No sensible educated person will ever limit his life to a permanent habitat; to keep moving and migrating from place to place is the secret of human progress”
Going by the above quoted poem rendered by an Arab poet, ‘The Message’ today chooses to migrate from the insanity of Nigeria’s political and religious rigmarole to the global political tempest if only for a change. After all, elasticity has its own limit. And by so doing, some relief might come to readers of this column about the economic heat being heartlessly generated by the so-called rulers of this country. Recently, Al-Jazeera Television Cable Network throbbed with breaking news, saying that a United States military aircraft strayed into the airspace of Iran and the latter promptly responded by shooting it down. Iran announced another of the like just three days ago. This disturbing development has further aggravated the tension between both countries which started in 1979 with the Iranian revolution that uprooted the country’s imperial despotism which had caged the citizens for decades. In reaction, the US authorities explained that the destination of the shot aircraft was Afghanistan but its pilots lost control and strayed into Iranian territory. Shortly before that incident, Some Iranian students had besieged the British Embassy in Tehran protesting the meddling of David Cameron’s government in the internal affairs of Iran. And in retaliation, Britain quickly evacuated her diplomats in Iran and sent the latter’s diplomats in London packing despite Iran’s regret over those students’ action. To further complicate the matter, the French government also issued a 48 hour ultimatum to Iranian Embassy to quit France. This was done in solidarity with Britain in the spirit of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Things have since moved so fast that it now becomes difficult to predict what will happen next. Most diplomatic observers saw similarity between these developments and the unexpected occurrences of the early 20th century that precipitated both World War I and World War II. Their fear is a possible reoccurrence of those wars. Retrospectively, the genesis of the faceoff between the West and Iran took roots in the latter’s unexpected revolution of 1979 which shut the door against the West’s economic exploitation of her people. It was 33 years last February, since Iran jumped to the world stage with a surprising revolution. February 11, 1979 was the precise climax of a struggle, in that country, which began in 1963 between the oppressed people seeking independence from the shackles of imperialism and the implacable oppressors wanting to keep that country’s innocent peasants in perpetual subservience. The success of that revolution has since changed the grand design of the Western powers for the Muslim world.
That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows: “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilisations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never- ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”. Sir Bannerman’s observation was in further pursuit of an earlier demand by Theodor Herzl, a leader of the Zionist movement founded in 1879. Herzl, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist demanded thus: “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage for ourselves…”In response to that clandestine demand, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home has since put the Middle East in an incessant turmoil read thus in part: “His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective…. The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” To facilitate that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, a juicy chunk of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria and Kuwait from Iraq. The strategy was to cause a dissention among the citizens of those Countries with the intention of breaking the yoke of the Muslim unity which Bannerman had targeted in his infamous observation quoted above. How does Iran come into this picture when she is not an Arab Country? That is the logical question anybody would who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up would ask. Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And by culture here, we mean ISLAM. Iran is a foremost Islamic Country even if her official language is not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects other Muslim Countries must affect her. The case of Turkey is a good example. Turkey was though not an Arab country she was nevertheless the seat of the Islamic Caliphate until 1924 when a diabolical agent of the West came on stage as Head of State. His name was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; a man who wanted to prove to the West that it was possible for a non-Catholic to be “Holier than the Pope” especially when it came to adopting the so-called Western Civilisation. On March 3, 1924, just one year after assuming office as the ruler of Turkey, Ataturk introduced a bill to the Turkish Parliament seeking to secularise his country by abolishing the office of the caliph without any consideration for the feelings and sensitivity of the people he ruled. Presenting the bill, Ataturk said: “Ottoman Empire was built and existed on the principle of Islam. Islam is Arabic in character and in concept. It shapes from birth to death, the lives of its adherents; it stifles hope and initiative. The Republic (of Turkey) is threatened by the continued existence of Islam in its midst….”With the passage of that bill, Turkey was recognised as a secular state. Politics was separated from religion and Islam was relegated to a personal matter rather than the state religion that it was before then. The caliphate was abolished and Islamic law was abrogated. Ataturk borrowed the new Turkish civil law from Switzerland, the criminal law from Italy and the international law of trade from Germany. The Muslim personal law was harmonised with the European civil law. Religious instruction in public schools was prohibited. Purdah system was abolished and declared illegal. Co-education was introduced to schools. The use of Arabic alphabets was prohibited and replaced by the Latin Script. Adhan (the call to prayer) was no longer to be made in Arabic but in Turkish language while the national costume was changed to that of the Europeans even as the wearing of hat was made compulsory. What Ataturk did not do was to abrogate the tenets of Islam completely. Thus, by one man’s whim, Turkey lost her values and heritage of centuries in a bid to adopt the so-called ‘modernity’ brought by ‘Western civilisation’. One can imagine what Islam would have become today if countries like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan had adopted the same misfortune. It was this same situation that prompted the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ruhullah Mousavi Khomeini to embark on the liberation struggle in 1963 that culminated in a successful revolution in 1979. Unlike Ataturk, however, Imam Khomeini knew that the greatest virtue that could be lost in the life of man was culture. He knew that without a clear-cut culture man couldn’t be better than a beast. He knew that such values as law, education and religion, which guide man in his peregrinations on earth, are the attributes of culture. He knew that a nation, which surrenders its culture and adopts that of another nation, has enslaved herself permanently to the caprice of the latter nation. Thus, Khomeini saw Islam, (the culture of over one billion Muslims in the world at that time), as the target of the Western imperialists, which needed defence and protection. No one believed in 1979 that a mass protest which started like a small political billow, engendered by the country’s unarmed Mullahs could eventually grow into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’. By the time the foggy dust finally settled, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic republic. The drama was quite electric. Characteristic of the West, all hands were put on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic republic did not succeed the tyrannical monarchy headed by the Shah Pahlavi, heavily backed up by the oppressive West. America was most active in that ambitious but vain effort. She would not easily allow the massive benefit she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on that country’s embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of the country. The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government in Iran had warranted the siege. While a number of US F15 bomber jets were approaching Iran, President Jimmy Carter engaged his country’s press in a chart without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and that of the country from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an. More than 1,400 years before that incident, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54. Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing his press address, the news would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of his address. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have it, instead of the expected news, what he got was a shocker of his life. Two of the F15 fighters deployed for the operation miraculously collided in the air just at the point of entering Iran crashing with their contents, and consuming the lives of 16 top air force officers while the other jet fighters had to turn back having run into confusion. When this devastating news reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly became a public knowledge. Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze and explain convincingly. With that scheme, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party. For about 444 days (well over a year), the 52 American hostages remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released. Yet, America was not done. She went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of $80 billion in addition to imposition of economic sanctions with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. The only Iran’s offence in this case was to chart an independent political course that could liberate her citizens from the manacles of the Western imperialism. Ever since, the relationship between America and Iran has remained icy. That relationship however, further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy. America responded with a threat saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in Iran because she could not trust that Islamic nation. And of course, America’s voice was re-echoed by the United Nations, through the mouth of the latter’s Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. Only a fool will not know that the UN, as presently constituted, is the greyhound of the US through which the latter barks randomly at the rest of the world. But for the recent Iraqi episode that became regrettable for the self-appointed policeman of the world, and of course, the North Korean case, which has become a cancerous sore on the head of the US, another Gulf war would have either ensued or been in plan by now. The secret of America’s military successes in various parts of the world is neither in technological advancement, nor military superiority per se. The failed rescue mission in Iran can confirm this. That secret is rather in her ability to cause schism among some other nations and races. Iran has never been a prey to America’s direct military aggression, even when the Shah Pahlavi was in power, because she has never played a fool dancing to the sour music of that predatory country in a seeming open market.Now, with the threat of invasion of Iran by Israel on the one hand and economic and political sanctions against her by the Western the NATO allies on the other, will history repeat itself? One fact has become clear about the US political trend ever since that country withdrew from her self-isolationism in 1945. Her internal politics has been regularly dictated by her foreign policy. Thus, many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the concerned President. Will this also repeat itself? The days ahead will answer this fundamental question as events continue to unfold even as the ongoing crisis between Israel and Palestine also remains a cog in the wheel of global peace. But with the objection by China and Russia to any economic sanctions against Iran, the US and her allies will have to watch their steps carefully especially with respect to any planned invasion of Iran before embarking on a military action. Iran is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. The world cannot afford another World War now. No one should attempt to plunge it into one. A word is enough for the wise.
