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Go Home "a Reeking Corpse"

THE SPINE AUGUST 16, 2007

"a Reeking Corpse"

BY TNR STAFF

The Dutch Catholic bishop about whom I posted yesterday wants to replace the word "God" with "Allah" so that comity between religions will be mankind's peaceful future.

Alas, there are many in Islam who believe--forgive the crass analogy--that the cards have already been dealt. Take, for example, a Persian Shi'a hotshot cleric, Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi, a member of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, who is sure that Christianity is already a reeking corpse. His comments were unearthed by MEMRI, the archive of opinion in the Islamic orbit.

The following are excerpts from a public address delivered by Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi, member of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, which aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on July 20, 2007.

Clip #1528: Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity Is a Reeking Corpse

Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi: The expiry date of Christianity passed more than a thousand years ago. They are dragging this corpse with them. The expiry date of Christianity has passed, because of its contradictions, superstitions, and polytheism, and because it cannot resolve the theoretical and practical problems facing mankind.

[...]

Islam, in contrast to Christianity, is not a corpse that you have to drag--a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.

[...]

I myself don't believe in preserving such a religion. These Westerners must be very religious, if they have kept a corpse of a religion devoid of content, for a thousand years. Real men they are! They continue to go to church and to read the New Testament. The New Testament and the Torah are so full of strange things that if you read them to children, they would start laughing.

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17 comments

yeah, but I could post a thousand things from Christian clerics openly mocking Islam. There are assholes on both sides, but I would agree that the main difference is that those assholes wish us death. And one can make the argument that if Christians are dragging a reeking corpse they have progressed a heck of a lot farther in every aspect of civilization then those professing Islam.

- blackton

August 16, 2007 at 1:01pm

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I love- love- when one religious dude says another religion is full of superstition. It would be great, if it didn't end in, you know, slaughter.

- boneill

August 16, 2007 at 1:20pm

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I like the implication that children wouldn't laugh at, say, the flying horse story in the Quran.

- boneill

August 16, 2007 at 2:59pm

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To follow up on blackies excellent point, one could argue that the reason Europe has progressed much further as a civilization is because Christianity has essentially been a corpse for a long time. Yes- I know, at one point the Islamic world was way ahead. But those were not its most pious times, and certainly ranked among the times when Islamic fundamentalism was at its lowest, if not faith itself.

- boneill

August 16, 2007 at 3:01pm

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The citizens of the West should not be ashamed that they generally take religion with a grain of salt. "True believers" are the exception to the norm. A certain degree of practical agnosticism is a sign of strength. These thugs do not believe in live and let live. Toleration is perceived as a sign of weakness. This unrelenting adamancy is the reason why a struggle to the death between the two cultures is unavoidable. Republican presidential candidates like Rudy Giuliani clearly understand this harsh reality. None of the Democrats seem to have a clue.

- thomsondavid

August 16, 2007 at 3:03pm

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...if anyone is going to understand lack of tolerance and 'unrelenting adamancy' (is that a word?), it's a Republican. We Democrats seem to largely feel that for the most part, intolerant pre-Lockean Islamic worshippers, although can pose a real threat, really cannot harm us in any existential way, provided we remain properly vigilant.

- mmathog

August 16, 2007 at 3:26pm

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I think it is because they are self-hating Americans who harbor a- perhaps unconscious- desire to see America destroyed. I don't know. Just running that up the flagpole, see who salutes. You have any thoughts?

- boneill

August 16, 2007 at 3:38pm

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"The citizens of the West should not be ashamed that they generally take religion with a grain of salt. "True believers" are the exception to the norm. A certain degree of practical agnosticism is a sign of strength." Cold. Very cold. "These thugs do not believe in live and let live. Toleration is perceived as a sign of weakness. This unrelenting adamancy is the reason why a struggle to the death between the two cultures is unavoidable." Warmer. "Republican presidential candidates like Rudy Giuliani clearly understand this harsh reality." Much warmer. "None of the Democrats seem to have a clue." HOT! Sorry, sometimes I have to remind TD how to act like a caricature of himself.

- ratnerstar

August 16, 2007 at 4:09pm

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of unearthing and publicizing crazy statements made by one religion towards another? What essential service is being provided that will move us forward as a civilization? Martin, can't you find a more productive use for this online space?

- gmodell

August 16, 2007 at 4:15pm

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...that some percentage of Muslims today appear to have the same thirst for conquest exhibited by Christianity during the Crusades -- and they have whole assortments of really, really nasty toys available to them to go after the rest of us. Of course, thomsondavid, Rudy the G hasn't got the faintest idea what to do about it -- he's as ignorant on the Mideast and Islam as are the loony left crazies (Code Pink, et. al., anyone?) and the bishop noted by Peretz. They all currently seem to worship sharia law....

- LISAH

August 16, 2007 at 4:30pm

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http://tinyurl.com/yso53p "Iran summons Argentines over probe into bombing of Jewish community center" By The Associated Press "An Iranian court has summoned five former Argentine government officials to journey to Iran and answer charges involving their roles in an investigation that implicated Iran in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina's capital. Iran is charging them with working against the country's security, the state television reported Thursday. Eighty-five people were killed and 200 were wounded in the Buenos Aires bombing. The Tehran court summoned former federal Judge Juan Jose Galeano, Interior Minister Carlos Corach, chief prosecutors Eamon Mullen and Jose Barbaccia, and Ruben Beraja, a banker and former head of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations. The report said the five officials had been informed of the summons via diplomatic channels and if they did not travel to Iran and appear in court in the coming days, international arrest warrants would be issued against them. More Argentines could be summoned in the future, the report added. Argentina's foreign ministry rejected Tehran's request, saying it seemed to be a political reprisal to Argentine efforts to find and detain Iranians involved in the community center bombing."

- jacksondyer

August 16, 2007 at 5:06pm

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Fairy tales in the NT and Torah? Go figure. Does this mean the other books in the OT are ok?

- Lymon1

August 16, 2007 at 5:09pm

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I suppose the man has been reading Dawkins and wants to take us all out of our "delusion"...

- luispc

August 17, 2007 at 3:39am

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Instances where a famous line is used in a much later movie or TV series -- "I'm a _doctor_, not a [blank]." The more recent cite is pretty famous. Name the earlier one. A couple more instances come to mind. DJStahl

- FBC

August 17, 2007 at 4:35am

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I asked a prominent Western scholar of Islam a few years ago why it was Muslim leaders seemed to lie so easily. This was soon after Saddam's Information Minister rose to fame. Perhaps, I said, Islam simply doesn't have the veneration for truth that other ideologies have. He said that "of course" Islam taught truthfulness as a virtue. But he quoted a hadith that allows Muslims to dissemble in time of war, or under threat. Seems many read that hadith fairly broadly nowadays. And it may mean that many--not just the serious radicals--consider Islam under threat. The Quran includes many stories from the OT, including spiritual and miraculous events. For a Muslim cleric to mock the OT is to mock his own Quran. Except to fellow Muslims in the know, perhaps. What the imam evidently is doing is playing to the broad, uneducated audience, both among seculars and Muslims, in the propaganda war. Archeology attests to many of the public events in the Bible, from about 900 BCE. Extreme revisionists like Finkelstein, who are not widely accepted, tend to say things like: Why do we have so much more material from King Omri than from King Solomon? Doesn't this mean the stories about King Solomon are inflated? As far as private matters, like whether someone called Abraham lived in Canaan around 1,500 BCE, archeology doesn't usually address such questions. Till Schliemann, many classical scholars believed Troy was purely a legend. The discovery of the city doesn't prove there ever was someone called Achilles, though. As far as the spiritual elements in the Quran and the Bible, "the Bible was written in the language of men," or something like that. Not that much different in kind from believing in feng shui. DJStahl

- FBC

August 17, 2007 at 4:54am

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What is this nonsense about the Muslims now being like the European Christian crusaders?! This is rubbish. Just stop it! You guys in America fall for every bit of Islamic propaganda, every single time. You have even internalized bin Laden's lies. In the times when Christian Europe mounted Crusades, how was Islam any nicer? In the very same period, Islam aggressively occupied and converted all Northern Africa, Christian Byzantium that became Islamic Turkey, all of the Balkans and half of Eastern Europe. Have you guys forgotten that Spain was occupied by Islam for seven hundred years? Have all of you guys forgotten that all the Balkans were occupied by Turkey for five hundred years? Have you not heard that by 1983 Islamic armies were at the gates of Vienna? Do you not know that the national holidays of almost every Balkan country celebrates independence from Islamic Turkey? Mind you, these independences were hard won only in the 19th and the 20th century. The last act of that genuinely Evil Empire that was Islamic Turkey was the genocide of Christian Armenians. You are ignorant and hence gullible. You have been tricked into guilt by the evil Islam that enslaved Spaniards and Eastern Europeans for hundreds of years.

- sleepyavl

August 20, 2007 at 2:13am

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The second siege of Vienna by the Turks was in 1683, lifted apparently by King John Sobieski and the Polish cavalry. Often called the "battle" of Vienna to distinguish it from the earlier siege in 1529. ***** Did the recent spate of attacks on Peretz, as by Alterman, start up after Peretz's article about Soros? ***** Here are two more example of double quotes. First should be pretty obvious. "No one would want to belong to a club that would have them as a member." "Not so much a rule; more of a guideline." DJStahl

- FBC

August 22, 2007 at 4:52pm

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