Is the Bush administration schmoozing with the mullahs in Iran? I don't know, but this piece by Michael Ledeen makes me very suspicious. (Courtesy of Blog Iran.) While it is premature to accuse the Bush administration of betraying freedom in Iran, this needs to be watched carefully.

This blog has long supported freedom in Iran. As I said before,

Iran is Persia, for God's sake! Persia is proud! Persia will not be kept down by medieval mullahs spouting psychotic gibberish. Persia has a long history of culture, civilization and religious tolerance.

And what about the "war on terrorism" anyway? Who have been the biggest historical sponsors of terrorism? Who are actively developing nukes? (Next thing you know, we'll be calling the Iranians and the Saudis our "allies.")

This begs the question, of course, of which side "we" are on. Roger Simon expressed the nature of the conflict brilliantly, as one between secular freedom and religious tyranny:

why does such a great percentage of their masses buy this self-destructive insanity… why is there so little internal resistance to their interchangeable religious and secular tyrants? It comes of course from their own shame and rage at the horrible condition of their society. But just as significantly, although our political leaders are loath to say so, this sad proclivity comes directly from the holy book of Islam itself which preaches both the primacy of religious law over secular law and the imperative that all others be converted to Islam, peacefully or by the sword (particularly in the latter part of the book). And it does so without benefit of a Reformation or similar religious liberalization that mollified the more bellicose aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Now some say this is subject to interpretation. Well, sure, so are a lot of things. But lately they are interpreting one way and one way only. And the Wahhabis are not doing this by themselves. They have plenty of allies from Al Jazeera to the Iranian Mullahs to the Palestinian shaheeds to the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Not to mention in Europe, where, as we all know, the Moslem populations are growing at an extraordinary rate, considerably faster than the locals while resisting any of the traditional assimilation of immigrant groups and bringing their madrassas with them. They are clinging to the primacy of religious law in the very countries that gave us the Enlightenment.

We are, aren't we?

I like to think so, despite shrill anti-Enlightenment clamoring from minorities on one side or another of what passes for a political spectrum.