IRAN: As the sun is setting on the tyrannical Islamic Regime, are we witnessing a Persian re-awakening?

The primary tool of any autocracy is not the bullet, but the fear of the bullet. For decades, the regime maintained a facade of invincibility. However, the current uprising, born from a “survival crisis” of economic collapse and social suffocation, has achieved what was once thought impossible: the total evaporation of fear. The regime’s attempt to “hang on” via an internet blackout – a tactic used to hide the scale of their brutality – is no longer working.

Crucially, the security apparatus is fraying. History teaches us that regimes do not fall because of the protesters alone; they fall when the men with the guns decide they no longer want to kill their own sisters and neighbors.

Reports of defections and “tactical retreats” by local police are the first cracks in the dam. When the regular army (the Artesh) eventually decides its oath is to the Iranian people rather than a dying ideology, the collapse will happen with breathtaking speed. The regime is now an island, surrounded by a population that views it as an occupying force. It is hanging on by a thread, and the Iranian people have finally found the scissors.

According to Bernard Lewis “Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. Persians remained Persians. And after an interval of silence, Iran reemerged as a separate, different and distinctive element within Islam, eventually adding a new element even to Islam itself.

It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: to the Turks, first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and India. The Ottoman Turks brought a form of Iranian civilization to the walls of Vienna.”

During my generation, Iran was overall a modern and secular country. Islam was not an important aspect of life to most Iranians. Islam was performed for only special occasions such as burials, weddings and by a very devout Shi’a minority Muslims, during the month of Muharram, specifically, during the days of Ashura and Tasua.

Forty years has passed since the Islamic invasion of 1979. Today, many Iranians are incorrigibly disaffected from the fraudulent and oppressive Islamic rulers. Although Islam was imposed on the Iranian people some 1,400 years ago, Iranians deeply value their own ancient non-Arab identity and have never fully surrendered to Arab culture.

Today, Iranians have finally awakened and search for their roots and identity. Some people have thanked Ayatollah Khomeini for this enlightenment. For revealing true Islam, not the figment of their imaginations about Islam. Many have already started to refer to this period as an era of Persian renaissance or awakening.

Historically, Islam has always contradicted Persian values, costumes, traditions and culture, as is evident from the glorious pre-Islamic Iranian festivities and celebrations such as Nowruz. The current anti-Islam movement in Iran in recent days has gained serious momentum, especially among the younger generations who are savvy and aware of world events via the Internet.

These brave and young enlightened Persians hold the key to break the chain of Islam that was wrapped around the necks of their forefathers many years ago with the sword of Allah. They were forced to pledge their loyalty with an oath to Allah’s book –the Qur’an– the same charter that they held in one hand while slashing the throats of tens of thousands of innocent Iranians and yelling joyously “Allah is the greatest.”

Free and civilized people must understand that it is not easy to reach the peak of freedom overnight. It takes great vision, effort and courage to ascend from the pit of Islamic slavery to the peak of emancipation.

Before the Islamic invasion (Revolution) of 1979, most Iranians were uninformed as to the core values of Islamic ideology simply because they could not read Arabic. So, they created their own version in their minds. Regrettably, in the seventh century AD, the Persian Empire (Sasanian Dynasty) lost the war to the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula in the Battle of Qadisiyyah. Why they were defeated is a long story. For years Iranians resisted and fought back, but no avail. With that defeat, the Islamic creed was imposed on an enlightened, tolerant and free people at the point of a sword.

Zoroastrianism, the original Iranian religion, was not an effective barrier against the radical and backward religion from the Arabian desert

In 1979, the world witnessed another Arab-Islamic invasion on the peaceful nation of Persia. As we mentioned earlier, most Iranians never knew of Islam’s true nature. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it opened their eyes to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s version of Islam: violence, executions, mutilations, torture, rape, harassment, forced hijab, Islamic dungeons and more. They finally tasted the real Islam.

In the past forty years, many Iranians have begun to reject Islam in its entirety with its exclusionary and oppressive dogma. We call on decent and tolerant people of the world who celebrate gender equality, race amity, and liberty for all to join us in once and for all defeating the scourge that is Islam.

Many Iranians continue to abandon the slaveholder Islam: they break loose from the yoke of the exploitive clergy, renounce Islamic dogma, purge the discriminatory and bizarre teachings in the Quran and the Hadith, and leave the suffocating tent of dogmatic Islam for the life-giving expanse of liberty.

According to Dr. Jason Reza Jorjani, one of the pioneers and leading intellectuals of the Iranian Renaissance movement, “The Persian awakening has already begun. Islamdom is at a crossroad. Millions in Iran, a hugely important force of sustaining and fanning the Islamic fire, have already turned and are turning against the Islamic credo. They and the rest of the world need to hear the voices of secular decent people who are in league with them and can help to put Islam, the very spawning swamp of the deadly virus that makes for jihadists, out of business.”

AMIL IMANI is an Iranian-American writer, satirist, novelist, public speaker, political analyst, foreign policy, National, Border & Homeland Security, Intelligence & Counterterrorism who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and the Islamization of America.