Iran’s dawa, or declaration of war, against the US: Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda: “Peace only unto those who follow the true path”
Before we wrote the piece below on the Ahmadinejad dawa (HT: LGF), we Dogpiled and Googled the closing phrase of the letter to no avail. Now we know what it means, courtesy of the NY Sun:
Iran Declares War
President Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush, widely interpreted as a peaceful overture, is in fact a declaration of war. The key sentence in the letter is the closing salutation. In an eight-page text of the letter being circulated by the Council on Foreign Relations, it is left untranslated and rendered as “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda.” What this means is “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.”
It is a phrase with historical significance in Islam, for, according to Islamic tradition, in year six of the Hejira - the late 620s - the prophet Mohammad sent letters to the Byzantine emperor and the Sassanid emperor telling them to convert to the true faith of Islam or be conquered. The letters included the same phrase that President Ahmadinejad used to conclude his letter to Mr. Bush. For Mohammad, the letters were a prelude to a Muslim offensive, a war launched for the purpose of imposing Islamic rule over infidels.
Much of the rest of Ahmadinejad’s letter is devoted to portraying Mr. Bush as an infidel. Given that Mr. Bush is not about to convert to Islam, what the letter presages is, if anything, an Islamic attack. So the thing to think about is what this implies for American policymakers. For one thing, no step short of converting to Islam will avert the planned attack so long as the regime in Tehran remains in power. All the “carrots” that the doves in the American foreign policy establishment want to offer - abandoning Israel, offering Iran “security guarantees” and economic and political relations - fall short of what Iran’s president demands. He demands that America “follow the true path,” that is, convert to Islam. Short of that, America will not receive peace from the Iranian regime.
UPDATE
Yesterday, we brought you a message of peace from the Iranian Dear Leader. Today, it’s business as usual, via Australian ABC:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “one day will vanish” as he ramped up his anti-Western rhetoric in a speech to university students in Jakarta. “This regime one day will vanish,” the leader said, complaining that when elections were held in the Palestinian territories “and supported by its people, liberalism did not want to recognise it”. Last October, the Iranian president declared that the Jewish state should be “wiped off the map”. In April he said that Israel “cannot survive” and that migrants to the Jewish state should go back to where they came from.
Ahmadinejad means business, make no mistake. Every time we see some sort of flabby column, such as this one, indicating that the West should be accommodating to Iran and Islamist radicals in order to get them to moderate their positions, we call to mind the character of Ellis in the movie Die Hard. He’s the poor sap who thinks he is sophisticated but gets his head blown off because he has failed to realize just what kind of men he is dealing with. We fancy we do understand just whom we are dealing with.
May 11th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Dinocrats’ “Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda”:Peace only unto those who follow true path
IS the MOST IMPORTANT POST IN INTERNET HISTORY!
Jack has just uncovered, not a threat, but a promise in writing.
I was just in process of sending the following link to Jack.
THIS IS THE SECOND MOST IMPORTANT POST:
“Ahmadinejad just spilled the beans, and he didn’t even realize it”.
….Doug Hanson 5 11 06 at American Thinker:
States and terrorists
…. But the notion of 9-11 by its complexity perhaps being carried out by an experienced intelligence service is correct. We have been so attacked.Laurie Mylroie has ably shown how the first World Trade Center attacks were linked to Saddam’s intelligence service, and how the 9-11 attacks required the same coordination and operational skill that only resides in agencies of established nation-states. I also have shown how a force of former Baathists, Saddam’s intelligence service, and Iranian mercenaries among others are the actual core of the enemy we face in the field, and not some loose network of jihadists or an insurgent ”people’s army.”
How truly silly, mendacious, _______,________,_______, and clueless are Twinkle Toes Albright and all the CLINTONISTAS out in force on the cable news nets to offer “advise” to GW and Condi on how to answer/open dialog/talk to/respond to this “touching”/”reaching out” by Ahmadinejad!
{in trying to remember this nutjob’s name I am in good company - fr SOS Eagleberger admitted he had trouble with the name - try this:
Ah - mad - in- e(h - like a Cockney Brit) -jad (like jihad!)
= A MADman IN Eh JihAD!
Ah mad in e jad. Hope that helps}
May 11th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
[...] the link is here [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
[...] UPDATE Yesterday, we brought you a message of peace from the Iranian Dear Leader. Today, it’s business as usual, via Australian ABC: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “one day will vanish” as he ramped up his anti-Western rhetoric in a speech to university students in Jakarta. “This regime one day will vanish,” the leader said, complaining that when elections were held in the Palestinian territories “and supported by its people, liberalism did not want to recognise it”. Last October, the Iranian president declared that the Jewish state should be “wiped off the map”. In April he said that Israel “cannot survive” and that migrants to the Jewish state should go back to where they came from. Ahmadinejad means business, make no mistake. Every time we see some sort of flabby column, such as this one, indicating that the West should be accommodating to Iran and Islamist radicals in order to get them to moderate their positions, we call to mind the character of Ellis in the movie Die Hard. He’s the poor sap who thinks he is sophisticated but gets his head blown off because he has failed to realize just what kind of men he is dealing with. We fancy we do understand just whom we are dealing with. the link is here We, Democrats and Republicans, as in WWII, should be working together on this. Politics should end at the water’s edge. If you do not know who the enemy is, how can you win? [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
[...] UPDATE Yesterday, we brought you a message of peace from the Iranian Dear Leader. Today, it’s business as usual, via Australian ABC: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “one day will vanish” as he ramped up his anti-Western rhetoric in a speech to university students in Jakarta. “This regime one day will vanish,” the leader said, complaining that when elections were held in the Palestinian territories “and supported by its people, liberalism did not want to recognise it”. Last October, the Iranian president declared that the Jewish state should be “wiped off the map”. In April he said that Israel “cannot survive” and that migrants to the Jewish state should go back to where they came from. Ahmadinejad means business, make no mistake. Every time we see some sort of flabby column, such as this one, indicating that the West should be accommodating to Iran and Islamist radicals in order to get them to moderate their positions, we call to mind the character of Ellis in the movie Die Hard. He’s the poor sap who thinks he is sophisticated but gets his head blown off because he has failed to realize just what kind of men he is dealing with. We fancy we do understand just whom we are dealing with. the link is here [...]
May 14th, 2006 at 10:25 am
the interpretation of such a letter can be biased, and this is what you have accomplished.
to not view this information objectivley.
any true peaceful man does not look at another peaceful man’s request as a threat.
his view’s on religion are very clear. monotheisem. the belief in following one god, one right path. which he see’s america is drastically straying from.
a guiding light from the dark.
something that we truly need.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:35 am
Young Joey misses something important. The phrase in question is not a call to monotheism. There are two parts to the Muslim creed. First is a call to monotheism. Second is a call to recognize that Muhammed is the prophet of monotheism. This second call means renunciation of all other calls to monotheism which are declared by Muhammed to be heretical. Thus the call to Muhammed is a call to renunciation of Judaism and Christianity. It is also a call that there will be no calls after Muhammed. So it is emphatically not a simple call to monotheism.
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:48 am
Joey is so naive. The president will attack us once he is done with Israel. The Koran says that a muslim can only declare war until they have sent an offering to convert to the Muslim religion. If President Bush declines then they will attack us.
May 27th, 2006 at 6:19 am
[...] On yesterday’s program, I violated every rule of commercial radio and read the entire letter on air. I concluded by reading the line left untranslated in the CFR’s posting: Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda A caller subseqently informed me of the significance of this particular phrase, a significance that Fradkin had alluded to, and which was spelled out in an editorial in The New York Sun: What this means is “Peace only unto those who follow the true path.” [...]
May 28th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
[...] Here Hugh Hewitt reads President Ahmandinejead’s missive to President Bush. And here is Dinocrat’s blog commentary. President Bush’s Commencement Address at West Point, class of 2006: By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America’s victory in the Cold War. As President Truman put it towards the end of his presidency, “When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we set the course that can win it.” His leadership paved the way for subsequent Presidents from both political parties — men like Eisenhower and Kennedy and Reagan — to confront and eventually defeat the Soviet threat.Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before — and like Americans in Truman’s day, we are laying the foundations for victory. The enemies we face today are different in many ways from the enemy we faced in the Cold War. In the Cold War, we deterred Soviet aggression through a policy of mutually assured destruction. Unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist enemies we face today hide in caves and shadows — and emerge to attack free nations from within. The terrorists have no borders to protect, or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred — but they will be defeated. America will fight the terrorists on every battlefront, and we will not rest until this threat to our country has been removed. [...]