More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Kim Ghattas
Read between
August 11 - August 30, 2020
Trying to answer the question “What happened to us?” led me to the fateful year of 1979. Three major events took place in that same year, almost independent of one another: the Iranian Revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the first battleground for jihad in modern times, an effort supported by the United States.
They were known hence as the partisans of Ali, shi’at Ali.
The struggle opposed two visions for the succession: one religious, through a line of the prophet’s descendants known as imams (leaders of prayer); and the other, more earthly, centered on power, caliphs (literally, “successors”), chosen by consensus among wise men. The
Shias had never had anyone speak up for them or lead their battles. Now they had Imam Sadr.
Khomeini and other clerics denounced what they saw as the Westernization of Iran by a despotic ruler. They were particularly incensed about the greater rights granted to women, including the right to run for elected office and serve as judges.
The shah crushed the protests, killing dozens. Opposition leaders who were not arrested went underground or scattered abroad.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the Partition Plan. On May 14, 1948, as the last British troops departed, Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel on the land apportioned to them by the UN plan.
But Arab countries had rejected the Partition Plan, declaring they would continue to fight for an undivided Palestine.
But in 1967, during six days of war, the Arabs lost more land: Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, including the walled old city that is home to Al-Aqsa mosque, as well as Egypt’s Sinai and Syria’s Golan Heights.
The king of Jordan would have none of it—his army crushed the PLO ruthlessly in 1970. More Palestinian fighters, and more refugees, headed to Lebanon.
The Shias felt they had no one: the shah of Iran was an ally of Israel and was mostly concerned with keeping tabs on the Iranian opposition in Lebanon.
Traditionally in Shiism, the perfect Islamic state can come into existence only with the return of the Mahdi, or Hidden Imam, a messiah-like redeemer and the twelfth imam after Ali, who had gone into hiding, or occultation, in the ninth century. Until the return of this infallible man, governance would be in the hands of the secular state.
Chamran, Ghotbzadeh, and Yazdi formed the backbone of the LMI, whose members were middle-class or wealthy Iranians who had lived a comfortable life.
Most of his colleagues on the left found the writings so outlandish that they assumed it was a forgery by the Iranian regime seeking to discredit Khomeini as a religious fanatic.
The fire was sparked in 1977. It began with the death in June of Ali Shariati, the dangerous visionary ideologue of the revolution.
were mysterious and attributed his death to the shah’s secret service, the SAVAK.
There had been years of unrest in Iran, but the moment when the dam truly broke was in November 1977, when the shah allowed Khomeini’s relatives in Iran to mark the fortieth day of mourning for Mostafa.
How could Egypt break rank and betray the Arab and Palestinian cause? Peace talks would soon begin between Israel and Egypt—so who would wipe the shame from the forehead of Arab men now?
The same is happening today
Husseini and Imam Sadr got to work. The politician would operate the recorder and the cleric would speak. They made tape after tape of revolutionary messages addressed to the Iranian people, encouraging them to rise up and demand change.
Why don’t we do this again?
Saddam wanted the shah to agree first. After discussing the proposal with close aides, the shah decided against
Iran as an authentic revolution against injustice that brought together students, workers, intellectuals, and men of religion—a revolution of ideas, not one of politics or violence.
The turning point in the heat of a summer of unrest had been an arson attack on the Rex Cinema in the city of Abadan, killing 420 people on August 19.
September 8, 1978, Black Friday, was another dramatic turning point. Thousands converged on Jaleh Square, chanting Marg bar shah, Death to the shah. The crowd of mostly men was a mix of Khomeini supporters, students, and leftists. Among them, behind the first lines of women and young people, there were guerrilla fighters, many trained in Lebanon by the Palestinians.
three thousand had died,
which (as in Iran) was eating away at their privileges and giving rights to women.
In Neauphle-le-Château, over the course of a four-month stay, he would give 132 interviews and become the face of the revolution, recognized throughout the world. The seventy-six-year-old cleric was invigorated.
wilayat al-faqih in public.
As early as 1964, Banisadr had enlisted Sartre to preside on a committee to raise awareness about Iranians in the shah’s jails. Sartre had once declared: “I have no religion, but if I had to pick one it would be Shariati.”
Saudi Arabia and Iran were allies and twin pillars in the US policy to counter the spread of communism and Soviet influence in the region. Iran was more powerful, and the shah had a formidable army and naval force, posing as the regional policeman.
Khomeini wanted to land at the peak of the fervor, so that the people’s relief at being saved would pour in his direction only.
Khomeini’s devotion was to the past, to re-creating an Islamic society fashioned after the one in the days of the prophet.
Not everyone noticed Khomeini’s reference to the wilayat.
It would take years for some of the early revolutionaries to accept the truth: they had delivered their nation to a theocrat, an irredeemable monster.
Who thinks this though?
Socialist leftists, pro-Syrian and Palestinian leaders, all said the same: this was a triumph for their cause and for Arab unity over Israel and the United States. THE SHAH IS GONE. TOMORROW SADAT, read one banner.
And Arafat, just as cunning and unscrupulous as the ayatollah, didn’t want to be owned; he wanted to lead. He would never adopt the name of Islamic resistance.
98 percent picked green, even though there was no definition of what an Islamic republic entailed.
He pointedly avoided addressing Taleghani as Ayatollah, instead calling him Mr. Taleghani.
It had its own thugs: Hezbollah, or the Party of God, and attacked demonstrators who opposed Khomeini, terrorized students on university campuses, shut down critical newspapers, and rode in the streets in convoys of motorbikes, waving black flags and banners.
the shah, but the ideologies then came in all colors and every possible combination: secular leftists, modernist Islamists, nationalists, leftist Islamists. Now there was only one stance, one narrative allowed. Seven hundred qualified scholars lost their jobs, while the country cut off
He had no use for pro-American leaders like Sadat, but Assad was already in his camp. Together they would form what would be known as the axis of resistance for decades ahead.
He knew the ayatollah and the pull this man could have on Iraq’s Shia community. He forced his cousin,
Now we’re getting into game theory
Jordan sent volunteers to fight with Saddam. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continued to give him billions. The ranks of Iraq’s army were filled with Shias who fought for their country—this was a war between nations. Syria sided with Iran.
The mighty Persian Sassanid Empire had succumbed to Arab conquest in 636 during the Battle of al-Qadisiyya. Now, over a millennium later, Khomeini and Saddam wanted a redo. Or revenge.
His admission to the United States for medical care had triggered the hostage crisis in Tehran.
And the establishment of the counter terrorism task force
In the summer of 1987, Pakistani Sunnis went into a village on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and killed Shias, fellow countrymen. Then Shias killed Sunnis.
The two men met only once, but the parallel tracks of their lives tell the tale of the proxy war that the House of Saud and Khomeini began to fight in Pakistan in the 1980s.
Lines were being drawn within Pakistani society, between those who paid zakat and those who didn’t, between the Sunnis and the Shias—the “other” Muslims.
the real representative of the Hidden Imam on earth, and the only man who could break the dominance of the great powers—both the US and the USSR—on other countries, including Pakistan.
Conservative but inclusive, this was a city and a region of famed Pashtun warriors who could recite the verses of two books by heart: the holy Quran and the poetry of their very own Peshawari Sufi saint Rahman Baba.
They were establishing a small Arabistan in the middle of Pakistan (just as Iranians were setting up a Little Tehran in Baalbek).
