Ahmadinejad: Israel waves Satan's flag
By MICHAEL D. EVANS
Published: August 21, 2007
If anyone was wondering whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would ever try to top his 2005 threat to "wipe Israel off the map," he obliged on Saturday by declaring that the Jewish state is "the standard bearer of Satan" and would soon fall apart.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as he spoke at a religious conference. It's probably not significant that he referred to Israel as Satan's flag waver and not Satan himself, though the ayatollahs have referred to the United States as "the Great Satan" and Israel as "the Lesser Satan" ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
"The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation, and Satan," Ahmadinejad said. "When the philosophy behind the establishment of a regime is in question, it is not unlikely that it will find itself on a course of decline and dissolution."
Most reasonable observers might think Ahmadinejad was referring to his own regime with that last statement. But perhaps it would be helpful to first consider just what an Islam means by Satan, big or small.
Like many concepts Islam inherited from the mother religions of Christianity and Judaism, Satan is rather familiar. In Islam, a divine being named Azazel (originally a Hebrew term for Hell), was thrown out of heaven for refusing to bow down to man, God's creation Adam.
In one Islamic version, Azazel conspired with a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in another version, Azazel collaborated with a peacock to tempt Adam and Eve with forbidden wheat.
The popular name for the devil in the Koran is "shaitan", which comes from the Hebrew "satahn" that has come into English as Satan. As in Christianity, shaitan is the embodiment of evil, luring mankind into sin.
Because Muslims are forbidden from making images, Islam has no counterpart to the familiar red-skinned, horned and tailed, pitchfork-waving devil of Christianity. During the hajj, Shaitan is represented by a plain stone wall or pillar, which pilgrims throw rocks at.
Popular posters from the Islamic Revolution depicted then-president Jimmy Carter, Uncle Sam, or Israel dressed as Satan and standing over the shah, who was intertwined with a snake.
It should not be surprising to hear Ahmadinejad associate the Jewish state with Satan, after hearing him repeatedly deny the Holocaust while at the same time threatening to commit genocide against the Jews of Israel. What is more amazing is to hear him say, at the same religious gathering on Saturday, that "There is no way for the salvation of mankind but the rule of Islam over mankind."
It doesn't take a United Nations survey of our planet to realize that, of all the religions of mankind, Islam is probably the least likely to offer salvation to its own believers, let alone the world's non-believers. After 14 centuries of Islam, the Islamic countries' high rate of illiteracy, low industrialization, high poverty, low scientific achievement, and so on are a throwback to the civilization of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
Ahmadinejad's primitive anti-Semitism would be hardly worth a comment, except that he is pursuing the manufacture of nuclear weapons with the declared intention of "wiping Israel off the map." In preparation for this great day, he offered a classically anti-Semitic rationalization at a conference in Teheran last year: "The basic problem in the Islamic world is the existence of the Zionist regime . . . It is a . . . regime that prevented the progress of the region's nations . . ."
If tiny Israel -- with no resources to speak of and surrounded by hostile Muslim countries bent on its destruction – can make the desert bloom and have the second highest number of NASDAQ listings after the United States, then maybe Ahmadinejad has it backwards. The basic problem in the Islamic world is Islam.
Published: August 21, 2007
If anyone was wondering whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would ever try to top his 2005 threat to "wipe Israel off the map," he obliged on Saturday by declaring that the Jewish state is "the standard bearer of Satan" and would soon fall apart.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as he spoke at a religious conference. It's probably not significant that he referred to Israel as Satan's flag waver and not Satan himself, though the ayatollahs have referred to the United States as "the Great Satan" and Israel as "the Lesser Satan" ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
"The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation, and Satan," Ahmadinejad said. "When the philosophy behind the establishment of a regime is in question, it is not unlikely that it will find itself on a course of decline and dissolution."
Most reasonable observers might think Ahmadinejad was referring to his own regime with that last statement. But perhaps it would be helpful to first consider just what an Islam means by Satan, big or small.
Like many concepts Islam inherited from the mother religions of Christianity and Judaism, Satan is rather familiar. In Islam, a divine being named Azazel (originally a Hebrew term for Hell), was thrown out of heaven for refusing to bow down to man, God's creation Adam.
In one Islamic version, Azazel conspired with a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in another version, Azazel collaborated with a peacock to tempt Adam and Eve with forbidden wheat.
The popular name for the devil in the Koran is "shaitan", which comes from the Hebrew "satahn" that has come into English as Satan. As in Christianity, shaitan is the embodiment of evil, luring mankind into sin.
Because Muslims are forbidden from making images, Islam has no counterpart to the familiar red-skinned, horned and tailed, pitchfork-waving devil of Christianity. During the hajj, Shaitan is represented by a plain stone wall or pillar, which pilgrims throw rocks at.
Popular posters from the Islamic Revolution depicted then-president Jimmy Carter, Uncle Sam, or Israel dressed as Satan and standing over the shah, who was intertwined with a snake.
It should not be surprising to hear Ahmadinejad associate the Jewish state with Satan, after hearing him repeatedly deny the Holocaust while at the same time threatening to commit genocide against the Jews of Israel. What is more amazing is to hear him say, at the same religious gathering on Saturday, that "There is no way for the salvation of mankind but the rule of Islam over mankind."
It doesn't take a United Nations survey of our planet to realize that, of all the religions of mankind, Islam is probably the least likely to offer salvation to its own believers, let alone the world's non-believers. After 14 centuries of Islam, the Islamic countries' high rate of illiteracy, low industrialization, high poverty, low scientific achievement, and so on are a throwback to the civilization of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
Ahmadinejad's primitive anti-Semitism would be hardly worth a comment, except that he is pursuing the manufacture of nuclear weapons with the declared intention of "wiping Israel off the map." In preparation for this great day, he offered a classically anti-Semitic rationalization at a conference in Teheran last year: "The basic problem in the Islamic world is the existence of the Zionist regime . . . It is a . . . regime that prevented the progress of the region's nations . . ."
If tiny Israel -- with no resources to speak of and surrounded by hostile Muslim countries bent on its destruction – can make the desert bloom and have the second highest number of NASDAQ listings after the United States, then maybe Ahmadinejad has it backwards. The basic problem in the Islamic world is Islam.
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