FG

Moderate Islamists who claim democracy and human rights are fully compatible with Islam have become a nightmare for Khamenei. Yesterday Ali Akbar Velayati, his senior advisor, launched a blistering attack on Erdogan's government in Turkey. It was a follow up to an earlier military threat.

//english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/12/14/1...

Erdogan's popularity everywhere contrasts dramatically with Khamenei's pariah status everywhere.

Erdogan thrives just fine without needing Khamenei-style "survival insurance" in the form of people pounders and rigged elections. Arabs also compare the economic success of democratic Turkey (no oil) with Iran's oil rich theocracy where after 30 years half of population lives below the poverty line and every mullah insider has become a multi-millionaire or billionaire. Since many of this parasitic class were poor as legless Cairo beggars in 1979 their enthusiasm for Islamic dictatorship is not surprising.

"Such comparisons are unfair," insisted Velayati, as he contrasted Iran's "real Islam" with Erdogan's watered down sissy stuff." Velayati asserted, "the Turkish model is unsuitable and incompatible with what people in the Middle East really need and what they actually sought in the the Arab Spring."

And what do they want? "Iran's totalitarian model," says Velayati. He praised the Islamic Republic's "standout" features--its long-nosed social police, its death squads and its brownshirt militias who deter undesirable reforms, its controlled media and its rigged justice which help keep society stable, its economic incompetence and corruption, rigged elections and its export of mini-Hezbollahs to neighboring countries. Velayati concluded with a sensible question, "What's not to like if you believe in REAL Islam?"

"Erdogan's model represents secular Islam, corrupted by western nonsense about freedom and human rights," Velayati assured reporters. "If you are an evil person who enjoys satanic things like open and fair elections, speaking your mind, reading whatever you like, holding hands with your girlfriend in public, sipping wine with your dinner, or having decent economic prospects, etc., then you will naturally be drawn to Erdogan's model. But please don't call yourself a muslim."

(The writer admits to having taken liberties with Velayati's quotes. However, I done so only to capture the ludicrous essence of his thesis).