- Introduction:
-
- We must now take into consideration the revolutionary
change in the nature and character of imperialism which occurred in the
20th Century. We shall examine its repercussions as far as the Islamic
Revolution in Iran is concerned, and (in Part 7) its relationship to more
recent events as witnessed in the brutal and immoral wars of aggression,
being waged against the peoples of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, by
the `Neocon` [2]Zionist forces of the Illuminati cabal, which although
acting in the guise of US Imperialism, are in reality the visible and physical
manifestations of a concerted Luciferian assault against the Umma.
-
- It is now impossible for all but those whose hearts have
been hardened by the evil one, not to discern the ultimate goal of this
aggression as being the complete destruction of Islam as a comprehensive
belief system, removing from Muslims their moral anchor and compass, thereby
substituting a perverse Satanic mirror image of what has already happened
here in the West in its stead.
-
- The New Imperialists:
-
- To the uninformed mass of humanity, it appeared as if
a British imperialism which had prevailed in Iran without interruption
since the end of World War I, was supplanted after the end of World War
II by an American one - or, rather, by one consisting of an alliance of
Rockefeller America and Rothschild Israel. Indeed, from quite early in
the 1950s an American-Israeli presence was the dominating foreign influence
in Iran; and yet strangely, it was almost exclusively against the Americans
that the hostility of the Mullahs and the masses was directed, culminating
in the invasion of the US embassy and the subsequent hostage drama, and
it's accompanying media circus.
-
- However, the reality was very different from the fiction,
for what looked like an American-Israeli alliance, was in fact only the
public picture presented by the `Hidden Face` of an altogether different
model of imperialism, which had come into existence, displacing and replacing
all the separate national imperiums. What began quite early in the twentieth
century, and proceeded at a much accelerated pace after the end of World
War II, was the progressive dismantling of all the separate national imperiums,
including the American, and their subsequent absorption into something
unprecedented in recorded history -- a global financial imperialism.
-
- Instead of the moral illegitimacy, or political pathology
of parasitical conspiracies of `special interests` inside the different
Western nations, henceforth, a vast cosmopolitan parasitism of `special
interests` would operate on a global basis, and with an endgame that was
far more ambitious, being nothing less than a world economic and political
imperium; a New World Order. Nationalist imperialisms were thus subsumed
in a single international imperialism in the same way as we have seen very
large commercial, industrial and financial enterprises swallowed and ingested
into the concentrated ownership and control of vastly bigger, mainly financial
conglomerates.
-
- The overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia in 1917,
along with the dispossession of all the European powers of their colonial
empires, and the setting up of the United Nations as a world government-in-waiting,
were all part of a power-concentrating process which began in the nineteenth
century and visibly can be seen to be continuing at an accelerating pace
to this day.
-
- This metamorphosis in the nature of imperialism was one
of the consequences resulting from a radical change in the realm of high
finance, which can briefly be explained as follows: For a long time after
the beginning of the modern industrial era, finance-capital (not to be
confused with private enterprise capital) existed almost entirely in national
concentrations: there was a British finance-capitalism, nominally answerable
to a British government, which was in turn nominally answerable to an electorate;
a German finance-capitalism, a French one, a Dutch, and so on, each joined
to a national government and each government nominally answerable to a
national electorate.
-
- These nations were, in fact, plutocracies; each one an
instance of what Hobson calls "social pathology," capable of
maintaining themselves in power with a public opinion not sought and consulted,
as before, but created as required, by news-media propaganda, patronage
and other rewards of the business world. Money had become the measure of
all things, with a ruling elite drawn less from the land and more and more
from the factory and the counting-house. From around about the middle of
the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, these national concentrations
of financial power were in vigorous competition, a major example of this
being the scramble for colonies and markets in the so-called underdeveloped
world. What then happened was that the many national vortices of financial
power were drawn into a global vortex of financial power.
-
- There can be no doubt that a major factor in bringing
about this change in the realm of high finance was the long-continued existence
within the different nations of Europe of Jewish banking families or dynasties
which had always specialized in transnational operations. The story of
how these financial dynasties consolidated their power on an international
basis is explained at some length by Prof. Carroll Quigley in his 1300-page
"History of the World in Our Time," Tragedy and Hope.[1]
-
- It all began with what Quigley called "the third
stage in the development of capitalism ... of overwhelming significance
in the history of the 20th century, and its ramifications and influences
subterranean and even occult." He adds:
-
- "Essentially what it did was to take the old disorganized
and localized methods of handling money and credit and organize them on
an international basis."
- But it was in the 1930s that the truly revolutionary
change was to occur, when the control of this international financial system
appeared to essentially pass out of the hands of those who had visibly
created it -- the likes of J.P. Morgan in America and Montagu Norman in
Britain and at last openly into the hands of a `cosmopolitan` elite,
no longer `high Episcopalian, Anglophile, and European-culture-conscious.`
The shift occurred at all levels, says Dr. Quigley, and was evident in
the decline of J.P. Morgan, which had hitherto dominated Wall Street.
-
- It can thus be reasonably said that much of what was
to happen in Iran and in many other parts of the world after the end of
World War II had its parallel in the United States, where the ostensibly
episcopalian Illuminati Bloodline families, [3]found themselves without
the power to control their own universities, and where their national newspaper,
the New York Herald-Tribune, fell into irreversible decline and died, like
a ring-barked forest giant. The use of words like America and American
in any discussion of world politics can thus be grossly misleading unless
it is clearly understood that `American power` has ceased to be essentially
American.
-
- The dismantling of what was an essentially British oil
empire in Iran, and its reorganization thereafter, on an international
basis (as was done with Belgium's copper empire in the Congo in 1960) was
therefore to be expected, having much the same effect as that produced
by supposed `decolonization` in so many other parts of the world. The Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company (AIOC) had been exploiting the oil fields in Khuzistan since
1901, and the demarcation of those fields, covering an area of 15,000 square
miles, has been set out in a 1933 agreement. This giant company, writes
Vincent Monteil, trained British subjects to take an interest in Iran's
internal affairs, and "took pleasure in appointing the number of votes
in the 'free' elections." In return -- to take only one year as an
example -- AIOC paid Iran royalties or rent of £10 million in 1949,
compared with £28 million paid in tax on profit alone to the British
treasury.
-
- In 1950, following the Shah's visit to the United States,
where he held talks with President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson,
the `Americans` began to display an increased interest in the Iranian oil
industry. A contingent of oil experts, businessmen and technicians visited
Iran, and began to lay the `powder-trail` for a political explosion which
was to take place less than twelve months later.
-
- By making it widely known how much more generously they
treated their partners in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and elsewhere, an incendiary
atmosphere was thus created as AIOC began negotiating for a further renewal
of its contract. In the wildly confusing situation that ensued, all likelihood
suggests, that it was the British who were initially instrumental in persuading
the Shah to appoint the army chief-of-staff, Ali Razmara, as prime minister,
charged with the task of handling these negotiations. However, typically,
the British were soon conducting a furious campaign of character-assassination
against Razmara, while at the same time, the Americans sought to bolster
his regime with aid and by upgrading their own embassy as a visual display
of sincerity. This little drama within a drama ended suddenly, and murderously
when Razmara was assassinated, supposedly as a warning to any politician
who dared to frustrate the growing demand for nationalization of the oil
industry.
-
- The killing was said to have been carried out by the
`Fedayen of Islam` (Martyrs for Islam), but it was generally believed,
and was undoubtedly the case, that orders for the assassination had come
from the British by way of one of their former employees. But the question
why begs asking? A draft bill for the renewal of the agreement with AIOC,
introduced by Gen. Razmara, was defeated and a few weeks later, another
bill introduced by Dr. Mohammad Mussadeq, [4]nationalizing the oil industry,
was passed. Mussadeq was then appointed prime minister and Iran found itself
involved in a titanic struggle with the ever furtive and treacherous British
at the World Court and the United Nations. A great British company with
many years of experience in Iran evidently had no intention of surrendering
without a struggle.
-
- Writes Amir Taheri: "That the United States wanted
Mussadeq to succeed was demonstrated by the increase in American aid from
$500,000 in 1950 to nearly $24 million two years later." [19] However,
if the Iranians expected the Americans to help them to re-establish the
oil industry on a national basis, they were soon to be disappointed, for
American policy was to be dictated by considerations of a kind wholly inaccessible
to the scrutiny of ordinary politicians and journalists. Whether, therefore,
it was the Rothschild British or the Rockefeller Americans who were responsible
for the small army revolt which dislodged Mussadeq has continued to this
day to be a debatable question in Iran.
-
- As a sincere nationalist politician enjoying much support
from the religious class, himself being a practising Muslim, Mussadeq had
performed the task required of him and had now to be removed. The Americans,
therefore, joined willingly enough in the world-wide champaign, engineered
by the British, to make it impossible for the Iranians to make a go of
their nationalized oil industry. In the ensuing turmoil the shah hurriedly
left the country, and as quickly returned after order had been established
by the army.
-
- The Point 4 Plan:
-
- The Iranians may have found a key to the riddle of one
of the most troubling periods in their much-troubled history in something
that happened in Washington in 1949. This was a speech by Mr. Truman in
Congress inaugurating his first full term as President, in which he unveiled
a grandiose plan to "save the world from Communism" (so soon
after America had saved the Soviet Union from Hitler!). This plan proclaimed
a "bold new program for underdeveloped areas," a program "to
greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations" and "to
raise substantially their standards of living." The executors and
agents of this plan, which came to be known as `Point 4` and Agency for
International Development" or AID, were soon afterwards pressing for
American assistance and advice on all the so-called `underdeveloped` countries,
including Iran. What President Truman had presented, as we now can see
more clearly, was the prefiguration of a new global financial imperialism
whose primary purpose would be to dismantle and dislodge all the national
economic imperialisms of the preceding 150 years.
-
- A Washington report at the time said that American officials
Concerned with President Truman's "Point 4" were working to the
principle of "a new type of benevolent imperialism designed to spread
prosperity without exacerbating political nationalism." Put more simply;
if the project was initiated, "American nationals will serve on the
governmental as well as the technical level in the politically independent
countries concerned." Although seen in many quarters as being a disturbing
innovation with regards to Asia and Africa, in Washington, it was to be
regarded as only an extension of a system which was already in operation
in Latin America.
-
- Following President Truman's speech, former London Times
foreign correspondent Douglas Reed wrote that he had a strong feeling that
he had read it all before somewhere. And so it turned out he had, in a
book by Earl Browder, leader of the American Communist Party, entitled
` Tehran, Our Path in War and Peace.` In Browder's words: "Our government
can create a series of giant industrial development corporations, each
in partnership with some other government or group of governments, and
set them to work upon large-scale plans of rail-road and highway building,
agricultural and industrial development, and all-round modernization in
all the devastated and undeveloped areas of the world. Closely related
socially, economically and politically with Africa are the Near Eastern
countries of Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Trans-Jordan.
Here also a broad program of economic development is called for."
-
- Significantly, it was a capitalist America and not a
Communist Soviet Union which the Communist Party boss called on to undertake
this ambitious program of financial and economic imperialism. Douglas Reed
could only marvel: "There must be in America under President Truman,
as under President Roosevelt, some group or force strong or persuasive
enough to sell Communist aims to political leaders and simultaneously to
convince them that these will stop Communism."
-
- And it is to the same `hidden` source must be traced
the true intentions of the architects of American state policy both during
and after WWII, as being entirely distinct from that policy as publicly
stated; namely, the promotion of two causes that were never publicly declared,
but simply came to pass: the unhindered advance of the Red Army into the
heartland of Europe and to the Pacific coast of Asia, and the continuous
pouring of billions of financial aid every year into the then-new state
of Israel.
-
- Grand Design and Counter-Revolution:
-
- The Ayatollah Khomeini's [5]`angry young men` who seized
the American embassy after the revolution, did not fail to notice that
many of the most telling policy directives from the State Department in
Washington failed to tally with reports and interpretations from those
men on the spot, who afterwards had to bear the full impassioned brunt
of Iranian animosity. Members of the American embassy in Tehran, says Taheri,
were led to understand that they should not report what they saw but, rather
what Washington wanted them to report. What this meant was that a grand
strategy and system of tactics were being implemented to which only a small
inner core of policy-makers at the top were privy, creating an environment
in which deeply clandestine purposes were heavily masked with an ostentation
of innocent and benevolent intentions. The effect was an utterly baffling
mélange of contradictory utterances and actions. As Taheri put it:
-
- "The behind-the-scenes drama enacted over more than
eight years in Tehran, Washington, Jerusalem, London, Cairo and a dozen
other cities reflected the realities of a secret world which obeyed few
rules either of international conduct or of individual morality. It is
in this broader context that the Iran-gate fiasco might be properly understood."
- This `viper's nest` of intrigue outside Iran had its
own parallels inside the country. In the aftermath of the Revolution, all
Free-masonic Lodges in Iran were closed, and their archives seized, confirming
what many had suspected. Many of them were controlled by Jews or Baha'is[6]
of Jewish origin, providing another channel of secret communication with
Israel and Zionism in general.
-
- So, how did the American Communist Party leader come
to present in broad outline an ambitious program for Third World development,
to be undertaken later at great cost by the United States and a wide network
of international agencies? Another question: How did it happen, and how
was it possible, for Armand Hammer, son of Julius Hammer, one of the founders
of the American Communist Party, to proceed to Russia immediately after
the Bolshevik Revolution and begin at once to organize a massive transfer
of finance, industrial equipment and technology from the capitalist West
to its supposed enemy, the Communist East?
-
- The short answer to both questions will be found in what
the German historian Oswald Spengler wrote immediately after the Bolshevik
Revolution: "There is no proletarian movement, not even a Communist
one, which does not operate in the interest of money, in the direction
indicated by money and for the period permitted by money, and all this
without the idealist in its ranks having the slightest suspicion of the
fact."
-
- Those who have penetrated the mystery of the strangely
ambivalent relationship of high finance and Communism will not be surprised
to learn that the Soviet Union supported the Shah to the end, and that
articles in Pravda about events in Iran were almost exactly the same in
tone and content as those in the New York Times.
-
- If the unfolding history of our century can be said to
be the product of an alliance of money and intellect, in the service of
`Magical Forces.` (The Luciferian Conspiracy), it was the role of Earl
Browder and very many of his kind, only a few of them to be identified
as Communists, to take care of the intellectual half of this alliance.
Writes Professor Hamid Algar:
-
- "The return of the shah in 1953 inaugurated the
intense period of a quarter of a century of unprecedented massacre and
oppression, the intensive exploitation of the resources of the Iranian
people by the imperialism of the East and West, the Western camp being
headed then by the United States rather than Britain."
- This then was the new imperialism, `American` and Israeli
in appearance but international and `cosmopolitan` in character, drawing
into its orbit power-wielding elements from all the previous national imperialisms,
financial, political and intellectual. The Iranian oil industry, hitherto
a British monopoly, was thus `internationalized,` the nominal national
ownership of it left intact but its management entrusted to a consortium
owned by AIOC, renamed British Petroleum (40 per cent), eight United States
oil trusts (40 per cent), Shell (14 per cent) and French Petroleum (6 per
cent).
-
- The Great Satan:
-
- We must now try to make some sense out of the phantasmagoria
of confused and seemingly contradictory facts which emerged in the struggle
between the Shah and his people that was to ensue.
-
- The thrust of the Iranian struggle following World War
II can be seen in the broadest terms as being a confrontation of mutually
antagonistic hierarchies of ideas, values and vortices of power, actual
or potential, the one belonging to the West and the other to the East,
the one having modern America as its grand symbol of human progress and
welfare, and the other regarding America as the arch-symbol of political
illegitimacy, `The Great Satan.` And the Shah, because he was unable imagine
any form of future for Iran except one modelled on the industrialized West,
and because he, too, regarded his country's religious class as the great
obstacle to progress in that direction, allowed himself to become, in every
way, the puppet of the foreign powers being amassed by the Illuminists.
-
- An assortment of ideological forces came into existence
after 1953 intended to combat the dictatorship of the Shah and his subservience
to the foreign powers; but behind all of them, a religious influence was
increasingly becoming discernible; so much so, that even socialism, a secular
ideology borrowed from the West, reappeared in Iran as "The Movement
of God-fearing Socialists." This increase in religious influence came
to a `head` in 1963 with the sudden emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini,
who was to play a role in the revolution resembling I some ways,if only
superficially that of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the seventh century,
combining in a remarkable way the functions of a religious and secular
leader.
-
- The Shah's increasing determination to enforce his will
on the Iranian population, was met with a corresponding increase in the
power and influence of a religious class which symbolized the will and
instinct of the mass of the people. The Shah's power to enforce his will
was enormously increased by:
-
- 1) an increase in the amount of money at his disposal
as oil production was resumed, and again as the price of oil rocketed;
-
- And;
-
- 2) close cooperation with the external power, especially
with its Israeli component, in the sophisticated use of secret police and
prisons as instruments of terror and compulsion.
-
- After 1963, even moderate opposition would result in
either forced exile, imprisonment, torture and even murder, and the army
was utilized to crush mass demonstrations mounted by the Ulama[7] in Tehran
and other cities, when thousands of people were killed. In 1975 the director
of Amnesty Internationals British section described Iran as the "world
leader" in torture, executions after sham trials, and widespread political
imprisonment. The cutting edge of the power which the Shah was able to
bring to exert on his internal opponents was almost entirely provided by
the United States and Israel; these were in reality however, never really
separate entities in this regard, but only two aspects of one and the same
world-revolutionary force.
-
- The facts prove that American and Israeli influence were
at all times inseparable. Prof. Algar says that after the coup of 1953,
which ousted Mussadeq, there was cooperation at all levels, especially
in intelligence and security work. He adds:
-
- "After a certain point it appears that the task
of staffing the Savak was taken over by Mossad, the Israeli security, from
the CIA although the CIA always retained the right of supervision over
the operations of Savak. I know of many people who report having been
- interrogated and tortured by Israelis while in the custody
of Savak." Algar continues: "There was overwhelming similarity
between the two of utter dependence on the United States. Israel is hardly
independent of the United States-or, rather, the matters are the reverse,
Israel certainly commands more votes in the Senate than does the White
House."
- Corrupting Power: "Lie In Peace Cyrus For We Are
Awake."
-
- The career of Shah Mohammad Reza [8]illustrates to perfection
Lord Acton's maxim that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely." Through the process of unrestrained personal ambition
the Shah became wholly separated from his own people- the corruption of
leadership in its ultimate form. He believed in what he was doing, enjoyed
the support of the greatest concentration of power outside his own country,
and was able to draw from his oil industry so much wealth that he needed
nothing from his people except their utter submission.
-
- From 1970 he was even able to expand his influence abroad
by giving away vast quantities of money, having raised his own country
to a position of power and influence unprecedented in centuries. Writes
Taheri: "Between 1968 and 1978 Iran earned more than $100,000 million
from oil exports. More than 10 percent of that was used in the form of
loans or outright gifts to friendly countries. The United Kingdom received
from $1,200 million in loans ... In West Germany Iran purchased substantial
shares in Krupps and Benz as a means of saving them from financial difficulties...
More than seven hundred "key personalities" in some 30 countries
were on the secret Iranian payroll from 1979 onwards."
-
- Iran's huge arms expenditure in the wake of the 1973-74
oil-price rise helped Western economies to avoid recession. At the same
time, under the Nixon-Kissinger doctrine [9], Iran was seen as the regional
power that would defend Western interests and act as policeman in the Persian
Gulf and Indian Ocean. The Shah had assigned to himself a role in history
comparable, in his imagination, only with that of the founder of the Persian
Empire in 600 BC. Of this he informed the world in October 1971 when, flanked
by his generals, he presented himself before the tomb of that great monarch,
now little more than a pile of stones in a vast arid plain, and ceremoniously
read a eulogy which began with the words: "Lie in peace, Cyrus, for
we are awake!" This was followed by a party among the grandiose ruins
at Persepolis attended by more than five hundred dignitaries, including
kings, presidents and prime ministers from sixty countries. All this, as
the shah remarked at the time, was intended to mark "the rebirth of
the Persian Empire and Iran's return to the forefront of human experience."
-
- Other products of the Shah's megalomania were the proposed
1,200-acre Shahestan-e-Pahlavi architectural extravaganza at Tehran and
20 planned nuclear power plants. This kind of development favoured Western
economics and Western contractors who shared the pickings with a new class
of Iranian monopolists and technocrats, but did little or nothing for the
Iranian economy as a whole. Carried away by this dream of national greatness,
what the Shah seemed unable to understand was that the role he had assigned
to himself was wholly subordinate to another which had been assigned to
him by those who were encouraging him in his ambitions. In other words,
that the Iranian national drama, so impressive when viewed separately,
was intended to be no more than an episode in a vastly bigger world-historical
drama.
-
- So, it is the motivational system of the likes of Henry
Kissinger - during most of the 1970s the Shah's warmest `friend` and most
trusted adviser -- that calls for some consideration. How and for what
purpose were these powerful individuals trying to use the Shah? A short
but inadequate answer is that the new international cosmopolitan imperialism,
spearheaded by Israel, had come to regard the Arab world and its Islamic
religions as being by far the greatest hindrance to the attainment of its
great objective, a one-world government which it could control at all levels;
and Iran, with its considerable non-Arabic population and huge oil wealth,
was seen as a possible countervailing force which could be used against
the Arab world.
-
- The first step was to make Israel virtually synonymous
with America in terms of foreign support in all fields, and then, by steady
progression, provide the Shah with a means of suppressing all internal
opposition. In fact, the Shah's security forces were virtually taken over
by the Israelis and reinforced with non-Islamic personnel, largely recruited
from non-Muslim population elements, especially the Bahais, largely people
of Jewish descent no longer practising the Jewish religion. This gave the
Shah an instrument which could be used with the utmost ruthlessness against
the population and against the religious class in particular.
-
- The commanding importance attached to Iran as a piece
on the chequerboard of global power politics was emphasized shortly after
the fall of the Shah when support from both sides of the so-called Iron
Curtain was given to Iraq, and when the most flagrant violations of international
law by Iraq, including the first attacks on neutral shipping, and even
the use of poison gas, were disregarded or excused. The external powers,
the USSR included, also doggedly refused to name Iraq as the aggressor.
Then when it had become clear that Iraq could not win, the combined efforts
of the external powers had to be used to prevent an Iranian victory --
an exercise which eventually called for direct American military action
in the Persian gulf.
-
- The `Mind`field:
-
- The Iranian struggle was won and lost on the battleground
of the mind. All the ideas which the Shah could muster in favour of the
visible benefits of the Western social model, supported with a maximum
application of force and terror, proved to be no match for a system of
ideas, promoted by the Mullahs, which united the people as never before
and infused them with death-defying courage. This was something the Shah
could never understand: an invincible unity of the people which embraced
old and young, uneducated and educated, including even those who had received
their schooling in the West. Thus, we learn that the Shah's last visit
to Washington at the invitation of President Carter in November 1977, was
marred by unprecedented demonstrations by Iranian students, and that the
tear-gas used by the police drifted across the White House lawns and caused
the Shah to shed a few tears.
-
- For the purpose of study and discussion, this victorious
system of ideas can be considered under two headings: populism and religion.
The use of the word populism, however, calls for an explanatory note: it
means what democracy used to mean and is still assumed to mean -- namely,
government by the people, direct or representative. However, since the
word democracy is now almost universally applied to states which are not
democracies as defined in the dictionaries, it can only be said to have
ceased to be "legal tender."
-
- The nations of the West are, in fact, plutocracies, or
special-interest oligarchies, wearing many of the trappings of democracy
-- political parties, the ballot box, etc. As Thomas Jefferson is quoted
as having said, "Democracy; two wolves and a sheep discussing what's
for dinner."
-
- All populist movements have their origin in a deeply
rooted instinct, a social or political instinct, which prompts people to
react negatively to any rule which, judged by the results produced, they
do not feel to be truly their own. Primitive societies which have endured
down the ages can be regarded as models of legitimate rule and an example
to the huge sophisticated societies of the modern world, in which the factor
of legitimacy has become wholly absent. The actual system matters very
little: it could be a monarchy, or a dictatorship, or an oligarchy or a
conventional democracy; there is no system of rule which has not been known
to work to the satisfaction of those ruled; any system acceptable provided
that it is implemented by those who can be regarded as the legitimate nominees
of those ruled, leaders who are sensitive to the feelings, values, beliefs
and group memories of the ruled.
-
- Amir Taheri, a West-oriented Iranian journalist and no
friend of the mullahs, says of the shah in 1976: "He did not need
the people for their votes in a general election. He was there by divine
right and parliamentary elections, organized every four years, were little
more than ritualistic exercises in futility." And the Shah had long
since abandoned the practice of travelling around the country to make direct
contact with his people.
-
- Other populist resistance movements in Iran since before
the turn of the century, some of them modelled on similar movements in
the West, were all influenced in some degree by the religious class, but
the one that finally triumphed was religious to its core, inspired by a
great religious leader and organized and managed throughout by the Ulama.
From all of which it would seem to follow that for the West, with all its
illusionary democracies and its Christian church fallen into disarray and
demoralization, there should be much to learn from the role of religion
as a mobilizer of mass political action, and about politics in general.
However, any consideration of the role of religion in Iran - a role which
would to most be unthinkable in the West today; needs to be preceded by
a few thoughts about religion in general, not this or that manifestation
of it, but religion as a factor of commanding importance in human affairs
everywhere and at all times of which we have any record.
-
- Religion:
-
- Religion can be said to have two main aspects: personal
and social. Religion can be a strictly personal phenomenon, joined to or
wholly independent of any prevailing orthodoxy or doctrine. A sound attitude
towards the totality of existence, a submission of the will to a system
of cosmic law external to and superior to the intellect, no matter how
such an attitude may have been acquired, is all that is needed for what
C.G. Jung describes as "a religious attitude to life," or state
of psychic well-being. For most people at all times, a taught religion
has provided the easiest access to such an attitude, for which the only
proof needed is that it works.
-
- Religion can, therefore, also be a social phenomenon,
a system of consensus belief having its origin in some prophet and offering
spiritual security and some measure of creative release to an entire community,
even to an epoch. Consensus religions, like all other human artefacts,
are exposed to the vicissitudes of time and change and thus are liable
to lose some of their pristine efficacy, their power to fulfil the purpose
for which they came into existence.
-
- So, what is the purpose of a consensus religion, if any,
apart from that of helping the individual to find psychic orientation?
-
- One simple but of course insufficient answer is that
a consensus religion serves as a repository of values and a system of tested
knowledge in respect of what is `right` and `wrong` in human relations.
This implies that certain cosmic laws which are relative to what people
do, or what is done to them, are somewhere encoded in human nature, not
as ready-made ideas, but only as instinctual intimations which must then
be conceptualized and verbalized as ideas capable of being communicated
and discussed. These we categorize as being `moral` or `metaphysical` laws
of a most volatile and elusive kind which are easily lost and are continually
having to be rediscovered reinforced, consolidated and verbalized anew.
And it is precisely these laws which if observed and applied in whatever
form, keep a society as it were `on course,` preserving it against disintegration
and disorder; more simply put, providing it's moral compass.
-
- Islam And Christianity:
-
- Only blind prejudice can prevent anyone who has gone
to the trouble of studying even a summary of the contents of the Quran[11]from
realising that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) [10]was a moral genius. A man
who, under pressure of a personal crisis of the mind, gained a quite extraordinary
insight into those metaphysical laws, so hard to grasp, which prevail inexorably
inside the human mind and in human relations. And it was the circumstances
then prevailing that made it possible, even inevitable, that one man's
breakthrough to a rare state of enlightenment via divine revelation, would
expand quickly into a consensus religion destined to spread very quickly
over most of the then known world.
-
- Muhammad (SAW), like Jesus Christ (SAW) about 600 years
earlier, was living in what can be described as `end times` -- much like
conditions present in the Western world today -- when civilisations, no
longer sufficiently in `tune` with the unalterable realities of human nature,
have begun to disintegrate. Social existence degenerates into a frantic
scramble for personal survival and advantage as people cease to find in
their social group a sense of shared security and mutual obligation and
duty, and very many begin to suffer within the recesses of their minds.
-
- What is most significant is that the Church in the West
is disintegrating along with everything else, compounding rather than counteracting
the process of decline in the West. Here a clear distinction must be drawn
between two aspects of Christianity as a consensus religion: the Church
Extant and the Church Invisible; the church as a great property-owning
and power-oriented institution and the church in its nascent form as a
message of personal deliverance. Both Christianity and Islam spring from
the same insights and share with Judaism the same even more ancient monotheistic
symbolism. The Quran says: "Jesus the Messiah, the son of Mary, was
a Messenger of God, His word which He placed in Mary, and His spirit"
(IV.171). There was, and remains therefore, no fundamental antagonism between
Islam and Christianity.
-
- The major difference between the two religions is that
Islam did not create a church or its equivalent, and that the Christian
Church, obedient to the laws of worldly growth, was everywhere inclined
to make common cause with centres of worldly power. The failure of the
church in the West is summed up in Balzac's trenchant remark that "there
can be no universal application of Christianity until the money problem
has been solved." Alas, the church has never been at odds for long
with "Caesar" in the ultimate form as concentrated financial
power.
-
- It is mainly for this reason that Islam, with its determined
prohibition of usury, is now seen as a major threat to the Illuminati structure
of power in the West, challenging the very moral foundations on which it
has been raised. The code of conduct, both for rulers and ruled, explicit
in Islam's Sharia, was once largely implicit in Christianity's basic teaching
("Do unto others as you would be done by"). The main difference
between the two faiths arose out of the fact that Muhammad (SAW) was compelled
by the circumstances of his time to become a political leader, administrator
and soldier, as well as religious leader. The meanings belonging to "a
kingdom not of this world" were thus brought into close relationship
with meanings more directly relevant to the unavoidable actualities of
"this world."
-
- Perhaps the most important aspect of all, when taken
in the context of the present world situation, is that Islam presents in
clear outline the moral configuration of Economic Man: worker, owner, dealer
in the products of labour, his duties, obligations and rights. The injunction
on the subject of usury may not have seemed all that important at the time
when few, if any, of the Prophet's followers might have been interested
in the lending of money. But, today, usury is the linchpin without which
the greatest concentration of diabolical worldly power ever seen would
simply collapse, and therein lies our only hope for earthly salvation.
-
- Centuries of antagonism between the Christian and Muslim
worlds can be traced to a great variety of causes, but one of its main
effects, as we can now see more plainly, was that of preventing the people
of the West from recognizing and getting to grips with a corrupting principle
which had been planted in their midst; USURY!
-
- The Shia:
-
- For an explanation of the Iranian Revolution, it is not
Islam in general but a particular version of it called Shi'ism [12]that
needs to be more closely examined, a kind of fundamentalism which, besides
setting Iran fiercely at odds with the Western world, has had the effect
of driving Iran into isolation, separated also from the rest of the Islamic
world. Professor Algar writes:
-
- "The revolution in Iran and the foundation of the
Islamic Republic is the culmination of a series of events that began in
the sixteenth century of the Christian era with the adherence of the majority
of the Iranian people to the Shi'i school of thought in Islam. Indeed,
one of the important factors that sets the Iranian Revolution apart from
all the other revolutionary upheavals of the present century is its deep
roots in the historical past."
- What has happened can be stated in a few words: Shi'ism
has presented in sharper and clearer outlines the religious configurations
of what we might call `Political Man.` This has entailed the politicization
of the Ulama and its involvement in public affairs to a degree unequalled
anywhere outside Iran. The secular leaders of the other Islamic states,
many in thrall to the same Luciferian forces, at work here in the West,
view what happened in Iran as a usurpation by the religious class that
could place their own corrupted regimes in danger. But this involvement
in politics by the Muslim clerics has deep roots in history and is supported
with considerable scholarship. Writes Prod Algar:
-
- "With the hindsight provided by the Islamic Revolution,
it will be more appropriate to write the Iranian history of the past three
or four centuries not so much in terms of dynasties as in terms of the
development of the class of Iranian ulama. Dynasties have come and gone,
leaving in many cases little more than a few artefacts behind to account
for their existence. but there has been a continuing development of the
class of Shi'i Ulama in Iran which has been totally without parallel elsewhere
in the Islamic world."
- Prof. Algar explains briefly how the burdens of state
came to be placed on the shoulders of the religious scholars and how they
learned to cope:
-
- "With the decline of the Safavid dynasty in 1724,
a period of anarchy began in Iran. At one point within the 18th century
we find no fewer than 13 different contestants for the throne doing battle
with each other. The total disintegration of the political authority accelerated
the process of divorce between the religious institution and the monarchy.
We can say that in the absence of an effective centralized monarchy throughout
the 18th century the ulama came in a practical fashion ... to assume the
role of local governors, arbitrators of disputes, executors at law and
so forth."
- This experience over an extended time period produced
a change in Shi'ism; for there had to be some change in theory and scholarship
to accommodate an expanded range of duty and mental activity. And so a
great debate arose about the duties of the religious scholar, whether he
should confine himself to the sifting of the teachings of the Prophet and
its interpretations, or whether it was permissible for him to engage in
independent reasoning in respect of legal questions. The first position
acquired the Arabic name akhbari and the other the usuli.
-
- It would be difficult indeed to exaggerate the profundity
and far-ranging implication of this debate; the question at issue is whether
a consensus religion can be a `total way of life` for any society unless
its scholars and teachers are also experts in jurisprudence and other affairs
of state and have been trained to exercise their intellects in secular
as well as religious matters, thereby acquiring competence to monitor the
performance of the rulers. Were it not for the triumph of the usuli position
in the 18th century, the religious scholars would have been reduced to
an extremely marginal position in society and the Iranian Revolution of
1978 would have been impossible. The whole significance of the Ayatollah
Khomeini arises from the fact that he was the living embodiment of this
activist tradition, the fruition of long years of political, spiritual
and intellectual development.
-
- As the mass of the Iranian population was instinctively
repelled by the conditions of existence created in the name of Westernisation
and progress, and after the failure of many attempts by various popular
movements, like Mussadeq's National Front, to place some curbs on the Shah's
dictatorial power, all turned to the Ulama and accepted it unreservedly
as the sole legitimate authority and thereafter responded unquestioningly
to its commands. Khomeini could, therefore, feel secure in the knowledge
that he had the mass of the population firmly behind him when early in
1963 he virtually launched the revolution with a series of public declarations
at Qum, in which he accused the Shah of having violated the constitution
and the oath he took when enthroned that he would protect Islam.
-
- He further attacked the Shah for his subordination to
foreign powers, naming the United States and Israel, whom he associated
with political and imperialist Zionism. The secret police `Savak` had permitted
some qualified criticism of America but had always rigorously enforced
the rule that not even the name of Israel must ever be mentioned in public
discussion. After one of these addresses, Khomeini's centre at Qum was
stormed by paratroopers and Savak members, a number of people were killed
and the Ayatollah arrested. Released a few days later, he continued to
attack the Shah, with the result that there followed on June 5th 1963 a
vast uprising in many Iranian cities. This was repressed with great force
and it was estimated that within a few days at least 15,000 people were
killed in the shooting ordered by the shah. Khomeini was arrested again
and sent into exile in Turkey, whence he moved later to Iraq and then to
Paris.
-
- Two features of the ensuing revolution which culminated
in the final explosion of public anger towards the end of 1978 call for
special notice. The more important of these was the factor of martyrdom,
that is resistance of a kind undeterred by the fear of death. The other
was the communications factor, the apparent ease with which the leader
of the revolution, even from distant Paris, could reach a widely distributed
population with information and instruction.
-
- The communications factor is more easily explained: the
Ulama represented a nationwide communications network with its mosques
and Madrassas (religious schools), its Mullahs and its students, vastly
expanded and expedited by two products of modern technology, the telephone
and the tape-recorder. A declaration by the ayatollah, spoken into a telephone
in Paris, would be recorded in Tehran or some other Iranian city, copied
and transcribed and retransmitted to other parts of the country, where
the process would be repeated until within a few hours it would have reached
even small and widely separated villages.
-
- All this was made possible however, only by reason of
the accumulated learning and preparatory work of four centuries which had
equipped the Ulama for such a role, so that all knew exactly what they
were expected to do and why, a rare condition in any society. This communications
system, wholly dependent on the zealous participation of thousands of individuals,
proved in the end to be more than a match for a powerful press, radio and
television, all vehemently supportive of the Shah's regime. All that needs
to be said about the highly abstruse martyrdom factor is that in Shi'ism
the concept has been more thoroughly elaborated as a main component of
the Islamic faith. It is something ever present in the consciousness of
the Iranians. Hence the Shi'i maxim: "Every day is Ashura and every
place is Karbala" - referring to the martyrdom of the Imam Hussain.
-
- It was this factor that gave to mass political action
in Iran, especially throughout 1978, a `diamond-hardness` that was proof
against all the ruthless and sophisticated physical force which the Shah
and his close Israeli ally could mount against it. During the first days
of December 1978, a large number of people appeared in the streets of Tehran
and other cities wearing their shrouds, prepared for martyrdom and advancing
unarmed on the rows of machine guns ready to be used to deadly effect.
-
- Notwithstanding the part in the drama played by the intelligence
agencies of the `western` powers, and the massive, if hidden, and apparently
prejudicial (to their own interests) financing by the International Bankers,
(as was the case with the Russian revolution) by no other means could the
people of Iran have overthrown one of the 20th century's most powerful
and ruthless tyrants.
-
- In Part Seven, we will follow the `money trail` up to
the present day and hopefully show that a solution to our planet's woes
is possible, if people of good heart and true faith will renounce petty
doctrinal differences, come together and cease to give, give, give to the
great force of evil which stalks our world, everything it wants to swallow.
-
- Comments to: http://righteousalliance.blogspot.com/
-
- Reference Notes:
-
- 1] http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119975.pdf
Tragedy And Hope
-
- 2] http://www.oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm
-
- 3] FrtizSpringmeier : http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm
-
- 4] http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/biography/
-
- 5] http://www.iranchamber.com/history/rkhomeini/ayatollah_khomeini.php
-
- 6] http://www.bahai.org/
-
- 7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulema
-
- 8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
-
- 9] By the last years of the Nixon administration, it
had become clear that it was the Third World that remained the most volatile
and dangerous source of world instability. Central to the Nixon-Kissinger
policy toward the Third World was the effort to maintain a stable status
quo without involving the United States too deeply in local disputes. In
1969 and 1970, in response to the height of the Vietnam War, the President
laid out the elements of what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, by which
the United States would "participate in the defense and development
of allies and friends" but would leave the "basic responsibility"
for the future of those "friends" to the nations themselves.
The Nixon Doctrine signified a growing contempt by the U.S. government
for the United Nations, where underdeveloped nations were gaining influence
through their sheer numbers, and increasing support to authoritarian regimes
attempting to withstand popular challenges from within. In the 1970s, for
example, the CIA poured substantial funds into Chile to help support the
established government against a Marxist challenge. When the Marxist candidate
for president, Salvador Allende, came to power through free elections,
the United States began funneling more money to opposition forces to help
"destabilize" the new government. In 1973, a U.S.-backed military
junta seized power from Allende. The new, repressive regime of General
Augusto Pinochet received warm approval and increased military and economic
assistance from the United States as an anti-Communist ally. Democracy
was finally re-established in Chile in 1989.
-
- 10] http://www.islamweb.net/ver2/archive/index2.php?vPart=74&startno=1&thelang=E
-
- 11] http://www.quranexplorer.com/quran/
-
- 12] http://www.islamfortoday.com/shia.htm
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