-- Amil Imani

Great news! Great news! The deadly confrontation between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran is about to become history. The dove of peace is here in the person of the Smiling Mullah Khatami. Just look at his serene face with and ever-present reassuring little smile. It makes you forget all your troubles, doesn’t it? If by looking at him you are not comforted, it may be the way he is dressed that seems alien—the turban, the cloak and all. Fine. Then let us listen to what he preaches.

In dealing with the mullahs ruling Iran, what you see is not what you get, and what you hear is not what they mean. Transparency and honesty are not their strong suit. So, we need a first-rate sleuth to see through their smoke-and-mirrors, as well as beyond their twisted tongues into their warped brains. Who else but Sherlock Holmes can be our man to tell us what the mullahs really want? The fact of the matter, as far as we can tell, is that the mullahs are waving a big menacing stick over the world’s head—their nuclear program and its ramifications.

Islam, the “religion of peace,” is anything but peaceful, particularly when it comes to other religions. To the oppressive Islam, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet—the seal of the prophets at that. Grudgingly, Islam barely tolerates people of the book—namely Jews and Christians—but no other faith is entitled to any fair treatment. In Iran, the force-imposed Islam finds it expedient to extend its limited tolerance to the original religion of the indigenous people—the Zoroastrians. The terrible plight of the Baha’is in Iran is particularly heartwrenching, since they are the largest non-Muslims in the country and have, from day one, been severely brutalized by Muslims. The Baha’i faith dates back to the middle of the 19th century when an Iranian nobleman, Baha’u’llah, founded the new faith as an independent religion—a very painful thorn in the side of a ruling vested clergy with a stranglehold on the masses.

Islam can justifiably be condemned as a barbaric ideology that has energized and continues to energize crimes against humanity. Islam belongs to a raft of doctrines such as Nazism, Fascism and Totalitarianism of various stripes that promotes hate and violence against others. Despicable doctrines of hate and violence remain confined to their place under the "shameful" classification in libraries until people adopt them as their program of life. Hence, it is people who are guilty of bringing to life the dogmas of savagery. In the same way that ignorance of the law does not constitute a valid defense, not bothering to find out about the true nature of Islamic precepts and practices and blindly doing Islam’s biddings constitutes inexcusable wrongdoing. Muslims, therefore, are indictable for subscribing to the Quran and committing themselves to carrying out its ruthless instructions at great harm to the non-subscribers.

Diffusing the present dangerous confrontation between Islam and the West demands rational impartial and cool heads to untangle facts from myth, understand the Muslims’ mindset, and redress any grievances on either side. The Muslims’ perennial complaint is that the imperialist West—all colonial powers of the past, as well as the United States of America—have victimized them for decades and even centuries and continue to do so in every conceivable way. The litany of the alleged wrongdoings by the West is encyclopedic.

The terror and death inflicted on humanity is not the work of radical Islam, neither the political Islam, nor the militant Islam. It is Islam, period. Get it? And the perpetrators are not fringe elements confined to brainwashed Saudis, loony Taliban, or some know--nothing Pakistanis who have hijacked Islam and are now in the business of mass murder. The latest project of the practitioners of the “religion of peace,” aimed to blowing planeloads of innocent civilians to smithereens in midair over the Atlantic, - ought to finally drive the point home: It is Islam, dummy. Get it? How could people calling themselves sincere God-fearing religionists bring themselves to even think of acts of such barbarity, yet plan them methodically and cold-bloodedly proceed to execute them?