*yawn* ... It might be daylight savings time but I'm still sleepy at what should be 2:30 in the morning.
This is a rough draft of my next article. I'm excited for it!!!!
"Compatriot" is how Iranians refer to other Iranians.
Islam and Human Rights are IncompatibleI am writing this to any person who still has a shred of decency, compassion, or kindness in their soul.
And, with that, I am giving my thesis to this article: if you endorse human rights, you will be opposed to Islam.
There is a rather arrogant position in the United States and Europe, mostly found among liberals, that the rest of the world is Islam, and simply would like a violent-free version of Islam, as Shirin Ebadi is supposedly advocating.
The fact of the matter is this is not true. There are a vast amount of people in the rest of the world who simply hate Islam, and see it, appropriately, as a direct contradiction to human rights.
In response to my most recent article, Shirin Ebadi: Why do you endorse Islam?, I received an overwhelming response from people all over the world, including Iran, Italy, and South Africa. Every single one of them supported what I said and wanted to thank me for expressing what I said.
One man pointed me to this website, which contained this letter, An Open Letter to the Nobel Committee. In this letter, they say:
"The only connection of the people in Iran has been the life of brutality and suppression imposed on them by Islamic laws. The only aspect of Islam that people identify themselves with is to fight against it."The letter goes on to say:
"The fact of the matter is that people of Iran see the Islamic Republic with all its laws and regulations as the cause of the hardship, poverty, destitution, women's suppression and the brutal state of children's rights."This letter was not signed by any "conservative" organizations. For what it's worth, I've had tremendous difficulty getting conservatives to listen to, accept, or take a stand on what I've been saying about Shirin Ebadi. My allies in this have been liberal and socialist groups. The signers of this open letter to the Nobel committee are hundreds of people, representing hundreds of different human rights group including some called "Women's Liberation abroad" and "International Relations of the Committee against Stoning" to name a few.
A very bright young man wrote to me:
"It's heart-warming to learn that there are folks like yourself who are cognizant of the true nationalistic psyche of Iranians and do not equate Iran and Iranians with an obscurantist religion which has brought nothing but misery and sexual apartheid in Iran." I could go on, but my point remains steadfast: the Iranian people are not Islamic and hate their Islamic based government. It has caused nothing but hardship for them and there is nothing they would like more than a secular Iran.
The following gives a brief glimpse into life in Iran:
"In today's world we seek to give a chance (right to live) to a serial killer or rapist while Muslim women get cruelly killed for hardly-criminal crimes like adultery by a barbaric and medieval custom called stoning-to-death. In Islamic Iran, a woman has to die a cruel death by stoning in public for killing a man to save herself from being raped." http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/AlamgirlHussain31025.htmThese people are well aware of the fact that Islam is oppressing them. But Western leaders are telling them that Islam is just great - we need to "accept different religions." They sit in countries where they enjoy not just freedom, but overwhelming prosperity, and they are commanding these people to accept what they know has been oppressing them for so long.
What really gets me is that feminists endorse Islam. It's "just another religion" to them. They, of course, hate Chrisitianity as being patriarchal, but Islam, with its stonings, decapitations, and oppressive laws against women seems to be OK.
Let it go on record that feminists are not a bunch that care about women. If they did, they, like the literally hundreds of women's groups around the world who actually DO care about women, would come out against Islam.
I thought for sure I would get a negative reaction from some people to my most recent article about Shirin Ebadi. I thought for sure I would start to be called a racist (for condemning Islam) and also get called a war-monger, or the like. Sure, I got this response -
from Americans. But the people of the rest of the world - people who are being oppressed, people from international groups working towards liberty and human rights for people - overwhelming liked my article.
These laws oppressing these peole are not just bad laws created by a bunch of random thugs, they are based in the text of the Koran.
The problem is Islam. The Koran explicitly endorses stoning to death, therefore the thugs force it upon society.
This is not a product of "extremists." This is a product of people who take the Koran literally. And that is the way it is meant to be taken. The only way for peace to exist in the Middle East is for Islam to be eliminated.
Some people say they don't mind people being Islamic, so as long as they don't force it on others. Indeed, that would be a nice position to accept. I have Islamic friends, all of whom I respect intellectually and in many other ways. But the fact is, they are tamed by living in secular America. Islam itself will always seek to force itself on others, if not chained by something else. It is a religion that actively tells its members to kill Christians and Jews. Islam, by itself, will never, ever create peace. It will always seek to force itself on society, government, and all innocent people.
The Iranian people are not a people that like Islam or Islamic based laws. It has terrorized them for centuries. I originally argued that Iranians were starry eyed over a woman who was promising to lead their country democratically, i.e. without war, to peace. I was halfway right, they of course would love this, but they are also simply grateful a woman can openly say the things they've wanted to say for long without going to jail.
Potkin Azarmehr describes in Iranian Reactions to Shirin Ebadi
"This section of Iranians (what he calls the Ebadi sceptic opposition section) criticise Shirin Ebadi's remarks about there being no contradictions between Islam and human rights. They quite rightly point out numerous contradictions between Islam and human rights and I share their view. However we must remember none of us who share these views dare to go back to Iran. The likes of us live outside Iran and enjoy the security of the democracies we live in and so we can comfortably afford to be so outspoken in our views.
We have to remember the limitations that the people in Iran face. Yes of course I would have preferred Shirin Ebadi to call herself an Iranian woman first and foremost instead of a Muslim woman. Of course I would have preferred Shirin Ebadi to come out and say Islam is not compatible with human rights, but do I dare to go to Iran and say such things myself? Do I know of any Iranians who publicly say these things inside Iran and are not dead or in prison right now? We are in fact a testimony to how our right to express our views is denied to us in Islamic countries."He goes on to say:
"Instead I revel in the joy of watching Shirin Ebadi appear before a press conference without the Islamic head dress, and say all Iranian political prisoners should be freed."The verdict is in. The Iranian people agree with what I have to say about Ebadi. Yes, they think she might be there to prolong the Ayatollah regime. But they are happy to see anybody do anything that will help them along - without having the fear of being prisoned, tortured, or killed.
Who can blame them?
But, giving moral support to the religion of Islam, which has oppressed them for centuries is not the route the West should have taken in helping them. We should have had the knowledge and resolve to prod a secular person wanting to completely drive the religious fanatics out. The Iranians deserve better than more promises of reform and more religious based government.
A young Iranian man contacted me and said:
And I also think [Ebadi is] a sell out to kids my age who went to protest against this regime in Summer. Their slogan was "ya marg, ya azadi" meaning "either liberty or death". I think in English there is something like "give me freedom or give me death". Kids out of high school are willing to die for freedom and she wants to defend human rights within the bounds of Islamic Republic's laws that call for decapitation and floggings? And she gets a prize for this?I don't know why that is, compatriot.
Can you answer him?
