THE KHOMEINI “REVIVAL”— BACK TO THE FUTURE

The so-called Khomeini revolution, which deposed Mohammad Reza Shah, was in reality a mere return to oppressive Shi'ite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Persian/Iranian governance since 1502.

In the months preceding the Shah's departure on 16 January 1979, the religious minorities.were already beginning to feel insecure.. Twenty thousand Jews left the country before the triumphant return of the Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 February.. On 16 March, the honorary president of the Iranian Jewish community, Habib Elghanian, a wealthy businessman, was arrested and charged by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal with

“corruption” and “contacts with Israel and Zionism”; he was shot on 8 May.⁵²

And Littman concluded this 1979 essay with the following appeal:

It is to be hoped that the new regime will not revert to the pre-Pahlavi attitudes of the Shi’a clergy, but will prefer a path of equality for all of its citizens, thus demonstrating in practice the “tolerant” attitude of Islam so frequently proclaimed.⁵³

Littman’s essay also alludes to the emigration of 20,000 Iranian Jews just prior to Khomeini’s assumption of power. The demographic decline of Iranian Jewry since the creation of Israel has been rather dramatic even including the relatively “halcyon days” before 1978/1979—from nearly 120,000 in 1948 to roughly 70,000 in 1978, and at present barely 20,000 (and perhaps considerably less).⁵⁴

The writings and speeches of the most influential religious ideologues of this restored Shi’ite theocracy— including Khomeini himself—make apparent their seamless connection to the oppressive doctrines of their forbears in the Safavid and Qajar dynasties.⁵⁵ For example, Sultanhussein Tabandeh, the Iranian Shi’ite leader of a prominent Sufi order, wrote an “Islamic perspective” on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim... then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain.. Again, the penalties of a non­Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed. Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them. Since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an infidel husband (in accordance with the verse quoted: “Men are guardians for women”) means her subordination to an infidel, that fact makes the marriage void.⁵⁹

The conception of najis or ritual uncleanliness of the non-Muslim has also been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly: “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.” Khomeini elaborated his views on najis and non-Muslims, with a specific reference to Jews:

Eleven things are unclean: urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer, perspiration of a camel that eats filth..

The late Iranian Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri— further indicated 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.”⁶² This “hatred” was to assure that Muslims would not succumb to corrupt, that is, non- Islamic, thoughts.⁶³

How have the jihad and its corollary institution, dhimmitude—including “^a/is-inspired” dhimmitude— been conjoined to Islamic anti-Semitism, past and present?

Demonizing Israel and Jews via motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira (the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad), Hezbollah views the jihad against the “Zionist entity” as an annihilationist war intrinsic to broader conflicts: the struggle between the Islamic world and the non-Muslim world, and the historical struggle between Islam and Judaism.⁶⁴

The most senior clerical authority for Hezbollah, Husayn Fadlallah, has stated:

We find in the Koran that the Jews are the most aggressive towards the Muslims...because of their aggressive resistance to the unity of the faith.⁶⁵

Fadlallah repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish archetypes in the Koran, hadith, and sira: the corrupt, treacherous, and aggressive nature of the Jews; their reputation as killers of prophets who spread corruption on earth; and the notion that the Jews engaged in conspiratorial efforts against Muhammad.⁶⁶ Hassan Nasrallah— current secretary general of Hezbollah, a protege of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and presently Iran's highest ranking political and religious authority (its “guardian jurisprudent”)—has reiterated these anti-Semitic views with particular vehemence.

Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history.. Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment.. There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel. If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.. [I]f they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.⁶⁸

The crux of all these allegations is a central anti­Semitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61, reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah.⁶⁹ It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured before the preamble to Hamas's foundational covenant.⁷⁰ This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe the Jews' transformation into apes and swine (5:60) or simply apes (i.e., verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son (5:78).” Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, book 37, number 4322):

He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: “.curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary.”⁷¹

The related verse 5:64 accuses the Jews of being “spreaders of war and corruption”—a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—invoked not only by Hezbollah leaders Fadlallah and Nasrallah,⁷² but “moderate” Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

Muslims to end their internecine strife and “aim their rifles at Israel.”⁷³

Indeed the Koran's overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews' ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: They are the devil's minions (4:60) cursed by Allah; their faces will be obliterated (4:47); and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam—the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)— they will be made into apes (2:65/7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the hellfire (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).⁷⁴

The centrality of the Jews' permanent “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God's anger” in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61 and 3:112 is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah's signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators such as Tabari (d. 923), Zamakshari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), when discussing Koran 5:82 (which includes the statement “Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews”), concur on the unique animus of the Jews toward the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/3:112.75 For example, in his commentary on 5:82, Tabari writes:

In my opinion, [the Christians] are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.⁷⁶

Tabari's classical interpretations of Koran 5:82 and 2:61, as well as his discussion of the related verse 9:29 mandating the Jews payment of the jizya, represent both anti-Semitic and more general anti-dhimmi views that became and remain intrinsic to Islam to this day.

“Abasement and poverty were imposed and laid down upon them,” as when someone says “the imam imposed the poll tax (jizya) on free non-Muslim subjects,” or “The man imposed land tax on his slave,” meaning thereby that he obliged him [to pay ] it, or, “The commander imposed a sortie on his troops,” meaning he made it their duty.. God commanded His believing servants not to give them [i.e., the non-Muslim people of the scripture] security— as long as they continued to disbelieve in Him and his Messenger—unless they paid the poll tax to them; God said: “Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden—such men as practice not the religion of truth [Islam], being of those who have been given the Book [Bible]—until they pay the poll tax, being humble.” (Koran 9:29)77

The dhimmis posture during the collection of the jizya “[should be lowering themselves] by walking on their hands...reluctantly.”

His words “and abasement and poverty were imposed upon them,” “These are the Jews of the Children of Israel.. Are they the Copts of Egypt?”...What have the

Copts of Egypt to do with this? No, by God, they are not; but they are the Jews, the Children of Israel.. By “and slain the prophets unrightfully,” He means that they used to kill the Messengers of God without God's leave, denying their messages and rejecting their prophethood.⁷⁸

The Koranic curse (verses 2:61/3:112) upon the Jews for (primarily) rejecting, even slaying Allah’s prophets, including Isa/Jesus (or at least his “body double,” 4:157-58), is updated with perfect archetypal logic in the canonical hadith. Following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted ultimately in his protracted, agonizing death.⁷⁹ And Ibn Saad’s sira account maintains that Muhammad’s poisoning resulted from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.⁸⁰

The contemporary Iranian theocracy’s state- sanctioned Jew-hatred employs this motif as part of its malevolent indoctrination of young adult candidates for national teacher training programs. Affirming as objective, factual history the hadith account (for example, Sahih Bukhari, volume 3, book 47, number 786) of Muhammad’s supposed poisoning by a Jewish woman from ancient Khaybar, Professor Eliz Sanasarian notes:

The subject became one of the questions in the ideological test for the Teachers’ Training College where students were given a multiple-choice question in order to identify the instigator of the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad, the “correct” answer being “a Jewess.”⁸¹

It is worth recounting, as depicted in the Muslim sources, the events that antedated Muhammad’s reputed poisoning at Khaybar.⁸²

Muhammad’s failures or incomplete successes were consistently recompensed by murderous attacks on the Jews. The Muslim prophet-warrior developed a penchant for assassinating individual Jews and destroying Jewish communities by expropriation and expulsion (Banu Quaynuqa and B. Nadir) or massacring their men and enslaving their women and children (Banu Qurayza).⁸³

Just before subduing the Medinan Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza and orchestrating the mass execution of their adult males, Muhammad invoked perhaps the most striking Koranic motif for the Jews’ debasement: He addressed these Jews, with hateful disparagement, as “You brothers of apes.”⁸⁴ Subsequently, in the case of the Khaybar Jews, Muhammad had the male leadership killed and plundered their riches. The terrorized Khaybar survivors, industrious Jewish farmers, became prototype subjugated dhimmis whose productivity was extracted by the Muslims as a form of permanent booty. (According to the Muslim sources, even this tenuous vassalage was arbitrarily terminated within a decade of Muhammad’s death when Caliph Umar expelled the Jews of Khaybar.)⁸⁵

Thus Maimonides (d. 1203), the renowned

Talmudist, philosopher, astronomer, and physician, as noted by historian Salo Baron, emphasizes the bellicose “madness” of Muhammad and his quest for political control. Muhammad’s mind-set and the actions it engendered had immediate and long-term tragic consequences for Jews—from his massacring up to twenty-four thousand Jews to their chronic oppression as described in the Islamic sources by Muslims themselves.⁸⁶

Muhammad’s brutal conquest and subjugation of the Medinan and Khaybar Jews and their subsequent expulsion by one of his companions, the (second) “Rightly Guided” Caliph Umar, epitomize permanent archetypal behavior patterns Islamic law deemed appropriate to Muslim interactions with Jews.⁸⁷ Georges Vajda’s seminal analysis of the anti-Jewish motifs in the hadith remains the definitive work on this subject.⁸⁸ Vajda concluded that according to the hadith, stubborn malevolence is the Jews’ defining worldly characteristic: Rejecting Muhammad and refusing to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy, and even selfish personal interest, led them to acts of treachery in keeping with their inveterate nature: “Sorcery, poisoning, assassination held no scruples for them.”⁸⁹ These archetypes sanction Muslim hatred toward the Jews, and the admonition to, at best: “Subject [the Jews] to Muslim domination” as dhimmis, treated “with contempt” under certain “humiliating arrangements.”⁹⁰

Annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Charter,⁹¹ are also rooted in Islamic eschatology.⁹² As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam.⁹³ Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjal— the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjal is himself Jewish.⁹⁴ At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjal will be accompanied by seventy thousand Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjal is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered. Everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter (in article 7). Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjal and his company of seventy thousand armed Jews. And the notion of jihad “ransom” extends even into Islamic eschatology: On the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate.⁹⁵

Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shi'ite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian president Ahmadinejad's deep personal attachment to mahdism:

Since the late ninth century, the Shi'ites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shi'ism as its supreme religion and system of rule. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed. Ahmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi. Shi'ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure; the Shi'ite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity.

However both Shi’ites and Sunnis share one particular detail about “the coming of the hour” and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith [Sahih Muslim, book 40, number 6985] attributed to Muhammad: The last hour will not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and the stone or the tree would say: “Muslim! Servant of Allah! Here is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!” Not one Friday passes without this hadith being quoted in sermons from one side of the Islamic world to the other.⁹⁶

The rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—has posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude. As historian Bat Ye’or has explained:

Because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by jihad.⁹⁷

This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, “resurgent” use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs, Sunni and Shi’ite alike, would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence.

Despite an international outcry of condemnation following Ahmadinejad’s statements in late October 2005 that Israel “should be wiped off the map...very soon this stain of disgrace will be purged from the center of the Islamic world,” he continued to express such annihilationist sentiments throughout 2006 through the present [circa 2009]while simultaneously referring to the “myth of the Holocaust” and even sponsoring a December 2006 Holocaust-deniers “conference” in Tehran. Ahmadinejad also maintained he has “a connection with God,” and his genocidal pronouncements have been endorsed by the upper echelons of Iran's national security establishment. The conclusion that Israel's eradication has become “Iran's principal foreign-policy objective” does not seem unwarranted.⁹⁸ Matthias Kuntzel has highlighted, appropriately, the unique dangers posed by Iran's fusion of a martyrdom mentality with nuclear-weapons capability and Holocaust denial.⁹⁹

Holocaust scholar Daniel Goldhagen has put forth the controversial argument that the Nazis melded centuries of annihilationist German Jew-hatred to a state machinery capable of implementing the systematic mass murder of Jews.¹⁰⁰ Citing the independent statements of Iranian presidents Rafsanjani (from December 2001) and Ahmadinejad (from October 2005), in a November 3, 2005, opinion editorial Goldhagen cautioned:

Two Iranian presidents have now openly spoken about destroying Israel, with Ahmadinejad defiantly repeating his genocidal hopes again...despite the world's condemnation of him.¹⁰¹

Goldhagen's visceral concern that “it would be folly for the world to treat the Iranian leaders' words as anything but an articulation of their intent,” remained oddly de-contextualized for a historian of anti-Semitism with his particular mind-set.¹⁰² Yet four centuries of ^q/A-inspired Jew-hatred in Shi'ite Iran, accompanied by pogroms, forced conversions, and other less violent but continuous forms of social and religious persecution—none of which are ever mentioned by Goldhagen—surely meets his own prior standard, regardless of its validity, of an established “annihilationist” mentality in Germany.¹⁰³

Irrespective of the controversy surrounding his earlier work on Nazi Germany, Goldhagen's apparent ignorance of Shi'ite Iran's centuries-old history of Jew- hatred is pathognomonic of the current state of “scholarship” on Islamic anti-Semitism. Such ignorance may also explain the inability of our intellectual and policymaking elites to appreciate the prevalence and depth of support for such annihilationist views in contemporary Shi'ite Iran.

Iran must not be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapons capability—certainly now, under the current regime, and into the foreseeable future.

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