Although Islam was imposed on many nations by the sword of Islam, Seif-Aallh” in the hands of jihadi, the choice of the conviction became partly of free will due to mechanism of Stockholm Syndrome in these nations. Islam became finally an identity pride for some people’s collective conscience, even if their ancestors were brutalised as the first victims of Islam. Islam for these people is formed by effects of fear, tradition, and finally pride, but never due to rationality. Rationality is a new paradigm shift in the Islamic world which is gradually emerging thanks to the plague of the Islamic regime in Iran.
Islam to Arab Middle East is melt with their history, a history of Caliphate and period of “Golden Ages”, what led to military conquerors in long wars against the world of non-Muslim or “Kufr”. The history of the Arab and Sunnite Muslims countries is associated with the pride of these Golden Ages, whereas the history of Iran is a disgrace by Islamic hordes of aggression in the 7th century, those who destroyed the advance culture and civilisation of ancient Iran / Persia.
The first Crusade was reinforced by accumulated defeats and finally collapse of the “Golden Ages”, the Sunnite Muslims lost the pride and felt their conquered territories looked down by the “non-Muslims.”
The second Crusade was the period of British / French colonisation that was a second triumphed Crusade of the non-Muslims over Islamic territories. This one regards the Islamic world with more disdain and more disgrace than losing the Golden Ages.
The third Crusade broken pride of Muslims after the first two defeats was the inception of a Jewish state in 1948 in the “holy lands” of Islam. This disgrace completed the series of defeats so deep that contributed in the raise of political Islam.
War against the Crusades finally freed Spain from the rule of Islam and trembled the Islamic Golden Ages. The period of This Golden Ages was patched with the Arab / Sunnite pride up and was an identity formation for the Sunnite Muslims especially Arabs. Once being violated by “non-Muslims”, the reaction was a mechanism of self-defence reaching a pan-Islamism. The recreation of Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS are typically the recent examples of the pan-Islamic transformation into war against the Crusades of non-Muslims.
Iranians do not shared this pride to Islam. Iranians do not act in favour of an Islamic identity like those in Arabic Sunnite nations, but even thanks to the Islamic regime increasingly reject such an Islamic identity as a disgrace. Whatever the place of Islam in the history of Iran, it is now associated with the plague of the 39-year anti-Iranian Islamic regime.
The Islamic regime represents the reminder of the 7th Muslim invasion; those Muslim hordes ravaged, killed, enslaved, destroyed and humiliated Iranians during two centuries of their occupation. Those atrocities of the 7th Islamic invaders are now associated resurfaced with / by the Islamic regime. Therefore, new generations of Iranians cannot be like Arabs proud of Islam. This pride-loss is a new and substantial change in the Islamic world. For the first time when an Islamised nation concedes a rationality which stands over the faith.
The Islamic regime would never be freely chosen in 1979 if Islam were freely discussed in the course of history. In this perspective, the Islamic regime in Iran seems to be the last bastion of the Islam’s leftovers of the 7th. Century and once collapsed, an Islamic regime will never be reset.
Islam of this regime pushes Iranians to learn on a daily basis learnt that a sharia-backed- regime does not match their rational ethics. Iranians are likely the first nation in the Middle East who reached to this revolutionary awareness that Islamic values within an Islamic state do not lead to any conditions for freedom, independence and democracy. Iranians experience that an Islamic state does not solve problems in our today’s world, but will rather deteriorate them.
It takes more time till new generations of the Islamised world realise the facts that political Islam is used as launching pad for a bunch of corrupt, reactionary and backward Mullahs, Sheiks, kings, life presidents…. Furthermore, in very noticeable contrast to the Golden Ages, some Islamic regimes such as the Pakistani “putschist” generals, Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, the US-backed Shiite government in Iraq and Afghanistan are even set up or propped up by the “non-Muslim” superpowers.
The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was a start point for Islamisation of the region. This swiftly irrational process was of course due to the long tradition of despotism and lack of democracy in the Islamic world. The effects of shortages are so deep that despite the bankruptcy of the Islamic regime in Iran, still the average peoples in the ME are more gravitating towards an Islamic regime. For them, the illiterate Mullahs and clown presidents such as Ahmadinejad are celebrated as the “anti-Western” heroes who stand up to the western “non-Muslims.”
In my views, such an anti-western phobia does not help to push back the supposed colonial agenda of the West, but it ends up to boomerang on the isolated country with more dependence to the West. Such a baseless phobia does not lead to independence, democracy, prosperity, and progress of people, but rather bogged down into an ideological abyss that can cook up extremist regimes like that of the Islamic regimes in the region. Such extremist regimes sooner or later will be economically new dependent client states to the one or another foreign key power.
A sane state is a servant of its people, a friend of humanity, and is based on the universally recognised values of democracy and human rights. Only such a regime can be independent because it is a free and conscious choice of today’s democratic values and thus less likely can secretly bargain over the national interests with the key powers. Such a regime will be a part of the international community with no ideological love or pathological hate towards any country.
Iranian people today distance themselves from such love-hate relations, namely from irrational love for a religion or ideology vs. hate towards the West to the extent of a western phobia. Most Iranians in fact share many traits of western values, values which are banned or disdained by the Islamic regime. Iranians look for the western values of secularism, laicity, and democracy to overcome the 1400 years of Islamic supremacy, to which is represented by the plague of the Islamic regime. These trends are hastening other factors of evolution of human rationality that Islam will likely dies out after the collapse of the Islamic regime.
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Why Iranians reject Islam?
