This is Iran's Selma

Today, June 24, 2009, the Iranian regime has shown its utter contempt for democratic values and the free speech rights of their people. There was a time that a nation run by religious hooligans and corrupt politicans could have simply shut down the media and done whatever it wanted without fear of the brutality seeping outside the country, but the Iranian tyrants have miscalculated the free flow of information in the twenty-first century. In a live CNN report via cell phone by a young woman in Tehran, the world learned that black clad Iranian security police waded into the crowd of peaceful demonstrators and beat, clubbed and shot them. There are reports of people being shoved off bridges and security police "chopping people like meat" with axes, blood everywhere.

What immediately comes to mind is the Civil Rights movement in the USA and the "Bloody Sunday" incident at Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. Non-violent demonstrators planned to march from Selma to the State Capitol at Montgomery. They made it only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the Dallas County Sheriff 's Department and Alabama Stae Troopers awaited them on horseback and in military formations. "In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful deomonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips. Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. civil rights movement." One woman, Amelia Boynton, was beaten and gassed almost to death in full light of the national news agencies.[1]

The horrific images shocked the nation and deeply embarrassed the people of the South. It was the beginning of the end to officially sanctioned segregation of public facilities and a great step forward toward America truly becoming one nation, under God.

Whereas the majority of Southern whites watched in horror at this violation of their Christian values, members of radical groups such as the KKK saw the protestors as agents of the devil, deserving what they got. It is important to note that the KKK considers itself a Christian organization, hence the burning cross as their symbol. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Christian minister, but his take on the faith of Jesus was infinitely distant from the hatemongering racicism that brought violence to the demonstrators on Bloody Sunday.

Iran is another case. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum; those who profess to be the leaders of Islam are standing behind the hand of state power in its suppression of the rights of free people. Peaceful protest is met with brutality, and that violence is seen as the will of God. Shame on the religious leaders who pervert Islam into a religion of hate and fear. You are the KKK in a turban, and you have no more right to speak for Islam than the Imperial Wizard of the Klan can speak for Jesus Christ.

Fortunately, everyone in Tehran seems to have a cell phone with a camera, and the world knows what is going on in the streets. Everywhere from the Russian arctic to Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina, people are hunched over computer screens reading translated versions of the news about the beastiality of the Iranian regime. Pictures have been released to the world. This is their Selma. God is Great, indeed.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
(accessed 06-24-09)