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ISIS, Iran, and the Rot of Political Islam (We should take the fanatic Islamists at their word)
National Review ^ | 6/17/2014 | Tom Rogan

Posted on 06/17/2014 2:43:18 AM PDT by markomalley

Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.
— Ayatollah Khomeini, from a sermon at Qom

“Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyya [separated from God].”
— Sayyid Qutb, Milestones

Those quotes encapsulate the hatred for freedom that defines both ISIS and the Khomeini-guardianship theology of Iran. To be sure, ISIS and Iran harbor deep hatred for each other. Still, their shared malevolence is telling.

These quotes also reveal the authoritarian xenophobia and absolute arrogance that underpin both ideologies. For these extremists, peaceful coexistence with mainstream society is intolerable. For them, resisting modernity is an ordained mission equaled in importance only by the necessity to impose their own agenda.

Their death-cultism is now on full display in Iraq. About a week ago, ISIS released a video of their latest exploits. The grotesque hour-long footage shows ISIS capturing Iraqi police officers and then shooting them as they kneel down and wait to die. In slow motion, ISIS regales us with terrified prisoners digging their own graves, and with assassinations. The ISIS videographers crow in the background. At one point, the camera records a gang of masked men who are slowly interrogating a police officer for propaganda value. Then, two of the terrorists jump on the officer and behead him, slowly, as he flails and struggles. The next scene shows his decapitated head sitting upon his torso. This is the world they seek: a “holy” kingdom of death.

But consider Iran — more strategically astute than ISIS, yes, but no less evil. Whether in its support for Assad’s chlorine-gas attacks in Syria or in its own numerous atrocities at home and across the world, Iran has no qualms about using death and fear as political weapons. A case in point is Iran’s plot in 2011 to blow up a crowded restaurant in Washington, D.C., in order to kill a Saudi diplomat. Former CENTCOM commander James Mattis tells the story here.

Of course, it isn’t only ISIS and Iran. In Yemen, fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) film themselves massacring unsuspecting villagers. In Kenya, Al-Shabaab has just murdered fans watching the World Cup. In Nigeria, Boko Haram slit throats and kidnaps children. (A celebrity-led hashtag campaign has thus far rescued no children.) In Beirut, Iran’s ally Hezbollah casually murders its democratic opponents. These cases are just a few from the swamp of Islamic terrorism.

We need to recognize that whether it’s Iran or ISIS or Islamic terrorists elsewhere, what’s happening around the world is proof of a deeper truth: the rot of political Islam. Far removed from the Islamic age of medieval enlightenment, much of the world’s Islamic political discourse is now defined by corruption and hate.

Take the Sunni Arab monarchies that buy a World Cup and then build the stadium with slave labor. These kingdoms might provide five-star tourism to Westerners, but extremists from Mali to Syria greatly benefit from the Doha fundraising circuit. And Iran preaches democracy but then joyfully crushes the hopes — and skulls — of its own citizens.

Unfortunately, we in the West prefer to delude ourselves about this evil. In recent months, we’ve seen Rutgers University cancel the award of an honorary degree to anti-Islamist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and ABC Family pressured into scrubbing a TV show that highlighted women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Regurgitating terms such as “Orientalism” (an academic theory basically holding that the West exploited and romanticized the East for its own imperialist ends), elites have turned the ideal of tolerance into the practice of censorship. Unlike the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq, most of us have failed to grasp that many Muslims detest extremism and would, if encouraged, stand more actively against these false idols.

The rot is spreading. In the interest of opening our eyes to the danger, let me offer another Qutb quote:The object of [holy order] is all humanity, and its sphere of action is the whole Earth.”


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 06/17/2014 2:43:18 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley
Data from the ROP... injured is Down! Yay... (/sarc) Murder is up... way Way WAY WAY!!!! up.


2 posted on 06/17/2014 3:30:22 AM PDT by C210N (When people fear government there is tyranny; when government fears people there is liberty)
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To: markomalley

Its not just political islam. Its islam period. Mohammed waged war to spread islam. It gets really annoying hearing Hannity say repeatedly that islam is being taken over by the radicals when those are the muslims practicing islam in the tradition of its founder thru violent jihad.


3 posted on 06/17/2014 4:05:15 AM PDT by RginTN
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To: markomalley

In other words, “stage 4” for Islam.


4 posted on 06/17/2014 4:07:39 AM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: RginTN

A false propeht spreading what simply came from the devil.


5 posted on 06/17/2014 4:08:16 AM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: markomalley

Criticising Islam in the west is like a fart in church. Everyone is offended.

Well, not everyone.

I take exception to the phrase about Islam in medieval times being different than today.

What finally finished Islam’s golden age (such as it was) was the eradication of the Jews and Christians that ran the municipalities, the finances, public services, collected taxes, maintained irrigation systems, ran everything as Dhimmis. The muslims eliminated these people, education and higher learning, went with them.

What was left was a rotting corpse, able only to examine its own navel as “schools” of thought on the Hadiths of Mohammed and Sharia jurisprudence argued among themselves as the educated slaves who were forced to work for them died off, and/or were forcibly converted or murdered.

In the end, there was no one left to do work, mental or physical.

Islam is a rotted, putrid, Satanic cult and the conditions of the common man and woman proclaim their is no justice, no opportunity, no hope, just hatred and blood.


6 posted on 06/17/2014 4:44:40 AM PDT by the anti-mahdi
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To: RginTN

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/06/let_them_kill_each_other.html


7 posted on 06/17/2014 4:48:19 AM PDT by Kackikat
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To: markomalley

We’re going to find out, sooner or later,
If Abdul will pray, to a glowing crater.
(He won’t.)


8 posted on 06/17/2014 5:14:22 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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