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Shia Islam Executive Director Schwartz, Open Letter to Ahmadinejad, Jewcy, January 23, 2007
January 23, 2007
To: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Tehran, Iran
Bismillah
ir-rahman ir-rahim, blessings upon the Prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, and upon his House, peace.
I write in response to your
letter dated 29 November 2006 and directed to the people of the United
States. As an ordinary American citizen, with no official responsibilities,
I will address you similarly, without titles or salutations referring to
your political status in your country.
You have taken to sending pretentious communications to
Americans,
including President George W. Bush himself, apparently without realizing
that such an exercise in publicity-seeking does little credit to you or to
the Iranian people.
Yet you address the American people as a “noble” people. I
consider the Iranian people, also, a noble people. I am an American Muslim
and for more than 40 years have been an admirer of the Iranian heritage and
the followers of
Ahl-ul-Bayt (the family of Prophet Muhammad,
pbuh), as specially represented by the Shia sect.
I know the justifiable pride that Iranian Shia take in their
devotion to classical logic and other pre-Islamic philosophy, to the works
of outstanding Islamic men of wisdom such as
al-Farabi and
Ibn Sina, and to the achievements of the
Persian Sufi poets.
I wonder, then, why your letters are characterized by such
pedestrian ramblings and twists of illogic.
Since your latest letter, stripped of its rhetoric, consists
of a series of questions, I will attempt both to answer your questions and
raise new ones.
You have chosen to aggravate the isolation and ostracism of
the great Iranian people, and the difficulties faced by the Shia Muslims,
who are daily slain in Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere. You have done this by
adopting the bizarre and disreputable project of undermining the memory of
the genocidal tragedy that befell the European Jews—religious believers in
their majority—at the hands of the pagan, idolatrous, and antireligious
Hitler regime. You have invited a despicable assortment of demagogues and
other crazy people to Iran to “debate” this undebatable reality.
Do you not understand that no other government in the
world—not even that of
Wahhabi-dominated Saudi Arabia—involves itself in such disgusting
propaganda?
Do you not understand that the Jews who were massacred in the
Holocaust were killed only because of their monotheistic faith, and that
such an unparalleled crime should horrify and repulse Muslims and inspire
solidarity with the Jewish victims?
Do you not understand that Hitlerism, which you apparently
wish to equate with resistance to imperialism, was in reality the most
ferocious and evil form of imperialism in modern times?
I know that Iranian Muslims wept with shared pain when the
peace-loving and virtuous Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina were attacked by
Serbian fascists. Do you really not know that the same ideology that
resulted in the Holocaust of the Jews brought about the horrific deaths of
innocent elders and children, men and women, in the Balkan wars of the
1990s? And has nobody ever told you that American Jewish leaders were
foremost in calling for military action to defend the Balkan Muslims, the
faithful people who alone represent a permanent, historic Muslim presence in
Europe?
You also issue allegations about the relationship between the
U.S. and Israel. Yet you implicitly admit that the foreign policy of the
U.S., including its relations with Israel and the Palestinians, is subject
to open and continuous debate in the U.S.—the kind of debate woefully absent
in Iran today.
When will the Iranian people see a public debate over your
squandering of resources in support of the adventurist and totalitarian
Hasan Nasrallah, a national discussion of the kind that is the norm in the
U.S. and inside the Jewish state?
You insult the American people by alleging that our
government is controlled by Zionists. But your nation is held hostage by
Palestinian Arabs who despise Iranians, and who hold Shias in deep contempt.
The same Palestinian Arabs to whom you express such warmth and provide
military and financial support exult in the murder of Iraqi Shias and the
devastation of their holy places. Did nobody ever tell you how Yasser
Arafat, an atheist and Marxist, once commented, “Alhamdulillah [Praise God],
we have neither Shias nor malarial mosquitoes in Palestine”?
You admit, “Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about
his departure.” Why do you not extend gratitude to the American people whose
sons and daughters were killed in the liberation of Iraq alongside those
sent from other Christian-majority nations?
You state, “Iraq [now] has a Constitution and an independent
Assembly and Government.” Are you really so obtuse as to imagine that this
was not purchased by the world at the price of American and Coalition blood,
as well as that of the Iraqi martyrs to Ba’athist and Wahhabi terrorism?
Is this how you will honor the example of
Imam Husayn, peace be upon him, whose
martyrdom at Karbala will be remembered on the
Day of Ashura (the 10th of Muharram) only a week
from now, on the 29th of January 2007?
You should begin your communication with Americans in a
spirit of Islamic appreciation for the sacrifices Americans and other people
from distant, non-Muslim lands have made for the freedom of
Karbala and Najaf, beloved to the Shias of the world.
But Karbala is worth less to you than an opportunity to
insult the memory of the Jewish people, as well as the dignity of the
American president.
Bear in mind, with the approach of Ashura, that Jews and
Persians alike are ancient peoples with a long common history.
Remember, as you grieve for Imam Husayn (pbuh), the blood
that has poured out of the bodies of American and Coalition men and women in
arms, who put themselves in harm’s way to ensure the freedom of the Shias of
Iraq. Do not endanger the new Iraq by permitting your associates to disrupt
the stabilization of that country, and do not allow Karbala to once again
escape Shia control.
The noble Iranian people pronounced a severe judgment on you
and your reactionary fantasies in the December local elections, when
your supporters received a small minority of votes cast by your
fellow-citizens. This was a verdict much harsher than that delivered on the
administration of President Bush, about which you comment impudently.
O Mahmoud! Let the workers, students, honest religious
scholars, and Sufis of Iran be successful in their demands for dismantling
of the failed clerical regime!
But above all, recall at Ashura how the sister of Husayn (pbuh),
Hazrat Zeynab, spoke to the Muslims in the aftermath of her brother’s
atrocious death: “The memory of those who die for freedom and liberty of
Islam takes firm root in the heart of humanity and there it lives on
forever.”
Some 3,000 Americans have died for the freedom and liberty of
Islam in Iraq.
Do not forget it.
Sincerely,
Stephen Suleyman Ahmad Schwartz
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