photos: Persia/Iran
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by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I do my best not to write about politics here. And this article is no exception. But we are passing through an historic moment and I would like to share an historical insight.

I have a friend, S, whose Middle East politics are opposite to my own. With me almost 70-years-old and him already 80, we are both of a generation who remembers being able to have opposite political opinions and still be friends. I hope that you remember, too.

Recently S and I agreed not to speak about the Middle East. But back when such conversation was still in bounds, I shared with S a perspective on the conflict that was new to him... and may be new to you as well.

The insight is not my own. I picked it up listening to a variety of expert opinions, in particular Haviv Rettig Gur. There are a lot of historical lectures online.

I know that I am going out on thin ice here. Please keep in mind, it is not my intention to write about war or politics. I know that such things happen, but I am not weighing in concerning any atrocities committed by any side in any conflict, past or present. I am writing about history, what seems to me settled, uncontroversial history... and, much less settled, about God.

Today, with over 2 billion followers, 26% of the world's population, and 50 Islamic countries, Islam is the most successful expansionist project ever.

From the start, Islam spread meteorically. With an astounding series of conquests, within a mere 130 years of its founding, the caliphate already spread from Spain to India, with more to come. Adherents, large and small, mullahs (religious authorities) and common folk, understood Islam's great expansionist success to be due to the fact that God, Allah's will, was on their side. With all that success it was easy to believe that the messianic goal, as predicted in the Koran, Islam's world domination, would be achieved.

The Moslem empire, the Ummah, thrived spectacularly for centuries. However, with the passage of time it shrank as Christian armies evicted it from Europe, and now and then, even expelled it from Palestine/Israel.

The Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa for 600 years. But while Europe advanced culturally and economically, the Ottoman Empire eventually began to stagnate and crumble.

Finally, during World War One, with their economy in tatters, the Ottomans aligned with the wrong side, and were conquered by France and England. After the war, their empire was partitioned into the nations that comprise the Middle East as we know it today.

Of course, there is a lot more nuance, a lot more to be said about all of this. However, no one disagrees with this basic outline. Here now is the news, an insight, still not controversial, but not well-known, or, at least, not discussed much.

The Islamic world has never recovered from their being conquered by the Europeans in World War One. For them the equation is very straight forward: if Islam's expansionist success was a sign of God's favor, then Islam's loss and "humiliation" is a sign of God's disfavor.

The idea of the nation-state (relatively new even in Europe) was and is a foreign imposition in the Middle East. Nations, their own nations, dividing the Islamic empire, constitutes foreign intervention. The kings and "presidents" ruling these artificial states, appointed as the were by the occupying powers (England and France) were and are illegitimate according to the transnational Islamicist Moslem Brotherhood, an organization banned by governments across the Middle East.

Never having gotten over their being conquered by European armies, adding insult to injury, their humiliation is compounded in their losing further power to the "weakest people in the world," the Jews. The issue for the Islamists has little, if anything, to do with Palestinian statehood, and everything to do with expelling the Jews from Palestine/Israel as a crucial early step in their anticipated Islamic renewal.

Again, please believe me, I am not here taking political sides. I'm not taking a position on the creation of Israel or the resulting conflict. I am only pointing out that while the Two State Solution, the creation of a Palestinian state, has been the basis for western diplomacy for over 50 years, in the most fundamental way, states are not part of the Islamist perspective. Islamism is theocratic. God rules, not the state.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Islamist Moslem Brotherhood, governed a state, or a proto-state in Gaza since 2007. For most or all of those years, Gaza largely enjoyed the economic cooperation of Israel. With Israel's blessing, until October 7, 2023, billions of dollars in international aid flowed into Gaza.  

But Hamas is a theocracy. They were and are willing to sacrifice their state and the people of their state, because for them, the conflict with Israel is not about states or people. It is about returning the glory of Islam. (Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy, did the same, starting wars that devastated Lebanon.)

Nasser in Egypt claimed the messianic role of the expeller of the Jews, and failed... repeatedly. The Asads (father and, even less credibly, his son) in Syria, claimed that role and failed... repeatedly. For the last 50 years Iran has claimed to be the Islamic savior: "You (Sunnis) failed to evict the Jews because you are not the true Islam. We (Shias) will succeed, because we are the true Islam."

That is why Iran's Islamic Republic, almost indifferent to the health of its state and the welfare of its people, invested its wealth and power in their clearly, often stated intent to commit genocide against the Jews.

More than one thousand miles separate Iran and Israel. Iran doesn't care about the Palestinian people, any more than they care about their own people or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians they and their proxy Hezbollah massacred in the recent Syrian civil war.

Iran's Grand Ayatollah was sincere. He believed, and may yet, that God was on his side. Iran was winning diplomatically and militarily against America and Israel, The Great Satan and the Little Satan. The Islamists were poking the bear, and nothing happened to them. But as the last week has shown, without nuclear weapons or their terrorist proxies, Iran is a paper tiger.

Western arrogance sees our values reflected around the world: "Everybody wants what we want: tolerance, a better economy, a safe place to live, college for the kids..." Western culture, so derided by so many who would be lost without it, allows us the privilege, the comforting illusion of believing that everyone shares our motivations.

History and current events prove otherwise.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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