Islamic Supremacism is Racism

John R. Houk
© May 9, 2009

The Muslim Middle East is on the forefront of calling the Land of Israel a racist nation. This battle cry is led by Iran’s Ahmadinejad openly and behind the scenes by the power elites of Saudi Arabia.

The sad thing is many Westerners are jumping on the Muslim race propaganda train, particularly of the Leftist bent.

Muslims and Leftists equate Zionism with racism. O my God, a thought just popped into my cranium. Surprisingly there are many Jews in the West that also equate Zionism with racism. How self-destructive is that?

Ahmadinejad is correct about one thing in his hate filled speeches. Modern Israel was formed out of the ashes of guilt the victors of WWII felt by allowing Adolf Hitler’s regime to murder six million Jews in the Nazi Final Solution (not to mention roughly another six million non-Jews that did not fit the Nazi vision of the master superior Aryan race).

Ahmadinejad and other Muslims pump propaganda that the Jews in Israel were sent by the West to displace Muslims living in the area.

The reality is the land then called Palestine was made a waste land by Ottoman Turk mismanagement. The Western ingenuity of immigrating Jews combined with the Jews already in the land turned this wasteland into habitable arable farm land that produced a gain from what was once an inhospitable landscape depleted by lack of attention.

In 1516 the Mamluks were defeated by the Ottoman Turks. The first three centuries of Ottoman rule isolated Palestine from outside influence. The discovery of sea routes to the East began to erode the importance of the Middle East to commerce. In 1831, Muhammad Ali, the Egyptian viceroy nominally subject to the Ottoman sultan, occupied Palestine. Under him and his son the region was opened to European influence. Ottoman control was reasserted in 1840, but Western influence continued. The Ottoman tax system was ruinous and did much to keep the land underdeveloped and the population small. [Emphasis Mine] When Alexander W. Kinglake crossed the Jordan in 1834-35, he used the Jordan's only bridge, a survival from Roman antiquity. Among the many European settlements established, the most significant in the long run were those of Jews, Russian Jews being the first to come (1882).

It is important to note that there was a Jewish population in Palestine continuously. Even after the Jewish state was ended by the Romans, Jewish communities continued to exist. All of the successor governments tried to eliminate the Jews at one time or another, but none succeeded as numerous accounts testify over the centuries. When the Zionists started the modern "return" to Eretz Yisrael in the 19th Century, they were joining Jews who never left.

In 1918, a Yiddish book by David BenGurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Eretz Yisrael in the Past and Present, was published in New York by the Poale Zion Palestine Committee. The authors note that long after the destruction of the Second Temple — and even after the defeat of Shimon Bar Kokhba, leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in the second century C.E. — large masses of Jews still tilled the soil of Eretz Yisrael.

In the wars and uprisings, many cities were ruined and many communities destroyed, but the farm population could not be wiped out so easily. Under foreign oppression, city dwellers — the propertied and educated classes — chose to leave their homes and migrate to freer countries such as Babylonia. The Jewish peasant, however, like peasants the world over, would not leave his land so quickly, for it was land developed by his sweat and that of his parents. (A Brief History of Palestine)

The more prosperous the ingenuous Jewish production, the more Arabs moved back into the area seeking jobs to make a living. Until the end of WWI, there existed little hostility between Jewish innovators and Muslim employees in the land dubbed Palestine in Levant.

The end of WWI saw the beginnings of Arab nationalism after receiving freedom from the Ottoman authority. This Arab nationalism resulted in the WWI victors to arbitrarily create borders for Arab nations that would be spheres of influence by the European victors which were primarily Britain and France in the Middle East.

I am guessing many Arabs viewed this as a mere switch of subjugation from the Ottomans to a form of neo-subjugation by Britain and France. As a part of this emerging bitterness and the Balfour Declaration, nationalistic Arab Muslims began to view the influx of more European Jews as stepping on the toes of Arab lands at the management of European colonialism.

The instigation of Arab hatred toward the Jewish was planted by the Arab nationalist the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini. Al-Husseini’s anti-Semitic hatred poured into Palestinian Mandate Arabs who became influenced to no longer look at Jews as harbingers of prosperity but rather as usurpers of Dar al-Islam. The Dar al-Islam concept is as racist an ideology a people can develop. Dar al-Islam simply defined for the Western mind is that once conquered by Mohammedans then it is always Mohammedan even if “temporary” set backs infringed by the kafir of Dar al-Harb.

If Zionism is racism then Zionists are picnic racists compared to Islamic Supremacist racism projected from intolerant Mohammedanism. The Jewish State of Israel has discovered a paradigm of a haven for the world’s Jews to live without government persecution AND operating democratic institutions with civil rights for Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. There are other minorities in Israel; however the significant minority that enjoys political enfranchisement is Arab-Muslims and Arab-Christians. This equal political enfranchisement is totally non-existent in other Middle Eastern nations. In the other Middle Eastern Muslim nations you are a fully enfranchised Muslim or a discriminated against non-Muslim. One bad look by a non-Muslim will render some harsh treatment up to and including death for a perception of insulting Islam.

It is part of Mohammedanism’s Theo-Political nature to be brutally intolerant and so I understand their dimwit hatred of Israel based on Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The real mystery is that of the Western Left that actually falls in line with Mohammedan propaganda by also claiming Israel Zionism is racism.

Israeli Zionism is racism as compared to what: Islamic Supremacist racism? Dear God in Heaven there is absolutely no equitable comparison between intolerant Mohammedan racism and full citizen enfranchisement of Zionist Israel. The Basques of Spain probably receive less toleration than the Arab citizens of Israel.

Leftist outcries about Zionism equaling racism are heinously ludicrous. Either the Leftist hatred of Zionism is based on delusional Muslim propaganda or Leftist hatred of Zionism is linked to traditional Western anti-Semitism. So when I read or hear people say ‘being anti-Israel is not being anti-Semitic’ is a bunch of delusional garbage.

Another thing that throws me for a loop is that there are actually Leftist Jews and even Orthodox Jews that denounce Zionism. Hello! Zionism is a movement of protection for practicing Jews and Jews of heritage in a place to exist where government of community prejudice will not exact violent to deadly pogroms that Jews have experienced in the West’s past. For a Jew of any persuasion to be anti-Zionist is to be self-loathing. The self-loathing is always in danger of self-destruction via stupid actions to outright suicide (note that suicide is not homicidal).

Anyway that is enough of venting on my part. You should go over to Ben’s Blog to read what set me off.

JRH 5/9/09
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Ahmadinejad: UN Racism Conference Part 4

By Ben
May 9, 2009 at 3:03 AM
Ben’s Blog

[statement by the Islamic Republic of Iran as delivered (unofficial transcript)]

After the Second World War, by exploiting the holocaust and under the pretext of protecting the Jews they made a nation homeless with military expeditions and invasion. They transferred various groups of people from America, Europe and other countries to this land. They established a completely racist government in the occupied Palestinian territories. And in fact, under the pretext of making up for damages resulting from racism in Europe, they established the most aggressive, racist country in another territory, i.e. Palestine.

Two groups of people claim possession of one small land area. Only one of them has a historical moral and legal right to it. The side having the valid claim was willing to share the land; the usurpers were not. They made war, which they continue to prosecute.

The death and displacement of which Ahmadinejad complains resulted from Islam's war against Israel. Without that war there would have been neither death nor displacement. The complaint has about as much merit as the parricide's plea for mercy on grounds of being an orphan.

Ahmadinejad practices projection: labeling Israel as “the most aggressive, racist country" when, in fact, that description fits Islam. The unstated premise is that Falestine is the national homeland of Falestinians. In fact, Israel was the homeland of the Jews, who were conquered and displaced serially by the Greeks and Romans, who were conquered by the Muslims in the seventh century.

• Our first clue comes from the Charter of Hamas, read it carefully. [Emphasis added.]

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Muslims have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Muslims consecrated these lands to Muslim generations till the Day of Judgement.

• Our second clue comes from Rodwell's translation of At-Taubah 29

9:29. Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth, until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled.

• Our third clue comes from the oral tradition of Moe's companions.

Abu Dawud 14.2477
Narrated Ibn Hawalah:


The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: It will turn out that you will be armed troops, one is Syria, one in the Yemen and one in Iraq. Ibn Hawalah said: Choose for me, Apostle of Allah, if I reach that time. He replied: Go to Syria, for it is Allah's chosen land, to which his best servants will be gathered but if you are unwilling, go to your Yemen, and draw water from your tanks, for Allah has on my account taken special charge of Syria and its people.

The continuous conflict flows directly from Moe's command, recited in Allah's name, to make war upon the Jews and his statement of preference for attacking the Byzantine province of which Israel was a part.
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Islamic Supremacism is Racism
John R. Houk
© May 9, 2009

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Ahmadinejad: UN Racism Conference Part 4
Ben’s Blog

ONLY Conclusive Victories Ensure Israeli Existence

In this Hamas instigated war against Israel it is totally evident how much the radical Islamic terrorist’s value human life. That value is zero.

How can I come to that conclusion? Hamas launches rockets at civilian targets in Israel and uses Arab civilians as human shields in Gaza (Gazastan/Hamastan). Not only is Hamas using the lives of their brethren as human shields they are using structures associated with hospitals, Mosques and civilian homes as command centers and places to store cache of weapons.

How does Israel value human life?

Israel sends leaflets to warn of impending Israeli assaults. Israel utilizes non-lethal missiles in an effort to scare Arab human shields off of buildings before the lethal missiles are launched. The rules of engagement for Israeli military are not to harm civilians UNLESS there is no other way to attack the cowardly enemy.

The evident rules of engagement for Hamas is to utilize a labyrinth of tunnels in Gaza to pop out in civilian clothes briefly engage the Israeli IDF either with weapons or with homicidal suicide bombers. Then disappear like cockroaches back to the tunnels.

The reality of the Hamas tactics actually is brilliant against a superior military army; however that which is reprehensible is the Western accepted propaganda that Israel is brutalizing Arabs that call themselves Palestinians.

I have established the difference in the value of human life between Hamas and Israel. Hamas seeks to murder Israeli civilians and sacrifice their own people to death. Israel seeks to protect their civilians and warn Gaza Arab civilians to minimize the collateral damage of civilians. And the West buys into the propaganda that Hamas ruled Gaza are the recipients of victimization. It is Israel taking every effort to protect Arab civilians from the collateral damage that Hamas encourages as a tactic to bring global opinion against Israel. THAT IS CRAZY!

How can such a disparity exist between two groups of people who merely wish to have a life of self-determination?

In Israel’s case they have a nation established in the 20th century resulting from the millennia of guilt of Jewish persecution that culminated with the Nazi horrors of the Holocaust.

Arabs that call themselves Palestinians are the victims of Islamic/Mohammedan ideology that once a land is conquered by Islam it must remain under Islamic hegemony forever regardless of a non-Muslim claim to a land of heritage. It is the concept of Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb. The Supremacist factor permeating the Theo-political ideology of Islam/Mohammedanism will forever unreasonably take every opportunity (openly or deceitfully) to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea.

It is Islamic Supremacism that is behind generations of clerics and Muslim educators continuing to poison their own people with racism and hate toward Israel and Jews in particular. Israel is a speck in a mote of Muslim hatred. To survive as a nation where Jews can go for both religious reasons and to escape millennia government persecution of Jews, Israel must maintain a vigilance of a martial nation. For the sake of self-preservation Israel must choose military strategies that may fly in the face of Western PC tolerance or Islamic Supremacism.

At the present time a good deal of Israel’s troubles is the result of failing to shoring up their multiple victories over Arab-Muslim invading armies. Every victory has been followed an appeasement gesture toward the losers. The losers merely used the gesture to re-arm for the next invasion, create Arab refugees trained in hate (ergo Islamic terrorists) and generations of misinformation-propaganda to paint a picture of Israeli evil to Westerners.

Hamas’ continued missile needling of Israeli civilians coupled with exploiting their own people to produce a fiction of Israeli atrocity in the now infamous doctrine of “Proportional (or Disproportional – depending on usage) Response, is a continuation of the ideology of Islamic Supremacy.

Israel needs to step up to the courage to eschew Left media anti-Semitism and Arab-oil muscle on the West to utilize DISPROPORTIONAL force to bring a conclusive victory instead of PC victory.

JRH 1/11/09

The Legacy Of Pax Islamica

All Things Beautiful Blog lays it on the line concerning the Religion of Peace. Many Mohammedans overtly (and many under self-delusion) shout from the roof tops the "jihad" does not mean violent war, rather it means inner struggle. Of course this is a bunch of odious gas malcontently released as perfumed truth by Mohammedans. "Jihad" has always been about violence and conquest to spread the death-cult of dar al islam.
All Things Beautiful wonderfully demonstrates the true intentions of JIHAD.

Von Maltzan also demonstrates why Conservative bloggers believed inititial reports of badging Jews in Iran. Iran has regarded all dhimmis and fakirs as polluted sub-human individuals. Iran Shi'ites have a long history of religious bigotry that more often than not ended at least in discrimination and at worst death.
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The Legacy Of Pax Islamica
Posted by Alexandra von Maltzan on Monday, May 22, 2006 at 07:06 AM
All Things Beautiful Blog

Professor Andrew Bostom has been a hero of mine ever since I finished reading what is now considered the Jihad Bible otherwise entitled "The Legacy Of Jihad". It came as a breath of fresh air amidst the rancid sea of apologists on the left, who have never quite understood the meaning of the word "Jihad", and were busy defending it as a mere spiritual struggle in the path of Allah.

My position on this has been crystal clear from the outset of my writing this blog, and although I have written about it many times before, I shall repeat it for the readers that may not be so familiar with the workings of the "Religion Of Peace".

Recently, apologists in the West have asserted that Jihad means primarily "spiritual struggle." There are several things to be said about this. First of all, the tradition to which they are referring is a late Sufi tradition, of the eleventh century, which divides jihad into a "Jihad of the Sword" and a "Jihad of the Spirit," stating that the former is the "lesser" Jihad and the latter is the "greater." This tradition is not contained in any of the canonical volumes of Sunni traditions, however, and has occupied, historically, only a very minor place in the Islamic tradition.

How do we know this to be so? There have been thousands of books composed on the religious duty of Jihad throughout the 14 centuries of Islamic history. Every last one of those books was about the "Jihad of the Sword" but one - and that one was composed only in the 20th century, by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shi'ite, and not exactly a pacifist. Second, and far more important: all that this tradition states is that the "Jihad of the Spirit" is the greater Jihad; it does not in any way abrogate the "lesser Jihad," the "Jihad of the Sword"- on the contrary. It is not accidental that the word for a Sufi monastery and for a fortress of volunteer border warriors (ribat) is identical in the Islamic languages; the same people who were "struggling in God's path" in the Jihad of the Spirit were simultaneously "struggling in God's path" in the Jihad of the Sword; even the Sufis who invented this tradition saw the two types of Jihad as being complementary, not mutually exclusive. Moreover, even had the late Sufi tradition actually been the dominant one in Islam, it would in no way abrogate the militaristic Qur'anic verses which order the believers variously to "fight' or to "kill" the unbelievers.

Every classical treatise on Islamic government has viewed the primary duty of a ruler as essentially that of ordering the world according to God's will. The world is divided into two mutually antagonistic parts: the "Abode of Islam" (Dar al-Islam), in which God's rule has already been established, and which is ruled according to Muslim law; and the "Abode of War" (Dar al-Harb); that portion of the world which is not yet under God's rule, but which the Muslims must eventually bring into the Islamic oecumene by force or by persuasion. What the apologists are not revealing when they talk of Islam as a religion of peace is that the "peace" they are referring to is a Pax Islamica.

Today we continue with the struggle of sending the message which if understood, will have a profound effect on how we deal with the sort of information given to us by Amir Taheri in the last few days, and which despite constant criticism from the left, culminating even in attempts to discredit him as the sterling journalist which we all know him to be, and calling me a Nazi, still needs to be explained further. Dr.Zin @ Regime Change provides a perfectly logical explanation: "Why does he say it "envisages" it [the law]? Perhaps it is because it has been reported that a separate dress code for minorities has been included in earlier versions of the proposed law," and the Anchoress makes an intelligent deduction: "Just because a document “makes no mention” of something doesn’t mean a thing is not - under a definition of “standard” - implied."

The New York Sun has an excellent article today expressing a vote of thanks to Taheri from the Iranian Jews. IMPORTANT UPDATE: Amir Taheri issues a press release and stands by his story.

Professor Bostom MD, MS, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, and an avid historian and author, whose knowledge of this particular subject is matched by very few.

Today he writes me an e-mail enclosing his latest article on the subject, pointing to the historical significance that goes a lot further back than Nazism, and points directly at the well established bigotry against non-Muslims deeply ingrained in Iran's history. Published @ Front Page today, fasten your seat belts, it is a must read:

"The Iranian Majlis or Parliament has reportedly passed (now disputed) a law requiring that, “Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.” An outraged Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Weisenthal Institute immediately responded to the provisions for Jews: “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust…Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”

Such a comparison sprang to the minds of many.

But Rabbi Hier’s statement and this general view ignore the immediate context—most glaringly, the simultaneous dress badge requirements for Christians and Zoroastrians living in Iran—and more importantly, the sad historical legacy of Shi’ite religious persecution of all non-Muslims which dates back to the founding of the Shi’ite theocracy in (then) Persia, under Shah Ismail at the very outset of the 16th century.

A reflexive invocation of the Nazi era is ahistorical, and symptomatic of a general failure to appreciate either Judenhass or much broader anti-“infidel” (i.e., in this case anti-Christian and anti-Zoroastrian) motifs intrinsic to orthodox Islamic doctrine and practice—both Sunni and Shi’ite. The Iranian Parliament’s legislation reflects the profound influence of najis—a unique Shi’ite institution—not Nazism.

Shi’ite Theocratic Rule in Iran: Najis and non-Muslims (especially Jews)

Visceral, even annihilationist animus towards Jews is a deep-rooted phenomenon in Shi’ite Iran, hardly unique to the contemporary post-Khomeini Shi’ite theocracy, including the current regime of Ayatollah Khameini and President Ahmadinejad. The Safavid rulers, at the outset of the 16th century, formally established Shi’a Islam as the Persian state religion, while permitting a clerical hierarchy nearly unlimited control and influence over all aspects of public life.

The profound influence of the Shi’ite clerical elite, continued for almost four centuries (although interrupted, between 1722-1795 during the period of Sunni Afghan invasion and rule), through the later Qajar period, as characterized by the noted scholar E.G. Browne:

The Mujtahids and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.

These Shi’ite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews, in particular, but also Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of inter-confessional relationships toward non-Muslims.

The impact of this najis conception (based on a literal interpretation of Koran 9:28) was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of the first Safavid Shah, Ismail I (1502-1524). The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512-1515), “Sheikh Ismail…never spares the life of any Jew”, while another European travelogue notes, “…the great hatred (Ismail I) bears against the Jews…”. During the reign of Shah Tahmasp I (d. 1576), the British merchant and traveler Anthony Jenkinson (a Christian), when finally granted an audience with the Shah,

… was required to wear ‘basmackes’ (a kind of over-shoes), because being a giaour [infidel], it was thought he would contaminate the imperial precincts…when he was dismissed from the Shah’s presence, [Jenkinson stated] ‘after me followed a man with a basanet of sand, sifting all the way that I had gone within the said palace’- as though covering something unclean.

Mohammad Baqer Majlesi (d. 1699), the highest institutionalized clerical officer under both Shah Sulayman (1666-1694) and Shah Husayn (1694-1722), was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shi’ite theocracy in Persia. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shi’a ethos among ordinary persons. His treatise, “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews” (pp. 216-220), was written in Persian, and despite its title, was actually an overall guideline to anti-dhimmi regulations for all non-Muslims within the Shi’ite theocracy.

Al-Majlisi, in this treatise, describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under the Shari’a, first and foremost, the blood ransom jizya, a poll-tax, based on Qur’an 9:29. He then enumerates six other restrictions relating to worship, housing, dress, transportation, and weapons (specifically, i.e., to render the dhimmis defenseless), before outlining the unique Shi’ite impurity or “najis” regulations.

With regard to dress, Majlisi’s stipulations from the late 17th century are consistent with the contemporary the Iranian Parliament’s proposal (albeit the “color-coding” differs):

it is appropriate that the ruler of the Muslims imposed upon them clothing that would distinguish then from Muslims so that they would not resemble Muslims. It is customary for Jews to wear yellow clothes while Christians wear black and dark blue ones. Christians [also] wear a girdle on their waists, and Jews sew a piece of silk of a different color on the front part of their clothes.

But it is the latter najis prohibitions which lead Anthropology Professor Laurence Loeb (who studied and lived within the Jewish community of Southern Iran in the early 1970s) to observe, “Fear of pollution by Jews led to great excesses and peculiar behavior by Muslims.” Again, according Al-Majlisi’s authoritative and influential late 17th century text,

And, that they should not enter the pool while a Muslim is bathing at the public baths…It is also incumbent upon Muslims that they should not accept from them victuals with which they had come into contact, such as distillates, which cannot be purified. In something can be purified, such as clothes, if they are dry, they can be accepted, they are clean. But if they [the dhimmis] had come into contact with those cloths in moisture they should be rinsed with water after being obtained. As for hide, or that which has been made of hide such as shoes and boots, and meat, whose religious cleanliness and lawfulness are conditional on the animal’s being slaughtered [according to the Shari’a], these may not be taken from them. Similarly, liquids that have been preserved in skins, such as oils, grape syrup, [fruit] juices, myrobalan, and the like, if they have been put in skin containers or water skins, these should [also] not be accepted from them…It would also be better if the ruler of the Muslims would establish that all infidels could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or snows because they would make Muslims impure.

Professor Laurence Loeb’s seminal analysis of dhimmi Jews in Shi’ite Persia/Iran (Outcaste- Jewish Life in Southern Iran 1977), documents the social impact of najis regulations, beginning with the implementation of

a badge of shame [as] an identifying symbol which marked someone as a najis Jew and thus to be avoided. From the reign of Abbas I [1587-1629] until the 1920s, all Jews were required to display the badge

Loeb emphasizes, “Fear of pollution by Jews led to great excesses and peculiar behavior by Muslims.”

Indoors/Outdoors and Wet/Dry

The enduring nature of the fanatical najis regulation prohibiting dhimmis from being outdoors during rain and/or snow, is well established. Examples include item 5 of Benjamin’s list (Eight Years in Asia and Africa- From 1846-1855, Hanover, 1859, pp. 211-213) of “oppressions”

(they [i.e., the Jews] are forbidden to go out when it rains; for it is said the rain would wash dirt off them, which would sully the feet of the Mussulmans),

and item 1 of Hamadan’s 1892 regulations for its Jews (From a letter by S. Somekh, The Alliance Israelite Universale, October, 27, 1892, translated and reproduced in Littman, D.G. “Jews Under Muslim Rule: The Case of Persia” The Weiner Library Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, Nos. 49/50, 1979, pp. 7-8.)

(The Jews are forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows [to prevent the impurity of the Jews being transmitted to the Shiite Muslims]),

as well as this account provided by the missionary Napier Malcolm who lived in the Yezd area at the close of the 19th century:

They [the strict Shi’as] make a distinction between wet and dry; only a few years ago it was dangerous for an Armenian Christian to leave his suburb and go into the bazaars in Isfahan on a wet [rainy] day. ‘A wet dog is worse than a dry dog.’ [Malcolm, Napier. Five Years in a Persian Town, New York, 1905, p. 107.]

Moreover, the late Persian Jewish scholar Sarah (Sorour) Soroudi related this family anecdote:

In his youth, early in the 20th century, my late father was eyewitness to the implementation of this regulation. A group of elder Jewish leaders in Kashan had to approach the head clergy of the town (a Shi’i community from early Islamic times, long before the Safavids, and known for its religious fervor) to discuss a matter of great urgency to the community. It was a rainy day and they had to send a Muslim messenger to ask for special permission to leave the ghetto. Permission granted, they reached the house of the clergy but, because of the rain, they were not allowed to stand even in the hallway. They remained outside, drenched, and talked to the mullah who stood inside next to the window.”[ from, “The Concept of Jewish Impurity and its Reflection in Persian and Judeo-Persian Traditions”, Irano-Judaica, Vol. 3, 1994, p. 156.]

Souroudi added this note, as well [p.156, footnote 36]:

As late as 1923, the Jews of Iran counted this regulation as one of the anti-Jewish restrictions still practiced in the country.”

A more disconcerting 20th century anecdote from an informant living in Shiraz, was recounted by Anthropologist Laurence Loeb [in Outcaste, p.21]:

When I was a boy, I went with my father to the house of a non-Jew on business. When we were on our way, it started to rain. We stopped near a man who had apparently fallen and was bleeding. As we started to help him, a Muslim akhond (theologian) stopped and asked me who I was and what I was doing. Upon discovering that I was a Jew, he reached for a stick to hit me for defiling him by being near him in the rain. My father ran to him and begged the akhond to hit him instead.

Finally, Janet Kestenberg Amighi. (in The Zoroastrians of Iran: conversion, assimilation, or persistence. New York, NY: AMS Press, 1990, pp. 85) has argued that the Zoroastrians were perhaps the lowest non-Muslim caste in Shi’ite Iran, and accordingly, subjected to the most severe najis-related restrictions:

In Yezd and Kerman (through the early 20th century), Moslem pollution prohibitions were strictly observed and extended to most aspects of life. A Moslem would not eat out of a dish touched by a Zoroastrian nor permit even his garment to be touched by a Zoroastrian. Zoroastrians were forbidden the use of most community facilities such as barber shops, bath houses, water fountains, and tea houses. Water and wetness were considered to be particularly strong carriers of pollution. Zoroastrians were not permitted to go to the market in the rain. They could not touch fruit when shopping in the bazaar, although the dry goods could be touched.

Far worse, the dehumanizing character of these popularized “impurity” regulations appears to have fomented recurring Muslim anti-infidel violence, including pogroms and forced conversions, throughout the 17th, 18th ,19th and into the early 20th centuries, as opposed to merely unpleasant, “odd behaviors” by individual Muslims towards non-Muslims."

Respite and Recrudescence

Reza Pahlavi’s spectacular rise to power in 1925 was accompanied by dramatic reforms, including secularization and westernization efforts, as well as a revitalization of Iran’s pre-Islamic spiritual and cultural heritage. This profound sociopolitical transformation had very positive consequences for Iran’s non-Muslims. By virtue of , “…breaking the power of the Shia clergy, which for centuries had stood in the way of progress”, Walter Fischel observed that Reza Shah, “…shaped a modernized and secularized state, freed almost entirely from the fetters of a once fanatical and powerful clergy”.

Regarding Jews specifically, Lawrence Loeb wrote in 1976 that,

The Pahlavi period…has been the most favorable era for Persian Jews since Parthian rule [175 B.C. to 226 C.E.]…the ‘Law of Apostasy’ was abrogated about 1930. While Reza Shah did prohibit political Zionism and condoned the execution of the popular liberal Jewish reformer Hayyim Effendi, his rule was on the whole, an era of new opportunities for the Persian Jew. Hostile outbreaks against the Jews have been prevented by the government. Jews are no longer legally barred from any profession. They are required to serve in the army and pay the same taxes as Muslims. The elimination of the face-veil removed a source of insult to Jewish women, who had been previously required have their faces uncovered; now all women are supposed to appear unveiled in public…Secular educations were available to Jewish girls as well as to boys, and, for the first time, Jews could become government-licensed teachers…Since the ascendance of Mohammad Reza Shah (Aryamehr) in 1941, the situation has further improved…Not only has the number of poor been reduced, but a new bourgeoisie is emerging…For the first time Jews are spending their money on cars, carpets, houses, travel, and clothing. Teheran has attracted provincial Jews in large numbers and has become the center of Iranian Jewish life…The Pahlavi era has seen vastly improved communications between Iranian Jewry and the rest of the world. Hundreds of boys and girls attend college and boarding school in the United States and Europe. Israeli emissaries come for periods of two years to teach in the Jewish schools…A small Jewish publication industry has arisen since 1925…Books on Jewish history, Zionism, the Hebrew language and classroom texts have since been published…On March 15, 1950, Iran extended de facto recognition to Israel. Relations with Israel are good and trade is growing.

But Loeb concluded on this cautionary, sadly prescient note, in 1976, emphasizing the Jews tenuous status:

“Despite the favorable attitude of the government and the relative prosperity of the Jewish community, all Iranian Jews acknowledge the precarious nature of the present situation. There are still sporadic outbreaks against them because the Muslim clergy constantly berates Jews, inciting the masses who make no effort to hide their animosity towards the Jew. Most Jews express the belief that it is only the personal strength and goodwill of the Shah that protects them: that plus God’s intervention! If either should fail… [emphasis added].

The so-called “Khomeini revolution”, which deposed Mohammad Reza Shah, was in reality a mere return to oppressive Shi’ite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Persian/Iranian governance since 1502. Conditions for all non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly Bahais and Jews, rapidly deteriorated. Historian David Littman recounts the Jews’ immediate plight:

In the months preceding the Shah’s departure on 16 January 1979, the religious minorities…were already beginning to feel insecure…Twenty thousand Jews left the country before the triumphant return of the Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 February…On 16 March, the honorary president of the Iranian Jewish community, Habib Elghanian, a wealthy businessman, was arrested and charged by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal with ‘corruption’ and ‘contacts with Israel and Zionism’; he was shot on 8 May

The writings and speeches of the most influential religious ideologues of this restored Shi’ite theocracy – including Khomeini himself – make apparent their seamless connection to the oppressive doctrines of their forbears in the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. For example, Sultanhussein Tabandeh, the leader of a Shi’ite Sufi order, wrote an “Islamic perspective” on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. According to Professor Eliz Sanasarian’s important analysis of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic, Tabandeh’s tract became

“…the core ideological work upon which the Iranian government…based its non-Muslim policy.”

Tabandeh begins his discussion by lauding Shah Ismail I (1502-1524), the repressive and bigoted founder of the Safavid dynasty, as a champion “…of the oppressed”. It is critical to understand that Tabandeh’s key views on non-Muslims, summarized below, were implemented “…almost verbatim in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”. In essence, Tabandeh simply reaffirms the sacralized inequality of non-Muslims relative to Muslims, under the Shari’a:

Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution…Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash

Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim…then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed

Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them. Since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an infidel husband (in accordance with the verse quoted: ‘Men are guardians form women’) means her subordination to an infidel, that fact makes the marriage void, because it does not obey the conditions laid down to make a contract valid. As the Sura (‘The Woman to be Examined’, LX v. 10) says: ‘Turn them not back to infidels: for they are not lawful unto infidels nor are infidels lawful unto them (i.e., in wedlock).

And Sanasarian emphasizes the centrality of this notion of Islam’s superiority to all other faiths: …even the so-called moderate elements [in the Islamic Republic] believed in its truth. Mehdi Barzagan, an engineer by training and religiously devout by family line and personal practice, became the prime minister of the Provisional Government in 1979. He believed that man must have one of the monotheistic religions in order to battle selfishness, materialism, and communism. Yet the choice was not a difficult one. ‘Among monotheist religions, Zoroastrianism is obsolete, Judaism has bred materialism, and Christianity is dictated by its church. Islam is the only way out’. In this line of thinking, there is no recognition of Hindusim, Buddhism, Bahaism, or other religions

The conception of najis or ritual uncleanliness of the non-Muslim has also been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly, “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.”

The Iranian Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri further elaborated that a non-Muslim (kafir’s) impurity was, “a political order from Islam and must be adhered to by the followers of Islam, and the goal [was] to promote general hatred toward those who are outside Muslim circles.”

This “hatred” was to assure that Muslims would not succumb to corrupt, i.e., non-Islamic, thoughts. Sanasarian provides a striking example of the practical impact of this renewed najis consciousness:

In the case of the Coca-Cola plant, for example, the owner (an Armenian) fled the country, the factory was confiscated, and Armenian workers were fired. Several years later, the family members were allowed to oversee the daily operations of the plant, and Armenians were allowed to work at the clerical level; however, the production workers remained Muslim. Armenian workers were never rehired on the grounds that non-Muslims should not touch the bottles or their contents, which may be consumed by Muslims.

Khomeini’s views were the most influential in shaping the ideology of the revitalized Shi’ite theocracy, and his attitudes towards Jews (both before and after he assumed power) were particularly negative. Khomeini’s speeches and writings invoked a panoply of Judenhass motifs, including orthodox interpretations of sacralized Muslim texts (for e.g., describing the destruction of the Banu Qurayza), and the Shi’ite conception of najis. More ominously, Khomeini’s rhetoric blurred the distinction between Jews and Israelis, reiterated paranoid conspiracy theories about Jews (both within Persia/Iran, and beyond), and endorsed the annihilation of the Jewish State. Sanasarian highlights these disturbing predilections:

The Jews and Israelis were interchangeable entities who had penetrated all facets of life. Iran was being ‘trampled upon under Jewish boots’. The Jews had conspired to kill the Qajar king Naser al-Din Shah and had a historically grand design to rule through a new monarchy and a new government (the Pahlavi dynasty): ‘Gentlemen, be frightened. They are such monsters’. In a vitriolic attack on Mohammad Reza Shah’s celebration of 2500 years of Persian monarchy in 1971, Khomeini declared that Israeli technicians had planned the celebrations and they were behind the exuberant expenses and overspending. Objecting to the sale of oil to Israel, he said: ‘We should not ignore that the Jews want to take over Islamic countries’…In an address to the Syrian foreign minister after the Revolution Khomeini lamented: ‘If Muslims got together and each poured one bucket of water on Israel, a flood would wash away Israel’

Professor Reza Afshari’s seminal analysis of human rights in contemporary Iran summarizes the predictable consequences for Jews of the Khomeini “revolution”:

As anti-Semitism found official expression…and the anti-Israeli state propaganda became shriller, Iranian Jews felt quite uncertain about their future under the theocracy. Early in 1979, the execution of Habib Elqaniyan, a wealthy, self-made businessman, a symbol of success for many Iranian Jews, hastened emigration. The departure of the chief rabbi for Europe in the summer of 1980 underlined the fact that the hardships that awaited the remaining Jewish Iranians would far surpass those of other protected minorities

Conclusions

An ethos of infidel-hatred, including paroxysms of annihilationist fanaticism, has pervaded Persian/Iranian society, almost without interruption (i.e., the two major exceptions being Sunni Afghan rule from 1725-1794, and Pahlavi reign, with its Pre-Islamic revivalist efforts, from 1925-1979), since the founding of the Shi’ite theocracy in 1502 under Shah Ismail, through its present Khomeini-inspired restoration, since 1979.

Having returned their small remnant Jewish community to a state of obsequious dhimmitude—including now, perhaps the full restoration of discriminatory badging —Iran’s current theocratic rulers focus most of their obsessive anti-Jewish bigotry on the free-living Jews of neighboring Israel.

Former Iranian President Rafsanjani’s December 2001 “Al Quds Day” sermon threatened, explicitly, the nuclear annihilation of this largest concentration of autonomous Jews in history. Current President Ahmadinejad has reiterated these threats repeatedly as Iran’s nuclear ambitions near fulfillment. But Ahmadinejad has also reportedly vowed, “To stop Christianity in this country” [i.e., Iran] , and his recent “letter” to President Bush emulates the jihad war precept (originally formulated by the Muslim prophet Muhammad) of calling infidel powers—often Christian powers—to accept Islam, prior to initiating a jihad war against them.

The Iranian regime’s words and deeds are authentic manifestations of the hatred of jihad. Whether directed against internal or external “infidels” this is a potentially genocidal animus which must be understood in its Islamic context without meaningless and distracting invocations to modern Western forms of totalitarianism, like Nazism."