In a speech
during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also
called for an immediate cease-fire to end the fighting between Israel and the
Iranian-back group Hezbollah. "Although the main solution is for the elimination
of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be
implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report
posted on its Web site.
TEHRAN, Iran -
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday rejected a U.N. Security Council
resolution that would give his nation until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium
enrichment.
Instead,
Ahmadinejad insisted Tehran would pursue its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad
said Iran will not give in to threats from the United Nations.
"If some think
they can still speak with threatening language to the Iranian nation, they must
know that they are badly mistaken," he said in a speech broadcast live on
state-run television.
"Our nation has
made its decision. We have passed the difficult stages. Today, the Iranian
nation has acquired the nuclear technology."
Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frustrated Western officials by refusing to
reply to their offer of various incentives in exchange for Iran's discarding its
nuclear program until August 22. The Western governments had asked Ahmadinejad to reply by June 29; why
would Tehran need two extra months?
Farid Ghadry, the
president of the Reform Party of Syria, has offered a provocative explanation for this delay. He asserts that the Supreme
National Security Council of Iran chose the August 22 date "for a very precise
reason. August 21, 2006 (Rajab 27, 1427) is known in the Islamic calendar as the
Night of the Sira'a and Miira'aj, the night Prophet Mohammed (saas) ascended to
heaven from the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on a Bourak (Half animal, half man),
while a great light lit-up the night sky, and visited Heaven and Hell also Beit
al-Saada and Beit al-Shaqaa (House of Happiness and House of Misery) and then
descended back to Mecca...."
The Night Journey, or Miraj, is central to Islam's claim
to Jerusalem as an Islamic holy city. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad
was carried on a Buraq, a miraculous horse with a human head, from Mecca to
Jerusalem, where he ascended into heaven and met the other prophets. The only
thing the Qur'an has to say about it is this: "Glory to (Allah) Who did take His
servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque,
whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs:
for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things)" (17:1). There is no
identification of the "farthest Mosque" with any mosque in Jerusalem in this,
but the Hadith is very clear on the identification of its location with
Jerusalem.
The traditions say that Muhammad and the Buraq, along
with the angel Gabriel, went to the Temple
Mount, and from
there to heaven itself, where Muhammad encountered various prophets. In the
sixth heaven was Moses, occasioning a dig at the Jews. "When I left him,"
Muhammad says, "he wept. Someone asked him, 'What makes you weep?' Moses said,
'I weep because after me there has been sent (Muhammad as a Prophet) a young
man, whose followers will enter Paradise in greater numbers than my followers.'"
Evidently,
however, Muhammad's stories of his journey were not altogether convincing: even
some of the Muslims abandoned their faith and challenged Muhammad's most
faithful follower, Abu Bakr, to do the same. Abu Bakr was contemptuous:
"If he says so then it is true.
And what is so surprising in that? He tells me that communications from God from
heaven to earth come to him in an hour of a day or night and
I believe him, and that is more extraordinary than that at which you boggle!"
The world has continued to witness such unshakeable devotion from Muslims to
this day.
Did Muhammad really go anywhere? According to his
favorite wife, Aisha, he did not: "The apostle's body remained where it
was but God removed his spirit by night." Nevertheless, the Night Journey
has become firmly embedded in the Islamic consciousness, such that Muslims today
celebrate it as one of the central events of Muhammad's life. And now, according
to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over
Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey.
What the Iranian President, he says, is "promising the world by August 22 is the
light in the sky over the Aqsa Mosque that took place the night before. That is
his answer to the package of incentives the international community offered Iran
on June 6."
Certainly a nuclear attack on Jerusalem or even an all-out
conventional assault against Israel by Iran would be consistent with
Ahmadinejad's oft-repeated denials of Israel's right to exist and recent
predictions that its demise was at hand. He hinted at the use of nuclear weapons
in his phrasing when he said that Israel "pushed the button of its own destruction" by finally
retaliating against Hizballah's relentless rocket barrage from south
Lebanon.
"Arrogant powers," Ahmadinejad said, "have set up a base
for themselves to threaten and plunder nations in the region. But today, the
occupier regime" - that is, Israel - "whose philosophy is based on threats,
massacre and invasion, has reached its finishing
line."
Will he attempt to make good on these threats this year on the
anniversary of the Miraj, illuminating the night sky over Jerusalem? Will
Western powers heed Farid Ghadry's words and move to stop Iran before it is too
late?
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