By Rachel Avraham
Islamist governments, from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza to the Islamic Republic of Iran, have a tendency to utilize death cults, systematically chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel.” The question one must ponder is, why do these regimes praise and glorify death, calling upon their people to become shahids instead of living a fulfilled life?
One explanation for the utilization of death cults is that by getting their people to focus on external enemies, they then get them to forget about their problems closer to come. In other words, when Iran props up terror groups to fight against Israel, they are essentially telling their people: Forget about how much you are suffering under US sanctions. Forget about the fact you are forced to wear hijab. Forget your poverty. Focus instead on killing Jews.
This is not the first time that Iran has utilized death cults in order to distract their populations. Iran has a history of sponsoring terror attacks across the globe since the Islamic Republic rose to power in 1979. As former EU Parliamentarian Paulo Casaca noted, “Following the revolution, the mullah’s regime immediately commenced a wave of global assassinations, starting with the killing of the 34-year-old nephew of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shahriar Shafiq in December 1979 in Paris. As he was visiting his mother, Princess Ahsraf Pahlavi, a masked gunman shot him point-blank in the head.”
Ayatollah Khalkhali, who had sentenced every member of the Pahlavi family to death in absentia, claimed that the attack was carried out by a death squad belonging to Fadaiyan e-Islam, the Islamist Iranian group that he headed then, and said: “If we cannot arrest them, we will assassinate them.” Indeed, from that moment onwards, Iran systematically worked to assassinate its political opponents overseas. Between 1989 and 1996, the Iranian regime assassinated more than 160 Iranian dissidents across the globe.
One of the most infamous incidents of these Iranian terror attacks occurred in Germany. On September 17, 1992, prominent representatives of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, Dr. Sadegh Sharafk, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan, and their translator Noori Dekhordi were murdered in the Mykonos restaurant over dinner by assassins hired by the Iranian regime. As a plaque in Germany made in the victim’s honor says: “They died in the battle for freedom and human rights.”
However, Iran was not content to go after only dissidents. Ahmed Salman Rushdie was an Indian Muslim writer who wrote a controversial book titled “The Satanic Verses.” In his book, Rushdie depicted fictionalized events related to the founding of Islam and presented the Prophet Muhammad in a satirical and critical manner. The book was considered blasphemous by radical Islamists, both due to the events described and the way Muhammad was portrayed. Islamist clerics viewed Rushdie as an apostate, and the punishment for such an offense, as mentioned, was death.
Although Rushdie was neither Persian nor a citizen of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) concerning Rushdie’s case. The fatwa declared that Rushdie and anyone who wrote, translated, or distributed his book were apostates, and every Muslim worldwide was obligated to kill Rushdie or anyone associated with the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, the author was stabbed 10 times by an assailant inspired by Khomeini, badly injuring him. One of his arms was severed and he lost an eye. Thus, Iran created a death cult that inspired someone to actually act on that fatwa and harm the Indian author. However, no one should be surprised that a nation that routinely chants “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” also attacks an Indian Muslim author.
The Houthis in Yemen employ a similar strategy. Most of the people in Yemen hate the Houthis. The Sana’a Center claims only 8% of Yemenites have a positive view of the Houthis. And most of the Yemenites have every reason to hate the Houthis, the ruling government in Yemen. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. Starvation is rampant. Amnesty International claims that Yemen under Houthi rule is one of the worst countries in the world to be a woman. They interviewed a Yemenite woman, who claimed: “By God, I am broken from the inside. It’s not normal, I don’t feel like a human being. I can’t breathe properly like other human beings. We suffer from the forced niqab, child marriage, divorce shame, domestic violence, and honor killings. I don’t know… as if we are aliens. They [male family members] have to oppress us and we have to stay oppressed – like a puppet controlled by strings.”
In Yemen, the Houthis are known to frequently shave off women’s hair at checkpoints when a woman is not accompanied by a male chaperone or even to rape such women. Nasma Muhammad, a Yemenite woman, told the Turkish media that she was imprisoned by the Houthis: “During interrogations, I was accused of providing coordinates to the Arab coalition, and being an agent of America and Israel, and working in a prostitution network. They tortured, beat, electrocuted, and sexually harassed and raped me.” Her parents had to pay a ransom of three million Yemeni riyals ($6,000) for her release. Noora al-Jrowi, president of the Coalition of Women for Peace in Yemen, told Anadolu Agency, that Houthi prisons are like graves for women: “Violations of women’s rights in Yemen, especially the rights of female prisoners in Houthi-controlled prisons, is unspeakable.”
However, when it comes to firing rockets at Israel or going after Western ships in the Red Sea, the Houthis are able to use that death cult in order to get people to forget their problems and unite around the leadership. And they are not alone in this. When ISIS had the Caliphate, they did likewise. Boko Haram does likewise. Hamas does likewise. Hezbollah does likewise. Assad and Saddam Hussein did likewise, even though they were not radical Islamists. It is always convenient to blame the “other” for ones problems and thus to get people to channel their frustrations towards America and Israel, rather than confronting their own leadership for the crimes that they committed. For that reason, radical Islamists love to utilize death cults for they love death more than life, and don’t want their people to rebel against them for not letting them live properly.
