RELIGION vs. MORALITY - IRAN - JUNE 2009

AN ELECTION WAR

Early in their founding eras, religions discovered an enemy in morality. In the ensuing wars between them, religious leaders, as all leaders attempt to do in time of war, found ways to undermine their enemies’ strengths. A monstrous strategy grew out of a simple military tactic; dress and speak like the enemy, infiltrate his ranks, discover what and where his weapons are and what his battle plans are, and by playing his game and taking over his assets, pretend to be him and destroy him. Thus, religion co-opted morality and now uses it as cover for nefarious acts.

Events in Iran today, June of 2009, show the schism between religious practice and moral functioning and the preaching of morality. These events also show clearly the essence of the religion-power combination. The tremendous overt psychological power of religion over the masses combined with economic power over human activity, both constructive and destructive, make it almost impossible for the masses to revolt for a better life. The election and the subsequent fraudulent functioning of the religious leaders and their supreme religious leader on behalf of economic and military power elites is a clear demonstration of religious immorality.

Can this nascent non-religious Iranian Revolution succeed even to the minimalist extent of the Russian Revolution? Religious power was beaten by the leadership’s education and subsequent laws against religion, driving it underground for five decades. However, the economic power elite soon subverted the success of the masses and with the aid of capitalist nations, including the United States, succeeded in taking control of life in the Soviet Union for the benefit, not of the masses, but for the benefit of the elites.

Customarily, economic power elites control governments. In Iran, since the revolution led by Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini in 1979, religion took over the government, but, and here’s the rub, the power elites remained in power behind the curtain of religion which was behind the curtain of government, as evidenced by the aggrandizement of military capability and capital growth. In much of the world, and certainly the Western world, religion is behind the curtain of the economic power elites and those elites, behind their curtain, control the governments.

In the coming days and weeks in Iran, the morality of religion will prove to be the immoral weapon and the chimera it is.