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Shame on Us Iranians for Not Defending Salman Rushdie
http://www.ghandchi.com/186-rushdie.htm
A few days ago IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) judiciary lifted the death sentence of Aghajari and at the same time the military state organization of Pasdaran of IRI, which reports directly to IRI's supreme leader Khamenei, reiterated the death sentence for Salman Rushdie. I have previously written about Aghajari's case:
http://www.ghandchi.com/159-Aghajari.htm
Also I previously wrote about the shameless stand of Aghajari's organization (sAzmAne enghelAbe eslAmi) against Salman Rushdie, even when their own friend was hit by the same ruthless Islamist intolerance for freedom of thought, and when Salman Rushdie was among the first people who spoke up against that murderous verdict:
http://www.ghandchi.com/174-noshariati.htm
What is amazing is not what the likes of sAzmAne enghelAbe eslAmi do, rather it is what the independent intellectuals of Iran do, when nobody says a word to condemn the death threats against Salman Rushdie. Even those who have taken the role of spokespersons for human rights issues in Iran, did not say a word on this outright threat of Pasdaran against Salman Rushdie, when they enumerated the human rights violations of IRI yesterday.
When are we going to learn that our silence when IRI was executing the generals of Shah's regime paved the way for IRI to execute Soltanpour and Paknezjad three years later? When are we going to learn that our silence about IRI death threat to Salman Rushdie paved the way for IRI to murder Foruhars later?
If there is one single issue that should be the condition for relations of advanced countries with the Middle Eastern countries, it should be the *human rights condition*. Those who are so worried for improvement of IRI-US relations and have become the apologists of IRI in the U.S., and equate IRI-US relations with Iran-US relations, better speak up about the death threat of Pasdaran against Salman Rushdie, than being worried about enumerating the groups that they perceive as obstacles to Iran-US relations:
http://www.ghandchi.com/88-Normal.htm
It is not Iranian MKO or monarchists that helped the murders of Bakhtiar, Foruhars, and the WTC killings. It was not the others the apologists gossip about, that have helped the killing of people for their thought. It is the appeasements of the Islamists by the IRI apologists and IRI lobbyists in the West, that has helped the continuation of these murders by the Islamists in the last 24 years.
When are they going to see the truth of these heinous murders that they have helped, the same way that the leftists and apologists of Communism in the West, helped the human rights violations of the Soviet Union and Eastern Block in the past. The murder of Trotsky in Mexico by Stalin was the start, but those apologists of Communism did not stop their appeasement of the Soviets even 40 years later. Are these apologists of Islamism in the West going to wake up soon to how they are helping these outright death threats coming from IRI?
At the other end of the spectrum, if Jimmy Carter did the right thing, to raise the issue of human rights, as the main challenge against the Soviet and Eastern Block Communist dictatorships, the same way, what needs to be raised against Islamism and the Middle East dictatorships of our times, is the issue of human rights.
Soviet Union had more weapons of mass destruction than the whole Middle East put together. What made that empire to collapse, was not any Western country disarming it, rather it was the people of the Soviet Union, when they knew their struggle for human rights was on top of the agenda of the whole civilized world. This is what is needed in the Middle East and particularly in Iran today.
We Iranians have a double duty to speak on behalf of our nation, to condemn the death threats of IRI against Salman Rushdie. If Iranian students were able to make history by their demonstrations in November and December last year, against the death sentence of Aghajari, we Iranians, all of us, owe it to ourselves and humanity at large, to raise our voice to condemn the death threats against Salman Rushdie today.
Yes, if we had raised our voice about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie before, as strong as we did in the case of Aghajari, when the death threat against Rushdie was issued by Khomeini, maybe we would not have seen the murder of Foruhars, and if the world had taken that more seriously, maybe even the WTC atrocities by the Islamists would have been prevented:
http://www.ghandchi.com/87-aboutWTC.htm
Those IRI apologists who try to appease IRI, by misleading the public opinion, are not helping Iran and Iranians. When IRI says they have no plans to kill Salman Rushdie, but IRI's head of Pasdaran military force makes death threats against Salman Rushdie, and when other IRI quasi-governmental organizations collect money freely in Iran for hit men to kill Salman Rushdie, then IRI is part of the murderous Islamist terrorism.
If the Ayatollah Khomeni's fatwa against Salman Rushdie is irreversible, then it means it is time to reverse such murderous orders by overthrowing any state power of Islamic mollahs, and by arresting any Islamic clergy who ever makes such murderous verdicts anywhere in the world. This is what commitment to human rights means in this day and age, by not appeasing a government that is helping to kill an individual for his ideas, and by defending the freedom of thought.
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.IRANSCOPE.com
February 17, 2003
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