On Iran, Anti-Semitism and the Twelfth Imam
Yesterday, I was alerted to this news-report from earlier this week in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was quoted as saying:
the state of Israel will cease to exist with or without the involvement of his country.
‘This will happen whether we are involved in it or not,’ the Iranian leader told a news conference…..
He had been asked to explain his statement earlier this week in which he said the Jewish state would soon disappear from the map.
This is not the first time that Mr Ahmedinejad has expressed similar sentiments…But the reason this particular report caught my eye was an interview I had just finished reading which had actually discussed the broader context around such remarks.
The interview was with political scientist and thinker, Matthias Küntzel (currently a research associate at the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) in Jerusalem and author of several books including, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11).
I am reproducing some excerpts below (emphasis mine) in which Mr Kuntzel talks about Iran, anti-semitism and the world view that appears to underpin and support the violent ideology of Islamism.
*** Excerpts Begin ***
Alan Johnson: Let’s turn to Iran. In a stream of articles and lectures presented around the world, you have pleaded with us to ‘take the Iranian leader’s Weltanschauung [worldview] seriously as a specific outlook with its own principles and history‘. You have invited us to ‘look inside Ahmadinejad’s fantasy world and seek to grasp the immanent logic behind his attacks, even if this involves insights which may send a shiver down the spine‘. You see the regime’s ideology – a ‘mish-mash of Jew-hatred, Holocaust denial and Shiite death-cult messianism‘ – as the real context for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Let’s begin with that aspect that most observers find frankly bizarre – Holocaust denial. What is the meaning and import of what you call ‘this new form of Holocaust denial: creative, modern, unrestrained, and extremely self-assertive‘?
Matthias Küntzel: I should say first that I am convinced that they believe what they say. It’s not just propaganda for their public. They are also trying to influence UN debates, suggesting that Israel should not be allowed to ‘spread the lie of the Holocaust’ and so on. Iran is pushing its own ‘truth’ within institutions. And this is little understood.
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Alan Johnson: Is this what you mean when you say that when it comes to Iran we must understand we are dealing with ‘a phantasmagoric parallel universe in which the reality principle is constantly ignored …the laws of reason have been excluded and all mental energy is harnessed for the cause of antisemitism‘?
Matthias Küntzel: Exactly. Anyone who wishes to engage in a serious study of this centre of Islamism must first attempt to grasp the internal logic of this ‘parallel universe’. Its main component is a particular form of Islamist epistemology. Islamists think reason is a sin. You have to believe in what God says, and reason endangers this naïve belief in God. To give you an example: No Islamist would challenge the statement in the Koran that Allah changed Jews into apes and pigs, because everything the Koran says is true. The only permissible debate which took place in the theoretical monthly magazine of Hamas, Falastin Al-Muslima, is about whether the Jews who became animals are able to have offspring or not, since the Koran provides no answer to this question. Truth is not a matter of trial and error but a matter of belief.
Even on the occasion of his speech at Columbia University Ahmadinejad claimed that only the true believer is gifted by Allah with truth. Nothing else counts. Therefore the Western style of historiography is rejected as well. Therefore Islamists are able to say that Moses was ‘the first Muslim’, that the Holocaust is a myth and that the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam is a reality.
Secondly, there is the emotional infrastructure of antisemitism. Holocaust denial brings antisemitism to its extreme point. Holocaust deniers implicitly claim that for 60 years the Jews have lied to the world. They claim that the Jews have every academic and media post sewn up to sustain the lie in order to browbeat the world. Every denial of the Holocaust thus tacitly contains an appeal to repeat it.
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Alan Johnson: Western observers find it hard to judge the significance of the Iranian regime’s beliefs concerning the return of the ‘Twelfth Imam’ and the connection of this belief to either Holocaust denial or the pursuit of the nuclear bomb. Should we take this idea seriously?
Matthias Küntzel: We must take it extremely seriously. Different religions have different ideas about the Messiah. It’s normally a form of metaphorical thinking about utopia – a better world in a future to come. But in the case of the special brand of Shiite Islam that Ahmadinejad and the group around Khatami represent, it’s quite another story. They have transferred the abstract idea of a Messiah into a political programme for today. That’s why it matters.
If the Mayor of Rome knocked down a quarter of the city to build a giant boulevard to prepare for the reappearance of Jesus Christ as a Messiah, I think the Italian people would remove him, maybe to the Asylum! But this is exactly what happens in Tehran. It was part of the last election campaign. Ahmadinejad won with the promise of building a boulevard for the return of the Twelfth Imam. Look, it’s the first time in human history that the special threat of destruction connected to the nuclear bomb is connected to this kind of religious apocalyptic thinking. This is extremely dangerous.
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Alan Johnson: You recently compared the reaction to the November 2007 American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran [which concluded Iran probably stopped the active pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2004] to ‘the euphoria inspired by Chamberlain’s words on Sept. 30, 1938, as he … announced that he had achieved ‘peace in our time.’ Why did you make that comparison?
Matthias Küntzel: People see what they want to see, and read what they want to read. Chamberlain didn’t want to notice the connection between the Sudeten German question and the overall ideology of Nazism. He wanted to separate these things. The NIE also wants to separate things. It takes the view that if Iran has declared uranium enrichment to be peaceful then we should believe the regime. (There is a footnote to this effect in the report). They disconnect the question of the nuclear programme from the whole ideology. But if you look at the constitution of Iran one part says ‘every means’ must be used to defend and to spread Islam. There is nothing which can’t be used for military means, according to the constitution of the ‘Islamic Republic’. Once you disconnect the technique and tools of the nuclear programme from the ideology, you are committing the same mistake as Chamberlain did.
I read British journals from the 1930s. When Chamberlain came back, people were so happy! More important: the British reporting of Nazi Germany changed instantly. Before Munich, the press was critical of the internal workings of the Nazi regime, of how it dealt with Jews and so on. After the huge sight of relief of Munich, they changed their reporting. Things were now seen in a brighter light. The realism faded. A rosier view emerged. Here we have one main consequence of appeasement. In order to defend the decision you have taken, you’ll start to see the enemy in a new light. After the NIE, in Germany at least, Iran vanished from the headlines. When Ahmadinejad called Israel a ‘dirty microbe’ – without doubt the language of Julius Streicher – there was no mention in any German newspaper.
*** Excerpts End ***
In the interview, Matthias also shares his views about the coming conflict between Islamism and the liberal world order. I think they are prescient:
At the beginning, this conflict was a territorial dispute – perhaps until the middle of the thirties. Then it started to become a conflict between the Arab world and the Zionists, and then with Israel. During the 1980s, after the Iranian revolution, it again changed its profile and scope. The basic framework is now Islamism against the West. Israel is not the root but just the front line in this war. The Islamists tell us they want to destroy liberal democracies and free societies the world over. They are outspoken about this but the Western world prefers not to listen to what they say.
Even in his letter to President Bush, President Ahmadinejad boasted that he ‘can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.’ I’m neither Jewish nor even religious. Thus I have no love affair with Israel. For me it’s nevertheless quite obvious that Israel defends my freedom against Islamism and that giving support to Israel is in my self-interest.
Finally, I could not resist reproducing this comment about Israel and the rocket attacks on Israeli towns:
For instance, it is normal for a state to defend itself against rocket attacks from outside. You must give Israel the same right. Otherwise you are dealing with Israel in the same way antisemites deal with Jews.
The way the attacks on Sderot are dealt with reminds me of how attacks on European Jews were dealt with in the Middle Ages. At that time also, it was very normal that Jews got punished and beaten, but if the Jew got up the courage to defend himself it was a big scandal.
Today, the big headlines only come when Israel tries to defend itself against the rockets. The rockets themselves are treated as, well, normal.
Some of you may recall a related post on this topic (article by Kanchan Gupta, which I woud recommend highly): “Cowards cannot build nations…”
Related Posts:
“Israel’s Domestic Enemy” – excerpts
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