Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech just delivered to the U.S. Congress Tuesday 3/3/15 included these accurate assessments:
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spews the oldest hatred, the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel must be annihilated—he tweets. You know, in Iran, there isn’t exactly free Internet. But he tweets in English that Israel must be destroyed.
America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad. And as states are collapsing across the Middle East, Iran is charging into the void to do just that.
Monday 3/2/15, at Breitbart.com, I published a lengthy 2-part essay (part 1 “Israel and the U.S.: Two (‘Unclean’) Dogs in the Same Fight With Iranian Jihadism”; part 2 “Jihad, Islamic Jew-Hatred, and ‘Najis’ Doctrine in Shiite Iran: Past as Prologue”) which highlighted an ugly ideology Mr. Netanyahu did not mention: the Iranian Shiite Islamic doctrine of “najis.” This doctrine elucidates the spiritual and physical “impurity/uncleanliness” of non-Muslims in general, and Jews in particular, being imposed to engender hatred against these “infidels.” Melded to Shiite Iran’s two other hegemonic pillars, as mentioned by Prime Minister Netanyahu, i.e., jihadism, and Islamic Jew-hatred, this odious doctrine, “popularized” by leading Shiite legists from al-Majlisi (d. 1699), the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era, to Green Movement spiritual “inspiration,” Ayatollah Montazeri (d. December, 2009), dehumanizes and thereby legitimates the annihilation of those deemed “unclean.”
Below are two examples of precisely what Prime Minister Netanyahu described: Ayatollah Khamenei using his twitter account to foment Jew-annihilation via jihadism and “najis” ideology. On November 9, 2014, Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated his ceaseless call for the jihad annihilation of Israel, via his twitter account, in a “question and answer” tweet: Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei’s answer to 9 key questions. #HandsOffAlAqsa “9 key questions about elimination of Israel”. Khamenei argued that the “only means” of halting alleged “Israeli crimes,” was “the elimination of this regime.” He recommended, specifically, for this purpose,
The West Bank should be armed like Gaza…those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should take action to arm the people of the West Bank.
Ayatollah Khamenei justified this call for an annihilationist jihad by concluding,
Yasser Arafat was poisoned and killed by Israel, while he had the most cooperation with the Zionists [which] proves that in the viewpoint of Israel, “peace” is simply a trick for more crimes and occupation.
A year earlier, during a Wednesday, November 20, 2013 speech before of 50,000 Basij militiamen, Khamenei proclaimed the following words, allegedly in reference to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Is the Islamic system after a war with others? Sometimes this is heard from the enemies of Iran, such as from the sinister mouth of the unclean rabid dog of the region in the Zionist regime.
The next morning (Thursday, 11/21/13), a Twitter feed associated with Khamenei shared a photo of an Israel Defense Forces canine unit with the Ayatollah’s sentiments from Wednesday, 11/20/14, reiterated as a caption referring to The Jewish State:
Israel is the sinister, unclean, rabid dog of the region.
Confirming another of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s allegations, Iran’s 1979 constitution proudly trumpets its jihadist Weltanschauung. Briefly, Shiite doctrine on jihad evolved to be indistinguishable from its Sunni counterpart by the late 13th century, i.e., open-ended warfare against non-Muslims. Iran’s theocratic Shiite Safavid and Qajar dynasties, its primary rulers from 1501-1925 (i.e., barring a period of Sunni Afghan invasion, internecine turmoil, and the heterodox reign of Nadir Shah, covering ~ 70 years during the 18th century), fully implemented this warfare doctrine, including the notion that jihad was more laudable in the absence of the 12th imam. Al-Amili (d. 1622), a distinguished jurist under Shah Abbas I, encapsulated these views in his authoritative manual of Islamic Law. He wrote, “Jihad against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam, or pay the poll-tax (per Koran 9:29)”
Predatory jihad campaigns (under the longest reigning Safavid Shah Tahmasp, r. 1524-1576) waged against Christian Georgia—punctuated by massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation—were consistent with this doctrine. The killing of non-combatants during jihad campaigns was fully sanctioned according to the prominent 14th, and 18th (to early 19th) century Shiite jurists, respectively, Allameh Helli [Hilli](d. 1325), and Sayyid Ali Tabatabai (d. 1816). Allameh Helli maintained there was a consensus among Shiite legalists that if defeating the enemy required attacking and killing children, women, and the elderly, then these actions were to be undertaken. Ali Tabatabai invoked Muhammad’s campaigns against the Medinan Jewish tribe Banu Nadir and his siege of Taif to justify such actions
This shared, mainstream Sunni and Shiite doctrine on jihad is the validating context in which Iran’s 1979 Constitutional provision on its self-proclaimed “Ideological Army” must be evaluated. Animated by the ideology of jihad, The Islamic Republic’s aggressive, conquering Weltanschauung, is self-evident. Invoking Koran 8:60, the 1979 Iranian Constitution declares:
In the formation and equipping of the country’s defense forces, due attention must be paid to faith and ideology as the basic criteria. Accordingly, the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are to be organized in conformity with this goal, and they will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in Allah’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of Allah’s law throughout the world (this is in accordance with the Koranic verse “Prepare against them whatever force you are able to muster, and strings of horses, striking fear into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them” [8:60]).
Mainstream Shiite Islamic Jew-hatred, and revitalized najis doctrine were championed with unabashed clarity by two of Iran’s—and Shi’ism’s—most important 20th century theologians and intellectuals, Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai (d. 1981), and the late Ayatollah Montazeri (d. December, 2009) represents the putatively “reformist” Green Movement’s eternal “spiritual” inspiration.
Tabatabai was a prolific writer whose influential Koranic studies and philosophical works remain widely read. Tabatabai’s “The measure of balance in the interpretation of the Quran,”, is regarded as the most important 20th century Shiite Koranic commentary. Indeed the mainstream Islamic Stuides academy has designated Tabatabai the leading modern Shiite religious scholar and philosopher, dubbing him a “theosopher.” Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaei [Tabatabai] University, named in honor of this celebrated Shiite authority and “theosopher,” is the largest specialized state social sciences university in Iran and the Middle East, with 17000 students and 500 full-time faculty members. Affirming his continued lofty stature, and relevance, an Iranian national conference was held on May 3, 2012, in Qom, dedicated to “recognizing the interpretative methods and principles used by Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaee [Tabatabai] in [his] Al-Mizan exegesis.” Allamah Tabatabai, modern doyen of Shiite Koranic exegesis, and “theosopher,” provides this gloss on Koran 5:82, arguably the central Koranic verse defining Islam’s eternal attitudes towards Jews and Judaism, is glossed by Tabatabai, thusly:
[T]he Jews, although they had the same alternatives as the Christians, and they could retain their religion with payment of the jizyah [Koranic poll tax, per verse 9:29], yet they continued in their haughtiness, became harder in their bigotry, and turned to double dealing and deception. They broke their covenants, eagerly waited calamities to befall the Muslims and dealt to them the bitterest deal…[T]he enmity of the Jews…toward the divine religion [Islam] and their sustained arrogance and bigotry, have continued exactly in the same manner even after the Prophet… These unchanged characteristics…confirm what the Mighty Book [the Koran] had indicated.
Green Movement spiritual inspiration Ayatollah Montazeri was the leading avatar of the contemporary revitalization of this odious doctrine in Iran. Professors Sorour Soroudi (d. 2002), and Eliz Sanasarian—both Iranian expatriates—have analyzed Montazeri’s views on najis, Sanasarian noting,
Montazeri saw nejasat [najis] in twelve items including blood, dogs, pigs, wine, and kafirs [i.e., primarily, non-Muslims]…A kafir’s body, including hair, nails, and body fluids was to be avoided. The purchase, sale, or receiving of meat and fat from either non-Muslim countries or a kafir were forbidden.”
Montazeri further argued that a non-Muslim’s (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.” Such “hatred” was to assure that Muslims would not succumb to corrupt, i.e., non-Islamic thoughts. The image, below, and English translation of its Farsi caption, confirm that Montazeri personally abided this ugly doctrine: “This is Iran’s deceased Ayatollah Montazeri (d. December, 2009) in the photograph where he rejected shaking the hand of a fellow Jewish Iranian. He declined the handshake because he did not want to become dirty (najis) and his cleanliness despoiled for his ‘Salaat’ preparation (for prayer, as a Muslim), by contacting the (najis, infidel) Jew.”
As described in detail in my recent book, Iran’s Final Solution For Israel, najis-inspired anti-Jewish pogroms periodically decimated the relatively small communities of Jews in theocratic Shiite Iran during the 16th through early 20th centuries. Now this revitalized Shiite Islamic animus is directed at the collective najis Jew, Israel, whose “regional filth” must be cleansed, as well as the infidel U.S., which must also be crushed over the long term, by jihad war.
