On the Right

Tel Aviv, March 23—The great hostility of the Ayatollah Khomeini for Israel prompts curiosity as to the doctrinal source, if any, of that hostility; and it transpires that, really, there isn’t any. Islam is an exclusivist religion in the sense that anyone who lives outside it is an infidel, so that the Jews are, to be sure, infidels, but no more so than, say, Christians or Buddhists. Why, then, has Khomeini gone on so?

“Before us,” he lectured in Iraq in 1970, “we see the Jews making a mockery of the Koran. It is our duty to reveal this treachery and to shout at the top of our voices until people understand that the Jews and their foreign masters are plotting against Islam and are preparing the way for the Jews to rule over the entire planet.”

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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Tel Aviv, March 23—The great hostility of the Ayatollah Khomeini for Israel prompts curiosity as to the doctrinal source, if any, of that hostility; and it transpires that, really, there isn’t any. Islam is an exclusivist religion in the sense that anyone who lives outside it is an infidel, so that the Jews are, to be sure, infidels, but no more so than, say, Christians or Buddhists. Why, then, has Khomeini gone on so?

“Before us,” he lectured in Iraq in 1970, “we see the Jews making a mockery of the Koran. It is our duty to reveal this treachery and to shout at the top of our voices until people understand that the Jews and their foreign masters are plotting against Islam and are preparing the way for the Jews to rule over the entire planet.”