Yazid was the killer of Hussein, the son of Ali, whose death the Shi'ites lament on Ashura. That the Iranian crowds would be chanting this suggests that this is a Shi'ite vs. Shi'ite affair -- Sharia adherents battling other Sharia adherents and jockeying for the mantle of Islamic purity. Given Iran's flirtation with secularism under the Shah, it's possible that if Obama had come out strongly in favor of the protesters from the beginning, this could have gone in a different direction -- but that is yet another missed opportunity for him. "Aides to Iran's Opposition Leaders Said to Be Arrested," by Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi for the New York Times, December 29:
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The Iranian authorities arrested a number of opposition figures on Monday in the wake of violent protests a day earlier, Web sites reported, including three top aides to the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and Ibrahim Yazdi, leader of the banned Iran Freedom Movement...."What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashura?" Mr. Karroubi said in a statement, according to the opposition Jaras Web site....
On Sunday, thick crowds marched down a central avenue in Tehran, defying official warnings of a harsh crackdown on protests as they chanted "death to Khamenei," referring to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed growing intolerance for political dissent in the country....
Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said....
The White House condemned what it called the "unjust suppression" of civilians by the Iranian government on Sunday.
"Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States," said Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council....
"This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall," the protesters shouted, equating Ayatollah Khamenei with Yazid, the ruler who ordered Imam Hussein's killing....
"Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain," said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament who is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "Killing people on Ashura shows how far Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests."...
If these are the battle cries, the West really has no stake in either side. An "overthrow" would represent only a reshuffling of the elites that would not greatly impact Iran's foreign policy.
Excellent work, Pamela ...and those graphic photos certainly do depict how villainous and evil Khamenei & Company truly are.
"Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain,"..
What does Koranic/Sharia definition of "innocent" mean to the Moslem world again, when the rest of humanity is exempt from innocence? Not much.
My sympathies for the youth of Iran who want better than the tyrannical repressions delivered by the mullahs of their present theocratic oppressive regime, but their efforts would be better directed to topple the whole Sharia government true-believers affair and replace it with a secular democratic constitutional government, separating religion from state, while protecting the rights of ALL believers to follow their religion. But will it happen, can it? More "innocents" will suffer, no doubt. More power to the people. Freedom!
Thumbs Up!
"Given Iran's flirtation with secularism under the Shah, it's possible that if Obama had..." etc.
If Spencer is suggesting that Obama should deploy the CIA in a covert operation to foment a coup to topple the current regime in Iran -- as the USA did in the early 1950s -- and replace it with a dictator who will -- as the Shah enabled by that coup did -- impose upon the millions of Muslims and thousands of Marxist-Muslims of Iran a secularism and a pro-American orientation, then I'm all for that (since that's the only way to have a pro-Western secularist regime -- even if only precariously approximating it at best -- in a country populated by a vast majority of Muslims). I suspect, however, Spencer has something altogether more fancifully starry-eyed in mind than that, due in part to the delirium that is one sign & symptom of the Persian Flu, which seems to have been hanging on with not a few people in the West for several months now.
A course of anti-viral booster shoots prescribed by Dr. Diana West will help bring down the fever; if the patient is willing.
When Iranians start talking about re-embracing Zoroastrianism, then I guess we can start talking about real change in those parts of the woods.
Hey, Champ!
I would agree with your "thumbs up" to BoT, but would add this comment:
"Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain," said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo...
Sorry, Sweetie (Fatemeh), but 'Ashura' is only symbolic of your religion. I support your efforts, but let's keep the facts straight.
Hey, Boneshack! ...yeah, their religion IS their culture and vice versa, and round 'n round we go ...
I'm reading all over the web about outrage among Shi'ite Muslims because the Mullahs violated the well-known rule against killing people on Holy Ashura (even executions do not take place on that holy day). Am I to understand that in Shi'ite Islam killing is only really forbidden ONE DAY A YEAR?
I know that the gates of Ijittihad are still open in the Shi'ia, while they are forever closed in the Sunn'a, which means that if reform ever comes to Islam it will be born among Shi'ites. But I ask myself: can these people even imagine a culture like the Judeo-Christian one, where killing people is forbidden EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR?
I'm reading all over the web about outrage among Shi'ite Muslims because the Mullahs violated the well-known rule against killing people on Holy Ashura (even executions do not take place on that holy day). Am I to understand that in Shi'ite Islam killing is only really forbidden ONE DAY A YEAR?
I know that the gates of Ijittihad are still open in the Shi'ia, while they are forever closed in the Sunn'a, which means that if reform ever comes to Islam it will be born among Shi'ites. But I ask myself: can these people even imagine a culture like the Judeo-Christian one, where killing people is forbidden EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR?
I'm reading all over the web about outrage among Shi'ite Muslims because the Mullahs violated the well-known rule against killing people on Holy Ashura (even executions do not take place on that holy day). Am I to understand that in Shi'ite Islam killing is only really forbidden ONE DAY A YEAR?
I know that the gates of Ijittihad are still open in the Shi'ia, while they are forever closed in the Sunn'a, which means that if reform ever comes to Islam it will be born among Shi'ites. But I ask myself: can these people even imagine a culture like the Judeo-Christian one, where killing people is forbidden EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR?
I'm reading all over the web about outrage among Shi'ite Muslims because the Mullahs violated the well-known rule against killing people on Holy Ashura (even executions do not take place on that holy day). Am I to understand that in Shi'ite Islam killing is only really forbidden ONE DAY A YEAR?
I know that the gates of Ijittihad are still open in the Shi'ia, while they are forever closed in the Sunn'a, which means that if reform ever comes to Islam it will be born among Shi'ites. But I ask myself: can these people even imagine a culture like the Judeo-Christian one, where killing people is forbidden EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR?