THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 173, September 7, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
POLITICAL ISLAM & THE SILENT HOLOCAUST:
Why Humanity Must Achieve Victory Over Islam
By Azam Kamguian
THE BARBARISM, TERROR, & TYRANNY OF POLITICAL ISLAM: THE CONDITIONS OF HUMAN MISERY, DEGRADATION,
OPPRESSION, & BACKWARDNESS THAT EXIST WHEN ISLAM HOLDS POLITICAL POWER & CONTROLS & DIRECTS THE
OPERATIONS OF A SOVEREIGN STATE OR OTHER POLITICAL COMMUNITY -- EPISODES OF ISLAMIC CARNAGE -- WHAT HAS
BEEN HAPPENING IN IRAN EVER SINCE THE ISLAMISTS SEIZED POWER IN THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION OF 1979 -- THE URGENCY
OF ACHIEVING THE VICTORY OF HUMANITY OVER ISLAMIST POLITICAL REGIMES & MOVEMENTS -- THE PRACTICAL STEPS
THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN TO ACHIEVE VICTORY OVER POLITICAL ISLAM
FULL STORY:
What I am going to talk about is Islam -- contemporary Islam in Iran. I will describe some episodes of Islamic carnage and pass
you briefly through what happened and still is happening in Iran. I will talk about those who have nurtured Islamic movements
or have tried to justify Islam. I will conclude by emphasizing the urgency of achieving the victory of humanity over Islam and
the practical steps that should be taken to achieve this.
The final decades of the Twentieth Century witnessed another Holocaust -- an Islamic Holocaust, one in which millions have been and
continue to be shot, decapitated, and stoned to death; in which people have been slaughtered and displaced by Islamic states,
political Islamic movements and Islamic terrorists in Iran, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Central Asia, and
now in America. The robe, turban, and Koran continue to victimize people. Any voice of dissent or freedom has been silenced
on the spot. The oppression maintained by Islamic movements primarily takes the form of opposition to the freedom of women,
by crushing women's civil liberties, by curtailing freedom of expression in the cultural and personal domains, by enforcing
brutal laws and traditions, and by the mass killing of people from young children to the elderly.
Essentially, Islam is a set of beliefs and rules that militate against human prosperity, happiness, welfare, freedom, equality, and
knowledge. Islam and a full human life are contradictory concepts, opposed to each other. Islam, under any kind of
interpretation is and always has been a strong force against secularism, modernism, egalitarianism, and women's rights.
However, political Islam (aka: Islamism, Islamo-fascism, militant Islam, and radical Islam) is a political movement that has come
to the fore against secular and progressive movements for liberation, and against cultural and intellectual advances. Violence
and disregard for human dignity are inherent in the manifestos of political Islamic groups.
The very statement that an Islamic republic exists somewhere means that brutal violence exists within it.
After political Islam took power in Iran, creating the Islamic Republic of Iran, this movement came out of the margins in other
Middle Eastern countries. It was in Iran that political Islam first organised itself into a government and thus turned into a
considerable force in the region. In Iran, under an Islamic state, violence has had another dimension -- one that is based on
Islam. Again, the very statement that an Islamic Republic exists somewhere means that brutal violence exists in it. The mere
fact that people are forced to abide by laws based on something some god is believed to have said somewhere, or that some
prophet has said, itself represents a form of violence. If anyone protests against such laws, they are subject to punishment
and suppression. Islam means the worst and the most ferocious kind of violence. Iran is the most transparent picture of what
Islam is capable of doing. I will try to pass you briefly through this period of violence, atrocities, and misogyny -- a bloodbath
committed by Islam in power, by Islam controlling and directing the operations of a sovereign state, by Islam in the political
arena -- in short, by political Islam.
In Iran, I lived through thousands of days when Islam shed blood. Since 1979, a hundred thousand men, women and children
have been executed in the name of Allah. I have lived through days when I, along with thousands of men and women
throughout the country, looked for the names of our lovers, husbands, wives, friends, daughters, sons, colleagues, and
students in newspapers which daily announced the names of the executed. I lived through days when the soldiers of Allah
attacked bookstores and publishing houses and burned books. I lived through days of armed attacks on universities, killing
students all over the country. I lived through were weeks and months of bloody attacks on workers' strikes and
demonstrations. I lived through years of assassination of opponents inside and outside Iran years of suppression and brutal
murder of atheists, freethinkers, socialists, trade union leaders and activists, Marxists, Bahais, women who resisted the misery
of hijab and the rule of sexual apartheid, and many others who were none of these, who were arrested in the streets and then
executed simply because of their innocent non-Islamic appearance. And, to the hundred thousand murdered in Iran, must be
added the millions who have died in Algeria, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. All of this constituted a silent
holocaust about which the civilised world does nothing.
I, along with thousands of political prisoners, was tortured by order of the representative of Allah and Sharia, tortured, while
the verses of the Qur'an about nonbelievers were played in the torture chambers. The voice reading the Qur'an
was mixed with our cries of pain from lashes and other brutal forms of torture.
They raped women political prisoners for the sake of Allah, and did so in expectation of his reward. They prayed before
raping them.
Thousands were shot to death by execution squads while Qur'anic verses were recited. Prisoners were awakened every day
at dawn to the sound of gunshots aimed at their friends and cellmates. From the numbers of shots you could work out how
many had been murdered that day. The killing machine did not stop for a minute. The fathers and mothers, husbands and
wives who received the bloody clothes of their loved ones had to pay for the bullets.
The Islamists created an Islamic Auschwitz. Many of the best, the most passionate and progressive people were massacred.
The dimensions of the horror are beyond imagining.
From that time on, love, happiness, smiling, any free human interaction was forbidden. Islam took over completely.
This is what happened to my generation. But it was not limited only to my generation. It had bloody consequences for our
parents’ generation and for the next generation. During those years, millions of children were brainwashed and manipulated.
The crimes committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and political Islam in the region are comparable to the crimes committed
by Nazism and Fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s, and to the genocide in Rwanda and Indonesia.
Yet, these are events of which humanity around the world has been largely unaware. These events constituted a Holocaust
which, if humanity knew of its dimensions and intensity, would certainly cause humanity to weep. With the downfall of such
tyrannical political regimes, the world will finally be given an opportunity to know the truth, since victims will speak
out, prisons and torture chambers will be exposed, torturers will make heart-wrenching confessions, Islamic prosecutors and
judges will reveal what they did to their victims behind prison walls. Then people all over the world will see what a despicable
phenomenon Islam is. They will finally find out the truth about those governments that backed the Islamic movements and
the Western mainstream media that deliberately blocked people's access to the truth.
The aftermath of the September 11, 2001, Islamist terrorist attacks on the U.S.A. exposed some of the reality of what is
happening to people living under the constant tyranny and terror of Islam. The attacks exposed something of the tragedy that
befell women under the Taliban. It revealed, to some extent, the true substance of Islam. But it became plain to see that this
carnage is Islamic. It became evident that it is all about Islam.
When I came to the West in the beginning of the 1990s, I was faced by the fact that the majority of intellectuals, the mainstream
media, the academic world, and many feminists, in the name of respecting other cultures and religions, were trying to justify
Islam by dividing it into fundamentalist and moderate, progressive and reactionary, Medina's and Mecca's, folksy and
non-folksy, poisonous and edible. For people like me, firsthand victims of the Islamic Holocaust, it was suffocating to listen to
and to have to refute endless tales to justify this terror, atrocity, and misogyny. Parallel to this Islamic carnage, apologists for
Islam try to divert people's righteous loathing for Islam and for the political Islamic movement, to limit it to a hatred of
fundamentalism. They attempt to reduce the anti-Islamic struggle to anti-fundamentalism. They keep telling us that what we
loathe is fundamentalism, not the "true" Islam, the "real" Islam. They pledge "reform in Islam" and the application of a
"positive interpretation of the Qur'an" to women's rights by "linguistic turn." They raise the idea of Islamic feminism
and try to attach a human face to the monstrous face of Islam against women.
The rights of freedom of expression, equality of men and women, and a secular state apply to people in the 'Third World' too.
Isn't it shameful that we have to argue about it?
The truth should be spoken. We shouldn't let apologists for Islam play with people's lives any more. We should say clearly
and loudly that it is all about Islam. What we have seen is the reality of Islam in power. The fact is that Western Liberal and
Leftwing intellectuals feel guilty about past colonial history and are apologetic to the "Third World". They consider the
"Third World" a given entity, where people are keen to suffer under the rotten rules of Islam, where people are happy to be
deprived of the achievements of human civilization in the Twenty-first Century. According to them, women desire sexual
apartheid, girls love to be segregated from boys, and people hate civil rights and individual freedom. In their view, people are
the allies of Islamic movements and Islamic governments. This is indeed a distorted image of the realities. This is an inverted
colonialism. In this picture, people who are fighting for civil rights and secularism and against political Islam do not exist. This
self-centered mentality in which everything should revolve around the guilt of Western pseudo-intellectuals is appalling.
Again, the rights of freedom of expression, equality of men and women, and a secular state apply to people in the "Third
World" too. Isn't it shameful that we have to argue about it?
Contrary to this view, there is a fight going on, and it has been going on for over 20 years. It is a fight between progressive
movements in the Middle East and in the West on the one side, and political Islam on the other. The records of the daily
struggle of people and the non-Islamic opposition in Islam-ridden countries, and the news of the daily resistance of the youth
and women in Iran, demonstrate the reality of peoples' demands in the "Third World." Since 1979, Iranian society has changed
dramatically and deeply. The movement for secularism and religious freedom, for modern ideas and culture, for individual
freedom, for women's liberation and civil liberties has been widespread and deep. Disgust for dogmatic religion and the
backward culture of those in power is immense.
Secularism must be defended actively and resolutely in Islam-ridden countries. Universal human and civil rights must be the
standard. Secularism is not only realizable, but also, after the experiences of Iran, Afghanistan, the Sudan and Algeria, is an
urgent and pressing need and demand of the people of the region. The demand for secularism must push for absolute and
complete separation of religion from the state; complete separation of religion from education; freedom of religion and
non-religious views; laws free of religious content; and for religion to be declared the private affair of individuals. A
conscious struggle must be conducted against the power of organised dogmatic religion. All religious denominations and
sects should be officially registered as private organizations and enterprises, subject to regulations and laws.
To realise these ideals and demands, we need a massive joint force. Despite the struggles of the non-Islamic opposition in the
Middle East and in the West in the past decades, all that has been visible has been occasional reports of the barbarity of
political Islam and the reactions of Western governments, media and "intellectual" apologists for Islam. But, there is a third
force, a sleeping giant who can turn the situation around. If this giant awakes, this era could see the beginning of positive
changes and the realization of ideals that were almost abandoned during the final decades of the Twentieth Century.
Humanity must rise up and defend itself against the barbarity of Islam.
The ranks of civilised humanity form a massive force that has, so far, sadly been silenced. It can come to the fore. For the
future of humanity, it must come to the fore. If there is to be a future, it is in the formation of an active, progressive, and
freedom-loving policy at the forefront of the ranks of the people. Otherwise, the stage is left open to terrorism, barbarism,
and tyranny. I conclude with the hope that in the coming years of the Twenty-first Century, we will witness the victory of
humanity over Islam. All freedom-lovers and secularist forces around the world should come together in a joint effort to
combat political Islam; to promote secularism, egalitarianism, and freedom in the societies that Islam oppresses.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
War & Peace in the Real World
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
Azam Kamguian is an Iranian writer and women's rights activist. She was born in 1958 and started her political activities in
1976. She was a medical student at Pahlavi University in Shiraz until arrested and imprisoned for a year for organising
student protests. The second time she was imprisoned for political activities was after the Islamist took power and the
"Islamic Republic of Iran" came into being. Azam was released from prison in 1983, after a period of brutal treatment in
prison, treatment including constant torture and solitary confinement. She resisted all the pressure and kept her real political
identity undiscovered. Lest this be discovered, placing her life in real danger, Azam fled to Kurdistan, a region free of
Islamist control at that time, and there, she continued the struggle for eight years, doing so until the beginning of 1990s,
when she left Kurdistan for America.
Kamguian has been writing since 1979. She has written several books, including Islam, Women, Challenges and
Perspectives, On Religion, Women's Liberation and Political Processes in the Middle East, Islam &
Women's Rights, and Iranian Women's Movement for Equality.
Kamguian is Founder and Chairperson of the Committee to Defend Women's Rights in the Middle East and editor of the
Committee's bulletin, Women in the Middle East. Azam's numerous articles and Interviews on women, religion, Islam,
and social issues have been published and broadcast in various Persian as well as English, Swedish, Finish, Danish, French,
Turkish, and Arabic mainstream newspapers, journals, and TV and radio programs. She is also member of the editorial board
of Medusa, a women's journal in Farsi.
Throughout her activities, Azam has organised several campaigns in the defence of women's rights in the Middle East and
has advocated Middle Eastern women's rights and secularism in politics and government, doing so in various international,
regional and national congresses and conferences.
Currently, she lives and works in London, England.
Azam Kamguian 's article is republished here with the permission of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society
(ISIS), an organization formed to promote within Islamic society the ideals of rationalism, secularism, constitutional
democracy and human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief, freedom of
intellectual and scientifiv inquiry, and freedom of conscience and religion. The article was originally published on the
Institute's website, located at http://www.secularislam.org.
Kamguian's article was adapted from the speech she delivered, in 2002, at the World Congress of the International
Humanist and Ethical Union.
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