Connect the Ideological Dots
By Ralph Reiland
The message from the 9/11 hearings is that we're a bit slow in connecting the dots--about 25 years too slow.
It was Feb. 1, 1979, when the dark side of Islam stepped off a plane from Paris in Iran. After 14 years in exile, Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had come triumphantly home to establish his revolutionary "reign of virtue," an Islamic theocracy designed to cleanse a nation of what Khomeini called "Westoxification," the poisonous influences of Western culture.
With no delay, Khomeini urged a jihad against "the Great Satan" and supported the storming of the American embassy in Tehran by student militants. "Americans are the Great Satan, the wounded snake," Khomeini proclaimed. Not only wounded but also corrupt--so corrupt that we'd be better off dead. Killing us, he preached, was doing us a favor: "If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the Earth, his moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him."
For those within Iran who might be a little squeamish about being dragged back to the 7th century, Khomeini prescribed a no less bloody end than the one he'd set for the infidels of the world: "All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed."
Also disappearing should be any authors or buildings that were out of step with the process of Islamization. "Christian, Jewish and Bahai missionary centers are spread in Tehran to deceive people and lead them away from the teachings and principles of religion," said Khomeini. "Isn't it a duty to destroy these centers?" Also destroyed should be Salman Rushdie, as ordered in Khomeini's infamous fatwa: "The author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its contents, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems to execute them wherever they find them."
For the crime of expressing a viewpoint, not only was British author Rushdie to be killed but also his publishers. Rushdie's American publisher received bomb threats and death threats, his Norwegian publisher and Italian translator were attacked and his Japanese translator was fatally stabbed. Anywhere in the world, the very idea of a free mind was to be crushed out of existence.
Also disappearing in Khomeini's paradigm was any separation between mosque and state. "In Islam," he explained, "the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty," i.e., to Khomeini Almighty.
To French intellectual Roger Garaudy, the whole thing seemed quite dandy. "The Islamic Revolution of Iran presented a new example of perfect human beings and society," he declared. "This is the reason behind the West's enmity towards it. Khomeini gave a new meaning to the lives of the Iranians."
Others followed in Khomeini's footsteps, getting "new meaning" in their lives, getting "perfect," by killing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981; killing Lebanese Prime Minister Bashir Gemayel in 1982; bombing the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; assassinating a U.S Navy officer in Greece in 1983; murdering a U.S. Embassy official in Beirut in 1984; killing American servicemen in 1984 in Torrejon, Spain; hijacking the Achille Lauro in 1985; killing American servicemen in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub in 1986; blowing up the Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988; bombing the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992; bombing the World Trade Center in February 1993; attempting to assassinate President George Bush in April 1993 in Kuwait; murdering American diplomats in Pakistan in 1995; bombing the Riyadh military compound in Saudi Arabia in 1995; bombing the Khobar Towers in Dhahran in 1996; blowing up American facilities in 1998 in Tanzania and Kenya; and bombing the USS Cole in 2000.
Sept. 11, 2001, was simply more of the same, only larger.
Testifying before the 9/11 commission, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice spoke of our "inability to connect the dots." Khomeini is a dot, as are al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, plus every attack listed above. Connect the ideological dots and the picture becomes only too clear. Our enemy is Islamic extremism, a fundamentalism that promises to smash anything in its path in order to impose a "reign of virtue."
Ralph R. Reiland is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University.
