How Not to Toast a Tyrant

الجمعة ١٩ - أبريل - ٢٠٢٤ ١١:٣٤ مساءً

A dialog dinner for Ahmadinejad.:

في السبت ٢٠ - سبتمبر - ٢٠٠٨ ١٢:٠٠ صباحاً

> Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won't be given a prestigious
> academic podium this time in New York when he returns to address the
> United Nations General Assembly on September 23, but neither will he be
> given the kind of reception befitting a dangerous tyrant. In fact, he
> will receive another propaganda gift perhaps more valuable than last
> year's Columbia University forum.

مقالات متعلقة :

>
> Courtesy of new General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto, who is
> Nicaragua's foreign minister, and a coalition of left-wing American
> Christian groups, he will be the guest of honor at a private iftar
> dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The September 25 event at the
> Grand Hyatt Hotel has all the trappings of a Cold War solidarity event.
> Joining D'Escoto as hosts are some companeros from the former Catholic
> priest's Sandinista days: The World Council of Churches, the American
> Friends Service Committee, the Mennonites, and the US section of the
> World Conference of Religions for Peace .
>
> Given these hosts' track record of downplaying Communist crimes in
> Soviet days, Ahmadinejad will, likely without contradiction, portray
> Iran's government as a progressive third-world champion, defending the
> world's oppressed, resisting American hegemony, and, by dint of the
> dinner itself , accommodating of religious pluralism. His
> well-publicized anti-Semitic rants, Holocaust denial, and threat to wipe
> Israel off the map will be dismissed as inconsequential by these
> Christian "peacemakers."
>
> This dialog comes the same month that the U.N.'s nuclear agency
> announced that it has reached a "dead end" with Iran due to
Tehran's
> refusal to cooperate and, moreover, that Iran has made substantial
> progress in developing its nuclear capability. The gathering sends a
> reassuring message there is little to fear from Ahmadinejad's
> government.
>
> But fear is precisely what this government instills at home. Apart from
> its nuclear ambitions, Iran is intensifying a domestic program of
> radical Islamization on a scale not seen since the Ayatollah
Khomeini's
> death. The West is beginning to comprehend some of the horrors of
Iran's
> laws- two women in Tehran are currently due to be stoned to death on
> allegations of adultery. But not well known is that, simply because of
> their beliefs, Iranians are imprisoned and killed for apostasy and
> blasphemy. Since, in theocracies, politics is conflated with religion,
> these laws crush political dissent as well as religious non-conformity.
> Their victims are the very people who stand against Iran's agenda of
> revolutionary Islamization, the underlying impediment to secure peace.
>
> The interfaith dinner coincides with the Iranian parliament's adoption
> of a mandatory death penalty for "apostasy." Among its primary
targets
> are the co-religionists of Ahmadinejad's New York hosts, and the Bahai
> minority. Other targets are dissident Muslims who, because they
> criticize the Iranian government, are jailed for supposedly insulting
> Islam itself.
>
> On September 9, the Iranian parliament, by 196 votes for, seven against,
> and two abstentions, voted to make the death penalty for apostasy
> compulsory (previously, judges could waive capital punishment). The bill
> now goes to committee before a second vote and final approval from the
> ayatollahs on the Guardian Council. The first victims of the new law may
> well be Christians. Just last week, two Christian men, Mahmood Matin
> Azad and Arash Basirat, who had converted from Islam, were charged with
> apostasy. This follows the arrests last summer of 16 Christians in
> Isfahan and 10 in Shiraz.
>
> The bill also targets heresy, a charge often used against Baha'is,
> Iran's largest non-Muslim minority. If passed, it could threaten some
> 350,000 people with the death penalty. Bahais are already subject to a
> campaign of repression. Seven leaders were arrested this spring and, on
> August 3, the Iranian press reported that they "confessed" to
running an
> illegal organization with ties to Israel and other countries in order to
> undermine the Islamic system. Bahais are excluded from universities and
> "sensitive" jobs such as "catering at reception
halls," "childcare," and
> "real estate," as well as cultural areas.
>
> Most of those prosecuted for apostasy, though, are Muslims. The ministry
> of intelligence is currently arresting dervishes, but more widespread is
> the crackdown on reformers who criticize clerical rule. In 2007 three
> student activists, Ehsan Mansouri, Majid Tavakoli, and Ahmad Ghassaban,
> were convicted of "insulting Islam." Prominent Shiite dissident
Hashem
> Aghajari was arrested originally for saying "Muslims are not monkeys
to
> blindly follow the clerics." At his trial, he said his punishment was
> for "the sin of thinking." In 2002, due to international
pressure, his
> death sentence for blasphemy was commuted to five years imprisonment, an
> option the new law forbids.
>
> Iran's criminalization of apostasy and blasphemy is integral to its
> ideological arsenal. Peaceful reform becomes ever more remote when
> Muslim dissenters are silenced. They are the Iranian equivalent of the
> Sakharovs, Solzhenitsyns, and Sharanskys who gave lie to Soviet
> propaganda claims. It is no small irony that the courageous Iranians are
> undercut by some of the same groups who pursued "peace" with the
> oppressors of that prior generation of human-rights defenders.
>
> If Western religious communities want to show solidarity with Iranians,
> they should do so with the religious minorities and courageous reformers
> imprisoned by the regime. If Ahmadinejad sincerely wants interfaith
> dialog, he should start by releasing Azad, Basirat, Bahai leaders and
> Muslim reformers from prison and dialog with them.
>
> - Paul Marshall and Nina Shea are respectively, senior fellow and
> director of Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, and
authors
> of a forthcoming book on the politics of apostasy.
>
> ________________________________
>
> National Review Online -
> http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2I3Njk5ZmQ2YzlhYTJlY2I4NzFkMTU1YmQ
> wYWY5MzI=
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