More on the Shi’ite view of uncleanness

Andrew Bostom adds further comments about the avoidance of najis, uncleanness, as practiced by the Shi’ites whom we have empowered in Iraq: th

Such views have real life meaning in Iraq, unfortunately, as noted by C.K. Stoudt, who made these eyewitness observations in 1925 in Kadhamein, a Shi’ite suburb of Baghdad, which contains a major Shi’ite mosque and burial shrines for two of Ali’s descendants:

So fanatical are the inhabitants of this suburb of Baghdad that they consider everything a non-Moslem touches defiled. On one of my visits we asked for a tea in three or four coffee houses and were blankly and rudely refused each time. Should we have been served, we would have defiled the glasses out of which we drank, and the shopkeeper would have been obliged to break them. [Moslem World, 1925, Vol. 15, p. 364.]

I also provide many examples of how najis was cruelly imposed on non-Muslims—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians——from the 1500s through the current Khomeini-inspired restoration of a Shi’ite theocracy in Iran, in an article at FrontPage Magazine:

The conception of najas or ritual uncleanliness of the non-Muslim has also been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly, “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najas.” The Iranian Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri further elaborated that a non-Muslim’s (kafir’s) impurity was “a political order from Islam and must be adhered to by the followers of Islam, and the goal [was] to promote general hatred toward those who are outside Muslim circles.” This “hatred” was to assure that Muslims would not succumb to corrupt, i.e., non-Islamic, thoughts. Eliz Sanasarian, a UCLA Professor and authority on the plight of non-Muslims in modern Iran, provides a striking example of the practical impact of this renewed najas consciousness:

“In the case of the Coca-Cola plant, for example, the owner (an Armenian) fled the country, the factory was confiscated, and Armenian workers were fired. Several years later, the family members were allowed to oversee the daily operations of the plant, and Armenians were allowed to work at the clerical level; however, the production workers remained Muslim. Armenian workers were never rehired on the grounds that non-Muslims should not touch the bottles or their contents, which may be consumed by Muslims.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2005 06:15 PM | Send