H
ere’s something that seems to get overlooked in all the chatter about the Iran nuclear deal. Who is our worst enemy?
Is it Iran, with its well-educated, pro-American population and repressive government? Or is it ISIL, the self-proclaimed Sunni caliphate with its gospel of pure hatred and its twisted view of the Prophet Mohammed’s teachings? Is it Shia support for Hamas and Hezbollah, or is it Sunni Wahabbism, that inspired the creation of Al Qaeda and all the violent Sunni extremist groups, including ISIL?
As for me, I consider the latter to be by far the greater menace to the world. ISIL is basically just a nihilistic organized crime syndicate operating in the holy name of Allah. It’s the closest thing to pure evil that exists on the planet.
They use Sura 9 of the Quran to legitimize slavery, which was outlawed worldwide as of 1954 (the last signatory being Saudi Arabia, by the way). They finance themselves through the sale of stolen antiquities, while defacing and destroying other treasures of the ancient world. They practice kidnapping and systematic rape, and proudly and publicly murder people whose faith they reject, which includes everybody in the world, except themselves and their extremist followers.
Although they are geographically isolated, they have terrifying reach into all corners of the globe, for one simple reason. They have declared their leader to be the Caliph – the Sunni equivalent of the Pope. All observant Muslims who accept this claim – and there are lots and lots of those, believe it or not – are required to rally to the caliph’s side and join him in his struggle. Sunnis did not have a Caliph in more than 80 years prior to ISIL’s proclamation in 2014, and this is a very exciting development to a lot of Muslims. For this reason, there are people all over the globe trying to emigrate to ISIL territory. ISIL is savvy, they are savage, and they are implacable.
Who or what will stop ISIL? The Iraqi government is a bad joke. Syria is in tatters. Turkey is reluctant to pick a fight with ISIL, and the Saudis dare not, for fear of angering their own very powerful religious conservatives – the very people who invented Wahabbism.
No, my friends, whatever your view of Iran, they are by far the strongest counterweight against ISIL, and the only regional power capable of contesting them on the ground. ISIL is an even greater threat to Iran than to us.
I’m not suggesting we form an alliance with Iran generally. As long as their government denies the holocaust, rejects Israel’s right to exist, and suppresses the legitimate democratic aspirations of the remarkable Iranian people, there is no chance of that.
But just as we allied ourselves with Communist Russia to win World War II, we can ally ourselves with the Iranians to obliterate ISIL.
An obliteration which ISIL fully and correctly expects.
