Towards God?

'The whole world is moving towards God, would Your Excellency not wish to join?' said Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a letter to his American counterpart - George Bush. This kind of a letter, for your information, is not new and is simply a continuance of tradition instituted by Prophet Muhammad.

In 625 AD, after having consolidated his position in Medina and having established a secured power base for Islam Prophet dictated three letters: to Khosrow Parviz, the Persian King of Kings, a Zoroastrian; and to Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium and the Ethiopian monarch Negus, who were Christians by faith. The Prophet's offer to the three recipients of his letters was: Convert to Islam and secure a place in paradise or cling to your beliefs and face the sword of Islam.

The Persian monarch, apparently angered that Muhammad had put his own name before that of the King of Kin', ordered his security services to find the insolent letter writer and bring him to the court in Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire at the time. According to Islamic folklore Muhammad escaped capture by the King of King' agents only because, soon after the incident, Khosrow Parviz was murdered by his son and designated heir. Within a decade of this incident the Persian Empire had disintegrated with most of its territory falling to the armies of Islam.

Ayathollah Khomeini's letter came with a similar response to a message sent by Gorbachev through his ambassador Vladimir Vingradov, offering the Islamic Republic a strategic partnership with the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Mikhail Gorbachev wanted the Islamic Republic to help him prevent the victory of the US-backed Islamist Mujahedin in Afghanistan. In exchange, Gorbachev would support the Islamic Republic in the face of mounting American pressure. Khomeini, however, was not interested in that kind of deal-making. As a good Muslim leader he would not be satisfied with having 'something'. He, perhaps, wanted everything. Thus he composed a letter inviting Gorbachev to convert to Islam before he could recieve help in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Needless to say the Soviet leader 'polietly' declined.

Despite it's many spelling and grammatical errors, written with naive undergraduate style, Ahmadinejad's letter contained a crucial message that: the present regime in Iran is the enemy of the current international system and is, certainly, determined to undermine and, if at all possible, destroy it. It has now been confirmed that 'Ahmadinejad believes that hidden Imam is about to return and that it is the duty of the Islamic Republic to provoke a clash of civilization' to hasten that return. As he asserts in his letter, Ahmadinejad also believes that the liberal democratic model of market-based capitalist societies has failed and is rejected even in its traditional homeland.

Ahmadinejad has been impressed by the extent of recent riots in France in which the extreme Left provided the leadership while the Muslim sub-proletariat offered much of the muscle in the streets. All this, and more, makes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a subject of hate to majority in the civilized society.

Apart from that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his well-known intent to 'erase' Israel from the map last Friday with a new twist: Israel is a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated in one storm. The history at times takes weird twists and turn. During the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the current regime was not considered problematic by Israelis. At that time, Jerusalem saw Teheran as its strategic ally against Baghdad, then under the Saddam's regime. The situation has reversed because of the fact that Ahmadinejad is a political novoice with a streak of ultra-nationalist tendencies – all poised to make situation for Iran worse.

Writes M J Akbar:

The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad pact. This was sweetened by much talk of nuclear energy on rather salty terms, intrusive, expensive and imbalanced

But is there a better way to confine the Iranians? I think that's the issue we aren't really debating. Muslims still find themselves aligned with the Iranians. Non-Muslims, should they like it or not, have to align in such cases with the Americans whose President, it seems, prefers to let the weapons do the talking, even when he claims to be engaging in diplomacy. Sadly, there is hardly any much difference between the two President. Both are fanatics in their own aspects.

By denying the Holocaust and Suffering of Jewish people Ahmadinejad has endeared himself to Muslims. By his diplomatic and hawkish posturing, has managed to earn more enemies for Iran during the past year and a half than the leaders of Islamic Republic have over the past quarter century or so.

With inputs from fronliners it looks as if Americans have already made up their mind to attack Iran. It's now only a matter of 'when' than 'if'. Accoding to Oxford Research Group upto 10,000 people would die immediately if the US bombed Iran's nuclear site. If the US uses nuclear weapons, such as earth penetrating bunker buster bombs, radio active fallout would become even more disastorous.

Says Aijaz Zaka Syed of Khaleej Times:

Although Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons – at least not yet – to stave off aggression, it has other options of retaliating. It boasts a standing army of 450,000 troops as well as long range missiles that could hit Israel an even Europe. More importantly, a desperate Iran can play a havoc with the global economy by blocking strait of Hormuz through which much of the world oil supply is routed.

I don't know as to whether the world is moving towards God. But these two leaders are certain to push to world to brink of disaster. We are on our way to war and not God, that is for sure.