Der Spiegel reports on a recent report showing the impact of Islamic extremism on Christians around the world.

The rise of Islamic extremism is putting increasing pressure on Christians in Muslim countries, who are the victims of murder, violence and discrimination. Christians are now considered the most persecuted religious group around the world.

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In many countries through the Muslim world, religion has gained influence over governmental policy in the last two decades. The militant Islamist group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while Islamist militias are fighting the governments of Nigeria and the Philippines. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen have fallen to a large extent into the hands of Islamists. And where Islamists are not yet in power, secular governing parties are trying to outstrip the more religious groups in a rush to the right.

While there are both Muslim and non-Muslim countries on the list of offenders, a review of the report shows that a majority of the countries where Christians are persecuted are member states of the Organization of the Islamic conference (OIC).

According the OIC website, “The Organization is the collective voice of the Muslim world and ensuring [sic] to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world.” [italics added] The contradiction between this claim and the facts on the ground is straightforward.

Against this backdrop: In October, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the OIC’s push in the UN for a legally binding international treaty against blasphemy. This is in addition to the resolutions they regularly pass—successfully—on the issue. In 2006, the IHEU noted that another OIC anti-blasphemy proposal would have given justification for Muslim violence—as in the Mohammed cartoon riots several years back—without actually promoting human rights.

The recent study shows that there are a number of OIC states who support inter-religious reconciliation. However, against the backdrop of the anti-blasphemy measures in the UN—along with years of persecution of religious minorities—it’s apparent that the majority are less interested in “peace and harmony” than in promoting an Islamist agenda which could ultimately impact our free speech at home, while the plight of religious minorities worsens around the world.

Is the Iranian government interested in finding peaceful solutions to the standoff with the West?

Its own internal politics don’t seem to bear this out. Speaking on the recent opposition movement, a representative of Iran’s supreme leader said recently that it would be worth it to kill 75,000 Iranians for the regime to survive. This is grim, but unsurprising. The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, himself said, “Those who say Islam should not kill don’t understand [it]. Killing is a great [divine] gift that appears [to man]. A religion that does not include [provisions for] killing and massacre is incomplete.”

In light of this, it should come as little surprise that in the early ‘80s Tehran hosted a fountain of faux blood, ostensibly as a way of intimidating its enemies. Radio Free Europe recently translated an Iranian blog about this infamous fountain.

In the early years of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, a pond with several sections was built near an area dedicated to martyrs at the Beheshte Zahra graveyard in Tehran. Its fountain spurted blood. It became known as the “Pond of Blood.” Obviously, it was not actual blood but only red coloring mixed in the water.

The fame of this pond even reached overseas, to the point that foreign journalists would strive to take pictures of it.

Once, the Iranian daily “Etelaat” published a special issue about the war with a picture of the fountain on the cover, with a caption consisting of a saying by Imam Khomeini: “All in all, our revolution was a blessing.”

The publication of that picture with that caption provoked the rage of the Hizbullahi fellows and protests began. The forces of the Revolutionary Guards were sent to the newspaper’s offices to arrest and punish those behind the publication. In the end, the matter was solved by the dismissal of a few “Etelaat” employees and an apology from the head of the newspaper.

The construction of the pond, which had a symbolic and propaganda value, proved to be more painful to the families of the martyrs than to Iran’s enemies. Hence, the bloody water was removed and now normal water flows in it.

There may still be peaceful avenues available to resolve this crisis, including sanctions against the regime’s primary supports and support for the opposition movement. But, it may not be reasonable to assume that a regime which considers it rational to kill thousands of its own people, and which celebrates death, would be quick to compromise with a West it may view with even greater enmity than an opposition movement.

Blog translation copyright (c) 2009. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.  You can view the article here.

In today’s Washington Post

U.N. nuclear inspectors, citing evidence of an apparently ongoing effort by Iran to obtain new technologies, publicly suggested for the first time Thursday that the country is actively seeking to develop a weapons capability.

According to the IAEA report, experiments related to nuclear explosives continued beyond 2004—which contradicts U.S. intelligence claims that such activities ceased in 2003.

Iran has amassed upwards of two tons of enriched uranium—sufficient for an atomic bomb. Using centrifuges at the Natanz facility, the material could be enriched to weapons grade quality within a year and a half.

You can read the Washington Post story here.

The IAEA report can be viewed here.

The recent case of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who murdered one soldier and injured another at a Little Rock military recruiting center last year, reflects several trends in the growing danger of extremism on American soil.

The New York Times reports that Mr. Muhammed—née Carlos Bledsoe–was born a Baptist. Shortly after beginning college, he converted to Sunni Islam and dropped out of school. He became increasingly devout, and was active in Nashville’s Somali community where he began wearing Arab-style clothing, gave up alcohol, and changed his name.

He eventually went to Yemen to study Arabic. He overstayed his visa, was deported, and ended up in a U.S. prison.

Mr. Muhammad told his father that while in prison he met Islamic radicals who told him that the American government had forsaken him. “We are your real brothers,” they said…

Read more…

The Los Angeles Times reported last week on a push by two California officials to divest from Iran.

[They] are pushing insurers and the state’s two major pension funds to sell more than $6 billion worth of holdings in companies doing business in Iran. Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is expected Wednesday to ask hundreds of state-licensed insurance companies to pull money out of 50 foreign-owned corporations he said are involved in Iran’s nuclear, military and energy sectors.

The push follows moves by the Treasury Department to impose sanctions as a way of forcing the regime to curb its nuclear program. The sanctions have largely targeted the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Doha last week that the U.S. feared the IRGC was gradually seizing control of the state, with the potential to transform it into a military dictatorship.

According to RAND the IRGC

[controls] an array of subsidiary companies that have penetrated virtually every sector of the Iranian market—from construction and real estate to laser eye surgery and automobile manufacturing. Reportedly, the IRGC also operates illicit smuggling networks that constitute a vast shadow economy.

Tactics like sanctions and divestment are not failsafe mechanisms, as the regime has found ways to disguise some of its business dealings. Nevertheless, they are important resources to help curb the nuclear threat, when applied to Iranian business interests, as well as when applied to any company doing business with the regime.

You can read the Los Angeles Times article here.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted yesterday that the regime has succeeded in enriching uranium to a level of 20%, and that his country now possessed the ability to enrich it to weapons grade levels.

Although he has also said they do not believe in making nuclear bombs, MEMRI reports that “the conservative daily Kayhan, which is close to [supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, even stated in a February 9 editorial… that the minute Iran enriches uranium to 20%, the West will not be able to stop it from advancing further. At that point, Iran will not agree to stop at 20%, and the negotiations will be over enrichment to a higher level.”

How long could it take to enrich to weapons grade? Enrichment gets exponentially easier the further you go, meaning that once you get to 20%, it’s only a short leap to finish the job.

While it can’t be proven that their goal is WMDs, there are many worrying signs about the actual intent of the program.

Nuclear weapons cannot be allowed into the hands of the largest state sponsor of terror in the world. This cannot afford to be entertained as a legitimate possibility. Among the options currently being pursued to stop the regime are sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps which props up the government. Additionally, United Against a Nuclear Iran is directly going after companies that do business with Iran, as another way of pressuring the regime.

Iran has announced it plans on further enriching its uranium stockpile. As the LA Times reports

Any move by Iran to produce a 20%-enriched nuclear fuel supply could provoke Western nations and Israel, which allege that Tehran ultimately plans to build atomic bombs. Uranium enriched at the current 3.5% level can fuel civilian power plants; moves toward enriching it beyond 20% could suggest a goal of making weapons.

There are a number of very worrisome issues with Iran’s nuclear program. First, there’s no need for the Iranians to enrich fuel for civilian energy purposes, since the fuel for the Busehr reactor is being provided by the Russians. Also, although the Iranian regime would say mastering nuclear enrichment may be a matter of national pride, it doesn’t make fiscal sense for the second largest oil producer in the Middle-East to be developing an extraordinarily expensive nuclear program—compounded by the brutal economic difficulties the country finds itself in.

Regarding Iranian claims that the purpose of 20% enriched uranium is for use in a medical reactor, the LA Times reports, “only France and Argentina have the facilities to turn the material into the fuel plates for the reactor.” Unless some agreement can be reached with these countries, Iran would be left with a stockpile of useless material.

While getting to 3.5% enrichment is a major technological feat, enriching to 20% “would be going most of the rest of the way to weapon-grade uranium,” as David Albright, an official with Washington’s Institute for Science and International Security, told the Associated Press. On top of this, it was reported months ago that Iran possessed enough uranium—if further enriched— to make a nuclear bomb.

Former CIA director Jim Woolsey said in a 2007 hearing before the House

“The traces of highly-enriched (not just fuelgrade) uranium, their deception, their heavy water plant and other indicators brand their program as one designed to develop nuclear weapons even in the absence of considering their rhetoric about destroying Israel and ending the world”

You can read the LA Times article here.

The fight against a nuclear Iran and support for the self-determination of the Iranian people go hand in hand, as Mehdi Khalaji, a scholar with the Washington Institute, pointed out in testimony before Congress last week.

Peace in the region and democracy in Iran now seem to be inseparable, because the same forces that threaten the peace are the same powers in Iran who threaten democracy and run the repressive machinery against the Iranian people. The threat to regional peace and Iranian democracy are the same: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is not only the main body in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, but also is the most effective means for political suppression in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader and commander-in-chief.

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Democracy and peace can be achieved through weakening the military government in Tehran and pressuring the IRGC. The two parallel tracks — the international community’s effort for peace and the Iranian people’s democratic movement — naturally reinforce each other, because they fight with the same enemy.

Among some of the solutions Khalaji suggests are weakening the IRGC, which also threatens U.S. interests by weakening Sunni-Muslim allies of the West, sabotaging the middle-East peace process, and by trying to sabotage the positive developments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

J. Scott Carpenter, who testified with Khalaji, talked about sanctions as another vital tool to address the threat. These include sanctions influencing the IRGC’s political and business interests. Khalaji pointed out that the IRGC and its affiliates “control one third of Iran’s income, dominating construction, oil field services, and telecommunications, among other industries.” Targeted sanctions could also include the threat of gasoline embargo against a regime dependent on other countries to refine the oil it produces.

We can help strengthen the democratic movement by helping the Iranian people connect with the outside world, in the face of a regime which spends billions of dollars trying to prevent this.

The major internet companies in the West could work with activists to find ways to bypass Iran’s internet censors. Companies that provide Iran with the technology of surveillance and suppression should be named and shamed; consumers should shy away from these companies’ products, and governments should urge these companies to reconsider their practices… New measures and mechanisms are needed to stop Iran from breaking international law.

As citizens we can contact our Congressmen to push for sanctions on groups like the IRGC, we can work together to develop boycotts against groups aiding the regime’s oppression of its citizens, and we can give support to the Iranian people, to help inform the world of what is happening inside and build global support for their struggle.

By doing so, we help fight for the universal human rights of the Iranian people, at the same time as we fight for the security of all other nations—including our own—threatened by this regime.

You can read the testimony of Mehdi Khalaji and J. Scott Carpenter here.

From a humanitarian rights perspective, it’s not hard to be moved by the—at times brutal—suppression of the opposition movement building in Iran. For those of us who cherish freedoms like speech and self-determination, it’s not hard to be moved by the images of people killed in protests, and the reports of academic institutions being cleansed of suspected agitators.

At the same time, it may also be easy for some of us to say that these events, half a world away, don’t personally impact our lives. We may then excuse ourselves from any meaningful involvement in the cause. In a recent Op Ed, scholar Mehdi Khalaji shows that this thinking is mistaken. He points out that the regime’s current foreign policy is directly tied to the unrest in the country; this includes negotiations on their nuclear program. Khalaji writes:

[Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s foreign policy is now completely subject to how the domestic situation in Iran develops. As recent months have shown, he will consider a compromise with the West only when he loses his certainty that all is under control internally. It is like a seesaw: Khamenei’s domestic weakness changes the balance of Iran’s foreign policy…

Support of human rights and democracy in Iran is not only a matter of morality. It should be a strategic priority for the West. Empowering the Iranian people means weakening Khamenei and his military allies. And a weakened Khamenei is more likely to compromise on the nuclear front.

You can read the full article here.

Amidst another wave of opposition demonstrations in Iran, the Guardian reports the following regarding what Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameini is willing to do to hold onto power.

“Mohammad Khatami [Iran's reformist former president] was asked during a visit to Washington last year why he hadn’t done more to resist Khamenei,” he said. “He replied that it was because Khamenei is determined to fight his enemies if they come to the streets and that he is ready to kill up to 200,000 people. There are many pieces of evidence that confirm Khatami’s understanding that Khamenei is prepared to kill more people.

We’ve written about Iran’s nuclear ambitions in previous posts. If Khamenei is willing to kill this many of his own citizens for their pursuit of human rights, it’s reasonable to suggest he would be much less reserved when it comes to killing non-Iranians he also judged to be his enemies.