Urgent appeal from the Foundation for Democracy in Iran- - - - - - - - -
May 29, 2008: Monarchist reportedly faces imminent execution in Tehran. Dr. Forood Fouladvand, a self-styled monarchist who disappeared along with two associates on the Turkish border with Iran on Jan. 17, 2007, now faces imminent execution by the Iranian authorities, Iranian exiles in London tell FDI. According to these sources, Dr. Fouladvand will be executed tomorrow. “He is like the Robert Spencer of Iran,” one supporter in London said. “He has been studying Islamic texts and using them to convince people to leave Islam” on radio and satellite television broadcasts from London.
Dr. Fouladvand heads a group called Anjomane Padeshahi Iran (API), the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, which advocates restoration of the constitutional monarchy abolished by the Islamic Republic in 1980. He had gone to Iran, apparently lured by promises from an opposition group that was either infiltrated by the regime or that had been cooped by the regime. Fouladvand was traveling with a fake passport under the name of Jahangir Irani and disappeared along with two supporters, identified on his website as Simorgh and Kouroshe Lor.
More information is available at www.iran.org.
Since this press release was dated yesterday, it may well be that Dr. Fouladvand is being executed today.
Those of us who are old enough to remember events in Iran in 1979 — and thus circumvent the media memory hole on some of the inconvenient details — know that progressives across the West lionized Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and actively lobbied for the overthrow of the Shah. The Left romanticized Khomeini, and acted as cheerleaders for the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
As the revolution devoured its children, and the Iran-Iraq War unfolded, and the full bestiality of the regime became apparent, a cone of silence descended on the subject. The murderous mullahs morphed from romantic heroes — Khomeini had been a sort of Islamic Ché to the café-au-lait set in Europe — into “conservatives”, because, as we all know, the murderous thugs of the world are by definition conservatives.
And so it has continued up until the present day. The media in the West observe every twitch of the mullahs, the same way they did with the genrontocrats in the Kremlin. And we are constantly advised to appease them, because if we don’t the hardliners will gain the upper hand over the moderates — the latter, of course, are only “moderate” because they want fewer stonings and hangings, and don’t advocate the death penalty for people who listen to music on the radio.
Looking back, is there anyone who thinks that Iran is better off now than it would have been if the Shah had not been overthrown? If the dynasty of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi were still in charge, would we be facing a lunatic regime armed with nuclear weapons and preparing for the arrival of the Twelfth Imam?
Under the current circumstances, an Iranian monarchist counts as a “progressive”.
6 comments:
The left have had a long and irrational love affair with warped Islamic politics. Like Foucault.
During the Iranian revolution Michael Foucault warmly received the news that left-wing movements in Iran had hybridized the war-like and austere Shia Islam with Communism. Think about it, Communism with religious fanaticism. When the Shia aspect of this Shia-Marxist glorious "peoples revolution" (as Foucault beleived it to be) began beheading gays and stoning women he couldn't acknowledge what had happened. Moreover, he didn't want to condemn the direction the revolution had taken for to do so would be to imperialistically and occulsively impose Western values on a non-Western revolution.
According to a hugely interesting article Foucault:
"Michel Foucault stated that he was ‘impressed' by the ‘attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics' that he discerned in project on an Islamic government. Today there are little girls all in black, veiled from head to toe; women stabbed precisely because they do not want to wear the veil; summary executions for homosexuality; the creation of a ‘Ministry of Guidance According to the Precepts of the Koran;' thieves and adulterous women flagellated." "
Moreover Foucault saw a redemptive power in Shia/Marxism (from the above linked web-site)
"He concluded the article by referring to the crucial place of "political spirituality" in Iran and the loss of such spirituality in early modern Europe. "
Then he called his opponents Islamophobic:
"Returning to the problematic notion of an Islamic government, Atoussa H. pointed to the brutal forms of justice in Saudi Arabia: "Heads and hands are cut off, for thieves and lovers." She concluded: "Many Iranians are, like me, distressed and desperate about the thought of an ‘Islamic' government. . . . The Western liberal left needs to know that Islamic law can become a dead weight on societies hungering for change. They should not let themselves be seduced by a cure that is perhaps worse than the disease." Foucault, in a short rejoinder published the following week in Nouvel Observateur, wrote that what was "intolerable" about Atoussa H.'s letter, was her "merging together" of all forms of Islam into one and then "scorning" Islam as "fanatical." It was certainly discerning on Foucault's part to note in his response that Islam "as a political force is an essential problem for our epoch and for the years to come." But this prediction was seriously undercut by his utter refusal to share any of her critique of political Islam. Instead, he concluded his rejoinder by lecturing Atoussa H.: "The first condition for approaching it [Islam] with a minimum of intelligence is not to begin by bringing in hatred." In March and April 1979, once the Khomeini regime's atrocities against women and homosexuals began, this exchange would come back to haunt Foucault."
He may as well have called his critics "Islamophobic" and because their criticisms were only thinly veiled "discourses of the will to power", because, after all, there is no objective truth. God is Dead. The Will-to-Power creates truth and order.
We are naive in the extreme if we think this reincarnation of Godless German philosophy is not going to end up with another Nazi tyranny.
No, I'd say this tyranny has already begun with the spurious "Hate-Speech" legislation where quoting from the Koran in public, or perhaps just filming and displaying what Muslims think of gays, can land you in prison, or subject to investigation because after all, there is no truth, no ideas, only speakers, and if one says something that makes another look bad by reference to his beliefs and culture--which are protected as a human right,
i.e. Religion is irrational, but being irrational it is a wellspring of life and therefore essential to humanity ergo to insult someone's religion is to insult someone's humanity--which makes you a kind of proto-nazi.
Should God turn His eye away from us and should we turn our backs upon Him and usher in Marxism as held by perhaps our next president, whose wife we cannot even mention by name even now, we will be in the sad position of seeing just exactly how Sharia Law/Marxism play out here. We already have the makings of the "hate-speech", "hate-crimes" laws which are code and everyone knows it.
Dr. Fouladvand and his colleagues may have already paid the sacrifice for their efforts. Recalling those days when I saw pure evil in the black eyes of the Ayatollah, it was as if the world shook and Evil was ushered in. To me, Jimmy Carter has blood on his hands figuratively speaking.
Sadly, the far-left liberals of our nation as well as the EU may end up getting what they want and there won't be anyone there to save them because they are truly nuts if they think any imams are going to give them a seat at the table - maybe on a platter but not in a chair.
Dr. Foroud Fouladvand (an Iranian/British citizen), Mr. Nazem Schmidtt (an Iranian/American citizen), and Mr. Alexander Valizadeh (an Iranian/German citizen) deserve better from Britain, America, and Germany. Shame on us!
Where are you, Condi, when an American citizen is kidnapped, tortured, and perhaps by now executed by the barbarian "Mullahs" of Iran?
Homophobic Horse: We are naive in the extreme if we think this reincarnation of Godless German philosophy is not going to end up with another Nazi tyranny.
Sooner or later—much as with Nazi Germany—civilization will eventually reach the inescapable conclusion that all further progress is entirely contingent upon the complete and total extermination of political Islam.
When that time comes, woe betide any and all Muslims who cannot relinquish Islam's political ideology. Islam, by its very birthing and nature, foreordains this exact outcome. There can be no tolerating of the intolerable.
"When that time comes, woe betide any and all Muslims who cannot relinquish Islam's political ideology. Islam, by its very birthing and nature, foreordains this exact outcome. There can be no tolerating of the intolerable."
Yes. We must destroy them, we must incinerate the intolerant Colonel Zenster.
Homophobic Horse: Yes. We must destroy them, we must incinerate the intolerant Colonel Zenster.
Casting aside your feeble attempt at character assassination, why don't you tell the studio audience and all the folks at home exactly what it is that you, Homophobic Horse, find to be tolerable about political Islam. I await your answer.
So, days later and still no reply, eh, Homophobic Horse? Just a thinly veiled and gratuitous sideswipe without any honest attempt at actual debate.
I expected better from you than a pitiful straw man. Please rest assured I'll not be making that mistake again.
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