{"id":889,"date":"2009-03-31T00:05:15","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T07:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/?p=889"},"modified":"2009-03-31T23:44:20","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T06:44:20","slug":"1979-was-a-game-changing-year-in-the-epicenter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/?p=889","title":{"rendered":"1979 was a game-changing year in the epicenter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/authorrosen2.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-41\" title=\"authorrosen2\" src=\"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/authorrosen2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"99\" height=\"106\" \/><\/a><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>by Joel                 Rosenberg<\/strong><\/span><strong><span style=\"color: #808080;\"> [novelist]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>The<\/strong><\/span> year 1979 was a game-changer\u00a0in the epicenter for Radicals, Reformers and Revivalists alike.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\"><span>In January 1979, the Shah of Iran \u2014 not\u00a0a Reformer, but certainly a long-time friend of the U.S. and Israel \u2014 was ousted from power.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>On February 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini \u2014 the first true Radical of the modern era \u2014 returned to Iran after decades in exile and was met by\u00a0millions of Muslims who greeted him as the possible Islamic Messiah, chanting,<em> \u201cThe Holy One has come!\u201d<\/em> <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>On March 26th, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat \u2014 the first true Reformer of the modern era \u2013\u00a0and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin\u00a0signed the Camp David Accords at the White House, an historic peace treaty\u00a0unprecedented in the annals of 4,000+ years of Jewish-Egyptian relations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>On April 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared\u00a0Iran the world\u2019s first \u201cIslamic Republic,\u201d putting the country under Sharia law and creating a Radical tyranny unlike any other at the time in the Middle East.<!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>By November of that pivotal year, Radical followers of Khomeini\u00a0had seized the American Embassy in Tehran and began holding\u00a052 hostages for 444 humiliating days.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Also in November, Radical Muslim gunmen\u00a0led by a man claiming to be the Islamic Messiah known as a the \u201cTwelfth Imam\u201d seized a key mosque in Mecca and triggered an enormous crisis for the Saudi government (Saudi troops eventually had to\u00a0storm the mosque, leaving hundreds dead and wounded)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>In December of that year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a move that would lead to the rise of Osama bin Laden and the birth of al Qaeda, the Radical\u00a0terror network, and later the dissolution of the Soviet empire.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Curiously, it was also in December of 1979\u00a0that Warner Brothers and an evangelical Christian ministry called Campus Crusade For Christ\u00a0released the\u00a0<em>JESUS<\/em> film, a\u00a0drama of the life of Jesus of Nazareth based on the Gospel According to Luke. It has since been translated into more than 1,000 languages and dialects,\u00a0has been seen by more than two billion people worldwide, and has become a key tool used by Revivalists to reach Muslims with the gospel of Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span>Something was clearly crackling in the spiritual realm that year. The question now is: Where are we thirty years later?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span>A few observations:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li><span>Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah,\u00a0now lives in Maryland and is\u00a0trying to build a global movement to overthrow the mullahs and ayatollahs and bring democratic\u00a0reform\u00a0to Iran.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>The Iranian Revolution is rapidly approaching its most dangerous moment. Its current leaders believe the end of the world is at hand, the Islamic Messiah\u2019s return to earth is \u201cimminent,\u201d and the way to hasten the coming of the Twelfth Imam is to annihilate Israel and the U.S. What\u2019s more, the current leaders of Iran\u00a0are feverishly trying to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons and build alliances with three nuclear powers \u2014 Russia, China and North Korea.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Egypt and Israel have a cold but stable peace.\u00a0True, Sadat was assassinated by Radicals, but he did inspire a new generation of Arab Muslim Reformers throughout the region, particularly in Iraq. Unfortunately,\u00a0current Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is by no means a Reformer. He is, instead, a \u201cResister\u201d of almost any sort of positive change.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Menachem Begin\u2019s disciple \u2014 Benjamin Netanyahu \u2014 is about to become the next Prime Minister of Israel.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Afghanistan is\u00a0in the hands of the Reformers,\u00a0though the Radicals of al Qaeda and the Taliban are battling hard to take it back.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>The Revivalists have a new tool for reaching Muslims with the gospel \u2014 the new film, \u201cDamascus,\u201d which will premiere at the Vatican on May 16th and spread throughout Protestant and Catholic churches in the Middle East this summer. I just met with the executive producer of the film and will have more details soon.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span>Bottom line: Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution began in Iran,\u00a0and the Reformer Revolution began with the Camp David Accords, and the Revivalist Revolution began with the JESUS film, the battle for hearts, minds and souls in the epicenter rages on with increasing intensity. Watching all three movements is the\u00a0Islamic \u201cRank-and-File,\u201d the vast majority of the world\u2019s 1.3 billion Muslims. The Rank-and-File represent the vast middle ground of the Muslim world. They are going about their day-to-day lives without much of a desire to be Revolutionaries of any kind. But they are the audience to which the Radicals, the Reformers, and the Revivalists are speaking. If any of these major movements ever gains the majority \u2014 or even a working plurality \u2014 of the Rank-and-File, the entire world will be forever changed, for good or ill. Understanding these three Revolutionary movements \u2014 including the crises they are responding to and the answers they are offering \u2014 is of absolutely critical importance. Those who ignore these trends do so at their peril.\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>ExileStreet<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">copyright 2008 Joel Rosenberg<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of THE LAST JIHAD, THE LAST DAYS, THE EZEKIEL OPTION, THE COPPER SCROLL and EPICENTER with more than one million copies in print. He previously served as a senior advisor to several U.S. and Israeli leaders, including Steve Forbes, Rush Limbaugh, former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has been interviewed on more than 300 radio and TV shows, including ABC&#8217;s &#8220;Nightline,&#8221; CBN&#8217;s 700 Club, CNN Headline News, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, the Michael Reagan Show, the Rush Limbaugh Show and the Sean Hannity Show..\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joelrosenberg.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Website<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Joel Rosenberg [novelist] The year 1979 was a game-changer\u00a0in the epicenter for Radicals, Reformers and Revivalists alike. In January 1979, the Shah of Iran \u2014 not\u00a0a Reformer, but certainly a long-time friend of the U.S. and Israel \u2014 was ousted from power. On February 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini \u2014 the first true Radical of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions\/891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}