A new study on shariah describes the governing threat doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the instruments of force and violence that the regime uses to operationalize its ideology.
Titled Shariah: The Threat, the 300-page study “is the result of months of analysis, discussion and drafting by a group of top security policy experts concerned with the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time: the legal-political-military doctrine known within Islam as ‘shariah,’” the Center for Security Policy said in a statement.
The Center assembled a team of experts, collectively known as Team B II, to compile the report. The experts range from former senior civilian and military intelligence officials, prosecutors, attorneys, experts on ideological threat doctrines and enemy propaganda, and others.
The study “is designed to provide a comprehensive and articulate ‘second opinion’ on the official characterizations and assessments of this threat as put forth by the United States government. This study challenges the assumptions underpinning the official line in the conflict with today’s totalitarian threat, which is currently euphemistically described as ‘violent extremism,’ and the policies of co-existence, accommodation and submission that are rooted in those assumptions.”
Though the Team B II study focuses mostly on Sunni forms of Islam as mainfested by Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, it also discusses the politicized Shi’a form of Islam that is the official ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran. An excerpt follows:
The Islamic Republic of Iran is, according to its own constitution, dedicated to revolution and “the religious fight of Islam…inside and outside the country.” The duties of the vanguard in that fight, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), are likewise set out in Iran’s 1989 constitution:
“…The corps of Revolutionary Guards…have responsibility not only for the safeguarding of the frontiers, but also for a religious mission, which is jihad along the way of Allah, and the struggle to extend the supremacy of Allah’s law in the world.”
In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers were the second group of jihadists, after the House of Saud earlier in the 20th Century, to seize control of a nation state with vast natural resources. While the Saudi population is predominantly Sunni and that of Iran predominantly Shiite, both regimes are completely committed to the supremacy of shariah and its realization across the globe via jihad – whether by the pen, the purse or the sword.
As noted in chapter two, Khomeini’s ideology of Velayat-e Faqih (or Rule of the Jurisprudent) calls for theocratic governance under a senior Shiite cleric. It derives from Khomeini’s own deeply hostile attitude towards modernization and secularization in an increasingly Western-dominated world.
Velayat-e Faqih mandates strict implementation of shariah along 7th Century lines. Even though a 1989 referendum by the Iranian people suggested popular support for this official ideology, it imposes draconian hudud punishments, the death penalty for homosexuals and an institutionalized misogyny that are deeply resented and increasingly opposed by Iran’s youthful population. Especially in the wake of the massive nationwide popular protests following the fraudulent June 2009 presidential elections, demonstrators in the street and senior members of the Iranian Shiite clergy alike have demanded an end to the institution of the Supreme Leader and Velayat-e Faqih itself, correctly declaring both to be perversions of traditional Shia Islam.
In the face of such opposition, the clerical clique in Tehran maintains power today by means of draconian repression domestically and the projection of its ideology and power abroad. The latter is accomplished through proxy and allied terrorist organizations – which include Sunni organizations like al Qaeda and Hamas, as well as Shiite ones like Hezbollah and a variety of Iraqi militias.
The mullahs’ drive for a deliverable nuclear weapons capability is the sine qua non of this regime and will not be denied it, absent a credible threat to regime survival – or, perhaps, by its destruction alone. Their implacable antisemitism and declarations of genocidal intent toward the State of Israel provide inspiration, guidance and material support to entities bent on preventing an Arab-Israeli peace process.
At the same time, Tehran’s aggressive drive for expanded geo-strategic influence in the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East, in conjunction with its bid to seize leadership of the international jihad, alarms neighboring Sunni regimes, compounded by fear of an imminent withdrawal of traditional American power projection in the region by the Obama administration.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Qods Force division, and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) are the lead Iranian organizations for jihadist terror projection. Each of these organizations requires urgent attention by U.S. security policymakers.
(For the full text of the report, click here.)
