Nearly every nation has dangerous religious fanatics. My impression is that they have much more control in Iran than in Israel, although they do exist in the latter. They also exist right here in the US, where their strength seems to be growing, as evidenced by more calls for Christian religious law replacing secular law, and more blatant Islamophobia now than right after 9/11.

I think Destro asks a fair question, but it’s one that can easily be rebutted by the fact that Shas seems on the fringe in Israel whereas its Iranian “counterparts” pretty much run the whole freaking deranged clusterfuck called Iran.