These Last Days News - March 24, 2026
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Shia Culture Of Martyrdom Key To Understanding Iran, Says Msgr. Nazir-Ali...

RELIGION OF THE CROSS
"There is only one religion that can save your country and all of the countries of the world: the religion of the cross and My Son's sacrifice upon that cross." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 25, 1978

ONLY TRUE RELIGION
"O My children, I will not go into a long discourse now with you about charity and love for your neighbor, but you must understand: you cannot judge your neighbor. You must pray for them. However, you cannot become weak and permissive. You must stand forth as bearers of the light, carriers of the truth. You have been given by your baptism entrance into the only true religion upon earth, the Roman Catholic Church under My Son, Jesus. Though man in his arrogance and pride has forgotten His role and His rule, you must carry it forward. Retain the Faith and the truth in the hearts of mankind." - Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1978

The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York. Read more

NCRegister.com reported on March 23, 2026:

By Edward Pentin

Western governments misread Iran if they assume its theocratic regime will quickly capitulate under military pressure, because the country’s leaders are sustained by a Shia religious worldview that exalts suffering and martyrdom as supreme virtues.

This is the view of Msgr. Michael Nazir-Ali, a member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a former Anglican bishop and an expert in Islamic history.

Writing in the UK’s Daily Telegraph March 17, Msgr. Nazir-Ali argued that Tehran’s defiance is not simply political brinkmanship, but flows from a centuries-old theology in which dying for the faith is a privilege believed to advance God’s purposes and hasten the coming of a just order.

Western policymakers, he warned, must factor this “martyr complex” into their strategic calculations if they are to avoid repeating the mistakes of earlier Middle Eastern interventions.

Msgr. Nazir-Ali, who comes from a Pakistani Shia Muslim background and was received into the Catholic Church in September 2021, recalled the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War when he personally witnessed teenage boys and elderly men being presented with symbolic “green keys to Paradise” before being sent as human waves against Iraqi positions.

When they were killed, he said, their families and neighborhoods were ordered to celebrate their “martyrdom” with lights and religious music, turning personal loss into a public religious festival.

Msgr. Nazir-Ali traced this approach to the martyrdom of Hussein, Muhammad’s grandson, at the hands of the caliph Yazid — which Shia Muslims mark every year with “weeping, chanting, self-flagellation and ordeals of fire” as acts of solidarity with Hussein’s suffering. They also remember the martyrdoms of Hussein’s brother, Hassan, and their father, Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad. All three are venerated as martyrs.

Drawing on these historical examples, he said persecution and marginalization of Shia communities by dominant powers over the centuries reinforced an ethos in which suffering for the faith is not only tolerated but esteemed as spiritually fruitful. What evolved, Msgr. Nazir-Ali explained, is an “entrenched understanding of the virtue of suffering for their beliefs, which is not found in more triumphalist versions of Islam.”

Iran’s leaders, he continued, have deliberately harnessed this culture of martyrdom before, during and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “Every act of repression by the Shah and his agents, every setback and every difficulty has been understood in the context of the martyrdom of the first Shia imams or leaders,” said Msgr. Nazir-Ali.

He also pointed out that within Twelver Shiism, Iran’s dominant sect, the expectation remains strong that the Hidden Twelfth Imam, or Mahdi, will return with Jesus to inaugurate a reign of justice. Msgr. Nazir-Ali recalled a leading ayatollah asking him, “When Jesus comes again will he be with our Mahdi?” revealing how Christ is already integrated into Shia end-times belief.

The Pakistani-born prelate further remembered an Iranian government minister telling him that Iran’s foreign policy is built on the struggle for justice for the oppressed everywhere. “This is because such a struggle hastens the return of the Mahdi and his rule of justice,” Msgr. Nazir-Ali explained. “As the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated, if this struggle results in mass martyrdom, this is thought to only hasten the coming of the Imam Mahdi.”

But Msgr. Nazir-Ali, who has studied theology and interfaith relations at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, acknowledged that this justice rhetoric sits uneasily with the regime’s brutal oppression of its own people and religious groups, including Iran’s long-persecuted Christians. Iran’s populist paramilitary group known as the Basij, under the supervision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has “bought in heavily to Shia ideas of martyrdom” and used them to justify their brutal oppression, he said.

In light of all this, Msgr. Nazir-Ali cautioned Western governments not to dismiss Tehran’s threats and defiant rhetoric as “merely bluff or defiance” but rather “deeply rooted in Shia psychology.”

“If the regime were to fall, either as a result of aerial warfare or because of ‘boots on the ground,’ the Islamist revolutionaries have a ready-made force for indefinite resistance to whatever takes the place of the present regime and to its allies,” Msgr. Nazir-Ali argued. “Withdrawal to the mountains and deserts, as well as exile, is an aspect of sharing in the sufferings of their imams, and resistance to the ‘ungodly’ will be understood as hastening the return of Imam Mahdi and the restoration of Sharia-based rule.”

He urged Western leaders to consider this “martyr complex” when making future political and military calculations.

“If the regime survives, this will be seen as a vindication by Allah of the sacrifices made by the IRGC, the Basij and the regime generally,” he stressed. Their program of theocracy, he continued, “will be reinforced,” meaning the Iranian people will have to “bear even more repression and denial of their basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief.”

Conversely, he said if the military action does result in regime change, preparations must be made now to prevent the Basij and other elements from waging a guerrilla war, either inside or outside Iran. He also stressed the need to begin now to create new civil institutions, rather than leaving such restructuring to the last minute, as happened in Iraq.

Many Iranians from all walks of life will want to cooperate in the emergence of a new Iran, Msgr. Nazir-Ali predicted. “It will need to be rooted in Iran’s ancient civilization,” he said, “from which it can draw inspiration for the urgent task of reconstruction when the ayatollahs fall.”

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