The popular outdoor pastime in Tehran these days has become burning Israel’s flag in the street. Actually, burning Israel’s flag as well as the American flag has long been a popular form of recreation in Iran. But the flag burning craze has really caught fire, so to speak, following the incendiary (I can’t stop) remarks of the new Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
At a conference in Tehran this week entitled The World Without Zionism, Ahmadinejad said, among other things, that “there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world†and, “Israel must be wiped off the map†not to mention, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.†Of course, his remarks caused quite a stir in western political circles.
But one thing should be made clear – the President’s remarks are not an abberation. The Muslim world, by and large, cannot conceive of politics seperated from religion. Many Americans see the images of Muslims burning the American flag and the Israeli flag and wonder, what have we done to make them so mad at us, but fail to realize that it isn’t what we’ve done but it’s who we are.
What’s happening in Iran right now is only a manifestation of what is brewing in other Islamic countries. The tenets of Islam proscribe Islam from existing in harmony with any other religion. So as the United States, Great Britain and the Coalition attempt to bring peace to the Middle East with political solutions, we fail to recognize the true source of the conflict. As the title of the Tehran conference, The World Without Zionism, indicates, Islam seeks to eliminate all other religions, most notably Judaism and Christianity, from the face of the earth.