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Iran resurrects Salman Rushdie threat

Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, head of a powerful state foundation providing relief to the poor, said the film would never have been made if the order to execute Rushdie, issued by the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had been carried out.

Ayatollah Sanei has offered financial rewards for carrying out the edict in the past, he said Muslim anger over the recent film meant the time was now ripe.

"The aim [of the fatwa] has been to uproot the anti-Islamic conspiracy and now the necessity for taking this action is even more obvious than any other time," he said. "I'm adding another $500,000 to the reward and anyone who carries out this order will immediately receive the whole amount." The total bounty is now $3.3m (£2.1 m).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on September 17, 2012 at 8:17

Couple of things:

The fatwa against Salman Rushdie and Innocence of Muslims have NOTHING to do with each other. I suppose this particular ayatollah thinks that maybe Salman wrote the screenplay to the video or something like that. Uh huh ... SUUUUUUUUUUUURE he did...
The fatwa against Rushdie really never died. Christopher Hitchens reported this in a YouTube video (which I suppose I could dig up if I looked hard enough), and I'm willing to take him at his word.

Here's a question for the International Criminal Court: WHY isn't THIS - the fatwa against Rushdie - being tried under your auspices???

Permalink Reply by Sayed Iman Rafizadeh on September 17, 2012 at 8:56

Muslims think by threat and death can silence any oppositions, that's their policiy since 1400 years ago.

Permalink Reply by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 17, 2012 at 10:50

Muslims are going to have to accept that their laws and customs may be enforced only in their lands. Other nations owe no apologies to anyone for lawful acts committed outside of al-Islamiyah.

They seem to wish to force the issue. Do they not see the logical outcome: a planetary graveyard ruined for primate habitation? We're doing this slowly already. It could be done with an exchange of atomic weapons in under two hours.

Of course, the real problem with these Muslims -and with the evangelical "Christians" of the West- is their belief in heaven. This earth is a foul pit designed to beguile weak men into committing sins. It is not "life" here. "Life" begins only after this world. Any threat of death is actually welcomed by these "holy martyrs".

And I don't believe in a "kill them all" course of action. I'm a Jew, albeit a non-theistic one. I saw what happened in 1940s Europe and noted it never stopped; it just moved across Africa and Asia from the Mediterranean and Red Seas all the way to the archipelagos of southeastern Asia. Ugandan "witch children"? Mao? Pol Pot? Persian homosexuals? Well, as long as it isn't European Christians being slaughtered ...

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on September 17, 2012 at 11:03

They don't want to accept that, Mordekhai. So far as they're concerned, Allah's the god and Mohammed's the prophet and you need to accept that or die. The only difference between them and the christers with their own god and prophet/savior is that, so far, the christers are only selectively violent. For an example, I refer you to Dr. George Tiller.

To both of them, my message is the same: believe as you please, but keep your beliefs off of me and the government. Attempt to coerce either me or the government with your outdated crap and you will have a fight on your hands.

That is not a threat. It's a statement of fact.

Permalink Reply by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 17, 2012 at 11:10

@ L. Miller:

Ya goddamn right, amigo. If there's one thing the USA is good at, it's blowing up things. But I don't want to be part of and aggressor nation. OTOH, I would rather see them all dead than "us".

Why has our species let its reach exceed its grasp? We run out of arguments and commence killing. It's easier, I see that. But it's terrible.

If this is the best we can do, we should have stayed swinging through the trees. Earth will not miss us. It is indifferent and time is on its side.

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on September 17, 2012 at 12:47

Reach exceeding grasp wasn't a concern, until we became capable of completely eradicating our own species (never mind multiple others!) on a time scale of hours or days, rather than years or decades. Only very few understood the potential represented by atomic power 80 years ago, and the sad fact is, if we hadn't used it or refused to develop it, such secrets don't typically remain "secret" for very long. In any case, the genie is out of that bottle; putting it back is practically impossible.

As many before me have observed, Iran is a country which is centuries behind the west morally, yet wants modern-day weaponry at its disposal. Worse, it is doubtful that it would be reticent in deploying such a weapon once it had one. Should Iran actually develop and deploy such a weapon, the consequences they would face would be catastrophic ... though I am extremely dubious that "consequences" would end there.

Personally, I think we can survive this. The single biggest problem we face is less the nukes than it is people with antiquated thinking patterns, who nevertheless seem to think their thoughts should dominate ... and once again, we're up against the same old rational vs. irrational problem once again. That problem remains at the core of this issue and too many others to name, and until we find some way of resolving it, these conflicts will continue.

Permalink Reply by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 17, 2012 at 20:16

Loren, we're screwed. Maximally.

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on September 18, 2012 at 6:00

I'm not sure I agree, bro. It's not going to be easy - more on the order of Missiles of October kind of fun, and I don't think this will be sorted without a bomb being dropped - but I think we CAN sort it.

For all their bluster, the Iranians may not have come to grips with what they are facing militarily, and here I'm thinking specifically of "bunker-buster" technology. Give one of their underground labs a taste of such technology and let them know there's more where that came from, and it just may be that Ahmadinejad might rethink. Then again, he may kowtow to the nuts he feels beholden to, and we're off to the races.

The other thing we need to consider is the meeting which happened just before 17 January, 1991, between Tariq Aziz and US Secretary of State James Baker. The way I hear it, Baker told Aziz that ANY deployment of a weapon of mass destruction (meaning chemical, biological, or nuclear device) would be responded to IN KIND. Whether Iraq had such weapons at the time or not, that this statement came from the one country which has deployed atomic weapons may have given Hussein and company a bit of pause.

I'm not suggesting we go nuclear on Iran. Frankly, I don't think we have to. Between fuel-air devices and bunker-busters, we have all the means we need to put a serious dent in whatever activities the Iranians are entertaining. There is also the example of the Gulf and Iraq wars to remind the Iranians of our capabilities in this direction and MAYBE get them to see reason.

Yeah, I know: this is me being hopeful. But if they wanna be stupid, they can pay the price for being stupid ... and with that, we may all pay a price. But again, I'm an engineer, not a diplomat nor a strategist. And as Gust Avrakotos' Zen master said:

"We'll see..."

Permalink Reply by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 18, 2012 at 6:10

@ L. Miller

Iran is NOT a martyr-state. They very much want to keep on going. But they may not, as you observe, truly grasp what's at stake. Once we start bombing them they will be reduced to medieval technology. Since this will bring their reality in line with their world view it might not be so terrible. But I don't want to bomb anybody who doesn't absolutely need to be bombed.

We will see what happens. I hope we come out of this without more bloodshed. I also hope we don't let those paranoid freaks (in Iran, I mean) have their way.

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on September 18, 2012 at 6:28

Hey, I don't want to reduce them to the medieval level, either, and my point is we may not have to. If we can demonstrate to them that a struggle against us is futile (again, reference the Gulf War), they may get it.

On the other hand, they may react as the savages of Taurus Two did (Star Trek: TOS - "The Galileo Seven") and once again, we're on our merry way.

Permalink Reply by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 18, 2012 at 6:30

Oyvavoy!

Permalink Reply by Sayed Iman Rafizadeh on September 18, 2012 at 13:02

Everything depends on US election. Mullahs in Iran don't compromise at all so let's see easy going Obama continues his soft policy or Romney gives a good lesson to mullahs.