Iranian Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Ahmadinejad's a Terrorist – Just Like Bin Laden

View from a booth: I am delighted that a mainstream Arab media outlet like Al-Arabiya allowed this gentleman to speak frankly. He is of course correct, but the problem in Iran is not all the fault of Ahmedinejad. The problem lies in the "Supreme Leader" (out of "Rocky and Bullwinkle") and his friends who really run the country. When the mullahs come to their senses and realize that the way to peace is through peaceful engagement and not jihad against the non-Islamic ("infidel") world, we will have peace. That, however, is a long, long way off. We are dealing with religious fanatics.

Randy Shiner

Iranian Filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Ahmadinejad's a Terrorist – Just Like Bin Laden

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The following is an interview with Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on July 2, 2009: To view the clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2173.htm.

"Ahmadinejad is a Terrorist – And He Does Not Represent the Iranian People, Who Hate Him" Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "We call upon the world not to recognize Ahmadinejad's presidency and not to sign any agreements with him, because the Iranian people will subsequently reject these agreements. "Along with Marjane Satrapi, who is also a filmmaker, I went to the European parliament and asked them to do the same. I have been invited to go to the European parliament next week, in order to explain the current situation in Iran. "We demand to be allowed to demonstrate in Iran, and we demand that the elections be held again, under the auspices of the U.N. "I reiterate: Ahmadinejad is a terrorist, and he does not represent the Iranian people, who hate him. The whole world hates him, along with the nuclear bomb issue, through which he seeks popularity among the Iranian public. "I declare today that if the world does not help the popular revolution against Ahmadinejad in Iran, you will be forced to accept his conditions tomorrow. Unfortunately, it will be too late." "How Can the World Expect Us to Abandon This Freedom-Seeking People to Ahmadinejad and His Leader – Who Are Just Like Bin Laden and Mullah Omar? Interviewer: "Were you satisfied with Obama's conduct? How did you feel when he greeted the Iranian people on the occasion of the Nowruz holiday, and reached out to Iran?" Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei are toying with you. They have the ability to produce a nuclear bomb. They have been procrastinating for years in order to buy time – month after month, year after year. Ultimately, this bomb will be aimed at you. "This is why I demand that no one recognize Ahmadinejad's regime, and that they be patient until the people elect their president. Otherwise, peace in the region will be jeopardized. The world accused the Iranian people of being an enemy of democracy because it had voted for Ahmadinejad – but today, the world sees how it was deceived by the regime of the mullahs. "Today, the Iranian people has proven its support for democracy. Millions have demanded freedom. How can the world expect us to abandon this freedom-seeking people to Ahmadinejad and his leader, who are just like bin Laden and Mullah Omar? [...] "Khatami and Mousavi seek stability and peace for the region. Peace constitutes Mousavi's strategy for the region. Ahmadinejad, however, is heading for war. Ahmadinejad helped the Palestinians against Israel. He didn't do this for the sake of Palestine. He wanted to shift the war to Palestine, instead of a war in Iran." [...] "We Want Peace... But Ahmadinejad is Killing People in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, And Palestine – [and] the Victims Are the Arabs" "We want peace and a dialogue of civilization in the region and the world. We do not want war, but Ahmadinejad is killing people in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Palestine. The victims are the Arabs. "Ahmadinejad does not like the Arabs. He just uses them for his political purposes. If he liked the Arabs, he should strive for peace, not war. Today, all the Arab countries have problems with Ahmadinejad. How can we say that Ahmadinejad likes the Arabs more than the Arabs themselves? Ahmadinejad and the leader Khamenei deceive the Arabs and the world, in order to remain in power and maintain the dictatorship in Iran. "In contrast, the Iranian people want peace for Palestine, and a resolution of its problems through dialogue. I hope that the Palestinians will achieve their own independent state. This will not be accomplished through war and rockets." Interviewer: "How do you view Israel and its people?" Mohsen Makhmalbaf: "I am an artist, not a politician, I love human beings. All the people born on this Earth have the right to live. Wars are launched by leaders, and the peoples are the victims. A child, whether Israeli or Palestinian, must live. I embrace both of them. [...] "I want to see a young girl, holding hands with a young man and walking in a free society, without any war. I want to see peace prevail in the world. I want to see Palestine laughing, and no war in any part of the world."

‘Between Terror and Martyrdom’

Middle East Strategy at Harvard

‘Between Terror and Martyrdom’

Posted: 07 Nov 2008 12:13 AM CST

MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Gilles Kepel is Professor and Chair of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. His new book is Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East.

From Gilles Kepel

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom is the English-language revised and updated version of Terreur et Martyre: Relever le défi de civilisation, which came out in French in the spring of 2008. That book is the third part of a trilogy that began with Jihad (French 2000, English 2001) and continued with Fitna (2004, English as The War for Muslim Minds)—all three published in English by Harvard University Press. The trilogy is an attempt to decipher the present state of the Middle East in its relation to the globalized world, through the lenses of its Islamist movements. Jihad dealt with a broader historical perspective, tracing the beginnings of radical Islamist ideology back to the mid-1960s with the seminal works of Sayyid Qutb, and questioning the rise and shortcomings of Islamist movements up to 2000. The latter two books dealt with a much shorter span: 2001 to 2004 for Fitna; the period from 2004 to the present for Beyond Terror and Martyrdom. (Click here for more on the trilogy, and other books mentioned below.)

When 9/11 occurred, Jihad was widely mocked: if, as the author had explained, radical Islamist movements had failed politically, how were they able to organize an attack of the magnitude of the ghazwatayn mubarakatayn (”two blessed raids”) on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? He surely had underestimated the “Islamist peril,” probably for politically correct reasons, and was no longer worthy of any academic standing. Some demanded that he be fired from his university job—but (hamdullah) the poor guy had tenure. This was not easy to swallow, and I tried to respond with a short and ironical travelogue, Chronique d’une guerre d’Orient (English as Bad Moon Rising, Saqi, UK, both 2002).

But none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri finally came to my rescue, with his Fursan taht rayat an-nabi (”Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”), where the number-one ideologue of Al Qaeda explained that 9/11 was but an attempt to reverse the failure of the 1990s, when Islamist radicals couldn’t mobilize the masses. Attacking the “faraway enemy” was the true means to show that the United States was a giant with feet of clay. The masses, too afraid to respond to the call of the Islamist radicals in Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc. would now stop being afraid and mobilize against their “apostate” regimes.

But 9/11 paved the way instead to the American-led “War on Terror” and the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden & Co. saw it as their golden opportunity for a global jihad-win-all against impious invaders of the abode of Islam, something they were sure would re-enact, on Arab land, the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the Red Army. (That had proved in retrospect to have been the cradle of Salafi-Jihadism, the ideological construct that led to Al Qaeda. The first book in my trilogy was entitled Jihad as a tribute to the central place of the Afghan “jihad” in the shaping of Islamist movements post-1980s.)

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom focuses on two main issues: first, the rise of “martyrdom” (or suicide) operations, which I believe actually led to the political suicide of Sunni Islamist radicalism, ripe with betrayals such as the so-called Sahwa (”awakening”) movement in Iraq and disputes on whether the shedding of “Muslim blood” was a major political failure; and second, the renewal of Shi’a radicalism in Iran under Ahmadinejad, who made the best possible use of the U.S. quagmire in Iraq.

Now I believe Zawahiri & Co. are not faring well, and I devote a long chapter in the book to an in-depth analysis of his cyber-proclamations; while in Iran, the radical rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, who had promised to put “oil money” on every Iranian dinner table, fell short of its populist promise. Just as Barack Obama’s victory is a typical “post-Bush” phenomenon, which doesn’t relate only to the sorry state of the economy but has to do with the cardinal sin at the core of the Gitmo-centred “GWOT,” I expect we’ll see in 2009 a “post-Ahmadinejad” political phenomenon in Iran—provided the West makes an offer to the new Iranian post-Islamist (though staunchly nationalist) elites, to reintegrate the Gulf security system.

Last, but by no means least, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom deals at length with issues of Muslims in Europe, which had been of particular interest to me since I published Les Banlieues de l’Islam (”The peripheries of Islam,” in 1987, no English translation). To cut a long story short, successful politics of integration are contrasted to failed politics of multi-culturalism—a taste of French schadenfreude and Fox News-bashing… which you may imagine I did relish!

Writing this book involved a lot of suffering—I believed wrongly that aging would make writing easier; well, quite the contrary—but reading it in English, in Pascale Ghazaleh’s great translation, is a pleasure! I wish I could write in English like that—though in the multipolar world, might there be some room left for obsolete dialects such as French or Arabic? I hope you’ll enjoy reading it too, and please send me your reactions, negative, critical or positive, here. I promise I’ll answer the relevant ones! A bientôt sur le web!

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