Imam Khomeini and the centrality of leadership in the Islamic movement

Every June, ceremonies are held to commemorate the passing away of Imam Khomeini in 1989. This year, these ceremonies gain added significance in view of the uprisings underway in the Muslim East. Zafar Bangash, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, compares the Imam’s leadership with the near-leaderless movements in the Muslim East.



The Muslim East, commonly referred to as the Middle East, has been in the throes of peoples’ uprisings since December 2010. In two countries long-entrenched dictators — General Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt — were driven from their palaces, while in others, the remaining sentries of Western neo-colonialism are barely clinging to power, fighting ruthlessly to retain it. These include Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, the Khalifah family in Bahrain, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, Abdullah in Jordan and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. How long these rulers will remain in power is not clear.

Comparison of the leadership qualities of Imam Khomeini and the Islamic movement he led to success in bringing about an Islamic revolution in Iran and the lack of leadership in the civil uprisings in the rest of the Muslim East is in order. This may explain why the initial momentum that would be expected to lead to societal liberation may be aborted even before any gains are institutionalized in the form of just policies, free constituency building leading to effective representation, more equitable distribution of resources, and re-evaluation of past treaties.

First, let us reflect on common features that are discernable in all the movements in the Muslim East. All appear leaderless or at least no single leader has emerged on the scene. Following from this, there is no clear directional course set for the movement. These uprisings, dubbed the Arab Awakening, are demanding the overthrow of brutal dictators that have either imposed themselves, or more likely, been imposed on the people for far too long. There also appears to be some confusion regarding the nature of the prevailing systems in their societies. Not one movement has publicly and unambiguously called for dismantling the existing systems or cutting down to size the top-heavy militaries, which act as praetorian guards for the status quo even if rulers like Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt have been forced out of office. In both countries and in the others, the militaries are at the forefront of crushing the peoples’ aspirations. In some places — Libya and Syria, for instance — the uprisings also have covert or even open external support. In the case of Bahrain, foreign troops — Saudi and Emirati — equipped with American weapons and war materiel have been rushed in to prop up the oppressive Khalifah regime. The common feature in all these countries is the call for freedom, elections, responsible representation, and better job opportunities.

These uprisings began in an unlikely locale: Tunisia — not on many observers’ radar screens to trigger such fast-paced changes in the Muslim East. To their credit, the people of Tunisia were the first to overcome fear. It is a powerful weapon used by oppressors everywhere to deny people their fundamental rights. Tunisians showed the way forward by defying the dreaded security services and standing up to them. Their steadfast defiance forced the establishment, including the military, to push Ben Ali out. The hope was that by removing the most visible face of the regime, it would pacify the people and contain their pent-up rage. The Tunisian military also refused to attack unarmed protesters, thereby sealing Ben Ali’s fate but it would be wrong to conclude that the people have achieved their objectives or that the military is on their side. The people of Egypt face a similar dilemma and are far from certain about realizing their dream of establishing a society based on justice and fairness.

Overcoming fear is the first step toward freedom. The people of Iran led by Imam Khomeini had shown more than 30 years ago that shedding fear is the most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressed. They defied the Shah’s dreaded secret service, the Savak, and his equally ruthless military machine thereby ushering in the Islamic Revolution. While the masses in the Muslim East are showing welcome signs of shedding their fear, they are nowhere near achieving success. True, there are some features common to the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain.

One of them is the large participation of women in anti-government rallies. This was clearly evident in Iran in 1978–1979 when many women were shot and killed by the Shah’s brutal troops. In the more recent Middle Eastern uprisings, women only in Bahrain have been martyred. Nonetheless, their participation is a welcome development and appears to have drawn inspiration from the example of their sisters in Iran of three decades earlier.

Another lesson learned from Iran was that participants in the Muslim East uprisings have not sought direct confrontation with the military. This was even more striking in Bahrain where people came out with their families (including children), bearing flowers to hand out to soldiers. The heavily armed soldiers, however, were in no mood to accept such gestures of peaceful intent and turned their guns on the people, killing and wounding scores of them. Not content with killing and maiming peaceful protesters, the troops then headed to the hospitals attacking medical personnel and dragging the wounded out of hospital beds. Such brutalities have seldom been witnessed before; attacking doctors, nurses, and the obviously wounded is a war crime, but as usual the mainstream media mouthpieces are out to lunch when such things happen to Muslims. Recall that during the Second Gulf War when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, his troops were accused of taking babies out of incubators and crushing them on the floors of the hospitals; and despite the fact that this did not happen, the news of the barbarity of the Republican Guard was flashed all over the world, validated no less by “testimony” in front of the US Congress for maximum effect and brainwashing. In this case, US-backed Saudi and Emirati troops are actually invading hospitals and convalescence facilities, but nary a murmur anywhere other than from the Islamic press. The duplicity of this type of coverage is reflective of the schizophrenia in the Arab Awakening.

But conversely, there are striking differences between the Imam Khomeini-inspired Islamic Revolution in Iran and the uprisings underway in the Muslim East today. One relates to leadership. In Iran, the Imam’s dynamic and charismatic leadership, completely immersed in the teachings of the Qur’an, provided a clear directional course uniting all people behind him. He had no equals or rivals — none. The Imam’s commitment to Islamic principles was also clear and unambiguous. He did not mobilize the people of Iran on the basis of nationalism; nor did he say that he wanted to bring down the price of bread or other essential commodities to win people’s backing. His main objective was to liberate his people not only from the local proxy — the Shah — but also from the global mechanism of corruption and God-denial led by the United States. Thus he emphatically pointed to the gross disparities that had emerged in society as a result of the slavish policies adopted by the Shah to appease his American masters. Further, he did not push to participate in elections under the Shah’s oppressive system. In his lectures and speeches, the Imam repeatedly emphasized how Islamic principles of dignity and respect were being trampled upon. He reminded the ‘ulama’ that they had an obligation to revive the spirit of struggle and sacrifice among the people. He urged them not to fall into the trap of passivity. One of the Qur’anic ayat the Imam frequently quoted to motivate people to rise up was, “Say [unto them O Prophet], “I exhort you unto one thing: that you stand up for Allah in pairs [collectively] and individually…” (34: 46).

Sincere leaders are clear about the overall objective. Setting the directional course is a prerequisite for any movement’s success. Only a muttaqi leader operating above personal or parochial interests can offer such direction. Imam Khomeini was such a leader. In fact, he surpassed any other Islamic leader in the last 200 years. That also explains why he was so successful when others have failed to bring about meaningful change in their societies. In the Muslim East today, on the other hand, there is near total absence of any identifiable leadership, much less one setting a directional course. A leader may yet emerge from within these movements but the fact that such leadership has not been identified and has not provided clear guidance to any of these movements is a major weakness of these struggles. This also explains why these movements, much as one may admire the people’s courage, cannot truly be called revolutionary because they are not demanding total change of the prevailing systems in their societies. A revolution requires a revolutionary leader. In the Muslim East, the movements simply want to fine-tune existing systems and to have a little more say in how the government should be run while leaving the ancient institutions imposed during the colonial period virtually intact. This also makes them vulnerable to external and internal manipulation as is already evident in several cases.

A person is thrust into position of leadership both by circumstances as well as by his personal charisma and ability to inspire and lead people toward the realization of a particular goal. This, of course requires clear articulation of the goal first and to motivate people to accept this as an objective worthy of pursuit. The goal must be such that people would be prepared to offer sacrifices, including lives, for its achievement. For Muslims, this means being an active member of the Islamic movement and working toward the establishment of the Islamic State. The successful leader not only articulates the vision but also demonstrates the ability to transform it into action by aligning performance with vision to create a climate of success for the realization of the stated goal.

Imam Khomeini was the prototype of such a leader. He not only articulated a clear vision but also inspired millions of people, creating a successful Islamic movement in Iran that led to the Islamic Revolution. This resulted in the establishment of the first Islamic State in the post-colonial era. This is and should be the principal aim of every Islamic movement. But the Imam’s is a truly remarkable achievement in contemporary Muslim history because hitherto Muslims had only suffered defeats and humiliations.

To properly understand and appreciate the significance of his legacy, we must briefly review the history of the last 200 years, especially as it relates to the Muslim world. This will enable us to better grasp the enormous challenges the Imam faced and how he overcame them to take the Islamic movement in Iran to its successful conclusion: an Islamic revolution. In the Muslim East, on the other hand, the movements do not seem even to want an Islamic revolution; they merely want permission to participate in “democratic” elections in which the rules of engagement are still defined by the same oppressive order they sought to overthrow.


Contemporary reality

It would be inaccurate to describe the Muslim world as free. True, the era of direct colonialism has ended but this has simply ushered in an era of neocolonialism whereby native agents of the West — civil and military — have assumed power and continued colonial policies, disguised today under the rubric of globalization. It is no coincidence that not one Muslim country, with the notable exception of Islamic Iran and to some extent Turkey under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), can be considered to be truly free. Some may argue that Muslim countries have their own constitutions, parliaments, armies, bureaucracies, flags, and national anthems and therefore, are free. Freedom, however, means much more than flags and anthems. It means to possess the liberty to formulate one’s own socio-economic systems and political priorities as well as to determine one’s own foreign engagements and treaty obligations. Measured on the basis of these criteria, few Muslim countries can be considered free.

The Imam was absolutely clear about the nature of the colonial system in Muslim societies. He did not seek permission from the Shah’s regime to set up a political party to be able to participate in elections. He did not recognize the legitimacy of the Shah’s regime or the imported plutocratic system that was in place, even though it was given a local flavor with a forced Iranian irredentism. He understood that the Shah, despite his fancy titles, was not free; nor was Iran a free country. In one of his famous statements when the Shah’s regime granted immunity from prosecution to Americans if they committed a crime on Iranian soil, the Imam said, “If some American’s servant, some American’s cook, assassinates your marja‘ in the middle of the bazaar, or runs over him, the Iranian police do not have the right to apprehend him. The dossier must be sent to America, so that our masters there can decide what is to be done!”

While endowed with abundant oil and gas resources, the vast majority of people in Iran languished in poverty; only a tiny parasitical class around the Shah acquired enormous wealth, a confirmation of the Western strategy to set up luxury classes in all Muslim societies that are aloof from the people socially as well as economically. The idea was to create a capital decision-making class that would not only concentrate wealth gained from local resources but also redirect the same resources and human potential to the sponsors of the class, while keeping the wealth disconnected from social services and the general economic well-being of the majority of the people. In case such a class ran afoul of its foreign patrons, the imperial sponsor would not have to fight the whole country, but only replace the luxury class and its military custodians with another one just like it. The Shah himself, despite bestowing such titles as the shahinshah (the king of kings), and descendant of Cyrus the Great, upon himself, was totally subservient to the West not unlike rulers in the Muslim East today.

The rulers in Saudi Arabia and Jordan call themselves kings; those in Bahrain and Kuwait have assumed titles of amirs. They were all created by the British and survive through subservience to the UK and its illegitimate prodigal son, the US. What kind of freedom makes a government that apparently represents a whole society of several million so inept as to be incapable of formulating its own policies and of defending its people against aggression? How can a “free” government rely on external forces to maintain its power?

The contemporary world order is not the result of natural evolution, nor was it established through consultation among peoples of the world. The victors of the First World War (and the Second) created it to maintain their dominance in world affairs. Almost all Muslim countries came into existence after these brutal wars, which together caused the deaths of nearly 80 million people. Some Muslim countries had never existed before; the colonial powers did not simply draw lines in the sand or arbitrarily create borders because they happened to be occupying those lands. There was a master plan behind the partitioning of the Muslim East and Africa. It is no mistake that the Arab world, where Arabic was the language that connected Muslims to the Qur’an, was divided into some 27 countries. Areas such as Kurdistan and Baluchistan were intentionally split across several countries so that foreign inspired nationalist movements would destabilize several countries at once creating a permanent impediment to peace and progress. A tribal map of Africa shows that national borders were intentionally created so as to divide tribes into separate countries. Witness the problem in the Darfur area where migratory peoples have to deal with political impediments that come from crossing a border between the Sudan and Chad. Pakistan was supposed to include all of the Punjab, Bengal, and Kashmir, but when the political partitions finally became new nations, half of the Punjab, West Bengal, and three-fourths of Kashmir ended up as a part of the new India; again this was no accident because the majority population in all these areas of the subcontinent is Muslim. Then of course there is the problem of Israel. Obviously, the drawing of borders was not meant to respect the aspirations of the people; it was done to preserve the interests of the colonial powers. Little has changed in the intervening period.


The Imam’s distinctiveness

Countries and peoples in the Muslim East are not only living in cages called nation-states but the systems in place are also imposed by the colonial powers. Any attempt on the part of the people to break free of this imposed colonial order is ruthlessly suppressed. In the unlikely event of some people succeeding, as happened in Iran under the leadership of Imam Khomeini, then every effort is made to undermine and destroy it. Islamic Iran had to face a brutal eight-year war imposed through the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq. Despite enormous odds, the people of Iran, led by the courageous leadership of Imam Khomeini, singlehandedly withstood the combined international onslaught. But the colonial powers also have other weapons at their disposal: freezing of assets, sanctions, and economic and military sabotage. Islamic Iran has faced all these but as the late Imam famously remarked, “Sanctions are a blessing for us.” This is what distinguishes Islamic leadership from an ordinary leader. Iran under its Islamic leadership has proved it. It is among the few countries in the world that has no external debt despite suffering a brutal war. Compare this to the US, the self-proclaimed sole superpower that is reeling from a mountain of debt because it is involved in two wars, and because it has close to 900 military bases all around the world. Its external debt is $14 trillion; add to that its internal debt of $38 trillion and the total climbs to $52 trillion. This translates into a debt of $176,000 for every man, woman, and child in the US. Islamic Iran has no debt whatsoever. Despite the sanctions, it has become self-sufficient in many essential industries, armaments being one of them. It has also mastered nuclear technology to meet its needs. These are the result as much of technical prowess as they are of having total faith in Allah (swt) as the sole Provider for all of His creation, and thereby having the recognition that its people have the same capacities as any other people on earth, regardless of birth, race, or geographic origin. This is the consequence of policies implemented by muttaqi leadership. Regrettably such clarity is absent in leaders elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Another factor that has continued to frustrate the Muslims’ struggle for dignified existence is the lack of clear understanding of the contemporary world order. Many leaders in the Muslim world, including leading figures in the Islamic movement, have failed to understand the Western modes of dominance with their inbuilt disproportionality. The Imam was absolutely clear on this issue and he insisted on banishing all traces of Western influence from the Muslim world in general, and from Iran in particular. While he was not educated in the West and had virtually no contact with it, the Imam understood the secular, God-denying Western nature extremely well. Many Muslims tend to take the West’s pronouncements about freedom and liberty seriously. The Imam, who was the product of traditional Islamic education, was not swayed by such self-serving Western rhetoric. The Imam’s deep study and knowledge of the Qur’an, a clear understanding of the life struggle of the noble Messenger of Allah (pbuh) and the great Imams in Islamic history gave him an insight that enabled him to see with great clarity the West’s hypocritical pronouncements. He understood that all non-Islamic systems are systems of kufr managed by the taghut, and he urged their overthrow. He wrote, “It is our duty to remove from the life of Muslim society all traces of kufr and destroy them.”

He further elucidated:


“Let us overthrow tyrannical governments by (1) severing all relations with governmental institutions; (2) refusing to cooperate with them; (3) refraining from any action that might be construed as aiding them; and (4) creating new judicial, financial, economic, cultural, and political institutions. It is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut, that is, the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world. The governmental apparatus of tyrannical and un-representative regimes must be replaced by institutions serving the public good, administered according to Islamic law. In this way, an Islamic government will gradually come into existence.”


From the above, we see that at no stage in his life did the Imam ever resort to a Western mode of operations. He did not call for setting up political parties to oppose the taghuti regime, nor did he tell people to approach the illegitimate courts of law to seek redress for injustices inflicted on them. The Imam was clear: all these institutions were illegitimate; they had to be dismantled. He did not wish to confer legitimacy on them by approaching them for any service. In their place, he called for creating new institutions that would be “administered according to Islamic law” and would serve the interests of the people. Deeply immersed in the Qur’an, all his statements and declarations were based on Islamic principles. The Imam was not a politician in the corrupt utilitarian mode; he was a leader of a different caliber far above the ways of modern politicians who tailor their statements (and principles) according to who they are speaking to.

The Imam was clear about what he wanted to achieve and he minced no words in spelling it out: the overthrow of tyrannical regimes by severing all relations with their institutions whether the bureaucracy, armed forces, police, puppet parliaments, or unjust judicial systems that instead of administering justice want to preserve and maintain the unjust oppressive system. And how this was to be achieved was also spelled out by the Imam: he urged the people to refuse to cooperate with these regimes and their institutions and refrain from any action that might be construed as aiding them.

The Imam, as a true leader, also showed the way forward: create new judicial, financial, economic, cultural, and political institutions that would serve not just a tiny parasitical class but would be at the service of all the people, especially the mustad‘afin. He made clear, “It is the duty of all of us to overthrow the taghut, that is, the illegitimate political powers that now rule the entire Islamic world.” Such clarity of thinking, regrettably, has not been evident among people in much of the Muslim East even today despite the clear example of Iran before them. In fact, there is ample evidence to prove that movements struggling for their rights in the Muslim East are being manipulated by the West, which has maintained dictators like Mubarak and Ben Ali in power for decades. Yet these movements have simply glossed over this fact and are willing to accept Western interference and manipulation, not to mention “help”, as in the case of Libya. They have also failed to understand the degree of polarization the West has imposed on the rest of the world.

Analysis of the Decline of Islamic Civilization

By Abdar Rahman Koya
Sometimes people find themselves in such a mess that the only consolation seems to be to relive the past. In fact so impotent are Muslims now that even their glorious past is relived through orientalist works. Thus we find hundreds of books on Muslim achievements of the so-called academic and objective bent, written by Muslims and non-Muslims, as if even the Muslim mind were colonised. Hundreds of books also flood libraries on Islamic laws and principles, ideals and beauty, without considering whether these principles can be put into practice at a time when Muslims are in the worst situation — humiliated and subjugated despite the enormous amounts of wealth flooding their cities.
Such has been our state for over a century, especially since the collapse of the Uthmaniyyah empire and the establishment of Muslim nation-states ruled by traitors and bandits (‘royals’ and ‘sheikhs’). By 1914 almost the whole Muslim world was directly under Western rule. Muslim leadership was either completely demoralised or had concluded that it was better to join the enemies because we could not fight them all.
It was in this frustrating state that one Muhammad Bisyooni Umran, an alim in Borneo Island (present-day Indonesia), wrote to Al-Manar, the reform magazine edited by Egyptian thinker Muhammad Rashid Rida, asking the "Prince of Eloquence" to explain the causes of the Muslims’ downfall. The "Prince of Eloquence" was no other than a Lebanese-Druze Muslim, Shakib Arslan (1871-1946), known and addressed as "Amir". He was considered well placed to comment on Muslims’ affairs because of his experience in labouring for many Muslim causes. After the first ‘world war’, he moved his efforts from reviving the last caliphate (or "Ottomanism") to Arab nationalism and "Islamism", in much the same way as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, being consistently against the West and its policies, unlike many of his contemporaries, who were critical of Muslim "apathy" while preferring western customs in their personal lives. By his stand Arslan earned the admiration of Muslims. Later he supported the jihad of Umar al-Mukhtar in Libya against the Italian Nazis, and that of Muhammad Abd al-Karim in the Maghreb. Arslan injected new life into the narrow brand of nationalism of that time — an ‘Islamist’ nationalism, as it were. Arslan was also one of the main early architects of the revolutionary movement in Palestine in the effort to break free from colonial clutches, using his contacts with activists in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine and with others in the Arabian Peninsula and Muslim countries.
Thus Arslan’s reply to Bisyooni Umran, first entitled in Arabic Li maza ta’akhkhara al-Muslimun wa li maza taqaddama ghayruhum ("why Muslims are backward and others have progressed") still deserves serious consideration. That most of what he laments about Muslim backwardness is still applicable, 70 years after he wrote it, shows how little (or not at all) Muslims have inched back from their hole.
This new revised translation, renamed Our Decline: Its Causes and Remedies from Our Decline and its Causes, could not be more timely: our history of direct colonization is set to repeat itself, particularly in the Middle East. Iraq, Palestine, the Arabian peninsula, other client-states of the US, as well as Pakistan and Turkey, are today all effectively under Washington’s command. The situation is little different in essence from when European powers were implementing every sort of colonial agenda in Muslim lands.
Arslan delayed giving his diagnosis of the Muslims’ decline until after his visit to Spain, where he saw the remnants of the Islamic-Arabic civilization in Andalus, and until he had seen French attempts to Christianize the Berbers in Morocco. He begins by discussing the Muslims’ "deplorable" conditions everywhere, and why this did not encourage them to leave their miserly and selfish ways and make sacrifices: what Arslan describes as the "modern" sense of jihad. The Europeans, by contrast, for good or bad, made huge sacrifices: Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Japan sent millions of soldiers to die in battle, and spent billions on arms and munitions.
Arslan asks, "Can anyone point out a single Muslim nation of the modern time, which has sacrificed men and money as unstintingly and unhesitatingly for their country as these Christian nations of Europe have done for theirs?" One is tempted to point out that the bulk of the moneys spent by the Europeans were from lands – most of them Muslim – that they colonised, stealing their natural resources and using them for their own ends. Thus to say that these Western powers were willing to sacrifice ‘their’ wealth is a misrepresentation, or misunderstanding, of the facts. But again Shakib could ask us: Would Muslims, if they were to hold this wealth themselves, be spending and sacrificing as the Europeans did? It is true, argues Shakib, that Muslims do not possess such resources to spend, but they need only spend a small proportion of their wealth for the common cause. "Are the Muslims prepared to do so?" he asks. Their abandonment of the waqf and zakah systems, and how these are abused, is one example he highlights.
The Amir should have lived today to see how much more relevant his strictures have become. Muslim governments are completely mixed up, and today we see them busy building sky-scrapers and huge mosques, instead of improving their societies in order to avoid having to depend on the West both for the products we learnt from them to want and for those things that once we produced ourselves. This is not the case with, say, the Japanese, writes Arslan. In addition, to maintain the lifestyles of Muslim rulers also requires astronomical resources. It is a fact that Muslim economies, awash with oil wealth, have to spend more to maintain their ‘royalties’ than any other country.
To strengthen his claim of Muslim miserliness and lack of spirit of sacrifice, Arslan gives the example of how 400 million Muslims could not match the contributions of around twenty million Jews for Palestine. He gives a rough breakdown of how much Muslims contributed to the Palestine Fund at that time, and shows his frustration that one-tenth of the world’s Muslim population were found to have contributed not even a qarsh per head.
There is another aspect to the problem of Muslim decline: our preoccupation with peripheral issues. Arslan criticises severely both the so-called ultra-modern and -conservative Muslims. These are two types of people who, according to him, have damaged Islam more than any other with their narrow interpretations of the deen, one lot to please their western masters, and the other to protect their own status and position in society by their lack of regard for knowledge, and for its right to be disseminated and understood widely, instead of becoming the scholars’ exclusive preserve. While one type accept European values totally, the other interpret Islam narrowly and oppose any effort to change their plight. For Arslan both "modernists" and "conservatives" act from ignorance and dogmatism, preparing the way for the enemies of Islamic civilization to attack it, "to pick holes in it with specious arguments that the teachings of Islam are responsible for the decline and fall of the Muslims." One can safely say that Arslan is definitely referring to the likes of the Turkish military, ever eager to join the West by banning Islam altogether, as well as the followers of the Taliban, who provided ammunition our enemies were longing for. However, he considers the latter more dangerous — theirs is what he calls "incorrigible conservatism": the "rigid, inflexible following of old hackneyed conventions".
The treachery of Muslims against their own people and the existence of false scholars who issue fatwas to justify the enemies’ subversion of Islam are another cause of Muslim decline. With few exceptions, Muslim rulers think their people have been created for their service, and have no scruples about terrorizing them into submission. To justify these rulers, there sprung up "species of scholars" who are only too eager to issue fatwas on the permissibility of killing whoever is bold enough to point out the rulers’ injustices.
He also points out other treacheries committed by Muslim ‘leaders’. One cannot help but wonder at his praise for king Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who was a member of the very elites that emerged out of treachery. Arslan may have had the astigmatism suffered by many well-meaning Muslim intellectuals and activists in this decade, who are unable to see through the people they deal with, despite their vast knowledge. Having said that, one should not let Arslan’s side-opinions and sentiments mar his arguments; we must look beyond these side-issues to gauge his opinions about the Ummah’s upliftment.
He points out that the Ummah suffered from many traitors: the Berber Muslims who allied themselves with France; some Muslims in India; and many Tartars in Russia. Their analogues are rife in this age: in Chechnya, where some "religious Chechen Muslims" are even more eager than the Russians for Chechnya to be part of the Russian Federation; in Kashmir, where some scholars have no qualms about speaking openly against the Muslims’ struggle for self-determination. These Muslims are either sucked into the colonial masters’ argument that Islam is the cause of their backwardness, and that their (the colonial masters’) only intention is to help these Muslims. Arslan may as well say that Muslims are better fighters when they fight among themselves!
These attempts at subverting Islam convinced some Muslims that the deen is the cause of their decline, and that the path of secularism is the only way out. The truth is, observes Arslan, that the ‘secular’ West are more religious, and the evidence abounds: the laws adopted by the ‘secular’ French in respect of the Berbers, to facilitate the propagation of Catholicism among them; the law imposed by the Dutch in Java to protect Christian missionaries; the Belgian government’s resolution to baptise the inhabitants of the Congo; and the British ban on preaching Islam in Uganda, Tanganyika and southern Sudan.
Throughout this book Shakib’s diagnosis is provided in the spirit of the Qur’anic proposition that "man can have nothing but what he strives for" (Q. 53:39). He not only supports his claims with ayaat, but provides evidence from his dealings with Muslim rulers and activists to drive home some points. He concludes that "sacrifice" is the necessary, irreplaceable method by which a people can redeem their dignity. It is the most obvious remedy, above everything else; only from the spirit of sacrifice in wealth, energy and lives can Muslims complain of their plight to God. It is no surprise, then, to see that the West dominates in almost every field of life today, because of the enormous efforts they have made to protect and nurture their civilization.

A new Western crusade: this time against Libya

By Zafar Bangash

The West’s attack on Libya is yet another crusade launched against a Muslim country on the pretext of protecting its people. Pope Urban II would be pleased to learn that his disciples are still marching on as good “Christian soldiers” against another group of “heathens” in the Muslim world nearly a thousand years after his sermon on Mount Clermont. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi does not have to be our favourite tyrant but like Saddam Husain of Iraq, he has enjoyed Western support for decades. Western multinationals salivate at the prospect of consuming his sweet crude. Now they can have their belly full.

Interestingly, too, the UN Security Council was pressed into service to pass a resolution (#1973), imposing a “no-fly zone” over Libya on March 17, ostensibly to “protect” the Libyan people. Twenty years ago, a similar no-fly zone was imposed on Iraq but without even the formality of going through the motion of a Security Council resolution. An estimated 1.5 million Iraqis were killed as a result of sanctions and the Western-imposed no fly zone. On May 12, 1996, when Leslie Stahl of CBS 60 Minutes program asked Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the UN, whether the death of 560,000 children was worth the price for ousting Saddam from power, the latter, without hesitation, said it was! Would it be any different in Libya?

Let us look at the lineup of countries attacking Libya: the US, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Italy repudiated its friendship treaty with Libya and US President Barack Obama said Qaddafi had lost his legitimacy. Did Qaddafi ever have legitimacy; if yes, when and how did he lose it? If not, why were the same Western powers eager to deal with him before the recent troubles? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had visited Qaddafi in his tent in March 2004. The Libyan dictator also received former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008. Qaddafi famously referred to her as “that black woman.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi both hosted Qaddafi in their capitals a few months before the uprisings started in the Middle East. So what has changed to make Qaddafi the bad boy of the Middle East again so quickly?

True, like Saddam, Qaddafi has had a rocky relationship with the West. From being the West’s darling to mad dog and then back into their good books, he has been through many ups and downs. Qaddafi’s current pariah status has nothing to do with the West’s argument of “humanitarian intervention” to save Libyan lives. Since when have Western rulers become concerned about the plight of Libyans or Muslims? If they do not care for the lives of their own friends — look at how the children of poor families are being sacrificed in Afghanistan and Iraq — why should they care about Libyans?

We need to understand what is afoot in Libya. Despite claims to the contrary, Western troops are already operating on the ground in Libya under the cover of “protecting” Western diplomats but actually providing training to the rebels. Even with the deeply flawed no-fly resolution that does not authorize attacks on Libyan ground forces or armored columns such as tanks, that is precisely what Western bombers are doing. This is creeping occupation of Libya as the world’s attention is diverted to the nuclear disaster in Japan. What might be the reason for the latest Western crusade?

Libyan oil, much coveted by the West because of its low sulphur content, has already been mentioned. Similarly, the US has frozen about $32 billion in Libyan assets under Executive Order 13566. Libya’s frozen assets represent a significant portion of its wealth, according to the Washington Post (March 23, 2011). “In 2009, Libya had a gross domestic product of $62 billion; its sovereign wealth fund is estimated at $40 billion and its central bank reserves at $110 billion. The European Union has added the central bank, the wealth fund and three other Libyan institutions to its sanctions — two weeks after the US action [of February 25],” according to the Post. Britain, not to be left behind, has seized more than $19 billion in Libyan assets.” The looting of Libya has begun in earnest by thieves that have honed their robbing skills over centuries.

Neither Qaddafi nor a successor regime — whatever its shape or color — will ever see this money again. Americans have a habit of stealing others’ wealth, whether by freezing their assets or robbing them through direct invasion and occupation. The US froze $40 billion of Iranian assets in 1980 and barring a few million the rest have been usurped. The Saudis have invested more than one trillion dollars in the US economy. They, too, are not likely to see any of this, especially given the precarious state of the US economy.

But the West’s crusade has another, more sinister purpose. Libya will serve as a beach-head for Western penetration into sub-Saharan Africa that is rich in minerals. Chad, Niger and Sudan have vast mineral deposits that the West covets. This also fits into the election of Obama as president of the United States in 2008. With a black man in the white house, the people of Africa as well as African Americans at home would not be too concerned if the US were to attack and occupy parts of Africa. After all, nobody would accuse Obama of racism. The American establishment has had it all neatly figured out.

A hint to the permanence of Western military intervention was given by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates when he said there was no definite answer about the duration of the Libyan campaign. But he did reveal what was afoot. “Let’s just call a spade a spade,” he said in what a no-fly zone over Libya would entail. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy air defences. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone.” A closer look at what Gates said reveals that there is no end in sight. Let us also recall the statement of Dick Cheney, former US vice president about the “war on terror”. He said it may last 50 to 100 years. We can now begin to get a glimpse into the thinking of Western policy-makers.

Wars necessarily create humanitarian crises. There are already nearly 100,000 refugees trying to flee Libya. These include Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians and citizens of sub-Saharan African countries as well as poor Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis. The West would use their plight as a pretext to send in “humanitarian” aid and workers. Then their “protection” would be used as a pretext for sending in large numbers of ground troops. Libya would once again be colonized directly.

We can see also that while the no-fly zone resolution was authorized by the UN Security Council, the military operations have been taken over by France and Britain and placed under NATO command. Thus, NATO powers have, once again, set themselves up as “authoritative judges of the world common good.”

Libyans clamoring for Western support to help them topple Qaddafi will rue that day when they wake up. Foreign intervention has never brought liberation to any people. Horace Campbell, Professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University and currently working on a book on AFRICOM has said: “US involvement in the Libyan bombing is being turned into a public relations ploy for AFRICOM (US Africa Command). AFRICOM is fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give AFRICOM credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention. No African country has agreed to let AFRICOM onto the continent. It has 1,500 people operating out of Stuttgart, Germany. If Libya is indeed partitioned, that new state could provide a base for AFRICOM.”

Libyans must wake up before they end up in even worse shape than they are under Qaddafi, however bad he may be. There are better ways to seek liberation than foreign help. It always comes with long strings attached and ends up enslaving rather than freeing people.

Hijab at Institutes of Higher Education and Universities

By Seyed Ziad





We Muslims are very smart at creating problems and running from pillar to post to find solutions.Now take the case of Hijab.Why on earth are we making the wearing of modest dress a uniform like think in the Universities and other institutes of Higher studies? Among all the students in the Universties, only the Muslim girls are compelled to wear a uniform like dress(Abayas, and that too black ones),



by their seniors during the freshers ragging days.And the poor girls think that this is Quranic injunction to wear as they are told by bigotted siniors, aligned to this or that Dawah organisation, who make these exercises to recruit new members to their highly profitable enteprises from among the gulible undergraduates.




Is it not better that the choice of Hijab and colour of their dresses be given to students themselves? What does it matter if the students wear an array of colours of their choice to the Universities?



First and fore most we must realise that this showing of pseudo-discipline among the students that prompts the other communities become jealous and envious of the Muslim students.


If we go about in a business as usual fashion, no one is going to make note of this and create a fuss about Hijab or beard for that matter, in the Universities. So it is better that we look inward as well and try to find a comprehensive solution to
this ill adviced dress code imposed on the poor(Literally and metaphorically) souls, by the self righteous Da’ees.Please don’t try to blame the other(Racist Buddhists and Hindus) when the mistake is ours.

Some sample Modest dresses for women availabl around the world


















"The philosophy of the Islamic ‘covering’ depends on several things. Some of them are psychological and some relate to the home and the family. Others have sociological roots and some of them relate to raising the dignity of a woman and preventing her debasement.The modest dress in Islam is rooted in a more general and basic issue. That is, Islamic precepts aim at limiting all kinds of sexual enjoyment to the family and the marital environment within the bounds of marriage so that society is only a place for work and activity. It is opposite of the Western system of the present era which mixes work with sexual enjoyment. Islam separates these two environments completely."

Ayatullah Shaheed Mutahhari

Ummah suffering from information overload and misinformation toxicity

Iqbal Siddiqui, Perspectives

The new year is traditionally a time when people reflect on their situations in life, as well as contemplating the possibilities of the year to come. This new year in the Gregorian calendar coincides (more or less) with a new year, 1432, in the Hijri calendar; Muharram 1 fell on December 7, 2010. That got me thinking back to the Hijrah centenary 32 years ago — Muharram 1, 1400ah fell on November 21, 1979ce — which was, perchance, one of the first major Islamic landmarks that I was aware of as a youth. In the mid-1970s, the commemoration of the Hijrah centenary was planned to be a major project for the Muslim Institute in its early years, before the Islamic Revolution in Iran radically changed the political environment of the time and took the full attention of its founder and director, the late Dr. Kalim Siddiqui (1931–1996).

For many in the Islamic movement, reflections on the first three decades of the 15th century AH revolve around the impact of the Islamic Revolution, the inspiration it provided to Islamic activists and movements everywhere, and the reaction it provoked from the hegemonic west. This is a subject I have written about a great deal over the years, not least as editor of Crescent from 1998–2008. Here I want to think about a slightly different aspect of the last 30 years; the changes in the information environment in which Crescent International has operated since it was converted from a local community paper in Toronto to a “newsmagazine of the global Islamic movement” under the editorship of Zafar Bangash and the guidance of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui as a response to the political and historical situation created by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Many people may struggle to remember or imagine it now, in the age of email, Youtube, Wikipedia and the global networking facilitated by Web 2.0, but that was a time when newspapers, magazines, books and personal contact through meetings and lectures were the main ways of disseminating information. Personal computers, the internet and satellite television were stuff of science fiction; international travel and even telephone communication were still expensive and unusual. Audio and video communication was still new and remarkable; the distribution of Imam Khomeini’s speeches in Iran on audio cassettes was a radical new political strategy that was regarded as a crucial factor in the Revolution. Wherever one lived, the world was a bigger, stranger place; news consisted of mainstream newspapers that covered only major stories, and brief news programs on local or national radio and television every evening, rather than the multitude of global or international 24-hour news channels that we now have. As a result, many foreign countries really were little more than names, representing alien places and peoples on which it was difficult to get any information at all.

Indeed, the key difference from that time to this can be understood precisely in terms of information: where now we are bombarded with “news” the whole time, and the problem is identifying the useful and significant from the mass of unwanted and useless “noise” or “stuff” — a situation that has become known as “information overload” — in those days, people who were interested in any topic had to go and find out about it for themselves, going to libraries or organizations, looking for special interest publications, piecing together the big picture from the scraps they could glean from the few sources available to them.

Information professionals have long since recognised this change in their working environment. They used to be experts at finding information for people who needed it but didn't know where to look. Now they have to be experts in filtering the information, providing what is useful and worthwhile for people overwhelmed by a glut of data and unable to navigate their way through it. Information scientists talk of kayaks and canoes — informationists used to put valuable bits and pieces together to craft kayaks that were secure, seaworthy and safe. Now they make canoes — picking a tree from the forest, chopping it down, stripping away all the unnecessary parts, hollowing out the trunk to leave only what is needed for what is often a crude but adequate boat.

Thirty years ago, Crescent was a rare source of an Islamic perspective that was otherwise almost impossible for Muslims to find. To this day, we meet people around the world who remember Crescent in the 1980s and 1990s as a crucial element (often alongside the ideas of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui and the work of the Muslim Institute) shaping their Islamic outlook and identity, whether they were students in Western universities, young people growing up in Muslim communities in Western countries, or journalists and Islamic activists in Muslim countries. But for the Ummah, as for the rest of the world, the information environment has changed. Where once intelligent, educated, politically aware young people yearned for and sought out a global Islamic perspective, to put against an international news discourse dominated by the complacent and comfortable west, now they are bombarded with competing voices claiming to represent “true Islam”, from pacifist and pro-western think-tanks supported by western and Muslim states and promoted as voices of reason and moderation, to the shrill, simplistic, confrontational, often sectarian voices of groups that promise easy answers to the problems facing the Ummah, but have no real understanding of Islam, history, society or the world we live in. And as usual in any shouting match, those with the loudest voices are heard most, particularly if they present only easy slogans and soundbites, while the voices of those who present reasoned, balanced and intellectual arguments are overwhelmed, missed or ignored by all but a discerning few.

For many confronting the hegemonic discourse of the west 20–30 years ago, the internet offered the promise of new and effective ways to spread their ideas, reach new audiences and knit the Ummah together into a global community of politically aware Muslims. And that has been achieved, to a point. But the unfortunate reality is that any such progress has been more than balanced by the exploitation of the internet and associated technologies by the powers that be to spread their own poisonous agendas, and to manipulate the world to their own ends, not least by promoting disorder where pro-western stability is not an option. The result is that Muslims now suffer not only from the systemic problems of information overload, but also from what we may call misinformation toxicity, the effects of which are seriously damaging the Ummah; and, in my judgement, more than reversing any benefits the Islamic movement may have gained from the potential promised by the new media.

What we now have, therefore, is what we may characterise as “information chaos” in place of the west-dominated order that previously prevailed. And while chaos and disorder may offer opportunities for all, including the weak and oppressed, it is always the strong and powerful who are best positioned to exploit those opportunities, assert their positions, defend their interests and emerge the stronger.

This is not a situation that is reversible. The information and communication technologies that have created this situation are here to stay. For the Islamic movement and those within it who are striving to offer voices of intelligent, balanced, principled reason, instead of succumbing to the temptations to join the cacophony in the chaos, the challenge now is to find ways of overcoming these problems and to achieve our objectives despite them. The promise and potential heralded by the Islamic Revolution and the Hijrah centenary over thirty years ago remain undimmed; it is just harder for their champions to effectively articulate them, and harder for others to see them. That is the challenge facing us all for the new year and the decades to come.


Iqbal Siddiqui is a former editor of Crescent International (1998–2008).

Looking at the future through the past

Reflctions – Zafar Bangash

Journalists, it is said, write the first draft of history. Given the manner in which the once honourable profession of journalism has been subverted into a propaganda tool of the Western corporate elite, it is a totally undeserved compliment. Today, journalists act little more than mouthpieces for the latest policy prescriptions of the ruling class, regardless of how destructive it may be for the rest of humanity, or indeed its own populations.

Some examples will clarify this point. Iran is accused by the West of making a nuclear bomb. Without examining the allegation or providing proof, the Western media simply parrot this nonsensical assertion. Iranian President Ahmedinejad wants to “wipe Israel off the map” is another oft-repeated allegation. He has never said any such thing but that has not prevented Western television talking heads and pompous newspaper columnists from repeating it ad nauseum. Even if Israel were wiped off the map, would the sky fall or the world come to an end? There is no Soviet Union today; Yugoslavia has disappeared. So what? What has been wiped off the face of the earth is Palestine and this is what the Zionists and supporters of this colonial settler entity do not want the rest of the world to know.

Moving beyond Western journalists’ hypocritical rantings, we want to venture into the realm of future gazing. We make no claims — big or small — to know the future but we take our job and profession seriously, hence this attempt to honestly analyze current trends to make an educated guess.

The US’s claim to being the sole superpower is no longer accepted even by diehard American firsters. True, it still wields enormous destructive power but that is no mark of greatness. The US does not hold the attraction it once did nor is it feared as widely. In addition to the Zionists even the South Koreans now thumb their noses at the Americans. The sole superpower is dead.

History shows that the balance of power doctrine works best in global politics. Competing centres of power emerge to challenge claimants to the sole leadership role. The US may have been unchallenged for a decade (1991–2001) but then it blundered into two wars that have sapped not only its energies but also drained its economy. While there may not be military alliances openly challenging the US, several economic and political blocs now exist as competing centres of power. There is the Brazil, India, China and Russia (BRIC) economic grouping that trade in each other’s currency bypassing the dollar. There is also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that brings Russia, China and the Central Asian Republics into a powerful bloc with others poised to join.



What is most interesting is the unofficial alliance between Turkey, Iran, Syria, Hizbullah/Lebanon and Hamas/Palestine. Turkey’s philosophy of zero conflict with all neighbours articulated by its able foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has paid handsome dividends. Turkey has lifted visa requirements for citizens of neighbouring countries. Massive foreign investment has also flowed in.

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, this new development offers the best hope for the future of Muslims. It does not mean the US and its allies, especially the Zionists will give up their mischief-making but Islamic Iran and Turkey have shown what good neighbourly behaviour can achieve.



There are also other developments on the horizon. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are destined for major shake-ups. Their aging rulers already have one foot in the grave. Who will succeed them is a tantalizing question but what is certain is both countries can expect periods of turbulence leading to declining US influence in the region. It cannot, however, be ruled out that some military officer — a colonel or general — may already have been groomed by the US to take over in one or both countries. He may even espouse anti-western rhetoric to gain public acceptance but changes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia will certainly diminish US influence in the most important region.

It is for Muslims, especially the Islamic movement to decide the kind of future they want. To secure an honourable existence in this unfair world, a clear understanding of the current global reality is an essential prerequisite. Pious hopes or banking on one’s enemies good behaviour will not achieve the desired results. The global arena has opened up with US military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and its consequent economic decline. If Muslims do not fill this vacuum, others will. The choice is ours.



Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought

Zionism needs the Israeli Jews to feel frightened: Alan Hart - Interview

By Kourosh Ziabari

Alan Hart is an indispensable name in journalism. Unquestionably, he has been one of the most influential British journalists with an expertise in the Middle East affairs. A former BBC Panorama presenter, Hart was a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. During his fruitful career, Hart interviewed several prominent leaders including Saudi Arabia's King Faisal, Jordan's King Hussein and Egyptian Presidents Nasser and Sadat.

He was a media correspondent for the Independent Television Network and has covered the Vietnam War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well.

He is a vocal critic of Israel and its expansionistic policies and has repeatedly reprimanded the Arab leaders for their implicit complicity with Israel in its suppression of the Palestinian nation.

Alan Hart joined me in an exclusive, in-depth interview to explore the prospect of Israel-Palestinian conflict, the roots of Zionist lobby's influence over the U.S. Congress, the 9/11 conspiracy theories and the possibility of a U.S.-directed military strike against Iran. 

Kourosh Ziabari: In your recent article "Zionism and Peace are Incompatible" you reach a point where you state "if it is the case that American presidents are frightened of provoking Israel, the conclusion would have to be that the Zionist state is a monster beyond control and that all efforts for peace are doomed to failure." Is it really the case that Israel possesses an uncontrollable, disproportionate power which enables it to violate the international law and enjoy immunity from being held accountable before the international community? What's the source of this unwarrantable power and influence? 

Alan Hart: Let's start with Reality Number One. There are two sets of rules for the behavior of nations, one for all the countries of the world minus Israel, the other exclusively for Israel. This double-standard is the mother and father of Arab and other Muslim hurt, humiliation and anger. Put another way, this double-standard is the best recruiting sergeant for violent Islamic fundamentalism.

In the story of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel as I tell it fully documented in my latest book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the moment when the major powers created the double-standard can be more or less pinpointed. In the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war, and because it was a war of Israeli aggression not self-defense, the major powers, through the UN Security Council, should have said to Israel something like the following: "You are not to build any settlements on newly occupied Arab land. If you do, you'll be demonstrating your contempt for international law. In this event the international community will declare Israel to be an outlaw state and subject it to sanctions." 

If something like that riot act had been read to Israel, there probably would have been peace many, many years ago. For background let me briefly explain why.  

The pragmatic Arafat was reluctantly reconciled to the reality of Israel's existence inside its pre-1967 borders as far back as 1969. In his gun and olive branch address to the UN General Assembly on 13 November 1974 he said so by obvious implication. Thereafter he put his credibility with his leadership colleagues and his people, and his life, on the line to get a mandate for unthinkable compromise with Israel. He got the mandate at the end of 1979 when the Palestine National Council, then the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side, voted by 296 votes to 4 to endorse his two-state policy - a solution which any rational Israeli government and people would have accepted with relief. What Arafat needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. He eventually got a probable one, Yitzhak Rabin, but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly what he was doing - killing the peace process. The more it became clear that Israel's leaders were not interested in a genuine two-state solution for which Arafat had prepared the ground on his side, the more his credibility with his own people suffered. 

Eisenhower was the first and the last American president to contain Zionism. After Israel had secretly colluded with France and Britain in the 1956 invasion of Eygpt to overthrow Nasser and take back the Suez Canal which he had nationalized, Israel's leaders tried to insist on conditions for Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai. Eisenhower confronted them by going over the heads of Congress in an address to the nation. In the course of it he said this: 

"Israel insists on firm guarantees as a condition to withdrawing its forces of invasion. If we agree that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and gaining national advantage... If the UN once admits that international disputes can be settled using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope for establishing a real world order."  

As I note in a chapter of my book titled Goodbye to the Security Council's Integrity, after the 1967 war there simply was not the Eisenhower-like political will to oblige Israel to behave like a normal state - i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN. 

What, really, explains this lack of political will - in 1967 and still today?

I used to believe the short answer was the stranglehold on American policy for the Middle East of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress. There's no mystery about the prime source of the lobby's power. It's money to fund election campaigns. If you were an American and announced that you were going to run for Congress or any other significant public office, you'd be approached by the lobby. It would tell you the policy position on Israel and then offer you a choice. If you supported Israel, you would receive all the campaign funding you needed to defeat your opponent. If you were not interested, the funding would go to your opponent to enable him or her to defeat you. That's an over-simplification of how the system works but it's also the essence of the reality. 

Incidentally, I do NOT blame the Zionist lobby for playing the game the way it does. It is only playing according to The System's rules. I blame America's pork-barrel system of politics which puts what passes for democracy up for sale to the highest bidders. It just so happens that the Zionist lobby in association with its Christian fundamentalist allies is one of the highest bidders, if not the highest. If I had the opportunity to advise an American president, I would say to him or her: "The best thing you could do for your country is to give it some real democracy by putting an end to your corrupt, pork-barrel politics." 

Today, and as I indicated in my recent article from you quoted, Zionism and Peace Are Incompatible, I am beginning to think that the awesome influence of the Zionist lobby may not be the complete explanation of the lack of political will. Because it is obviously not in America's own best interests to go on supporting Israel right or wrong and making enemies of 1.4 billion Muslims by so doing, the question I am asking myself is this: Could it be that all American presidents are frightened of confronting Zionism because they know there is nothing nuclear-armed Israeli leaders would not do if they were seriously pressed to make peace on terms which they believed in their own deluded minds would put Israel's security at risk? 

That question was provoked by my recall of a statement made to me in a BBC Panorama interview by Golda Meir when she was prime minister. At a point I interrupted her to say: "I just want to be sure that I understand what you're saying… You are saying that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the world down with it?" Without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American presidents according to need, she replied: "Yes! That's exactly what I am saying." 

In those days Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs program, was transmitted on a Monday evening at 8.10pm. By 10.0pm, The Times, then a seriously good newspaper not the Murdoch product it is today, had changed its lead editorial to quote what Golda had said to me. It then added its own opinion. "We had better believe her." 

Exactly what I am saying comes down to this. Even if an American president was free to read the riot act to Israel, if only to best protect America's own real interests, it does not follow that its leaders would say: "Okay. We'll do what you want." In my view it's possible, even probable, that they would say: "Mr. President, go to hell. If you push us too far, we'll create mayhem in the region." 

KZ: The pro-Palestinian journalist and activist Jeffrey Blankfort told me in a recent interview about the efforts made by the previous United State presidents to hold back the influence of Israel and Zionist lobby over the U.S. Congress. He cited the confrontation of George Bush Sr. with the Zionist network in 1991 and 1992 when he denied Israel its request for $10 billion in loan guarantees; however, Mr. Bush was eventually forced to surrender and endorse the loan. Will the same fate await President Obama who is said to be determined to put forward a proposal for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in the Security Council? 

AH: About President Obama let me first of all say this. I do not believe as many of his anti-Zionist critics do that he came into office as a Zionist stooge, programmed to do Zionism's bidding. If that was the case, why would he have challenged Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby over the settlements and set himself up to be humiliated? My view is that Obama meant well but was too naïve and inexperienced for the job and was therefore bound to become a prisoner of the Zionist lobby. I also think it is impossible for any new, first term president to be completely aware of the full extent of the Zionist lobby's stranglehold on Congress until he is in the Oval Office trying to get things done. 

As I write in Is Peace Possible?, the Epilogue of Volume Three of the American edition of my book, I think there was a reason why Obama moved so quickly to try to get a Middle East peace process going. 

He knew something that all American presidents know about when serious initiatives for peace can and cannot be taken. I know what that something is because a president told me a few months after events had denied him a second term in office. Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to break or try to break the Zionist lobby's stranglehold on Congress on matters to do with Israel/Palestine.  

The first window is during the first nine months of his first term because after that the soliciting of funds for the mid-term elections begins. Presidents don't have to worry on their own account about funds for the mid-term elections, but with their approach no president can do or say anything that would cost his party seats in Congress. The second window of opportunity is the last year of his second term if he has one. In that year, because he can't run for a third term, no president has a personal need for election campaign funds or organized votes. 

As things are there's a question mark over whether Obama will get a second term, but with the mid-term elections are out of the way, he might have one more opportunity to put some real pressure on Israel - if he has the will. There has been talk of a Palestinian and presumably wider Arab initiative to have the Security Council recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If such a resolution does find its way to the Security Council, Obama could do what American Presidents always do when resolutions are not to Israel's liking - veto it. But he could also say and do nothing and effectively let the resolution pass. What then? 

In Ha'aretz on 20 October, Israeli commentator Aluf Benn offered this answer. A Security Council decision to recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and Gaza "would deem Israel an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures against Israel." In Aluff Benn's view the international movement to boycott Israel would "gain massive encouragement when Europe, China and India turn their backs on Israel and erode the last remnants of its legitimacy. Gradually the Israeli public will also feel the diplomatic and economic stranglehold." 

My guess is that such a resolution will not find its way to the Security Council because the Arab regimes are too frightened of offending Zionism too much; but if it does, Obama will have his last chance to demonstrate that, as it relates to American efforts for peace in the Middle East, his "Yes, we can" has not become "No, we can't." 

KZ. Arab leaders have shown signs that they're willing to renormalize their ties with Israel. Politicians in some of the Arab states have openly negotiated with high-ranking Israeli officials and invited them to their events. What are the benefits of this renormalization for the Arab leaders while anger and hatred against the Israeli regime is growing in the Arab world on a daily basis? How can the Arab leaders disregard the crowds of people who storm into streets en masse to protest the aggressive and belligerent policies of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza? 

AH: Most Arabs quietly despise their leaders but I'm not aware that they have stormed into the streets to protest against Israel's policies. I would re-phrase what I think is the essence of your question in this way: "Do Arab leaders care about what happens to the occupied and oppressed Palestinians?" 

My short answer is "No". My longer answer is this.The real history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel invites the conclusion that the Arab regimes, more by default than design in my view, betrayed the Palestinians. And there's no mystery about the nature of this betrayal. 

When the Palestine file was closed by Israel's 1948 victory on the battlefield and the armistice agreements, the divided and impotent Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as the Zionists and the major powers. It was that the file would remain closed for ever. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. 

Nor is there any mystery about why the Arab regimes were at one with the Zionists and the major powers in hoping that there would never be a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism. They all knew that if there was, there would one day have to be a confrontation with Zionism; and nobody wanted that.  

When Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a few others lit the slow burning fire of the regeneration, it was the security services of Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon which took the lead in trying to put it out. 

Fast forward to 1982, Before Sharon sent the IDF all the way to Beirut to exterminate the PLO's leadership and destroy its infrastructure, [Persian] Gulf Arab leaders met in secret, without advisers present, in order to agree a message to the Reagan administration. The message was to the effect that they would not intervene in any way when Sharon made his move. After that message was sent, one of the Arab leaders present, Oman's Sultan Qaboos, said to Arafat: "Be careful. You are going to ask for our help and it will not come."  

And let me add this. Last year I had a private conversation in London with a major royal from the Arab world. I said to him, "Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your regimes are more frightened of their own masses than they are of offending Zionism and America". He replied, "You're right." I also said to him, "If the Zionists do resort to a final round of ethnic cleaning to close the Palestine file, Arab leaders, behind closed doors, will give thanks and celebrate." His reply was the same, "You're right." 

KZ. You've implied in your article "Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace" that if the Arab and Muslim leaders were effectively united against the United States whose ultimate objective is to consolidate and empower the quisling government of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel couldn't have succeeded in imposing its expansionistic wills on the Palestinian nation and its chances for legitimizing a Greater Israel which goes beyond the borders of 1967 would have been insignificant; however, we don't find such a solidarity among the Muslim and Arab leaders. except in the streets, as you put it. So what will be the fate of Palestinian nation? Should they surrender into what Israel has foreseen for them, that is displacement, homelessness and destruction? 

A: My point has never been that Arab and other Muslim leaders have to be "against" the U.S. The main difference at leadership level between the Jews and the Arabs is that the Jews know how to play the game of international politics and the Arabs don't. Put another way, Zionism's key players know how to play the cards they were dealt and Arab leaders don't. 

Zionism's five main cards were and are the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust for blackmail purposes; money (virtually unlimited funds) and the influence it buys; the organized Jewish vote in close American election races; overwhelming military superiority; and, more generally speaking, breathtakingly, brilliant organization and coordination.  

The Arabs had, and still have an ace that would have trumped all of Zionism's cards: OIL. 

Imagine what would have happened in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war if Arab leaders had put their act together and sent one of their number secretly to Washington DC to say something very like the following to President Johnson behind closed doors: "If you don't get Israel back behind its pre-war borders, we'll turn off the oil taps."

If Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, he would have replied with something very like the following: "I can't guarantee swift action on Jerusalem but give me two or three weeks for the rest." 

If the Zionists had been in the Arab position, that is how they would have played their hand. And that is not pure speculation on my part. Over the years I have been told so by a number of Israeli leaders including former Directors of Military Intelligence. 

The main point is that if Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, they would not have had to turn off the oil taps. A secret, credible threat to do so would have been enough to cause Johnson or any president to put America's own best interests first. 

Against that background the question to be asked today is something like this: What, in theory, could Arab leaders still do to give themselves a reasonable chance of countering Zionism's influence on American policy for the Middle East?  

Prefaced by a summary statement of all the initiatives the Arabs including the Palestinians have taken for peace. They could threaten to 

- Sever their diplomatic relations with the U.S.

- Withdraw their financial support for America's broken economy

- Turn off the oil taps 

Will Arab leaders ever learn how to play their cards if only to best protect their own longer term, real interests? 

I think not, and that takes me to the second part of your question - What will be the fate of the Palestinian nation and should the Palestinians surrender to Zionism's will?  

The main point is that the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, the masses, are not going to surrender to Zionism's will and accept crumbs from its table; the crumbs being three or four Bantustans on maximum 40% of the West Bank, which would not come even close to satisfying the Palestinians' minimum demand and need for some justice but which they could call a state if they wished. It's not totally impossible that under pressure from the Arab regimes and America, a quisling Palestinian leadership will seek to do such a deal with Israel, but it would be rejected by the masses; and probably the quisling Palestinian leader would be assassinated. 

The question arising is what will Zionism's in-Israel leaders do when they conclude that with bombs and bullets and repressive measure of all kinds they cannot break the will of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians to continue their struggle? My guess is that they will create a pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever. If that happens, the West Bank will be soaked in blood, mostly Palestinian blood, and honest reporters will describe it as a Zionist holocaust. 

It's because I truly fear that is the most likely scenario that I think the priority of the international community should stopping the final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine. 

KZ: A growing number of internet writers and technical experts in America and many other countries believe that Israel was behind or implicated in the 9/11 attacks. Do you think this conspiracy theory is credible and, if you do, in what ways did 9/11 benefit Israel? 

A: In my view the starting point for any serious and honest discussion of 9/11 has to be this question: Did the impact of the planes and the heat of their burning fuel bring the Twin Towers down? If the answer is "Yes", there's no need for conspiracy theories. If the answer is "No", the speculative question has to be - Who did it and how and why? 

My answer is "No". In my analysis there's enough evidence - visual, technical and scientific, and from eye-witnesses including fire fighters - to invite the conclusion that the Twin Towers, like Building Seven, were pre-wired for controlled demolition with nanothermite, the highest-tech military explosive. 

For context, the first observation I'd like to offer is that the mainstream Western media's complicity in suppressing even questions and debate about what really happened on 9/11 is consistent. What I mean is that for the past 63 years - from the creation of the Zionist state of Israel mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing to the present the mainstream media have been complicit in the suppression of the truth about the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. Put another way, the mainstream media have been content to peddle Zionism's propaganda lies. The two biggest lies can be summed up in a very few words. 

The first is that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the "driving into the sea" of its Jews. The truth, as I document in detail through the three volumes of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is that Israel's existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Zionism's assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most - in the Western world and America especially - with presenting its aggression as self defense and itself as the victim when it was and is the oppressor. 

The second is that Israel "never had Arab partners for peace" That is complete nonsense. I've already mentioned Arafat's pragmatism and work for peace to make the point, but here's another example. From almost the moment he came to power in 1951, Eygpt's President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel. He had secret exchanges with Israel's foreign minister, Moshe Sharret, who was in my view the only completely sane Israeli leader of his time. For wanting to make peace with Nasser and the Arabs, Sharett was destroyed by Israel's founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion 

Prior to 9/11, the best single example of the mainstream media's complicity in the suppression of the truth as it relates to conflict in the Middle East is Israel's attack on the American spy ship, the USS Liberty, on 8th June 1967, the 4^th day of the 6-Day war. (I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis, so I was in the Sinai desert at the time). That attack killed 37 Americans and seriously wounded more than 90 others. If things had gone according to the plan of the man who ordered that attack, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the Liberty would have been sunk with all hands on board, leaving nobody to tell the story of what really happened… If it had been an Arab/Muslim attack on an American vessel, it's reasonable to speculate that America would have resorted to a military strike, if not war, on the country or countries it held responsible. What did President Johnson do? Out of fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress, he ordered a cover-up which remains in force to this day. And the mainstream media went along with it, as it still does. 

Now to my summary thoughts on the possible, probable involvement of Israel's Mossad in 9/11. I will offer you two scenarios - A or B. 

In scenario A it's not impossible that 9/11 started out as an Arab/Muslim idea. But even if this was the case, Mossad would have had an inside track very quickly. From almost the moment of the Zionist state's birth, Mossad put great effort into placing agents inside every Arab regime, every Arab military and security establishment and every Arab/Muslim liberation movement and terrorist group. Many of Mossad's best and most effective agents were Moroccan and other North African Jews because they could pose most perfectly as Arabs. In a moment I'll tell you the short story of Mossad's penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group. 

In Scenario A the question is: Did Mossad tell anybody? My speculation is that it told some in the CIA and a few of Zionism's neo-con associates, Jews and non-Jews, including Vice President Cheney I call him the real Doctor Strangelove and the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In this scenario Mossad could have asked, "What do we do about this?" And the answer could have been something like, "We'll use it for the Pearl Harbor-like pretext we need." 

In this scenario, 9/11, even if it started out as an Arab/Muslim idea, was a joint Israeli/Mossad and American/neo-con conspiracy. 

For background here's a very short story about Mossad's penetration of the Abu Nidal terrorist group. Abu Nidal was a member of Arafat's Fatah but he broke with it when Arafat had come to terms with the reality of Israel's existence and was preparing the ground on his side for compromise with Israel. The Abu Nidal group, based mainly in Iraq, was responsible for the assassinations, mainly in Europe, of more than 20 of Arafat's emissaries who were telling Western governments behind closed doors that the Fatah-dominated PLO was serious about compromise with Israel. An investigation by Arafat and Abu Iyad, Fatah's counter intelligence chief, subsequently revealed that Abu Nidal was an alcoholic - he consumed between one and two bottles of whisky a day, and for much of most days he was drunk, not sober. His number two was running the show and targeting those to be assassinated and directing the killing. Abu Nidal's number two was a Mossad agent.  

It was, in fact, two Palestinian students in London who were activated by the Abu Nidal group to assassinate Israeli ambassador Argov. It was that assassination attempt in 1982 that gave Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon the pretext they needed to launch their invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut, for the purpose of exterminating the entire leadership of the PLO and destroying its infrastructure… Ambassador Argov survived and quite some time after the event, he indicated that he suspected Israel's involvement (he could only have meant targeting) in the attempt to kill him. 

Scenario B has to be considered because it's a fact that some of the Arab/Muslim plotters, actual or alleged, were under surveillance by various Western intelligence agencies for years before 9/11. The agencies who were tracking them as possible/probable terrorists included those of America, Germany and Israel. 

In this scenario it's not impossible that the idea for 9/11 was put into the heads of possible/probable Arab/Muslim terrorists by Mossad agents. 

In this scenario, Mossad was actually running the show with key American neo-cons fixing things in America to make sure the attack was successful. From all that happened on the day, I'm not convinced that President Bush was in the pre-9/11 fixing loop. I think Cheney was most probably in control of the American executive oversight of what was essentially a Mossad false flag operation. Who else, for example, could have authorized the blocking of President Bush's electronic communications with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for a critical period? 

Question: How did 9/11 serve the interests of the lunatic right in Israel and its neo-con associates in America? 

In their view Saddam Hussein represented the only foreseeable potential Arab challenge to Greater Israel's continued military domination of the whole Arab world. He had to be removed. By falsely claiming that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attack, Zionism and its neo-con associates in America set the stage for President Bush to be conned into going to war. 

Zionism's intention to get rid of Saddam Hussein was not, in fact, a secret. In 1996, under the chairmanship of Richard Perle, widely known in informed circles as the "Prince of Darkness", American Zionism presented a policy document with the title A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm.  

It urged incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have no second thoughts about making a clean break with the Rabin policy of negotiating with the PLO and trading land for peace. Israel's claim to all the land it occupied was "legitimate and noble", the policy paper said. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights is a solid basis for the future."After the clean break Israel would be free to shape its "strategic environment". What would that involve? Among other things, "re-establishing the principle of pre-emption (pre-emptive strikes)... focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq... weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria, Hizbollah and Iran." 

In fact the commitment of Zionism's in-America fixers and their neo-con associates to getting rid of Saddam Hussein goes back further than 1996. They were angry when President Bush the First refused to complete the job when he assembled a coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait. After that Zionism's in-America fixers and their neo-con associates needed two things: 

A president who was dumb enough to buy their ideas - they got that with George "Dubya" Bush; and 

A "Pearl Harbour" like event to trigger the action. They got that with 9/11. 

But there was much more to it. 9/11 was a win-win for Zionism in another way.  

Predictably it provoked a rising tide of Islamophobia throughout the Western world and across America especially. In the minds of uninformed and ignorant Americans (i.e. most Americans), that in turn gave added credibility to the Zionist state's claim to be America's only true and reliable ally in the whole of the Arab and wider Muslim world. 

As I say in the Dear America introduction to the American edition of Volume 1 of my book, when Americans asked "Why do they hate us?", they were more or less all Arabs and Muslims everywhere. And I asked this question: What would Americans have learned if, instead of rushing to declare his war on global terrorism, President Bush had caused the Why-do-they-hate-us question to be addressed seriously? 

The short answer I give in my Dear America Introduction - the long answer is in the three volumes of my book - begins with the statement that the overwhelming majority of all Arabs and Muslims everywhere do NOT hate America or Americans. What almost all Arabs and Muslims everywhere DO hate is American foreign policy - its double standards in general and, in particular, its unconditional support for an Israel which ignores UN resolutions, demonstrates its contempt for international law and human rights conventions and resorts to state terrorism… A related truth is that for decades very many Arabs and other Muslims would, if they could, have migrated to America to enjoy a better life there. Today, however, the number of Arabs and other Muslims who would opt for American residence and citizenship if they could is greatly reduced because of the fact, sad but true, that the monster of Islamophobia is on the prowl across the Land of the Free and licking its lips. 

KZ: Over the past five years and since the escalation of international controversy over Iran's nuclear program, Israel has repeatedly threatened Iran with an imminent military strike and supported the imposition of financial sanctions against the country over its nuclear activities. Will Israel eventually attack Iran? What will be the consequences of such an attack for the Middle East?

AH: I do not believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons but, for the sake of argument, let's assume that I am wrong and that in the not too distant future it does possess some. Does anybody seriously think it would launch a nuclear first strike on Israel? Of course it would not. If it did, the whole of Iran would be devastated by a retaliatory response. No Iranian leadership is ever going to invite such a catastrophe. Unless Zionism's leaders are completely out of their minds, they know this. So why, really, are they playing up the alleged Iranian nuclear threat?

I think they are doing so for three reasons.

One is to deflect attention from their crimes, in part to reduce the prospect of real pressure on them to be serious about peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could just about accept.

Another is what might be called a strategic consideration. Israel's leaders know that if Iran did posses nuclear weapons, their freedom to go on imposing their will on the region would be greatly restricted.

But most of all there is Zionism's need for Israeli Jews to feel frightened.

A good explanation of why was provided by Ira Cherna in a Truthout post in November 2009. It was headlined Israel's Pathology. Cherna asked - How can it be that pathological feelings of fear, weakness and victimization are "comforting" to very many Israelis? His answer was the following:

"For starters, they automatically put Jews on the side of innocence. Who can blame the weak victim for the violence? All the trouble, it seems, is started by the other side... And if all the trouble is started by the other side, then all the fault must lie with the other side. Weakness and victimization seem to prove that ‘We're moral.' Obviously, it's our enemies who are immoral and thus to blame for all our problems. So Israelis have no reason even to consider changing any of their policies or behaviors."

Will Israel eventually attack Iran?

Where Zionism is concerned nothing is impossible, but I prefer to think that even Israel's leaders, despite their rhetoric, are not that mad. As I'm sure you know, there have been reports that Obama sent messengers to Israel to tell its leaders that attacking Iran was not an option. That suggests to me there won't be an attack on Iran on his watch. But what if Obama doesn't get a second term? If the Republican and Tea Party lunatics come to power in the 2012 American elections, I imagine that all bets will be off. In a worst case scenario there's a Mossad nuclear false flag operation in America which is blamed on Iran. Within minutes if not seconds of it happening, the cry goes up, "Bomb the bastards!" The only thing then to be decided would be whether the U.S. should give Israel the greenlight or do the job itself.

What would be the consequences of an attack on Iran?

Short answer, catastrophe for the region - sustained conflict and instability; huge damage to American and other Western interests throughout the Arab and wider Muslim world; and quite possibly the collapse of what remains of the global economy, this because Iran has the ability to disrupt oil exports from the Gulf and provoke a worldwide oil crisis.

It's also not impossible that an attack on Iran would encourage its leadership, any leadership, to acquire nuclear weapons.  

KZ: What's your prediction for the future of Israel's political entity? Will it continue to survive or will it terminate in a destiny like that of the apartheid regime of South Africa or the Soviet Union?  

AH: I personally think Zionism's colonial enterprise is doomed. In my analysis there was a pre-condition for the survival of the Zionist, not Jewish state. When it closed the Palestine file in 1948/49, it had to keep the file closed, prevent a re-generation of Palestinian nationalism. It has failed to do that.

That fact takes us to the real threat to Israel's existence. It is not Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran or any combination of Arab and other Muslim force. The real threat is the demographic time-bomb of occupation.

In occupation of the West Bank, Israel has three options:

1. Formally annexing it and granting all of its citizens equal rights, this to enable Israel to go on claiming that it is a democracy. The problem with this option s that it would bring about an end of the Zionist state by political means because, in due course, the Arab citizens of Greater Israel would outnumber and outvote its Jewish citizens.

2. Formally annexing the West Bank but denying Greater Israel's Arab citizens (the majority in the making) equal rights. In this scenario Greater Israel would have to treat its Arab citizens even worse than the black majority in South Africa was treated by the apartheid regime. And that would not be acceptable to many Jews of the world and, perhaps, a significant number of Israeli Jews. It would also present the governments of the international community with no choice, at some point, but to declare Greater Israel a pariah state and impose sanctions on it.

3. Resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing - provoking an all-out confrontation with the Palestinians to give the IDF and the armed settlers the pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever, in the name of self-defense, of course. If the Palestinians refused to flee, there would be, as I said earlier, a bloodbath. A Zionist holocaust.

As things are today it's my view that, at a point, Israel's leaders will go for the third option.

When they do there will such outrage in the world that governments including the one in Washington DC will have to say to Israel, "Enough is enough!" And the Zionist state will then be subjected to diplomatic isolation and crippling sanctions, with serious efforts to call and hold its political and military leaders to account for their crimes.

How will Israel's leaders respond?

As Golda Meir said, in a doomsday situation they will be prepared to take the region and possibly the world down with them.

If you asked me if I really believe that's how the story of the struggle for Palestine could end, I would answer "Yes", and this is why.

Zionism is not only Jewish nationalism which created a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Zionism is a pathological mindset. And what the deluded Zionist mind actually thinks is this: "The world has always hated Jews and always will." In other words, the pathological Jewish mindset assumes that Holocaust II (shorthand for another great turning against Jews) is inevitable.

In the shadow of the Nazi holocaust, that way of thinking led Zionism's leaders into believing there was nothing they should not do to preserve Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews when the world turned against them again.

And the end, mad, Zionist logic speaks for itself. "If the world won't let us do whatever we believe to be necessary to preserve Israel as a refuge of last resort for all Jews, our enterprise is doomed, but we won't go down alone."

- Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. He has interviewed political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke, Australian politician Ian Cohen, member of German Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council advisor Peter D. Feaver, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in biology Robin Warren, famous German political prisoner Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff, American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist Eric Margolis, former assistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud and the former President of the American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sid Ganis.