Christians Under Attack

Lebanon. The would-be terrorists are the new recruits of a movement which claims to have 50,000 members and is called Setad Pasdasht Shohadaye Nehzat Jahani Islam (Headquarters for the Commemoration of the Martyrs of the International Islamic Movement).

A day after the ceremony, Mohammad Ali Samadi, the organisation's spokesman, told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone conversation that "Each Israeli, soldier or civilian, must not feel safe wherever he or she is."

Samadi said Israel is a target of the group along with the US and European Union countries where the group has allegedly recruited militants. "We have brothers who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the triumph of Islam in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and also the United States," he said.

Samadi's organisation was created two years ago and is led by a woman, Forouz Rajaifar.

According to Samadi, there are over 50,000 members of the group who are ready to become suicide bombers. Sources in Tehran say the number is widely exagerated though they claim the group can still count on 25.000 would-be attackers.

"A fatwa from a leading cleric is enough to set off these madmen," said a political analyst and reformist, who asked that his name be withheld.

Samadi said aspiring organisation members must fill in forms asking them, among other things, which enemy they want to fight against. The options ain the form are three: "Americans who desacrated the sites of Shiite Islam occupying Iraq and Afghanistan"; "Jews who occupy Jerusalem"; and the "British who gave protection to [Indian writer] Salman Rushdie" against whom Iranian clerics have issued a fatwa for his 1988 book Satanic Verses.

However, Samadi said his group is thinking to "widen the list" of targets in the membership forms and include the Netherlands, Italy and France.

"We have learnt that they want to make a follow up to the trash movie 'Submission'," by Theo Van Gogh, who was killed in 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan Islamic militant, he said. Submission highlighted the repression of women in some Islamic cultures.

France will reportedly be a target "for greatly offending Islam after it prohibited to young women to go to school with the hijab."

Italy was included in the potential list of new entries for granting political asylum in March to an Afghan man who risked the death penalty for converting to Christianity from Islam.

"Giving political asylum to an idiot who defied Islam is a very serious offense which cannot be ignored," said Samadi. "We will make Italians pay for this offence."

Samadi's group, Setad Pasdasht Shohadaye Nehzat Jahani Islam, is registered in Iran as a non-governmental organisation and is supported by leading members of the religious elite.

Many Ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom support it along with members of Abadgaran, the main political force supporting the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Its meetings are attended by well known clerics such as hojjatolislam Heidar Mosalahi, who represents within the armed forces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme guide.

Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani, a mujtahed - a cleric with the authority to interpret the Koran and Sharia, and who can issue a fatwa - is another supporter of the movement.

Recently Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, who heads the secretary's office of Ayatollah Khamenei, also gave his blessing to the group.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khameni has still not issued a fatwa supporting suicide attacks but he has recently said that "should the United States or the Zionist entity [Israel] attack nuclear power plants in Iran, the Islamic Republic would respond without hesitation and would strike the aggressor's interests worldwide."

Suicide attacks were also blessed by the head of the office of Iran's spiritual guide.

"Our leader [Seyyed Ali Khamenei] has volunteers ready to take action everywhere, also in the United States and Israel," said hojjatolislam Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani.

Members of parliament such as Mehdi Kuchekzadeh, Marzieh Dabbagh, Fatemeh Alia, Eshrat Shayegh and Mohammad Hossein Rahimian regularly attend the group's meetings.

The man who is believed to be the group's strategist is Hassan Abbasi, a professor at the University Imam Hossein in Tehran and an advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Our youths who are ready for martyrdom will be more effective in striking the enemy than any missiles system," Abbasi allegedly vowed to the would-be suicide bombers at the cemetery Behesht Zahra in Tehran on Thursday night.