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PLANNING THE CONQUEST OF the State of Israel posed special problems for Iran’s theologians. Not since 1453, when the Ottoman sultans took Constantinople and converted wholesale its mostly Christian population, has Islam been compelled to come to terms with implementing its very raison d’etre, the conversion of an entire population and their absorption into the Muslim polity. Certainly Islam is no stranger to the role of conquerer: Mohammed brought all of Arabia to Allah; his descendants carried Muslim civilization from North Africa through southern Europe to India and the Far East. But those converts were pagans, induced to accept Islam by the opportunity to participate fully in a new world order, with all the rights and privileges thereof.

Israel presents a different problem.

Like Christians, throughout history Jews were afforded special status as protected peoples or dhimmi. But leaving in place six million insincere converts to Islam would be demographically untenable and politically impossible. A few mullahs insisted the Jews be offered the chance to live as Muslims, but this solution would still leave such new Muslims a majority in the holy city of al Kuds, which the Jews call Jerusalem, and in Tel Aviv and Haifa and throughout the land. The conflict was in Shar’ia law itself: these Jews must be permitted to live, but by force of numbers would remain a threat. Left in place, the clever Jews would win again. Thus principle warred with pragmatism.

Pragmatism won.

Having spent over fifty years decrying the evil of these sons of dogs and monkeys, that the holy warriors of Islam should be defeated by trickery could not be permitted. Thus, after years of debate and research—the reconquest of the Holy Land was hardly spur of the moment—the mullahs concluded the evil the Jews had wrought could not simply be wiped away by conversion, which most likely would be as superficial as their conversion to Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century.

Let nature then take its course in Tel Aviv.

If Allah willed the Jews life then the One God would provide them manna, as He had the Jews in the desert upon their exodus from Egypt. If Allah wished them life then clean water would spring from the ground. If Allah wished them to survive then Allah would come to their aid.

In the absence of such divine intervention, it was only charitable to cut the Jews down so as to spare them suffering a slow death of thirst, starvation, and disease. In this, Islam would treat its enemies with humane generosity.