he claims it is too difficult to do, but while acknowledging its obligation, then the jurists differ as to the ruling: Abu Hanifa considers that he should be beaten at the time of every prayer, but that he is not killed; Ahmad ibn Hanbal and a group of his later followers say that he becomes a kafir by his abandoning it, and is killed for this denial … Al-Shafiʿi considers… he is not put to death until he has been asked to turn in repentance … If he refuses to make repentance, and does not accept to do the prayer; then he is killed for abandoning it—immediately, according to some, after three days, according to others. He is killed in cold blood by the sword, although Abu’ Abbas ibn Surayj says that he is beaten with a wooden stick until he dies.
What about fasting in the holy month of Ramadan? Al-Mawardi wrote that the Muslim who refuses to fast “is not put to death,” but is still “given a discretionary punishment to teach him a lesson.” Such punishments in Islamic law, called “tazir,” meaning discretionary rules set by the authorities rather than scripture, typically included lashes or short prison sentences.
Who were the authorities responsible for implementing these laws? There were courts ruled by qadis, or judges, but they did not go after lawbreakers themselves. The latter task, which al-Mawardi described as “one of the fundamental matters of the religion,” was called “hisba,” to be carried out by “those who do hisba,” or the “muhtasibs.” While the duty of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” was incumbent on all Muslims, it was these state-appointed officials who physically enforced the rules.
What, then, is hisba? Among the many meanings cited by Ibn Manzur, the word implies enforcing and managing limits, as well as sufficiency, monitoring and reckoning. Both classical and contemporary Muslim sources define it as a kind of law enforcement, established by the prophet. However, when we look carefully into the prophetic practice, we see something rather different from religious policing: market inspection.
The marketplace was a fundamental institution in nascent Islam, thanks to the fact that many of the first Muslims, including the prophet himself, were longtime merchants. No wonder that, soon after settling in Medina after his historic hijra (migration) from Mecca, Muhammad designated a spot in the city, declaring: “This is your market, let it not be narrowed, and let no tax be taken on it.” He also began frequenting the market in person to prohibit any fraudulent practices, which the Quran rebuked severely in a number of verses.
This is also why the prophet appointed some of his companions to oversee the market and prevent the occurrence of fraud. Interestingly, one of these inspectors was reportedly a woman named Samra bint Nuhayk al-Asadiyya — a notable example of the prominent public roles played by early Muslim women. A few decades later, the Caliph Umar also appointed a woman, al-Shifa bint Abd Allah, in addition to three men, to oversee the Medinan market.
In the first century of Islam, these market inspectors were called “aamil al-suq,” or “overseer of the market.” In Muslim Spain, they were also called “sahib al-suq,” or “master of the market.” Their functions were described by the Cordoban scholar Yahya ibn Umar (died 901 CE), who wrote about “the orderly running of the marketplace, particularly with regard to weights, measures and scales.” Significantly, he did not mention any religious policing.
Yet the latter function would soon appear. As the historian Abbas Hamdani observed, while “in his previous role as sahib al-suq, the market inspector had mainly material, not spiritual considerations,” a shift later took place. “In the late ninth century, we find that the office of the market inspector begins to be regarded as a religious office and the inspector is now called muhtasib, a person who takes count of the right and wrong deeds of the people and brings them to book.”
This dual function of the muhtasib was also observed by the historian Yassine Essid, who wrote:
In reading the different treatises devoted to the hisbah we discover two categories of responsibilities, or rather, we find ourselves looking at two different figures: the censor of morals who breaks musical instruments, pours out wine, beats the libertine and tears off his silken clothing, and the modest market provost, a man who controls weights and measures, inspects the quality of the foods on sale, ensures that the markets are well supplied.
As time went on, religious policing even became the principal duty of the muhtasib, whereas market supervising turned trivial. This was evident in “The Revival of Religious Sciences,” the highly influential book by the Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (died 1111 CE), one of the towering scholars of the Sunni tradition. Al-Ghazali wrote a whole chapter on hisba, which he defined as “prevent[ing] an evildoing for the sake of God’s right in order to safeguard the prevented from committing sin.” Thus, everything that is considered sin is to be targeted, from drinking wine to leaving prayer. In retribution for such acts, al-Ghazali proposed “direct” punishments, such as “breaking the musical instruments, spilling over the wine, and snatching the silk garment from him who is wearing it.”
Al-Ghazali also justified “hisba against the religious innovations,” meaning heresies. This was, in fact, even “more important than against all the other evildoings.”
In short, hisba, which began under Muhammad with the limited function of market inspection, turned only much later into full-fledged religious coercion — against not only impieties, but also heresies.
Yet wouldn’t religious coercion infringe on an Islamic value, also cherished by pious scholars such as al-Ghazali himself: the sincerity of intentions behind acts of worship? What would be the value of prayer, for example, if it were performed only out of fear of the muhtasib, not fear of God? And if the suppression of heresy were justified, would this not lead to endless religious conflict among Muslims, since one sect’s “heresy” was another’s true faith?
These questions appear to have been asked only rarely in the classical age of Islamic civilization, though there were a few scholars who noticed the problem with coercion.
One was the Ottoman Hanafi-Sufi scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (died 1731), who was troubled by the Istanbul-based Kadizadeli movement, a zealous religious group that created much disturbance in 17th-century Ottoman society. Influenced by Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328), the prominent Hanbali scholar, these were puritans who blamed the Ottomans’ decline on “innovations” in Islam, such as Sufi orders that used religious music, “rational sciences” such as philosophy and mathematics, and perceived social vices such as coffee and tobacco, which had become quite popular across the empire. For a while, the Kadizadelis influenced Sultan Murad IV, who destroyed all the coffeehouses in Istanbul and executed tobacco smokers, not to mention wine drinkers. (Ironically, he himself was a heavy drinker, who died of cirrhosis at the age of 27.) In the late 17th century, the Kadizadeli militancy would decline, but not totally vanish.
Al-Nabulsi patiently argued against these puritans in his book, “al-Hadiqa al-Nadiyya” (“The Dew-Moistened Garden”). First, he opposed the conflation of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” with hisba, which had become the standard view since al-Ghazali. In al-Nabulsi’s view, the duty was only a “matter of the tongue,” with no enforcement. In return, people could either heed the advice or not — it was their choice, because “There is no compulsion in religion.” According to Cook, this reference by al-Nabulsi to Quran 2:256 may be the very first use of this verse against coercion in Islam. Traditionally, it had been cited only to rule out forced conversions to Islam of Jews, Christians or others.
Al-Nabulsi also referred, in a letter, to a Quranic verse often downplayed by religious enforcers: “You who believe, you are responsible for your own souls; if anyone else goes astray it will not harm you so long as you follow the guidance.” (5:105) The lesson, al-Nabulsi argued, is that instead of judging others, Muslims would be better off spending time examining their own souls.
Al-Nabulsi also deconstructed the ostensible piety of the Kadizadelis. Zealots of their kind set out to command and forbid, he argued, in Cook’s paraphrasing, “because they crave an ego trip, or see it as a way to establish a role of power and dominance in society, or to gain the attention of important people.” Beneath their claims to righteousness, in other words, lay only self-righteousness.
Another Ottoman scholar, the famous polymath Katip Çelebi (died 1657), had also seen Kadizadeli militancy even more closely, and minced no words against it. In his book, “Mîzânü’l-Hak,” or “The Balance of Truth,” he wrote:
“The most noble Prophet used to deal kindly and generously with his community. The arrogant men of later time, not seeing the disgrace of running counter to him, label some of the community as infidels, some as heretics, some as profligates, for trifling reasons … They bring the people to the grievous state of fanaticism, and cause dissension. Ordinary folk know nothing of these rules and conditions; thinking that it is obligatory in every case to enjoin right and forbid wrong, they quarrel and are pertinacious with one another. The baseless wrangling in which they engage, with stone-like stupidity, sometimes leads to bloodshed. Most fighting and strife between Muslims arises from this cause.”
Today, almost four centuries later, it is remarkable to read this sharp critique by Katip Çelebi. It is also sad, because it remains true today that “most fighting and strife between Muslims arises from this cause,” which is religious zealotry and coercion. Various Islamic regimes or parties, from West Africa to Southeast Asia, struggle with each other, and with secular forces, to “command the right and forbid the wrong,” in the narrow way they define it. In the meantime, they hardly make anyone more faithful or pious, if that is really their goal. On the contrary, as seen in Iran today, in the hijabs defiantly burned by the women on whom they are imposed, they only make people lose respect for Islam.
As such, I believe the way forward for Islamic civilization lies in divorcing “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong” from religious coercion. Sure, in any society, certain things have to be coercively “commanded,” such as honesty in trade, or “forbidden,” such as theft, murder or oppression. These are literally maaruf, in terms of being “known” to all humanity as common sense. But how people believe in God and worship him are matters of their own conscience, which should be left to their private minds to freely determine.
While this argument may sound to some like a big “innovation” in Islam, it has firm roots in the earliest interpretations of the Quranic duty of “commanding the right and forbidding the wrong,” and in fact aligns with the original meaning of hisba. It is also strongly grounded in the Quranic dictum rightly expounded by al-Nabulsi: “There is no compulsion in religion.” Properly understood, this means there should really be no compulsion in religion. People should be at liberty to practice it, or not, based on their sincere convictions and free choices.”
Iran, a reading list
As chosen by myself as a scholar of the Naqshbandi Order of Sufism and literate in Classical Persian
Women’s Voices
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi
Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, Fatemeh Keshavarz
City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran, Ramita Navai
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, Shirin Ebadi
Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran, Shirin Ebadi
The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny, Shirin Ebadi
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9667539-the-golden-cage
Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, Shahrnush Parsipur
My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir, Zarah Ghahramani
Daughter of Persia: A Woman’s Journey from Her Father’s Harem Through the Islamic Revolution, Sattareh Farman Farmaian
Rooftops of Tehran, Sholeh Wolpé
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3465139-rooftops-of-tehran
Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths: Poems, Sholeh Wolpé
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17074991-keeping-time-with-blue-hyacinths
Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat
Marriage On the Street Corners of Tehran: A Novel Based On the True Stories of Temporary Marriage, Nadia Shahram
Other Modern Literature
Then the Fish Swallowed Him, Amir Ahmadi Arian
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44557426-then-the-fish-swallowed-him
My Father’s Notebook: A Novel of Iran, Kader Abdolah, Susan Massotty (Translator)
The Immortals of Tehran, Alireza Taheri Araghi
Histories
Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, Elaine Sciolino
Garden of the Brave in War: Recollections of Iran, Terence O’Donnell
Waking Up in Tehran: Love & Intrigue in Revolutionary Iran, M. Lachlan White
Shah of Shahs, Ryszard Kapuściński
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59661.Shah_of_Shahs
Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup,
Christopher de Bellaigue
The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, Roy Mottahedeh
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32986.The_Mantle_of_the_Prophet?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_72
God and Man in Tehran: Contending Visions of the Divine from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic, Hossein Kamaly
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, Vali Nasr
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29963522-the-shia-revival?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_77
Iran: A Modern History, Abbas Amanat
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34152729-iran?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_36
In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, Christopher De Bellaigue
Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran, Jason Elliot
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, Kim Ghatta
Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism, Mana Kia
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52364278-persianate-selves
The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant,
Michael Axworthy
Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan, Rudi Matthee
Classical Persian Literature
The Arabian Nights, Anonymous, Husain Haddawy (Translator), Muhsin Mahdi
(Editor)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3312298-the-arabian-nights
Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights, Marina Warner
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13067271-stranger-magic
Scheherazade’s Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights,
Philip F. Kennedy, Marina Warner (Editors)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17920212-scheherazade-s-children?ref=nav_sb_ss_3_18
The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition, Seyyed Hossein Nasr
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142133.The_Garden_of_Truth
The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy, Henry Corbin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227098.The_Voyage_and_the_Messenger
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Azar Nafisi
(Foreword) Dick Davis (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157985.Shahnameh
Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Dick Davis
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157994.Epic_and_Sedition
Rostam: Tales of Love & War from Persia’s Book of Kings, Abolqasem Ferdowsi
The Essential Rumi – New Expanded Edition 2020: Translations By Coleman Barks with John Moyne, Jalal Al-Din Rumi
The Big Red Book, Rumi, Coleman Barks (Translator)
The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi, Andrew Harvey
The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalāloddin Rumi, Annemarie Schimmel
I Am Wind, You Are Fire: The Life and Work of Rumi, Annemarie Schimmel
The Divan, Hafez (illustrated Gertrude Bell translation)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46292.The_Divan
Divan of Hafez Shirazi, Hafez, Paul Smith (Translation)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26769075-divan-of-hafez-shirazi
The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez, Hafez,
Leonard Lewisohn, Robert Bly (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1356418.The_Angels_Knocking_on_the_Tavern_Door
Diwan Al Hallaj, Mansur al-Hallaj, Louis Massignon (Translator), Arini Hidajati
(Editor)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2638268-diwan-al-hallaj
Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr – Abridged Edition, Louis Massignon, Herbert Mason
(Editor)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/165115.Hallaj
The Book of Mansur Hallaj: Selected Poems & The Tawasin, Mansur al-Hallaj,
Paul Smith (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26824465-the-book-of-mansur-hallaj
Iraqi: Selected Poems, Iraqi, Paul Smith (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24385405-iraqi
Divan of Sadi, Saadi, Paul Smith (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16221053-divan-of-sadi
Anthology of the Ghazal in Persian Sufi Poetry, Paul Smith Translator
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56917071-anthology-of-the-ghazal-in-persian-sufi-poetry
The Persian Masnavi: An Anthology, Paul Smith Translator
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56298730-the-persian-masnavi
Sweet Sorrows: Selected Poems of Sheikh Farideddin Attar Neyshaboori,
Attar of Nishapur, Vraje Abramian (Translation)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17434949-sweet-sorrows
The Conference of the Birds, Attar of Nishapur, Sholeh Wolpé
(Translation)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35187179-the-conference-of-the-birds
Wine of the Mystic: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Spiritual Interpretation,
Omar Khayyám, Paramahansa Yogananda
Omar Khayyam: Poet, Rebel, Astronomer, Omar Khayyám, Hazhir Teimourian
Torch of Liberty 