Category Archives: Islam

Guests of the Ayatollah

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guests-of-the-ayatollahThe subtitle of this book by Mark Bowden is “The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam,” and I think a better subtitle would have been “The Iranian Hostage Crisis.” This book was recommended to me by a Great Nephew who is studying to be a high school history teacher, and it is a very worthwhile book. I was worried when I saw it is well over 600 pages and decided I could probably skim some of it. I asked myself something to the effect, “After all, how could the lengthy hostage situation have interesting information for several hundred pages?” I was wrong. I found myself reading the details each time I thought of skimming. There is very little information in the book that isn’t interesting, and I learned why someone beginning a career as a history teacher would recommend it to person who has given himself the title of “amateur historian.”

The book begins with a description of Iranian students who had become more interested in the revolutionary politics of opposing the United States than in university studies. They began planning a siege of the American embassy in Tehran, and many of them expected to die. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the hated Shah of Iran, had been a staunch ally to the U.S. against Soviet expansionism. He had been put in power by a CIA-funded coup that had been masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore’s grandson that overthrew the elected government in 1953. The shah had to flee to the United States when the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers landed at the Tehran airport, revolution swept the country, and the United States became the “Great Satan.” “The prosperous middle and upper classes of Iran prayed that they weren’t going to be abandoned to the bearded clerics, but they were in the minority. To the great stirred mass of Iranians, afire with the dream of a perfect Islamic society, the U.S. embassy was a threat…What plots were being hatched by the devils coming and going from its gates. Why was no one stopping them?”

A dozen young Islamist activists who named themselves, “Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line” to differentiate themselves from those they thought were not completely loyal to the Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, planned to take advantage of a large planned demonstration against the embassy. The students knew Khomeini had a stake in preserving the provisional government, and they feared he might order them to not carry out the assault. That was probably the most brilliant part of their plan.  The activists planning the assault decided they would not harm the Americans. They expected to have some attackers killed, and decided they would pass the bodies of any martyrs killed by the Marines out to the crowd. Continue reading →

President Obama’s Use of ISIL Instead of ISIS

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I’ve been baffled since the early days of the Obama administration’s about the focus semantics rather than policy. I think the first time I noticed was when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano began using the term “man-caused disaster” instead of “terrorist attack.” That was just the start. “War on Terror” became a forbidden phrase and was replaced by “Overseas Contingency,” which I still don’t understand. “Jihad” became a forbidden word and “violent extremism” replaced either “Islamists or Islamic terrorists.” I have come to believe that the original confusion about the attack on Benghazi was caused by Obama administration officials being convinced they weren’t allowed to use the term “terrorist attack.” Perhaps even they thought it would be silly to call it a “man-caused disaster” and instead referred to it as a “demonstration.”

The latest in the quest to use semantics is the conscious shift of the administration from the term ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) to ISIL (Islamic State In the Levant) to describe the terrorist organization creating carnage in Iraq. I had to look up “Levant” and learned it consists of the Eastern Mediterranean. Wiki describes that the Levant today “…consists of the island of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria Palestine, and part of southern Turkey.” I was even more confused, because I hadn’t heard of any of the ISIS or ISIL attacks being in any of those countries other than Syria. I thought most of the attacks that had made the news occurred in Iraq, which isn’t mentioned. Continue reading →

Muslim Brotherhood Origins

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I’ve been baffled trying to understand the basis of Islamic terrorism and what I have been hearing about the Muslim Brotherhood.  One example of my confusion was how the young men who flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11 after living in the U.S. in complete freedom and tolerance could have enough hate to do what they did. I recently read the book “The Closing of the Muslim Mind” by Robert R. Reilly (that is reviewed on this date) and it provides some answers. I remain conflicted that any God could want the murder of people innocent except that they haven’t read the book of the chosen God and lived their lives strictly by his teachings. However, Reilly’s book explains why there are Islamists who are not conflicted by that. Continue reading →

The Closing of the Muslim Mind

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muslim_mindThe subtitle of this book by Robert R. Reilly is “How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis,” and the author certainly documents the basis for that subtitle. I did not enjoy reading this book for several reasons. It provides the Islamic words to interpret various descriptions and meanings, and I found that quite distracting.(Page 43 has 14 examples, to include fard for duty and mubah for permitted.) I was also disappointed early when the author announced that he was going to focus strictly on Sunni beliefs and was not going to discuss the “Shi’ites…except tangentially…” I was disappointed there wouldn’t be any help for me understanding the differences between those two groups.

The best of book is Chapter 8, “The Sources of Islamism.” It answers many of my questions about the Muslim Brotherhood and its widespread influence. The origin of the Muslim Brotherhood is traced back to the shock among Islamists over the abolition of the caliphate by Kemal Ataturk in 1924. (I have done a commentary including discussion of that event that I intend to post with this review.) The Muslims decided this must have been caused by their lack of faith. The only solution was to restore “…Muslim faith to a pristine condition.” In late forties and early fifties Sayyid Qutb traveled from Egypt to college in Greely, Colorado. He was disgusted by what he saw as a materialist and degenerate culture. He traveled back to Egypt and became a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went to the gallows in 1966 smiling, and that image inspires his followers today. It is worth noting that there were periods in the development of the Muslim Brotherhood that they modeled themselves after the Nazi Brownshirts and later were part of the Communist party in Egypt. Continue reading →