A Few Questions For Khatami...
By Gerald A. Honigman (09/10/06)
Former Iranian president and alleged moderate, Mohammad Khatami, is spending much of September visiting the United States where he’ll be making the rounds to various Islamic conferences, universities, and other public forums. One of his main messages is that American policies spawn Islamic terrorism.
He’s correct.
Islam has long seen the political and religious realms as but different sides of the same coin.
Whether enforced conquest and dominance were enhanced in the name of an imperialist Islam or via various imperialist ethnic/national movements acting under its umbrella, the expectations were basically the same...All would yield in their respective wakes.
If one consented, peace was possible.
Yet, in a nationalist era, this too would become far more complicated.
While native Jews and Christians were simply expected to accept their dhimmi status and all the subjugation and such that went along with it, fellow Muslim but different ethnic groups seeking their own political self-expression would also soon find themselves victimized by the more dominant national group. The plight of black Africans in the Sudan, Berbers in North Africa, and Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq are but a few examples.
Resistance to this Islamic and/or Arab and/or Turkish and/or Iranian (and so forth) subjugation and dominance was tantamount to being the enemy. Darfur, Halabja, and such were the consequences.
And anyone who dared challenge this mindset was the enemy as well.
So America helps create Islamic terrorism because it dares to suggest that others in the region besides Muslims--or the dominant Muslim ethnic group, be they Arabs or whomever--are entitled to their share of political rights as well in a nationalist age.
Let’s not stretch this.
America has still not called for a roadmap for Kurdistan, for example. And the bloodshed and genocide in the Sudan continues with the world--including America--still looking on, virtually helpless. There will be no trials in Geneva over this. Those are reserved for the Jews building a fence to keep Arabs from blowing apart their kids.
Yet America has taken steps in the right direction. And this has been enough to make it the Great Satan in many a Muslim Arab, Muslim Iranian, and so forth’s eyes.
Just supporting the rights of Jews, for example--half of whom were refugees from the so-called Arab/Islamic world--to a resurrected state on less than one half of one percent of the real estate in the region has challenged the basic Dar ul-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb mentality uniting the dominant religion and politics of the Middle East and North Africa (and fast spreading elsewhere).
Steps taken if not to support, at least not to actively oppose a decentralized, federalized Iraq with a thriving, autonomous Kurdish area in the north are seen by Arabs, Iranians, and Turks alike as hostile acts for reasons described above. Thirty million Kurds are simply expected to remain stateless, politically deprived, and culturally subjugated by others who have conquered and incorporated their lands over the ages. And the birth of a free Kurdistan has been declared by Arabs to be the equivalent of that of another Israel.
So, America indeed encourages the terrorism of those who believe that they have a monopoly on religious truth and political rights by simply opposing those views and supporting a wider concept of justice in the region.
Thus, a 22nd Arab state should not be created on the ashes of the Jews’ sole one. And a state for tens of millions of stateless Kurds willing to live in peace with their neighbors should be placed on the agenda far ahead of an additional Arab one which envisions itself taking the place of--not living side by side with--Israel.
Endorsing such things makes one an enemy of the dominant Islamic world outlook and those who use it to further their own nationalist causes. And while there may be other reasons as well (i.e. the historical clash of non-native imperialisms with the various local varieties), this is by far the main reason America is now hated and victimized by the jihadists.
Which brings me back to Khatami’s current visit.
He’s scheduled for a presentation at one of the world’s most prestigious universities…Harvard.
Since much of academia, the United Nations, media folks, and such treat visiting Israelis far differently than they do representatives from Muslim countries, I have some concerns.
Whether the Israeli is from the far left or the right, he or she can expect a non-stop grilling at such visits. At times, they have indeed been prevented from even speaking.
Too often those who confront the Jew of the Nations about every and all of its alleged sins, cower at any semblance of this when interviewing the Muslim world’s counterparts.
So, permit me to propose a few questions to Khatami that I fear won‘t be raised by others. I hope I‘m wrong.
Why is it that Iran can demand a second state for Arabs in “Palestine” (Arabs historically never had one there, and purely Arab Jordan was created from some 80% of the original 1920 Mandate’s borders), support groups like Hamas and Hizbullah which aim to destroy Israel (with Iran stating this as a goal itself--again, the Dar ul-Islam vs, Dar al-Harb thing), yet millions of Arabs, in what Iran calls (oil rich) Khuzestan but which for centuries has been known as Arabistan because of the Arabs who have lived and at times ruled there, remain suppressed and certainly deprived of such aspirations? Not long ago, a neighboring Arab Saddam fought a bloody war with Iran over this.
Why are the rights of Arabs to that additional state in Palestine more important than those of millions of Kurds whose historic lands you acquired over the millennia via your own pre-and post-Islam imperialist actions?
And ditto for how you deal with Azeris, Baluchis, and all others you came to dominate in a pre-nationalist age but who now have aspirations of their own as well? These folks make up at least half of your own alleged nation.
What makes Iranian national rights more valid than those of others seeking their own small share of justice and fair play in the modern age…especially since they have not been permitted this within your own domain?
Why Palestine but not Arabistan? Or Kurdistan? Or Baluchistan? Yet you’ll call an Israel less than the size of New Jersey expansionist because it refuses to return to its suicidal, 1949 armistice line-imposed, nine-mile wide, rump state status.
In short, Mr. Khatami, when will you and your country drop the hypocrisy and double standards which characterize your foreign and domestic policies?
The day that you grant independence to Arabistan or Kurdistan and such will be the day you gain the right to lecture and accuse Israel. Unlike Iran, which had plans to even outlaw the Arab language over its own “Arab problem,” Israel made Arabic the second official language of its state.
Until that time, you’re a pathetic joke.
Unfortunately, your many accomplices across the world will continue to play deaf, dumb, and blind on your behalf, allowing you to sit on your moral high horse while butchering and suppressing the rights of millions within your own borders.
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