“Ayatollah Khamenei’s March 12, 2015 speech should serve as confirmation of mid-19^th century Western scholarly characterizations of Islam as an aggressive, bellicose, Allah-inspired despotism, or in the parlance of 20^th century scholars, totalitarianism, akin to Communism. Hope springs eternal that such gimlet-eyed understanding has not, as Rodinson lamented, fully given way to apologetics, imperiling Western freedom itself.”    

Iran’s Supreme Leader, theocrat Ayatollah Khamenei, during a speech delivered March 12, 2015 to the new head, and members of the Shiite religious Assembly of Experts, crystallized the traditional essence of Islamic totalitarianism, for both Sunni, and Shia alike. Khamenei, deemed, appropriately, the third most influential contemporary Muslim eminence worldwide, by the mainstream, moderate Royal Jordanian Aal-al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, reminded these Shiite Muslim leaders, and Muslims in general,

Allah calls for the establishment of the entire religion with all its parts and constituents…[W]hat we understand from all Koranic teachings is that Islam commands Muslims to create a perfect and complete Islamic government. Islam wants the complete implementation of Islam.

Consistent with this totalitarian Islamic Weltanschauung, Khamenei stressed inculcating, even amongst Western youth, “the Islam of jihad and fighting.” Such jihadism—fighting—was to be directed, specifically, at “opponents of this [Islamic] movement and outlook,” Khamenei re-stating the Koranic injunctions (per verses 9:73, 48:29, and 66:9) that Islam compelled Muslims to be “hard to the unbelievers.”

Khamenei could not have been more blunt and explicit in his pronouncements. Nonetheless, one can be certain that the self-evident implications of Khamenei’s words will be ignored, obfuscated, or dismissed by a vast swath of the U.S. political, media, academic, and religious establishment. Most assuredly, and ominously, this willful denial applies to the Obama Administration brain trust brokering a dangerous and destabilizing nuclear agreement with Iran, enshrining Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium, with simultaneous “quick” economic sanctions relief, and even a partial lifting of the embargo on arms sales to the Islamic Republic.

Why is this the sorry, dishonest state of intellectual affairs vis-à-vis Islamic doctrine, and its, living, practical impact upon world affairs? Respected Islamologist Maxime Rodinson (d. 2004) proffered a cogent explanation. Rodinson, in a 1974 observation, decried the Left-dominated academic treatment of Islam, which has prevailed now for the past half century:

[t]he anti-colonial Left, whether Christian or not, often goes so far as to sanctify Islam and the contemporary ideologies of the Muslim world…Understanding has given way to apologetics pure and simple.

More here.