The Root of the Real Problem With Iran Deal is Trust

 

The familiar line we are getting about the impending Iran nuclear agreement is that we cannot trust Iran. I do not believe that is the most worrisome problem as much as our inability to trust the United States President and Secretary of State to be honest or even for their claims and comments on what is and is not permitted and their ramifications to even contain a scintilla of truth, and that is a major trust problem. Since I have initially claimed that trusting Iran is not the main problem, perhaps we should first discuss what I mean by trusting Iran and then we can go to the root problem of President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and the entire support staff and how far we can even trust the major advisors to the President.

 

President Obama, as almost everyone with eyes and ears has figured out, has a serious deficit in the foreign policy department which makes his domestic policies appear to be some of the greatest achievements in all of history. To claim the President Obama’s handling of America’s foreign dealings have been a blighted catastrophe may be giving them too much credit for actual achievement. The first improvement might be for him to stop whatever he is doing and then to pursue the exact opposite track. This would mean walking out of the Iran negotiations and reapplying the stiffest sanctions and working to enjoin as many other nations and international alliances to join in this pressure forcing the Iranian regime to realize they can either enter talks with an honest intent to reach some form of agreement with an in depth set of inspection routines which also includes snap inspection at the IAEA’s preference and not the paltry attempt at appearing to allow such inspections when they are restrained to only make snap request for permission under the current stipulations being discussed. President Obama has produced a strawman which he has burned in effigy at least a thousand times and has also added an additional inferred quality to his strawman which gives it the stench of one of the most horrid and ancient hatreds of planet Earth. Going back and listening to President Obama’s own words and he interchanges the strawman of the only other choice is war with claims that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is demanding the United States risk going to war with Iran. The President has labeled any opposition to his plan as surrendering to that warmonger from Israel, Netanyahu thus invoking the specter of anti-Semitism. The problem is that we cannot expect or trust that President Obama has anything other than the surrender of the entirety of United States control or even influence in the future of the Middle East including providing any protection for Israel, or perhaps centered on neutering Israeli power by granting Iran hegemonic power in the Middle East potentially greater than Israel possesses. President Obama has already made the suggestion that if only Israel would be rid of its nuclear arsenal then perhaps there might be a possibility that Iran would immediately end their dedicated nuclear weapons programs and unless Israel were to dismantle their nuclear arsenal and potentially render their Dimona reactor inert and permanently unusable then Israel should expect to accept all blame for any deficiencies which may prove to be resulting from any Iran deal President Obama and company are capable of producing. The entirety of any shortcoming will be blamed on Israel in general and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular by President Obama and the leftist media will add the responsibility and blame for Iran becoming a nuclear power by placing the onus on Israel. That has been the message and it will only be made to be heard louder and clear as a bell when the perfidy of President Obama is committing in order to make a deal. President Obama is arranging for any positives that are reaped from his Iran deal, which will likely be defined mathematically as the null or empty set, while all blame for the deficiencies being caused by Israeli intransigence preventing a broader deal which would have made the entire Middle East nuclear free and immediately breaking out in song and flowers sprouting across the lands. That is the crux of the treachery being committed by President Obama and his setup escape clause is, ‘blame Israel’ not he.

 

Now let’s proceed on to Iran and why Iran can be trusted. Simply put, the Iranian leadership and especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been brutally honest, which is more than what can be stated about President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry or the dire leftist media in their reporting, or more accurately, their lack of reporting on the situation. The Iranian leadership has been very up front in denying that they will permit any inspections ever on their military facilities, period! They have insisted that there be only scheduled inspections of which they are to be given ample notice and that they hold the final say on where and what the inspectors can visit and see, control over any samples taken, and generally be permitted to skirt around any potential troubles their nuclear program inspection might pose. They have flat out stated they will be utilizing their most recent and improved centrifuges which have the capability of producing weapons grade as much as 95% enriched uranium of 3.5%, that is three and one half percent, in a single cascade thus removing the troublesome storage of 20% enriched uranium as would have been required by their previous centrifuges. Further, they have assured all that should they design and produce even more efficient centrifuges in the future which would allow for a cascade needing fewer centrifuges and thus less likely to fail, then they will be exchanging the older centrifuges with the latest and greatest centrifuges no matter what President Obama is claiming. Probably the greatest of the Iranian claims is that there will be no restrictions on their missile program which since the beginning of the nuclear negotiations came under the tutelage of President Obama and his band of merry-making advisors who may only speak of the greatness of the emperor and his new policies back in 2009 has advanced from barely being capable of reaching Greece or Egypt or placing a satellite in near Earth orbit for a few revolutions to now being capable of striking France and Algeria and placing communications or spy satellites into orbit (which potentially means they could possibly strike anywhere on the globe with a fair amount of difficulty but still within their technical abilities).

 

Then there were the comments glossed over and quickly forgotten by the Western leftist media as Iranian ‘elected’ President Hassan Rouhani had claimed, in what is dismissed as ancient history and being long before he rose to the Presidency as a new and now suddenly moderate, what he had stated in what may as well have been a former life way back in 2001, “If one day … the Islamic world will be equipped with weapons available to Israel now … the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth but would only do damage to the Islamic world.” Recounting his term as the Lead Negotiator for Iran at the nuclear talks back in 2003, when the talks included only France, Britain, and Germany, he boasted that using a smile and a few jokes he completely disarmed the European negotiators convincing them he was a moderate reformer determined to reach an amicable agreement and then proceeded to drag out the talks. When he was assigned to lead the negotiations for Iran he boasted, “The day we invited the three European ministers, only 10 centrifuges were spinning at Natanz. We could not produce one gram of U4 or U6 [uranium hexafluoride]. We did not have the heavy water, we could not produce yellowcake, our total production of centrifuges inside the country was 150. We wanted to complete all of these, we needed time.” Referring to his use of deception President Rouhani related, “While Iran has a right within the nuclear non-proliferation regime to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes it has decided voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities as defined by the IAEA. The statement of Tehran in that declaration, there was a resolution that all [uranium enrichment and processing] must stop but we did not allow it.” Wearing an example of that gleaming and disarming famous smile, Rouhani boasts about Iran completing the construction of the Bushehr nuclear reactor as well as the Arak heavy water and plutonium producing reactor complex while Iran was increasing the number of centrifuges from 150 to 1,700 at Natanz facility. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu summed up the Rouhani approach and stylized deception he has packaged especially for what Rouhani perceives as Western fools easily led to there they wish to be led while delivering exactly what the Iranians desire stated, Iranian President Rouhani, “he’s criticizing his predecessor for being a wolf in wolf’s clothing. His strategy is to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Smile and build a bomb.” All it takes is a smile and a few jokes, wonderful.

 

There are other items we can be assured Iran honestly intends to follow through on and that they have announced repeatedly but the leftist media only sees the Cheshire Cat and the face away while the smile lingers. Some of the more pertinent claims include but are not limited to the following. Iran will be permitted to operate under these agreements nineteen thousand centrifuges. The Iranian military bases will be off-limits to inspectors who are merely spies for the Western powers. Iran refuses to answer the questions about previous activities which may have been operated by its military. We will keep all military activities secret and beyond the sight of the inspectors. Why is it that Israel is permitted to have hundreds of nuclear weapons but Iran is not allowed any such devices; that is an inequality which must not be permitted to stand. Iranian internal affairs are not to be interfered with by the Western Powers. And then there always is that favorite around which they have built a number of confabs which were more celebratory than they were policy in their appearance and the reporting by the mainstream media but if viewed and the speeches words were heeded, these were some of the most threatening and frightening celebratory events which targeted the conquest of the west but especially insisted that at their first possible convenience once they had the ability that Iran had a special treatment for the United States and Israel as stated in the banners and the name of these conventions, “A World Without Zionism or America.”

 

That should be sufficient to send a chill down the spine of every western democracy, republic or free society by any governance because Iran is out to conquer and destroy every last one of us. They have already started to spread their range of control which currently is taking a drubbing in Syria, but be assured that when all is over and the dust settles back on the rubble that Iran will have retained Damascus and the roads into Lebanon as that is their minimum requirement. The only way this can be avoided may be even more ominous as it would take making Isaiah 17:1, “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” a reality, something that may already be about to become fact as the only question is what will happen should Damascus fall to ISIS or al-Nusra. Would Iran turn Damascus into nothing more than rubble neighboring a fully functional international airport reserved for the private and military use by Iran? Of course they would as Iran is willing to put the entire world to the torch as by so doing they bring their salvation back from the well to deliver them the world for out of the chaos the Mahdi would return. The leadership of Iran is completely infested with what are known as ‘Twelvers’ who believe that only by spreading war and its misery and chaos far and wide encompassing the world will their perfect end times world be founded. They so not fear war, they worship it and that taints their every decision. This added to everything else we have seen from Iran would lead any sane person to believe that they will say anything while doing exactly what they believe is necessary to serve their ends. Many have yet to figure out their end desires despite it being unbelievably simple, it is the same destiny as proclaimed by ISIS and included in the Hamas Charter, conquest and purification, read all convert to their version of Islam or die, of society and rid it of all who refuse their superiority in all things starting with their religious beliefs. The sole difference is that ISIS and Hamas are Sunni and Iran Shiite making our final choice limited to who wins, if it is Iran we will all be Shiites or dead, if it is ISIS we will all be Sunnis (their definition which is very likely far more radical than mainline Sunnis) or dead, if it is Hamas we will all be Sunnis (their definition which is very much more radical than mainline Sunnis) or dead. There is an overriding theme to their vision of the future but there is another choice beyond the surrendering to Allah and his designated but self-proclaimed supreme leaders and authoritarian, imperial tormentors and the judgmental inquisitor of all that is acceptable and holy; we can nip this in the bud while it has not fully metastasized and their cancerous imperative spread and gained sufficient power to complete their fantasized dreams making their heaven on earth which for many, myself prominently in the category, will be someplace quite a bit less inviting and certainly quite permanent.

 

Humor me a little aside which will lead to one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes. One has to realize the greatness that was Winston Churchill which could not be completely appreciated until recent events though some of us took his warnings to heart as we saw the coming threat far back. Winston Churchill warned the West about the rise of Nazi horrors and the true nature of Adolph Hitler’s ambitions. For some time the West, meaning mostly Europe, the United States and the other western powers have had the realization, or perhaps more of a belief, that the world could not be conquered by one nation without the total destruction of the world. They theorized that anybody even fathoming as a possible theory the conquest of the world would inevitably see the radical increase in damage and destructive consequences of war, especially the use of nuclear weapons which brought forth the Japanese surrender, this interpolating would see the folly of attempting to conquer the world as doing so would bring about its destruction and one would be inheriting a smoldering and mostly uninhabited world taken back to the Stone Age. Unfortunately, the whole of humanity has not figured this out or they have conceived of a plan by which the world will not be entirely laid waste and the conquest and subjugation of the world and its population is still possible. Winston Churchill warned the world about Stalin and Communism coining the terminology of ‘Iron Curtain’ in his speech given at Westminster College of Fulton, Missouri, where he stated,

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone – Greece with its immortal glories – is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation.”

Finally, Winston Churchill defined the threat and nature of Islam in his original writing of “The River War” when it was first published as a two-volume set edition in 1899, but this selection was removed when the book was condensed into one volume and republished edition in 1902 though no reason could be found for the reasoning other than to shorten the book a number of quotes, especially the longer quotes, as this is, were removed. The quote here defines Winston Churchill’s cognitive and conclusive notes of the pervasive religious shortcoming of resisting the advances of science but mostly he relates his observations of both individual Muslims and the overriding societal whole under Islam. Let’s let the quote speak for itself.

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

Lastly I would like to close with one final quote which addresses in its time the threat which was being ignored in Europe and the possibility of the threat becoming so overwhelming as to make victory impossible. We may be witnessing the exact same scenario concerning current threats largely because our political leaders are too intimidated to speak the truth. They have been cowed by Political Correctness which has blinkered their eyes and closed their mouths. We can either hope and pray that our leaders collectively awaken from their stupor and rub the war weariness from their eyes and see the danger lurking just around the corner should certain events take a turn for the worse and we wait too long hoping that what we fear is not what we wish to avoid so what we see we visualize as a lesser threat which can be resolved without risk. If our violence averted society rejects even the just war then we will face extermination or at the very least the inversion and destruction of the freedoms we enjoy but refuse to defend. Winston Churchill described this scenario far better than I ever will as his mastery of the language was exquisite while mine is somewhat more of a blunt instrument beating people over the head repeatedly if that is what it takes. Churchill wrote

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Coming Deal that Iran Wrote

 

The defection of Amir Hossein Mottaghi, Rouhani’s public relations manager during his 2013 election campaign for President, removed any doubts or glimmers of hope that what was being acted out in Lausanne, Switzerland, nestled in the Alps, was an actual deal meant to deny Iran anything they desired and packaged it as an accomplishment. The crux of the problem is that the Iranians have neither desired nor needed any form of a deal as they always were and are going to do exactly that which best serves their purposes, and that is to build as many nuclear warheads and as many missiles on which to place those warheads and do so at whatever speed they desire. The warning signs have been everywhere for all to see. Even the French and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) claim the deal is so pathetic as it does not limit or even begin to prevent the Iranians from proceeding forward to producing nuclear weapons nor does it address the concerns expressed recently by the IAEA, an agency notorious for being unable to prevent or even monitor any nation which has had any desire to attain nuclear weapons. When the IAEA is expressing serious concerns that the Iranians have kept much of their work and engineering work for the supplemental items to weaponized nuclear materials such as the triggering mechanisms, warhead design and other necessities concealed and has been reticent about reporting such activities, then there may be a serious problem. The IAEA reports claim that Iran has refused to come clean in any number of areas and that they suspect Iran has nuclear research and production sites which they have refused to report and may even have some of which the IAEA has no knowledge or information about and may reveal in time that the Iranians are running a parallel program intended solely to produce the required nuclear weapons materials such as highly enriched uranium and all other parts required for the manufacture of nuclear weapons thus allowing for Iran to negotiate a deal while producing nuclear weapons clandestinely.

 

Meanwhile every report out of Lausanne, Switzerland, has been another piece of the puzzle which is beginning to reveal an ugly reality. What is becoming evidenced this week is satisfying the worst fears of those watching the charade being carried out by the United States negotiating team which appears to be cheering and working for the Iranians and simply attempting to drag any unwilling partners along down the primrose path and producing a document replete with the appropriate signatures all signifying nothing. The Iranians have taken measure of President Obama and found him to be lacking in all ways. They have detected an empty suit which envisions himself as a great negotiator whose simple presence, even from behind the scenes, as so inspiring that others will bend to his will and he can win the day with virtually no effort. They have seen the man-child for what he truly represents, a narcissist with delusions of grandeur and of great moral and intellectual prowess unequaled in all fields and so full of himself that he cannot even begin to believe the reality that Iran has simply been going through the motions of negotiating and simply have been baiting the United States team, the same team which negotiated the agreements with North Korea as they became nuclear capable, manipulating their every response leading them to the exact point the Iranians desired with which they would continue their clandestine operations while also using their agreed upon centrifuges working in order to continue the façade of staying within the letter of the agreement. Iran has used the negotiations to their advantage all the while laughing at the ridiculous actions of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry who have taken every word and action to heart and have never actually shown any intelligence or perceptive abilities all the while being largely led around by their noses going wherever the Iranians had wished to move them. As we have pointed to before, the French see the deal as weak and beyond the monitoring force’s ability to enforce. The IAEA will continue to never receive total access to the Iranian nuclear facilities thus never knowing definitively whether or not Iran is producing nuclear weapons behind their backs.

 

The Institute for Science and International Security was quoted in The Tower magazine having stated, “A deal that does not include Iran addressing the IAEA’s concerns about the past and possibly ongoing military dimensions of its nuclear program would undermine the verifiability of the deal, and thus the credibility of a comprehensive deal.” Their spokesperson was further quoted, “Fordo will remain open, and its centrifuges will spin.” As the information attained monitoring the news out of the negotiations revealed that it truly is a part of the deal that Iran may continue to utilize the Fordo facilities and continue to maintain six-thousand centrifuges at any given time by our latest information. Six-thousand centrifuges are a really large number for supplying fuel rods for the few reactors currently in use and thus one must conclude that Iran has measured the spines of the Western powers and found them to be lacking and thus capable of misleading themselves and their public into believing they had negotiated a good deal. The Iranians were likely convinced that they were negotiating with a pack of fools simply by how they reacted to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress by claiming they had Iran cornered and that the deal was as good as was possible all things being considered. Meanwhile, the IAEA had been sounding the warning bells trying to get anybody at the negotiating table in Lausanne, Switzerland to heed their concerns and realize that the deal they are debating is a complete and total lie as the Iranians have been dealing falsely and has no intentions of observing any limitations written into the deal and are making as many of the terms denoted in vague terminology such that there is potentially two manners in which one would be able to interpret the meaning and operate their centrifuges and other materials as freely as they wish. The truth of the matter is that the Iranians often were only capable of running their centrifuges at around forty to forty-five percent of capacity thus agreeing to around one-third of the units in use at any given time, so the six-thousand centrifuges turns out to be the number they use at any given time.

 

The claims by the French that the United States has spent much of the negotiations parroting the Iranian demands trying to make them more readily digestible for the remaining members of the P5+1 were pretty much validated by the defecting Amir Hossein Mottaghi. His relating the weakness displayed by the United States negotiating team also gives credibility to the claims made a couple of weeks ago by some Iranian dissidents that Iran had recently completed and already using a new unreported uranium enrichment site beneath the outskirts of Tehran. They explained the methods used to conceal its construction and how centrifuges were brought into the facility and assembled within the new laboratory and they claimed that the new site was recently completed and the cascades of centrifuges were tested and functioning well producing enriched uranium. The dissidents’ were dismissed as alarmists by the United States and dismissed as unreliable, pretty much as these same dissidents were dismissed when originally claiming that Iran was running secretive enrichment and other nuclear weapons related development which eventually proved valid producing these very talks.

 

But Iranian uranium enrichment is but the tip of the iceberg whose concern should be taken more seriously by the United States and the rest of the appeasing western nations. There is also the question of their rocket and missile research and their near completion of a true ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capable of carrying a nuclear warhead anywhere in the globe with relative accuracy. The definition of relatively accuracy is simply because with nuclear weapons, like horseshoes, often close is sufficient to score. This is one reason the difference between the super accurate United States missiles which were capable of striking their exact target missing it by no more than a couple of inches and their Soviet counterparts which had an accuracy of striking within twenty to thirty or even fifty yards really made little difference when talking about warheads which would lay waste to most of the targeted city. It has been proven by observing Iranian rocket and then missile tests that they have progressed from the simple rockets, which generally went where you pointed them and would strike more often than not within the country they were aimed at, though this might have proved more difficult when striking Israel due to her narrow profile, to large ballistic missiles which have ranges of up to three-thousand kilometers and striking within fifty kilometers of their intended target. Iran has recently claimed to have developed a cruise missile with a range of close to two-thousand kilometers and an accuracy of less than ten meters, an impressive level of accuracy. So there is this front which makes the Iranian development of nuclear weapons all the more ominous and threatening, especially with their continued chanting of, “Death to America”, and “Death to Israel.” These chants which have been a response to the policies of their government and the promises given to destroy these two main enemies and obstacles to a world dominated and ruled by the Iranian Mullahs.

 

This concept brings us to the last leg of the triad of threats posed by the Iranians, namely their ever more rapid attempts to control areas of the Middle East and their expressed desire to further their conquest across Europe. Additional to the Iranian conquest to becoming the leader of the entire Muslim world and spreading their form of Islam across Europe, they have a particular desire to vanquish the Greek islands in revenge for the Persians defeat at the hands of Alexander the Great. The Iranian eventual goal is perhaps the most difficult to believe and pertains to drenching the entire planet in a conflagration in order to speed up the arrival of the Messiah, the Twelfth Imam, who will climb from his hiding place in a well in Qom and lead the Iranians in the purification and conquest of all mankind. This sounds incredulous when one first contends with this Iranian belief that their savior has been hiding since childhood in a well to avoid being murdered by his enemies, the Sunni Muslims, and upon the world being bathed in fire and chaos will climb out from that very same well to lead in the Shiite conquest of the earth. Those who believe this concept are referred to as Twelvers for obvious reasons though I might have called them as duodenary dunderheads. This is perhaps partly the reason why many who have studied the leadership of Iran have posited the idea that deterrence is impossible as such a threat merely plays into their belief that the Twelfth Imam would then arise and lead them to their destined victory over all odds and adversaries, and that is truly frightening when one realizes that it is more likely that Iran is currently manufacturing nuclear warheads which are merely waiting to be married to their own ICBM and launched to the far corners of the globe and everywhere inbetween in order to bring on the salvation of the true believers. If this is not frightening enough to any sane individual, then I know not what might be.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

The video below is what will hopefully be the opening salvo placing Islam on a path to having its own reformation. The timing is pretty much right on schedule as Judaism had its expansionism where it took lands by force and eventually ended that stage of its history after which it only fought to retain the small area of lands which it occupied, a struggle the Jewish state is facing today as the forces of the world continuously attempt to slice and carve Israel up leaving an ever smaller piece of land for the Jewish state to continue existing. The first story telling of Avram’s belief that idolatry was an empty concept and likely led Avram on his quest for the knowledge which eventually led him to finding G0d tells of Avram going into the showroom where his family sold idols to make a living. Avram smashed all of the idols in the shop except the largest idol which he placed the large hammer he had used to smite the rest of the idols. When his father entered the shop he was beside himself and furious demanding that Avram explain what had happened. Avram calmly explained that when he arrived that morning he caught the largest idol, the one holding the hammer, smashing and destroying the other idols. His father rejected the ridiculous story yelling that stone idols were incapable of such acts which Avram simply and calmly inquired why his father and family were selling idols under a false claim. This episode was the beginning of the travels and tribulations for Avram as most certainly he was invited to vacate his family home by his irate and distressed father. The amount of anger Avram probably received from his father and the rest of the family likely drove him to the farthest lands he could find where he felt safe from their reach and where Avram’s life was drastically changed and he started the seeds of what would become Judaism. During this struggle to find truth Avram found G0d and upon G0d instructing him, he changed his name to Avraham.

 

Some five or six hundred years later, after the Jews had been enslaved in Egypt, their numbers had increased to a point that the Pharaoh saw the Jews within Egypt as a potential threat and so placed them in bondage such that they would not revolt and join with one of Egypt’s enemies thus toppling his rule. After four hundred years we are told that the Jews were led to freedom by Moses who gave the Jewish people the Torah gaining Moses the title of the law-giver. Moses also led the Jewish people back to their ancestral homelands, the lands which presumably were granted to Avraham by G0d. The path to freedom and liberty and the forming of a people who did not have their minds enslaved and fearful, as were the minds of the vast majority of the Jewish people whom Moses led out of Egypt; Moses had to turn the nation of Israel around and journey back into the dessert. Moses had initially led the Jews directly to what was to be their homeland but the test of the spies who told of a formidable peoples who had cities with insurmountable walls and themselves were giants with great strength which was given by all but two of the twelve men sent to reconnoiter the land and the people’s panic caused Moses to lead them back into the desert until a new generation had been raised not under the oppression of slavery and with the mindset of a freed people. This, we are told, took forty years of wandering through the desert. To make this telling short we will simply list that Moses did not enter the Promised Land but turned the leadership over to Joshua who led the Jewish people on their initial efforts to conquer what would become their homelands. Initially the Jewish people broke into their individual tribes with each being autonomous. It was not until King David melded the twelve tribes into one nation and King Solomon built the L0rd’s Temple, the First Temple, in Yerushalayim. This was the pinnacle of Jewish expansion and conquest of lands and the rest of time until the Romans dispersed the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire in order to make them cease to exist and to perish from the pages of history that the Jewish People lived in the lands straddling the Jordan River and across the plains of the Galilee, much of these lands are where Israel exists today. The Israelites took approximately fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred years from their founding as a people and a religion by Avraham to their conquest and settling their lands centered on Yerushalayim and the Temple. This was the end of military expansionism and the adopting a kinder and gentler Jewish People, the same area approximately that the Jews are attempting to rebuild their homelands which had sat desolate for almost two millennia. Without going through the periods of conquest, rebirth and reconquering their area across Europe but instead look to when Christianity also became nonviolent and no longer expansionary, one sees that this happened for the Christian faith approximately fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred years. Checking the Islamic calendar one would notice that Islam is approaching the time-period where both Judaism and Christendom went through their transformations and became less violent and mostly no longer expansionist. So, perhaps this video has arrived and this will be the first salvo for the transformation of Islam. Here is the video and more continues below, but first the video requires watching if you have not yet come to see it already as it did appear on the social media circuit.

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest general turned leader of Egypt will turn out to be the man who began the reformation of Islam or at least the reformation of Islamic beliefs and thought in Egypt, the most populous Islamic nation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the location of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. This was the University where el-Sisi gave his landmark speech. When I first viewed this speech made by el-Sisi I immediately feared for his life. There exists probably nobody in a more advantageous position to foment this transformation. The previous time such a reformation in Islam might have been possible was just after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secularly based Turkey which he had placed what he considered an unimpeachable guardian of the works of his lifetime when he placed the enforcement of the secular state he had set for Turkey. Much of his work is being undermined and undone by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been slowly and inexorably sliding Turkey away from the standards put in place by Mustafa Ataturk a century ago and has already replaced the top generals thus coopting the military from interfering with his designs on returning Turkey to the glory of its time as the head of the Caliphate. Now we have General el-Sisi aiming to turn Egypt into a modern and functional Islamic state. One has to give Abdel Fattah el-Sisi credit for giving this address before the faculty and administrators of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the recognized premier and most prestigious Islamic institution for higher learning in the world. If Abdel el-Sisi can persuade the Imams who teach at Al-Azhar University to teach a reformed and flexible version of Islam more centered on the original teachings of Muhammad during the time in Mecca where he initially wrote the Quran and find some evidence or writing which defines Islam in the manners of Turkey then Abdel el-Sisi may turn out to be the man who started the reformation of Islam. What might the signs be that Abdel el-Sisi is making progress and what form and nature would a reformed Islam take?

 

We can all probably agree that the first accomplishment that Egyptian President and Islamic reformer must achieve will be remaining alive. The fate that awaited former Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat after signing a peace treaty with Israel was that he was assassinated while watching a military revue when a soldier broke ranks and charged the reviewing stands and shot President Sadat at almost blank range. Anwar Sadat, like Abdel el-Sisi, was a general in the military before becoming President for Life and that relationship with the military was short-lived as it was from amongst the ranks of the military that the Muslim Brotherhood was able to reach out and assassinate him. So remaining alive and the symbol of a reformed Islam which is being practiced within Egypt, the largest Islamic state in the world, as well as taught at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the premier institute of higher learning and scholarly discourse in all of Islam, will produce a base for Islamic reformation in which Islam is transformed into a religion which is finally capable of living in a world in which other religions are deemed to be permitted and Islam will finally be able to be practiced side-by-side with the other faiths and will no longer pose a threat challenging all other faiths demanding to be the sole religion of the world. Making such a transition will take time, hopefully not too much time, but time just the same as such a transformation cannot be expected to take place overnight, or even in a single year.

 

The signs that such changes are being effectively spread throughout Islam and there will be more than sufficient pushback making the task of spreading the reformed version of Islam that much more difficult. There will be the resistance from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia who with Saudi oil monies who have been at the forefront of Jihad as a violent manner of spreading Islam if coercion and conversion failed to convince a people to adopt their version of Islam. Then there is the not so small matter of Shiite Muslims as Abdel el-Sisi is Sunni and thus will not hold any acceptable powers of persuasion or authority, moral or otherwise unless Abdel el-Sisi is planning to conquer all of existing Islam in order to teach then a version which is non-violent. Then there are places where Islam is practiced solely because of their willingness to use brute force to enforce the laws of Islam as they perceive such. There are entities whose very existence is dependent on violent Jihad such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezballah, the Twelvers which had their influence solely through nonviolent means. Then there are the recent events in Paris which may have revealed something extremely threatening about Islam today. The two brothers claim that they received training and that the plans were worked through and rehearsed before they were sent to France to perform their deadly acts. This would not seem to pose any problem except that one brother claimed to have worked with al-Qaeda while the other claimed he worked through ISIS. If what this implies is true then the world and Abdel el-Sisi have a serious problem on their hands. The merging of the two of the largest, best trained, and militarily capable of ruling over entire nation is seriously frightening. The world can only hope that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not working together, even if only on Jihadist acts which both terror entities have an interest, then reforming Islam will have become that much more difficult. Abdel el-Sisi made clear that he was speaking about changing the thinking and not the religion, the interpretation and not actual Islam. What he likely meant by these declarations was that he aimed to preserve the writings of Islam and simply shift the emphasis to coexistence as the Quran was first written and that the changes he was purporting were things which the Quran already states but which are not currently stressed and utilized thus getting Islam to change from being a threat to the other religions of the world into a more gentile and pleasant form where it coexists with the other religions in the world. Abdel el-Sisi reflected on his realization that should Islamic practices continue insisting on violent Jihad and the transformation of the entirety of the world to Islam by spreading Islam by the sword that Islam was facing a problem. Abdel el-Sisi described that problem perfectly when he stated, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Ummah to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!! That thinking, I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’, that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!!” Abdel el-Sisi has looked at the world through open eyes and seen that should Islam continue in its current path its hand will be against every religion, and every religion’s hand against Islam, and will in the end lead to the destruction of Islam, thus its path must change. Abdel el-Sisi has awakened from a nightmare revelation where he realizes that Islam will only continue if it refuses to continue raising its hands against the world thus he has taken upon himself the task of teaching the Imams and the presumed greatest of those preaching Jihad to now preach kindness. Can he win against the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Feisal Abdul Rauf and Abu Hamza al-Masri? All the rest of us can do is pray that Abdel el-Sisi is making an honest attempt and not trying to aggrandize himself, and that should his intents be pure, from the depths of his heart, and guided by his reason, that he be blessed in his quest as, should he succeed, then both Islam, the Muslim world and the world as a whole will benefit from his efforts.

 

Beyond the Cusp