Is Iran The Next Taliban?
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular teachers from the country's universities, urging students to return to 1980s-style radicalism."
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Is Iran changing into a Taliban-style nation? Well, in a way. The Afghan Taliban that the US and other forces drove out of power was a Sunni based Islamic purist movement which embraced the Shariah law as the force for government of Afghanistan. Iran is Shiite and not Sunni, but does embrace Islamic cleric leadership as the force for the governance of its people. Already clerics are the main force behind the government with the Supreme Ayatollah having final veto power on any government or Presidential rulings.
It appears from the information that we do have and the trends that we see from the small information that the West does get about Iran is that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is moving the government away from Westernization and to a return of Islamic purification.
Just a month ago, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the removal of anglicized words from the Persian language. Now he is expressing the desire for the purge of secular (non-religious) teachers and scholars from the state Universities.
By these actions Iran is moving to a more cloistered society and one which will have an even greater level of intolerance for anything Western and for that matter anything un-Shiite Islamic.
These actions are harbingers of further trouble as isolation breeds intolerance, intolerance breeds hatred, and hatred breeds violence.
Read the full article.
Is Iran changing into a Taliban-style nation? Well, in a way. The Afghan Taliban that the US and other forces drove out of power was a Sunni based Islamic purist movement which embraced the Shariah law as the force for government of Afghanistan. Iran is Shiite and not Sunni, but does embrace Islamic cleric leadership as the force for the governance of its people. Already clerics are the main force behind the government with the Supreme Ayatollah having final veto power on any government or Presidential rulings.
It appears from the information that we do have and the trends that we see from the small information that the West does get about Iran is that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is moving the government away from Westernization and to a return of Islamic purification.
Just a month ago, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the removal of anglicized words from the Persian language. Now he is expressing the desire for the purge of secular (non-religious) teachers and scholars from the state Universities.
"Iran retired dozens of liberal university professors and teachers earlier
this year. And last November, Ahmadinejad's administration for the first time
named a cleric to head the country's oldest institution of higher education,
Tehran University, despite protests by students"
By these actions Iran is moving to a more cloistered society and one which will have an even greater level of intolerance for anything Western and for that matter anything un-Shiite Islamic.
These actions are harbingers of further trouble as isolation breeds intolerance, intolerance breeds hatred, and hatred breeds violence.
