THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 128, July 18, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
PARALLEL BETRAYALS: IRANIAN REVOLUTION & ARAB SPRING
By Raymond Ibrahim
FROM THE 1979 IRANIAN REVOLUTION TO THE CURRENT ARAB REVOLUTIONS -- THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNED: HOW ISLAMISTS MANAGE TO OBTAIN &
CONSOLIDATE ABSOLUTE POWER -- OUTRIGHT LIES & FALSE PROMISES, JUSTIFIED THROUGH ISLAMIC DOCTRINES LIKE TAQIYYA & TAWRIYA -- GRADUAL
IMPLEMENTATION OF THEIR LONGTERM PLAN TO ACHIEVE MASTERSHIP OF THE WORLD -- EXPLOITATION OF DEMOCRACY TO EMPOWER SHARIA
FULL STORY:
Many are the lessons to be learned between the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the current revolutions of the Arab world.
Consider the issue of the hijab, the female "veil" — the proliferation of which, according to one former Islamist and associate of al-Qa'ida's Ayman Zawahiri, is
associated with a Muslim society's downward spiral into oppression and terror.
Prior to Egypt's presidential elections, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Muhammad Morsi, assured the nation's liberals and secularists that, as President, he
would certainly not enforce the hijab:
"Many people are speaking nonsense, saying that I will impose
the hijab against the will of the people; no one is going to force
anyone to wear a specific uniform."
These are famous words, spoken almost verbatim some 33 years earlier, in Iran, at the time of the 1979 Revolution. In fact, during the early days of the Revolution,
Ayatollah Mahmud Taleghani, a popular mullah, to reassure the secularists who participated in the overthrow of the Shah that an Islamic government would
certainly not interfere with their freedoms, declared in the March 11, 1979, edition of Iran's newspaper, Ettela'at, that "The hijab will not be a matter of
coercion."
The rest is history. Within months of the founding of the Islamic "Republic," the 1967 Family Protection Law was repealed, female government workers were made
to wear the hijab, women were barred from becoming judges, sex-segregation laws were promulgated, the marriage age for girls was dropped to 13, and married
women were barred from attending regular schools. Today, Iranian women are regularly beaten if they are not dressed in appropriate hijab.
The parallels between Iran and Egypt do not end there. While, today, it is standard to think of the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a purely Islamic affair, in fact, many
of the revolutionaries were secular, liberal, Marxist, non-Muslim, etc. The one goal that glued them altogether was the desire to overthrow the autocratic Shah.
Many of these Iranians did not want an Islamic government, certainly not a theocracy. And, indeed, not just the Ayatollah Taleghani, but the Ayatollah Khomeini
himself played down Sharia's draconian role to mobilize all these divergent segments of society — until he was fully entrenched in power, that is.
In short, the Iranian Revolution began as a heterodox affair, with different revolutionary factions and different ideological agendas, but it ended with the rise of a
totalitarian Islamic "republic."
Sound familiar? This is precisely what is happening today in Egypt, where the one unifying goal of the revolution was the overthrow of the Mubarak regime;
where many Egyptians are secularist, liberal, Christian, etc., and certainly do not want an Islamic government; and where the Islamists, like the Muslim
Brotherhood, are busy reassuring everyone that all their freedoms will be preserved.
Based on the Iranian model and the ongoing "Arab Spring," two lessons emerge as to how Islamists manage to consolidate power: (1) through outright lies and
false promises, justified through Islamic doctrines like taqiyya and tawriya; and (2) through gradual implementation. This is how the Mullahs achieved power in
Iran, and this is how the Muslim Brotherhood — which is on record saying that its gradual, longterm goal is "mastership of the world" — is working to achieve
power in Egypt, seen as the first domino on the road to Caliphate.
Speaking of gradualism, here is a telling anecdote from Egypt: back in 1953, when the Muslim Brotherhood's leader asked President Gamel Abdel Nasser to enforce
the hijab on women — in 1953, hardly any Egyptian women wore it — his suggestion was met with laughter and ridicule. Half a century later, the hijab is
commonplace in Egypt.
Thus, history prepares to repeat itself, even as the world prepares to act surprised — all in accord with that age-old adage, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me." One may forgive those Iranians and others who fell for the lies of the Islamists during the 1979 Revolution: there were no similar large scale
precedents to learn from, certainly not from the modern era; the world was just beginning to confront political Islam.
Today, however, as Islamists exploit democracy to empower Sharia — and after more than three decades' worth of Islamist lies, betrayals, and broken promises, all
justified by Islamic doctrines — for anyone to still take them at their word, well, that is a big "shame on you."
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Raymond Ibrahim, a historian of Islam, Islamism and the Middle East, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center, an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College, and
the editor of The Al-Qa'ida Reader, a collection of tranlations of key texts and documents of the Islamist movement.
Ibrahim's translations of the religious texts and political propaganda comprising this collection help readers comprehend
the origins, development, history, and serious danger of the Islamist war doctrines of Usama bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the Founders of Al-Qa'ida.
The foregoing article by Raymond Ibrahim was originally published in Front Page Magazine, June 18, 2012, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/3264/iranian-revolution-arab-spring)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
June 18, 2012
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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