Of course most Americans think Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, the kickoff of the Holiday shopping spree that makes retailers smile with glee. We know better, don’t we?

Twenty-nine years ago today, in Iran, Black Friday was an awakening call to jihad…

Once the struggle for power was joined, the spilling of blood came to be embraced, not avoided. As Iran’s revolution was unfolding during the Moharram ceremony in 1978, demonstrators caught in a battle with the Shah’s troops smeared their hands with the blood of the victims and raised their palms toward heaven. In the months before the revolution Khomeini said, “Our movement is but a fragile plant. It needs the blood of martyrs to help it grow into a towering tree.” The Black Friday Massacre in Tehran on September 8, 1978, in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed by the Shah’s troops, was a key event in precipitating the downfall of the Shah. Khomeini called that day the “victory of blood over the sword.”

and

Hamid showed me the high, wide-tiered fountain built for the martyred war dead. The fountain had once cascaded crimson-colored water dyed to look like blood. As more war dead came home, the cemetery grew bigger, so big that satellite fountains of martyrs’ blood had to be built. The martyrs are “irrigating the revolutionary seed,” officials liked to say.

Later, during the war with Hussein’s Iraq, Ahmadinejad’s Demons, the Basij, were created…

After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran’s forces were no match for Saddam Hussein’s professional, well-armed military. To compensate for their disadvantage, Khomeini sent Iranian children, some as young as twelve years old, to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies.At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. “In the past,” wrote the semi-official Iranian daily Ettelaat as the war raged on, “we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes would henceforth be avoided, Ettelaat assured its readers. “Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started in order to supplement his beleaguered army.The Basij Mostazafan–or “mobilization of the oppressed”–was essentially a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction.”

Ahmadinejad trained the Basij, during that conflict, and to this day the Basij remain as one of his favorite toys and tools.

Today, Iran and Ahmadinejad are running 3000 centrifuges night and day to get their bomb(s) ready for…Israel? You tell me.

Black Friday…from Iran’s Revolutionary Islamic Jihad’s perspective, a new beginning.