By Alex Gordon in Haifa, Israel
Since their inception, nuclear weapons have been and remain the most terrifying thing that can be used by humans against humans. Nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics from Iran are the greatest threat in the history of the Jewish people. The leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly stated its goal of destroying the state of Israel. The Nazi regime carried out “the final solution” to the Jewish question in secret. The death camps, where Jews were exterminated solely because they were Jews, operated in secrecy. The Iranian regime hides nothing: for its main goal, the export of the Islamic, Shia revolution, it is necessary to destroy the state of Israel. As long as this regime exists, war is the only reality in the Middle East, and peace is fiction. Peace negotiations with the Iranian regime, which recognizes no laws other than Sharia law, are also a fiction, a ceremony paying lip service to the banal but unreal slogan “peace is preferable to war” in this region.
A group of Jewish physicists, originally from Europe, made enormous efforts in the American nuclear bomb project to outpace the Nazis in their military nuclear project. They knew how dangerous Nazism was, even before they knew about the Holocaust. In the United States, of course, they know about the Holocaust, they continuously hear that the Iranian regime is preparing a new Holocaust for the Jews, but they strive to reach a peace deal with those for whom Western civilization, the Great and Little Satan, the United States and Israel must be destroyed.
Deals with a regime whose religion allows it to deceive infidels are meaningless and useless. Those who believe in the reality of a deal with fanatics are, at best, deceiving themselves, and at worst, presenting lies as truth, portraying the Shia adversary as a partner in the deal.
The Iranian regime is a Shia theocracy. When making a deal or signing a contract, Western politicians must understand who they are negotiating with.
According to Sharia law, in certain situations, deception—also known as taqiyya, based on Quranic terminology—is not only permitted but sometimes obligatory. Taqiyya is very common in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era. The main verse of the Quran that sanctions deception toward non-Muslims states: “Let not the believers take the disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Whoever does so will have no relationship with Allah – unless you take precautions against them”. (Quran 3:28; 2:173; 2:185; 4:29; 22:78; 40:28.)
According to the Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill Online edition): “The obligation of jihad exists until the universal dominance of Islam is achieved.” Peace with non-Muslim peoples, therefore, is only a temporary state; only incidental circumstances can temporarily justify it. There can be no question of genuine peace treaties with these people; only truces are permitted. But even such truces are unreliable, as they can be unilaterally canceled before the expiration date if it proves more advantageous for Islam to resume the conflict.
As a doctrine, taqiyya was first codified by Shia Muslims, primarily because of their historical experience. For a long time insisting that the caliphate rightfully belonged to the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, Ali (and then to his descendants), the Shiites were a loud and influential current of Islam that emerged after Muhammad’s death. However, after the internal Islamic civil wars of Fitna in 656–661, the Shiites became a minority persecuted by the mainstream Muslims, the Sunnis. Taqiyya became key to the survival of the Shiites.
Being among the much more numerous Sunnis, who currently make up about 90 percent of the Islamic world, Shiites often practiced taqiyya, pretending to be Sunnis on the outside while maintaining their Shiite beliefs on the inside, as permitted by Quran verse 16:106. Even today, especially in those Muslim states where there is limited religious freedom, Shiites still practice taqiyya. In Saudi Arabia, for example, Shia Muslims are considered by many in the Sunni majority to be heretics, traitors, and infidels, and, like other non-Sunni Muslims, they are often subjected to persecution.
Some of the highest religious leaders in Saudi Arabia have even issued fatwas sanctioning the killing of Shiites. As a result, estimates of the Shiite population in this Arab kingdom vary widely — from 1 percent to nearly 20 percent. Many Shiites living there apparently choose to hide their religious identity. As a result of approximately 1,400 years of Shia taqiyya, Sunnis often accuse Shias of habitual lying, insisting that taqiyya is deeply rooted in Shia culture.
In the negotiations between the USA and Shia Iran, between the West and the East, between democracy and theocracy, there is a clash of civilizations speaking different languages, holding different views, and sharing different values.
“The West is the West. East is East. And never the twain shall meet.” – wrote Rudyard Kipling. They clashed in a conflict over the shape of civilization. Agatha Christie wrote in her memoirs: “In the Middle East, appearance and essence never coincide. Here, familiar notions, rules of conduct, and life wisdom need to be completely re-evaluated, and everyone must learn anew.” English writers understood the incommensurability of the two civilizations. American businessmen approach the issue as if there is no profound difference between civilizations, as if one can trust “partners” who adhere to such beliefs.
In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington wrote: “In the eyes of Muslims, Western secularism, irreligion, and thus immorality, are evils worse than the Western Christianity that produced them. […] The main problem of the West is not Islamic fundamentalism at all. It is Islam, a different civilization, whose peoples are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are tormented by the thought of the inferiority of their power. For Islam, the problem is not at all the CIA or the US Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization, whose peoples are convinced of the global, universal nature of their civilization and who believe that it surpasses all others and that although its power is waning, it imposes on them the obligation to spread their culture throughout the world. These are the main components of the fuel that feeds the fire of the conflict between Islam and the West.” But in this region, there is much other fuel: oil, gas, and, in Huntington’s terms, Israel, the “foreign body” in the Middle East, located on the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations.
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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. He is the author of 12 books.