THE latest tweet of the Ayatollah on the destruction and extinction of Israel within 25 years must serve as notice that no nation should have anything to do with Iran. There are many objections, in theory and practice against a state of theocracy: for example, the inability to deal with the politics and the practicalities of the modern world. Nor is theocracy possible in the modern era where human rights are obligatory.
Dictatorship of the ordained has been a regular feature of history, but modern day life has made such dictatorships more and more difficult. The human spirit refuses to be confined within the space a dictatorship allows. Hitler is the most recent example of a dictatorship, although many argue that he got to power democratically, but his argument of the superiority of the Aryan race is in no way dissimilar to the Ayatollah’s.
What is the sin of the Jews in the eyes of the Ayatollah?
In Hitler’s world, the Iranians or Persians or whatever guise they may now dress themselves, would eventually end up in the gas chambers… those who did not would end up as second class citizens in Hitler’s scheme of races. The Nazis also killed one million Gypsies, another million Armenians, etc. It is indeed ironic that today, it is the descendants of Hitler who are lending a hand to the Syrian refugees, while the President of Syria is an ally of Iran. Other rich Arab countries have shamelessly stood by doing nothing.
The lessons of history are clear. Up until recently, all wars were religious although their aims political. Millions of people have been slaughtered in the course of history, in the cause of religion – The Aztecs, The Mayans. Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Christians, Moslems, etc. The artifacts that today dot many parts of the world are monuments built in memory or honour of one religious God or icon or God, Allah. One king chopped the head of six Queens and broke away from the Catholic Church all in the name of the religion. The most peaceable peoples of the world kept a pantheon of gods whom they strictly kept away from normal political rivalry. It is true that the so-called normal political rivalries sometimes led to wars but never on the scale, which the religious wars entailed.
The Holy Bible is full of stories, which actually led to religious wars-the failure of the people who called themselves God’s Chosen to obey the laws of their God. This led them to Egypt, Babylon, and all those places today occupied by Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, etc
By the 16th century, some sort of calm came over the world in terms of fighting for religious purposes. The crusades were over; the Arabs revenge for the crusades could be said to be over. A new, perhaps worse, mercantilism gripped the world.
The West, who had superior transport systems, had improved the war material learnt from China, gun powder and how to use them, had exhausted themselves after centuries of fighting each other, decided, like the hunter, there was better game reserves overseas. They came together as one – and set out to conquer the world. The Industrial Revolution was at hand; this was a hungry beast that could consume all one had in order to produce something one needed.
The King had his knights, his bishops, and his abbots or if truth be told, knights, bishops, abbots, etc… were small armies under the king. It is equally true that most men in Europe were farmers but they were called upon so frequently to fight since 1066 that by the 16th century most men were soldiers who occasionally farmed. Much booty or loot was available to soldiers, as were women, wine and other pleasures, which the life of a farmer lacked. Throughout the 16th – 18th century, I have not read one account of rape and I am sure it was not that people were not raped. Soldiers and officers were billeted in people’s houses, they went to war. I think we know enough about soldiers to stick our noses up when a soldier speaks of being “an officer and a gentleman”. That they indeed have to preach that code is eloquent testimony that it is one of their hardest tasks. Or that priests who come over to other people’s countries with or without their wives would be expected to be anything else than buggerers escapes my understanding. Those of them who are normal and ended up in Polynesia or in areas where sex was regarded as natural nearly all went ‘native’. In China and Japan, the depth of racism could be found in the anger of the Chinese and Japanese that white men took their women so easily. Today, there is a valuable export of Nigerian women to Italy and other parts of Europe. The trade should be organised, legalised just as Napoleon legalised prostitution in France; registering them and making sure they paid their taxes. The mind boggles as how to calculate, verify and quantify such a tax. European colonisation was an economic enterprise, not a religious one, regardless of the Bibles.
But colonisation had within it its own demise or denouncement; the colonialist brought education with all its implications, one of which was that, self-determination was a non-negotiable concept of freedom and democracy. But these are all secular goals. The problem of Islam is that it has not or cannot drag itself from its moorings in 7th century Arabia and environs.
Christianity has now become synonymous with the West. There is a sense in which this is acceptable – human behaviours, freedoms, democracy, choice, equality, etc. It is, of course, true that one may view the West also as Godless, almost satanic – but this does not produce a jihad or a crusade. That western governments often undertake ungodly acts is also accepted – for instance, the barefaced unapologetic exploitation of the blacks during the slave trade, the refusal to pay reparations for that trade which in many senses was worse than the holocaust, the continual exploitation of primary resources in the third world for the benefit of the West; the inability of the third world to meet development demands simply because the West will not allow it.
• To be continued tomorrow
• Dr. Cole is a consultant to The Guardian Editorial Board.
