Introduction:
We must now take into consideration the revolutionary change in the nature and character of imperialism which occurred in the 20th Century. We shall examine its repercussions as far as the Islamic Revolution in Iran is concerned, and (in Part 7) its relationship to more recent events as witnessed in the brutal and immoral wars of aggression, being waged against the peoples of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, by the `Neocon` [2]Zionist forces of the Illuminati cabal, which although acting in the guise of US Imperialism, are in reality the visible and physical manifestations of a concerted Luciferian assault against the Umma.
It is now impossible for all but those whose hearts have been hardened by the evil one, not to discern the ultimate goal of this aggression as being the complete destruction of Islam as a comprehensive belief system, removing from Muslims their moral anchor and compass, thereby substituting a perverse Satanic mirror image of what has already happened here in the West in its stead.
The New Imperialists:
To the uninformed mass of humanity, it appeared as if a British imperialism which had prevailed in Iran without interruption since the end of World War I, was supplanted after the end of World War II by an American one - or, rather, by one consisting of an alliance of Rockefeller America and Rothschild Israel. Indeed, from quite early in the 1950s an American-Israeli presence was the dominating foreign influence in Iran; and yet strangely, it was almost exclusively against the Americans that the hostility of the Mullahs and the masses was directed, culminating in the invasion of the US embassy and the subsequent hostage drama, and it's accompanying media circus.
However, the reality was very different from the fiction, for what looked like an American-Israeli alliance, was in fact only the public picture presented by the `Hidden Face` of an altogether different model of imperialism, which had come into existence, displacing and replacing all the separate national imperiums. What began quite early in the twentieth century, and proceeded at a much accelerated pace after the end of World War II, was the progressive dismantling of all the separate national imperiums, including the American, and their subsequent absorption into something unprecedented in recorded history -- a global financial imperialism.
Instead of the moral illegitimacy, or political pathology of parasitical conspiracies of `special interests` inside the different Western nations, henceforth, a vast cosmopolitan parasitism of `special interests` would operate on a global basis, and with an endgame that was far more ambitious, being nothing less than a world economic and political imperium; a New World Order. Nationalist imperialisms were thus subsumed in a single international imperialism in the same way as we have seen very large commercial, industrial and financial enterprises swallowed and ingested into the concentrated ownership and control of vastly bigger, mainly financial conglomerates.
The overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia in 1917, along with the dispossession of all the European powers of their colonial empires, and the setting up of the United Nations as a world government-in-waiting, were all part of a power-concentrating process which began in the nineteenth century and visibly can be seen to be continuing at an accelerating pace to this day.
This metamorphosis in the nature of imperialism was one of the consequences resulting from a radical change in the realm of high finance, which can briefly be explained as follows: For a long time after the beginning of the modern industrial era, finance-capital (not to be confused with private enterprise capital) existed almost entirely in national concentrations: there was a British finance-capitalism, nominally answerable to a British government, which was in turn nominally answerable to an electorate; a German finance-capitalism, a French one, a Dutch, and so on, each joined to a national government and each government nominally answerable to a national electorate.
These nations were, in fact, plutocracies; each one an instance of what Hobson calls "social pathology," capable of maintaining themselves in power with a public opinion not sought and consulted, as before, but created as required, by news-media propaganda, patronage and other rewards of the business world. Money had become the measure of all things, with a ruling elite drawn less from the land and more and more from the factory and the counting-house. From around about the middle of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, these national concentrations of financial power were in vigorous competition, a major example of this being the scramble for colonies and markets in the so-called underdeveloped world. What then happened was that the many national vortices of financial power were drawn into a global vortex of financial power.
There can be no doubt that a major factor in bringing about this change in the realm of high finance was the long-continued existence within the different nations of Europe of Jewish banking families or dynasties which had always specialized in transnational operations. The story of how these financial dynasties consolidated their power on an international basis is explained at some length by Prof. Carroll Quigley in his 1300-page "History of the World in Our Time," Tragedy and Hope.[1]
It all began with what Quigley called "the third stage in the development of capitalism ... of overwhelming significance in the history of the 20th century, and its ramifications and influences subterranean and even occult." He adds:
"Essentially what it did was to take the old disorganized and localized methods of handling money and credit and organize them on an international basis."
But it was in the 1930s that the truly revolutionary change was to occur, when the control of this international financial system appeared to essentially pass out of the hands of those who had visibly created it -- the likes of J.P. Morgan in America and Montagu Norman in Britain – and at last openly into the hands of a `cosmopolitan` elite, no longer `high Episcopalian, Anglophile, and European-culture-conscious.` The shift occurred at all levels, says Dr. Quigley, and was evident in the decline of J.P. Morgan, which had hitherto dominated Wall Street.
It can thus be reasonably said that much of what was to happen in Iran and in many other parts of the world after the end of World War II had its parallel in the United States, where the ostensibly episcopalian Illuminati Bloodline families, [3]found themselves without the power to control their own universities, and where their national newspaper, the New York Herald-Tribune, fell into irreversible decline and died, like a ring-barked forest giant. The use of words like America and American in any discussion of world politics can thus be grossly misleading unless it is clearly understood that `American power` has ceased to be essentially American.
The dismantling of what was an essentially British oil empire in Iran, and its reorganization thereafter, on an international basis (as was done with Belgium's copper empire in the Congo in 1960) was therefore to be expected, having much the same effect as that produced by supposed `decolonization` in so many other parts of the world. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had been exploiting the oil fields in Khuzistan since 1901, and the demarcation of those fields, covering an area of 15,000 square miles, has been set out in a 1933 agreement. This giant company, writes Vincent Monteil, trained British subjects to take an interest in Iran's internal affairs, and "took pleasure in appointing the number of votes in the 'free' elections." In return -- to take only one year as an example -- AIOC paid Iran royalties or rent of £10 million in 1949, compared with £28 million paid in tax on profit alone to the British treasury.
In 1950, following the Shah's visit to the United States, where he held talks with President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the `Americans` began to display an increased interest in the Iranian oil industry. A contingent of oil experts, businessmen and technicians visited Iran, and began to lay the `powder-trail` for a political explosion which was to take place less than twelve months later.
By making it widely known how much more generously they treated their partners in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and elsewhere, an incendiary atmosphere was thus created as AIOC began negotiating for a further renewal of its contract. In the wildly confusing situation that ensued, all likelihood suggests, that it was the British who were initially instrumental in persuading the Shah to appoint the army chief-of-staff, Ali Razmara, as prime minister, charged with the task of handling these negotiations. However, typically, the British were soon conducting a furious campaign of character-assassination against Razmara, while at the same time, the Americans sought to bolster his regime with aid and by upgrading their own embassy as a visual display of sincerity. This little drama within a drama ended suddenly, and murderously when Razmara was assassinated, supposedly as a warning to any politician who dared to frustrate the growing demand for nationalization of the oil industry.
The killing was said to have been carried out by the `Fedayen of Islam` (Martyrs for Islam), but it was generally believed, and was undoubtedly the case, that orders for the assassination had come from the British by way of one of their former employees. But the question why begs asking? A draft bill for the renewal of the agreement with AIOC, introduced by Gen. Razmara, was defeated and a few weeks later, another bill introduced by Dr. Mohammad Mussadeq, [4]nationalizing the oil industry, was passed. Mussadeq was then appointed prime minister and Iran found itself involved in a titanic struggle with the ever furtive and treacherous British at the World Court and the United Nations. A great British company with many years of experience in Iran evidently had no intention of surrendering without a struggle.
Writes Amir Taheri: "That the United States wanted Mussadeq to succeed was demonstrated by the increase in American aid from $500,000 in 1950 to nearly $24 million two years later." [19] However, if the Iranians expected the Americans to help them to re-establish the oil industry on a national basis, they were soon to be disappointed, for American policy was to be dictated by considerations of a kind wholly inaccessible to the scrutiny of ordinary politicians and journalists. Whether, therefore, it was the Rothschild British or the Rockefeller Americans who were responsible for the small army revolt which dislodged Mussadeq has continued to this day to be a debatable question in Iran.
As a sincere nationalist politician enjoying much support from the religious class, himself being a practising Muslim, Mussadeq had performed the task required of him and had now to be removed. The Americans, therefore, joined willingly enough in the world-wide champaign, engineered by the British, to make it impossible for the Iranians to make a go of their nationalized oil industry. In the ensuing turmoil the shah hurriedly left the country, and as quickly returned after order had been established by the army.
The Point 4 Plan:
The Iranians may have found a key to the riddle of one of the most troubling periods in their much-troubled history in something that happened in Washington in 1949. This was a speech by Mr. Truman in Congress inaugurating his first full term as President, in which he unveiled a grandiose plan to "save the world from Communism" (so soon after America had saved the Soviet Union from Hitler!). This plan proclaimed a "bold new program for underdeveloped areas," a program "to greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations" and "to raise substantially their standards of living." The executors and agents of this plan, which came to be known as `Point 4` and Agency for International Development" or AID, were soon afterwards pressing for American assistance and advice on all the so-called `underdeveloped` countries, including Iran. What President Truman had presented, as we now can see more clearly, was the prefiguration of a new global financial imperialism whose primary purpose would be to dismantle and dislodge all the national economic imperialisms of the preceding 150 years.
A Washington report at the time said that American officials Concerned with President Truman's "Point 4" were working to the principle of "a new type of benevolent imperialism designed to spread prosperity without exacerbating political nationalism." Put more simply; if the project was initiated, "American nationals will serve on the governmental as well as the technical level in the politically independent countries concerned." Although seen in many quarters as being a disturbing innovation with regards to Asia and Africa, in Washington, it was to be regarded as only an extension of a system which was already in operation in Latin America.
Following President Truman's speech, former London Times foreign correspondent Douglas Reed wrote that he had a strong feeling that he had read it all before somewhere. And so it turned out he had, in a book by Earl Browder, leader of the American Communist Party, entitled ` Tehran, Our Path in War and Peace.` In Browder's words: "Our government can create a series of giant industrial development corporations, each in partnership with some other government or group of governments, and set them to work upon large-scale plans of rail-road and highway building, agricultural and industrial development, and all-round modernization in all the devastated and undeveloped areas of the world. Closely related socially, economically and politically with Africa are the Near Eastern countries of Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Trans-Jordan. Here also a broad program of economic development is called for.”
Significantly, it was a capitalist America and not a Communist Soviet Union which the Communist Party boss called on to undertake this ambitious program of financial and economic imperialism. Douglas Reed could only marvel:
“There must be in America under President Truman, as under President Roosevelt, some group or force strong or persuasive enough to sell Communist aims to political leaders and simultaneously to convince them that these will stop Communism.”
And it is to the same `hidden` source must be traced the true intentions of the architects of American state policy both during and after WWII, as being entirely distinct from that policy as publicly stated; namely, the promotion of two causes that were never publicly declared, but simply came to pass: the unhindered advance of the Red Army into the heartland of Europe and to the Pacific coast of Asia, and the continuous pouring of billions of financial aid every year into the then-new state of Israel.
Grand Design and Counter-Revolution:
The Ayatollah Khomeini's [5]`angry young men` who seized the American embassy after the revolution, did not fail to notice that many of the most telling policy directives from the State Department in Washington failed to tally with reports and interpretations from those men on the spot, who afterwards had to bear the full impassioned brunt of Iranian animosity. Members of the American embassy in Tehran, says Taheri, were led to understand that they should not report what they saw but, rather what Washington wanted them to report. What this meant was that a grand strategy and system of tactics were being implemented to which only a small inner core of policy-makers at the top were privy, creating an environment in which deeply clandestine purposes were heavily masked with an ostentation of innocent and benevolent intentions. The effect was an utterly baffling melange of contradictory utterances and actions. As Taheri put it:
"The behind-the-scenes drama enacted over more than eight years in Tehran, Washington, Jerusalem, London, Cairo and a dozen other cities reflected the realities of a secret world which obeyed few rules either of international conduct or of individual morality. It is in this broader context that the Iran-gate fiasco might be properly understood."
This `viper's nest` of intrigue outside Iran had its own parallels inside the country. In the aftermath of the Revolution, all Free-masonic Lodges in Iran were closed, and their archives seized, confirming what many had suspected. Many of them were controlled by Jews or Bahais[6] of Jewish origin, providing another channel of secret communication with Israel and Zionism in general.
So, how did the American Communist Party leader come to present in broad outline an ambitious program for Third World development, to be undertaken later at great cost by the United States and a wide network of international agencies? Another question: How did it happen, and how was it possible, for Armand Hammer, son of Julius Hammer, one of the founders of the American Communist Party, to proceed to Russia immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution and begin at once to organize a massive transfer of finance, industrial equipment and technology from the capitalist West to its supposed enemy, the Communist East?
The short answer to both questions will be found in what the German historian Oswald Spengler wrote immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution: "There is no proletarian movement, not even a Communist one, which does not operate in the interest of money, in the direction indicated by money and for the period permitted by money, and all this without the idealist in its ranks having the slightest suspicion of the fact."
Those who have penetrated the mystery of the strangely ambivalent relationship of high finance and Communism will not be surprised to learn that the Soviet Union supported the Shah to the end, and that articles in Pravda about events in Iran were almost exactly the same in tone and content as those in the New York Times.
If the unfolding history of our century can be said to be the product of an alliance of money and intellect, in the service of `Magical Forces.` (The Luciferian Conspiracy), it was the role of Earl Browder and very many of his kind, only a few of them to be identified as Communists, to take care of the intellectual half of this alliance. Writes Professor Hamid Algar:
"The return of the shah in 1953 inaugurated the intense period of a quarter of a century of unprecedented massacre and oppression, the intensive exploitation of the resources of the Iranian people by the imperialism of the East and West, the Western camp being headed then by the United States rather than Britain."
This then was the new imperialism, `American` and Israeli in appearance but international and `cosmopolitan` in character, drawing into its orbit power-wielding elements from all the previous national imperialisms, financial, political and intellectual. The Iranian oil industry, hitherto a British monopoly, was thus `internationalized,` the nominal national ownership of it left intact but its management entrusted to a consortium owned by AIOC, renamed British Petroleum (40 per cent), eight United States oil trusts (40 per cent), Shell (14 per cent) and French Petroleum (6 per cent).
The Great Satan:
We must now try to make some sense out of the phantasmagoria of confused and seemingly contradictory facts which emerged in the struggle between the Shah and his people that was to ensue.
The thrust of the Iranian struggle following World War II can be seen in the broadest terms as being a confrontation of mutually antagonistic hierarchies of ideas, values and vortices of power, actual or potential, the one belonging to the West and the other to the East, the one having modern America as its grand symbol of human progress and welfare, and the other regarding America as the arch-symbol of political illegitimacy, `The Great Satan.` And the Shah, because he was unable imagine any form of future for Iran except one modelled on the industrialized West, and because he, too, regarded his country's religious class as the great obstacle to progress in that direction, allowed himself to become, in every way, the puppet of the foreign powers being amassed by the Illuminists.
An assortment of ideological forces came into existence after 1953 intended to combat the dictatorship of the Shah and his subservience to the foreign powers; but behind all of them, a religious influence was increasingly becoming discernible; so much so, that even socialism, a secular ideology borrowed from the West, reappeared in Iran as "The Movement of God-fearing Socialists." This increase in religious influence came to a `head` in 1963 with the sudden emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was to play a role in the revolution resembling I some ways,if only superficially that of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the seventh century, combining in a remarkable way the functions of a religious and secular leader.
The Shah's increasing determination to enforce his will on the Iranian population, was met with a corresponding increase in the power and influence of a religious class which symbolized the will and instinct of the mass of the people. The Shah's power to enforce his will was enormously increased by:
1) an increase in the amount of money at his disposal as oil production was resumed, and again as the price of oil rocketed;
And;
2) close cooperation with the external power, especially with its Israeli component, in the sophisticated use of secret police and prisons as instruments of terror and compulsion.
After 1963, even moderate opposition would result in either forced exile, imprisonment, torture and even murder, and the army was utilized to crush mass demonstrations mounted by the Ulama[7] in Tehran and other cities, when thousands of people were killed. In 1975 the director of Amnesty Internationals British section described Iran as the "world leader" in torture, executions after sham trials, and widespread political imprisonment. The cutting edge of the power which the Shah was able to bring to exert on his internal opponents was almost entirely provided by the United States and Israel; these were in reality however, never really separate entities in this regard, but only two aspects of one and the same world-revolutionary force.
The facts prove that American and Israeli influence were at all times inseparable. Prof. Algar says that after the coup of 1953, which ousted Mussadeq, there was cooperation at all levels, especially in intelligence and security work. He adds:
"After a certain point it appears that the task of staffing the Savak was taken over by Mossad, the Israeli security, from the CIA although the CIA always retained the right of supervision over the operations of Savak. I know of many people who report having been interrogated and tortured by Israelis while in the custody of Savak."
Algar continues: "There was overwhelming similarity between the two of utter dependence on the United States. Israel is hardly independent of the United States-or, rather, the matters are the reverse, Israel certainly commands more votes in the Senate than does the White House."
Corrupting Power: “Lie In Peace Cyrus For We Are Awake.”
The career of Shah Mohammad Reza [8]illustrates to perfection Lord Acton's maxim that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Through the process of unrestrained personal ambition the Shah became wholly separated from his own people- the corruption of leadership in its ultimate form. He believed in what he was doing, enjoyed the support of the greatest concentration of power outside his own country, and was able to draw from his oil industry so much wealth that he needed nothing from his people except their utter submission.
From 1970 he was even able to expand his influence abroad by giving away vast quantities of money, having raised his own country to a position of power and influence unprecedented in centuries. Writes Taheri: "Between 1968 and 1978 Iran earned more than $100,000 million from oil exports. More than 10 percent of that was used in the form of loans or outright gifts to friendly countries. The United Kingdom received from $1,200 million in loans ... In West Germany Iran purchased substantial shares in Krupps and Benz as a means of saving them from financial difficulties... More than seven hundred "key personalities" in some 30 countries were on the secret Iranian payroll from 1979 onwards."
Iran's huge arms expenditure in the wake of the 1973-74 oil-price rise helped Western economies to avoid recession. At the same time, under the Nixon-Kissinger doctrine [9], Iran was seen as the regional power that would defend Western interests and act as policeman in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. The Shah had assigned to himself a role in history comparable, in his imagination, only with that of the founder of the Persian Empire in 600 BC. Of this he informed the world in October 1971 when, flanked by his generals, he presented himself before the tomb of that great monarch, now little more than a pile of stones in a vast arid plain, and ceremoniously read a eulogy which began with the words: "Lie in peace, Cyrus, for we are awake!" This was followed by a party among the grandiose ruins at Persepolis attended by more than five hundred dignitaries, including kings, presidents and prime ministers from sixty countries. All this, as the Shah remarked at the time, was intended to mark "the rebirth of the Persian Empire and Iran's return to the forefront of human experience."
Other products of the Shah's megalomania were the proposed 1,200-acre Shahestan-e-Pahlavi architectural extravaganza at Tehran and 20 planned nuclear power plants. This kind of development favoured Western economics and Western contractors who shared the pickings with a new class of Iranian monopolists and technocrats, but did little or nothing for the Iranian economy as a whole. Carried away by this dream of national greatness, what the Shah seemed unable to understand was that the role he had assigned to himself was wholly subordinate to another which had been assigned to him by those who were encouraging him in his ambitions. In other words, that the Iranian national drama, so impressive when viewed separately, was intended to be no more than an episode in a vastly bigger world-historical drama.
So, it is the motivational system of the likes of Henry Kissinger - during most of the 1970s the Shah's warmest `friend` and most trusted adviser -- that calls for some consideration. How and for what purpose were these powerful individuals trying to use the Shah? A short but inadequate answer is that the new international cosmopolitan imperialism, spearheaded by Israel, had come to regard the Arab world and its Islamic religions as being by far the greatest hindrance to the attainment of its great objective, a one-world government which it could control at all levels; and Iran, with its considerable non-Arabic population and huge oil wealth, was seen as a possible countervailing force which could be used against the Arab world.
The first step was to make Israel virtually synonymous with America in terms of foreign support in all fields, and then, by steady progression, provide the Shah with a means of suppressing all internal opposition. In fact, the Shah's security forces were virtually taken over by the Israelis and reinforced with non-Islamic personnel, largely recruited from non-Muslim population elements, especially the Bahais, largely people of Jewish descent no longer practising the Jewish religion. This gave the Shah an instrument which could be used with the utmost ruthlessness against the population and against the religious class in particular.
The commanding importance attached to Iran as a piece on the chequerboard of global power politics was emphasized shortly after the fall of the Shah when support from both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain was given to Iraq, and when the most flagrant violations of international law by Iraq, including the first attacks on neutral shipping, and even the use of poison gas, were disregarded or excused. The external powers, the USSR included, also doggedly refused to name Iraq as the aggressor. Then when it had become clear that Iraq could not win, the combined efforts of the external powers had to be used to prevent an Iranian victory -- an exercise which eventually called for direct American military action in the Persian gulf.
The `Mind`field:
The Iranian struggle was won and lost on the battleground of the mind. All the ideas which the Shah could muster in favour of the visible benefits of the Western social model, supported with a maximum application of force and terror, proved to be no match for a system of ideas, promoted by the Mullahs, which united the people as never before and infused them with death-defying courage. This was something the Shah could never understand: an invincible unity of the people which embraced old and young, uneducated and educated, including even those who had received their schooling in the West. Thus, we learn that the Shah's last visit to Washington at the invitation of President Carter in November 1977, was marred by unprecedented demonstrations by Iranian students, and that the tear-gas used by the police drifted across the White House lawns and caused the Shah to shed a few tears.
For the purpose of study and discussion, this victorious system of ideas can be considered under two headings: populism and religion. The use of the word populism, however, calls for an explanatory note: it means what democracy used to mean and is still assumed to mean -- namely, government by the people, direct or representative. However, since the word democracy is now almost universally applied to states which are not democracies as defined in the dictionaries, it can only be said to have ceased to be "legal tender."
The nations of the West are, in fact, plutocracies, or special-interest oligarchies, wearing many of the trappings of democracy -- political parties, the ballot box, etc. As Thomas Jefferson is quoted as having said, “Democracy; two wolves and a sheep discussing what's for dinner.”
All populist movements have their origin in a deeply rooted instinct, a social or political instinct, which prompts people to react negatively to any rule which, judged by the results produced, they do not feel to be truly their own. Primitive societies which have endured down the ages can be regarded as models of legitimate rule and an example to the huge sophisticated societies of the modern world, in which the factor of legitimacy has become wholly absent. The actual system matters very little: it could be a monarchy, or a dictatorship, or an oligarchy or a conventional democracy; there is no system of rule which has not been known to work to the satisfaction of those ruled; any system acceptable provided that it is implemented by those who can be regarded as the legitimate nominees of those ruled, leaders who are sensitive to the feelings, values, beliefs and group memories of the ruled.
Amir Taheri, a West-oriented Iranian journalist and no friend of the Mullahs, says of the Shah in 1976: "He did not need the people for their votes in a general election. He was there by divine right and parliamentary elections, organized every four years, were little more than ritualistic exercises in futility." And the Shah had long since abandoned the practice of travelling around the country to make direct contact with his people.
Other populist resistance movements in Iran since before the turn of the century, some of them modelled on similar movements in the West, were all influenced in some degree by the religious class, but the one that finally triumphed was religious to its core, inspired by a great religious leader and organized and managed throughout by the Ulama. From all of which it would seem to follow that for the West, with all its illusionary democracies and its Christian church fallen into disarray and demoralization, there should be much to learn from the role of religion as a mobilizer of mass political action, and about politics in general. However, any consideration of the role of religion in Iran - a role which would to most be unthinkable in the West today; needs to be preceded by a few thoughts about religion in general, not this or that manifestation of it, but religion as a factor of commanding importance in human affairs everywhere and at all times of which we have any record.
Religion:
Religion can be said to have two main aspects: personal and social. Religion can be a strictly personal phenomenon, joined to or wholly independent of any prevailing orthodoxy or doctrine. A sound attitude towards the totality of existence, a submission of the will to a system of cosmic law external to and superior to the intellect, no matter how such an attitude may have been acquired, is all that is needed for what C.G. Jung describes as "a religious attitude to life," or state of psychic well-being. For most people at all times, a taught religion has provided the easiest access to such an attitude, for which the only proof needed is that it works.
Religion can, therefore, also be a social phenomenon, a system of consensus belief having its origin in some prophet and offering spiritual security and some measure of creative release to an entire community, even to an epoch. Consensus religions, like all other human artefacts, are exposed to the vicissitudes of time and change and thus are liable to lose some of their pristine efficacy, their power to fulfil the purpose for which they came into existence.
So, what is the purpose of a consensus religion, if any, apart from that of helping the individual to find psychic orientation?
One simple but of course insufficient answer is that a consensus religion serves as a repository of values and a system of tested knowledge in respect of what is `right` and `wrong` in human relations. This implies that certain cosmic laws which are relative to what people do, or what is done to them, are somewhere encoded in human nature, not as ready-made ideas, but only as instinctual intimations which must then be conceptualized and verbalized as ideas capable of being communicated and discussed. These we categorize as being `moral` or `metaphysical` laws of a most volatile and elusive kind which are easily lost and are continually having to be rediscovered reinforced, consolidated and verbalized anew. And it is precisely these laws which if observed and applied in whatever form, keep a society as it were `on course,` preserving it against disintegration and disorder; more simply put, providing it's moral compass.
Islam And Christianity:
Only blind prejudice can prevent anyone who has gone to the trouble of studying even a summary of the contents of the Quran[11]from realising that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) [10]was a moral genius. A man who, under pressure of a personal crisis of the mind, gained a quite extraordinary insight into those metaphysical laws, so hard to grasp, which prevail inexorably inside the human mind and in human relations. And it was the circumstances then prevailing that made it possible, even inevitable, that one man's breakthrough to a rare state of enlightenment via divine revelation, would expand quickly into a consensus religion destined to spread very quickly over most of the then known world.
Muhammad (SAW), like Jesus Christ (SAW) about 600 years earlier, was living in what can be described as `end times` -- much like conditions present in the Western world today -- when civilisations, no longer sufficiently in `tune` with the unalterable realities of human nature, have begun to disintegrate. Social existence degenerates into a frantic scramble for personal survival and advantage as people cease to find in their social group a sense of shared security and mutual obligation and duty, and very many begin to suffer within the recesses of their minds.
What is most significant is that the Church in the West is disintegrating along with everything else, compounding rather than counteracting the process of decline in the West. Here a clear distinction must be drawn between two aspects of Christianity as a consensus religion: the Church Extant and the Church Invisible; the church as a great property-owning and power-oriented institution and the church in its nascent form as a message of personal deliverance. Both Christianity and Islam spring from the same insights and share with Judaism the same even more ancient monotheistic symbolism. The Quran says: "Jesus the Messiah, the son of Mary, was a Messenger of God, His word which He placed in Mary, and His spirit" (IV.171). There was, and remains therefore, no fundamental antagonism between Islam and Christianity.
The major difference between the two religions is that Islam did not create a church or its equivalent, and that the Christian Church, obedient to the laws of worldly growth, was everywhere inclined to make common cause with centres of worldly power. The failure of the church in the West is summed up in Balzac's trenchant remark that "there can be no universal application of Christianity until the money problem has been solved." Alas, the church has never been at odds for long with "Caesar" in the ultimate form as concentrated financial power.
It is mainly for this reason that Islam, with its determined prohibition of usury, is now seen as a major threat to the Illuminati structure of power in the West, challenging the very moral foundations on which it has been raised. The code of conduct, both for rulers and ruled, explicit in Islam's Sharia, was once largely implicit in Christianity's basic teaching ("Do unto others as you would be done by"). The main difference between the two faiths arose out of the fact that Muhammad (SAW) was compelled by the circumstances of his time to become a political leader, administrator and soldier, as well as religious leader. The meanings belonging to "a kingdom not of this world" were thus brought into close relationship with meanings more directly relevant to the unavoidable actualities of "this world."
Perhaps the most important aspect of all, when taken in the context of the present world situation, is that Islam presents in clear outline the moral configuration of Economic Man: worker, owner, dealer in the products of labour, his duties, obligations and rights. The injunction on the subject of usury may not have seemed all that important at the time when few, if any, of the Prophet's followers might have been interested in the lending of money. But, today, usury is the linchpin without which the greatest concentration of diabolical worldly power ever seen would simply collapse, and therein lies our only hope for earthly salvation.
Centuries of antagonism between the Christian and Muslim worlds can be traced to a great variety of causes, but one of its main effects, as we can now see more plainly, was that of preventing the people of the West from recognizing and getting to grips with a corrupting principle which had been planted in their midst; USURY!
The Shia:
For an explanation of the Iranian Revolution, it is not Islam in general but a particular version of it called Shi'ism [12]that needs to be more closely examined, a kind of fundamentalism which, besides setting Iran fiercely at odds with the Western world, has had the effect of driving Iran into isolation, separated also from the rest of the Islamic world. Professor Algar writes:
"The revolution in Iran and the foundation of the Islamic Republic is the culmination of a series of events that began in the sixteenth century of the Christian era with the adherence of the majority of the Iranian people to the Shi'i school of thought in Islam. Indeed, one of the important factors that sets the Iranian Revolution apart from all the other revolutionary upheavals of the present century is its deep roots in the historical past."
What has happened can be stated in a few words: Shi'ism has presented in sharper and clearer outlines the religious configurations of what we might call `Political Man.` This has entailed the politicization of the Ulama and its involvement in public affairs to a degree unequalled anywhere outside Iran. The secular leaders of the other Islamic states, many in thrall to the same Luciferian forces, at work here in the West, view what happened in Iran as a usurpation by the religious class that could place their own corrupted regimes in danger. But this involvement in politics by the Muslim clerics has deep roots in history and is supported with considerable scholarship. Writes Prod Algar:
"With the hindsight provided by the Islamic Revolution, it will be more appropriate to write the Iranian history of the past three or four centuries not so much in terms of dynasties as in terms of the development of the class of Iranian ulama. Dynasties have come and gone, leaving in many cases little more than a few artefacts behind to account for their existence. but there has been a continuing development of the class of Shi'i Ulama in Iran which has been totally without parallel elsewhere in the Islamic world."
Prof. Algar explains briefly how the burdens of state came to be placed on the shoulders of the religious scholars and how they learned to cope:
"With the decline of the Safavid dynasty in 1724, a period of anarchy began in Iran. At one point within the 18th century we find no fewer than 13 different contestants for the throne doing battle with each other. The total disintegration of the political authority accelerated the process of divorce between the religious institution and the monarchy. We can say that in the absence of an effective centralized monarchy throughout the 18th century the ulama came in a practical fashion ... to assume the role of local governors, arbitrators of disputes, executors at law and so forth."
This experience over an extended time period produced a change in Shi'ism; for there had to be some change in theory and scholarship to accommodate an expanded range of duty and mental activity. And so a great debate arose about the duties of the religious scholar, whether he should confine himself to the sifting of the teachings of the Prophet and its interpretations, or whether it was permissible for him to engage in independent reasoning in respect of legal questions. The first position acquired the Arabic name akhbari and the other the usuli.
It would be difficult indeed to exaggerate the profundity and far-ranging implication of this debate; the question at issue is whether a consensus religion can be a `total way of life` for any society unless its scholars and teachers are also experts in jurisprudence and other affairs of state and have been trained to exercise their intellects in secular as well as religious matters, thereby acquiring competence to monitor the performance of the rulers. Were it not for the triumph of the usuli position in the 18th century, the religious scholars would have been reduced to an extremely marginal position in society and the Iranian Revolution of 1978 would have been impossible. The whole significance of the Ayatollah Khomeini arises from the fact that he was the living embodiment of this activist tradition, the fruition of long years of political, spiritual and intellectual development.
As the mass of the Iranian population was instinctively repelled by the conditions of existence created in the name of Westernisation and progress, and after the failure of many attempts by various popular movements, like Mussadeq's National Front, to place some curbs on the Shah's dictatorial power, all turned to the Ulama and accepted it unreservedly as the sole legitimate authority and thereafter responded unquestioningly to its commands. Khomeini could, therefore, feel secure in the knowledge that he had the mass of the population firmly behind him when early in 1963 he virtually launched the revolution with a series of public declarations at Qum, in which he accused the Shah of having violated the constitution and the oath he took when enthroned that he would protect Islam.
He further attacked the Shah for his subordination to foreign powers, naming the United States and Israel, whom he associated with political and imperialist Zionism. The secret police `Savak` had permitted some qualified criticism of America but had always rigorously enforced the rule that not even the name of Israel must ever be mentioned in public discussion. After one of these addresses, Khomeini's centre at Qum was stormed by paratroopers and Savak members, a number of people were killed and the Ayatollah arrested. Released a few days later, he continued to attack the Shah, with the result that there followed on June 5th 1963 a vast uprising in many Iranian cities. This was repressed with great force and it was estimated that within a few days at least 15,000 people were killed in the shooting ordered by the Shah. Khomeini was arrested again and sent into exile in Turkey, whence he moved later to Iraq and then to Paris.
Two features of the ensuing revolution which culminated in the final explosion of public anger towards the end of 1978 call for special notice. The more important of these was the factor of martyrdom, that is resistance of a kind undeterred by the fear of death. The other was the communications factor, the apparent ease with which the leader of the revolution, even from distant Paris, could reach a widely distributed population with information and instruction.
The communications factor is more easily explained: the Ulama represented a nationwide communications network with its mosques and Madrassas (religious schools), its Mullahs and its students, vastly expanded and expedited by two products of modern technology, the telephone and the tape-recorder. A declaration by the ayatollah, spoken into a telephone in Paris, would be recorded in Tehran or some other Iranian city, copied and transcribed and retransmitted to other parts of the country, where the process would be repeated until within a few hours it would have reached even small and widely separated villages.
All this was made possible however, only by reason of the accumulated learning and preparatory work of four centuries which had equipped the Ulama for such a role, so that all knew exactly what they were expected to do and why, a rare condition in any society. This communications system, wholly dependent on the zealous participation of thousands of individuals, proved in the end to be more than a match for a powerful press, radio and television, all vehemently supportive of the Shah's regime. All that needs to be said about the highly abstruse martyrdom factor is that in Shi'ism the concept has been more thoroughly elaborated as a main component of the Islamic faith. It is something ever present in the consciousness of the Iranians. Hence the Shi'i maxim: "Every day is Ashura and every place is Karbala" - referring to the martyrdom of the Imam Hussain.
It was this factor that gave to mass political action in Iran, especially throughout 1978, a `diamond-hardness` that was proof against all the ruthless and sophisticated physical force which the Shah and his close Israeli ally could mount against it. During the first days of December 1978, a large number of people appeared in the streets of Tehran and other cities wearing their shrouds, prepared for martyrdom and advancing unarmed on the rows of machine guns ready to be used to deadly effect.
Notwithstanding the part in the drama played by the intelligence agencies of the `western` powers, and the massive, if hidden, and apparently prejudicial (to their own interests) financing by the International Bankers, (as was the case with the Russian revolution) by no other means could the people of Iran have overthrown one of the 20th century's most powerful and ruthless tyrants.
In Part Seven, we will follow the `money trail` up to the present day and hopefully show that a solution to our planet's woes is possible, if people of good heart and true faith will renounce petty doctrinal differences, come together and cease to give, give, give to the great force of evil which stalks our world, everything it wants to swallow.
Comments to: http://righteousalliance.blogspot.com/
Reference Notes:
1] http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119975.pdf Tragedy And Hope
2] http://www.oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm
3] FrtizSpringmeier : http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/index.htm
4] http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/biography/
5] http://www.iranchamber.com/history/rkhomeini/ayatollah_khomeini.php
6] http://www.bahai.org/
7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulema
8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
9] By the last years of the Nixon administration, it had become clear that it was the Third World that remained the most volatile and dangerous source of world instability. Central to the Nixon-Kissinger policy toward the Third World was the effort to maintain a stable status quo without involving the United States too deeply in local disputes. In 1969 and 1970, in response to the height of the Vietnam War, the President laid out the elements of what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, by which the United States would "participate in the defense and development of allies and friends" but would leave the "basic responsibility" for the future of those "friends" to the nations themselves. The Nixon Doctrine signified a growing contempt by the U.S. government for the United Nations, where underdeveloped nations were gaining influence through their sheer numbers, and increasing support to authoritarian regimes attempting to withstand popular challenges from within. In the 1970s, for example, the CIA poured substantial funds into Chile to help support the established government against a Marxist challenge. When the Marxist candidate for president, Salvador Allende, came to power through free elections, the United States began funneling more money to opposition forces to help "destabilize" the new government. In 1973, a U.S.-backed military junta seized power from Allende. The new, repressive regime of General Augusto Pinochet received warm approval and increased military and economic assistance from the United States as an anti-Communist ally. Democracy was finally re-established in Chile in 1989.
10] http://www.islamweb.net/ver2/archive/index2.php?vPart=74&startno=1&thelang=E
11] http://www.quranexplorer.com/quran/
12] http://www.islamfortoday.com/shia.htm
Posts
.jpg)
