With his speech yesterday at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran, Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Mursi, drew a line in the sand against Iran’s hope of creating an “Islamic Awakening Front” under its leadership.
Iran’s leaders had spent a great deal of energy preparing what “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei dubbed “the triumph” of Ayatollah Khomeini’s version of Islam.
That version de-emphasizes the religious content of Islam to instead highlight a political role.To Khomeini and his successors, anti-Americanism provides the ideological backbone of contemporary Islam; shouting “Death to America” was as important as saying “There is no God but Allah.”
In his opening address at the summit, Khamenei spelled out that ideology with a torrent of hate against the American “Great Satan.” For him, Islam’s ultimate goal is “the destruction of America.”
To the Khomeini-Khamenei school, the only valid version of Islam as a faith is the Shiite one as interpreted by the ayatollah. Sunni Muslims are “deviants,” partly because they venerate the first caliphs of Islam — Abu-Bakr, Omar and Osman. In the Khomeinist version, all three were “usurpers” who betrayed the Prophet by preventing his cousin Ali from succeeding him.
Each year, Khomeinists organize ceremonies to “expose and denounce” the three caliphs, labeling them “The Dirty Trio” (al-Muthallath al-Mulawwatha). Omar is particularly hated because he led the Arab invasion of Persia. Burning his effigies (Omar-Suzan) is a major feast in many parts of Iran.
Khomeinist discourse now stresses three other themes:
* It wants the recent uprisings in the Middle East to be termed not “the Arab Spring” but “the Islamic Awakening” — and somehow, against all logic, linked to Khomeinism in Iran.
* The second theme is Holocaust denial, coupled with calls for the “elimination of Israel” as a “cancerous cell.”
* Finally, Tehran demands “unwavering support” for the Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad.
In his speech in Tehran, delivered during a four-hour stopover, Mursi disappointed the Khomeinist leadership on all accounts.
First, the Egyptian leader took care not to allow any hint of anti-Americanism in his speech, rejecting Khomeini’s equation of Islam with politics and politics with hatred for the United States.
Next, Mursi rejected the label “the Islamic Awakening,” insisting that uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen be described as “the Arab Spring.” The uprisings, he insisted, had been for democracy and human dignity — not for strictly religious reasons, let alone Khomeini’s weird version of Islam.
He then turned the knife by asserting that the uprising in Syria is “an extension of the Arab Spring” — not “an American-Zionist conspiracy,” as Khamenei claims.
Khamenei has declared the preservation of the Assad regime as one of Tehran’s key strategic objectives. Mursi called the Assad regime “oppressive and illegitimate” and threw Egypt’s support behind the Syrian uprising.
Nor, to the chagrin of the Khomeinist leadership, did Mursi beat the drums of war against Israel.
Tehran media had promised that the Egyptian leader would cancel the Camp David peace accords and join the Iranian-led “Resistance Front” to “wipe off the Jewish stain of shame.” Mursi did none of that. Instead, he said his administration is dedicated to peace and stability in the region.
And Mursi delivered one more slap at the Tehran mullahs. Khamenei had started his address by saluting “the Prophet and his descendants,” an old phrase revived by Khomeini that excludes the early caliphs. But Mursi in his speech saluted “the Prophet and his successors,” naming the “Dirty Trio” one by one.
The sound of those three names would send shockwaves down the spine of any mullah who has one.
Not surprisingly, Tehran television interrupted its live broadcast of Mursi’s address with a gas-company ad.
Mursi made it clear that, post-Mubarak, Egypt intends to reclaim its position as one of Islam’s three key powers (along with Iran and Turkey) by rejecting Khomeini’s equation of Islam with anti-Americanism.
Some have criticized Mursi’s decision to go to Tehran. I think he was right to go — especially with a powerful message that rejects every tenet of the Khomeinists’ schismatic doctrine.