Khatami in Spain

Once more, President Khatami gave an elegant, beautiful and intelligent talk not in Iran, but in Europe. I read the speech in Emrooz online. While enjoying it tremendously, I wonder why is it that all these good talks should be delivered outside Iran. As a matter of fact, most of his speeches in Iran, except one that he delivered on the occasion of Hazrat Fatima’s birthday somewhere in Iran, are mostly mediocre.

I can only speculate that

1- He does not think that his Iranian audience deserves better than what they get. I’m almost sure he won’t admit this, so let’s take it off the list.

2- In Iran, he feels he is among friends who love him no matter what, so he goes to various meetings without bothering about what he is going to say, just as when one goes home to visit ones parents, one does not write a speech beforehand. Of course, he is right to feel that way, he is indeed very well-loved, but I’m sure he would not abuse people’s love and understanding. So let’s take off the list too.

3-He does not feel comfortable (or, better, he is afraid) in Tehran, or other parts of the country beyond Yazd, where he spends most of his time when he is in Iran. That makes sense. We Yazdis keep too much to ourselves. Not that we do not like others, but there is “us” with a wall around us and “others” outside the wall, just like Yazd itself. And to defend ourselves, I should say we are right to be so, because we are surrounded by desert; and charming and picturesque as it might be, it is really scary. We are a bit afraid and get intimidated by the outsiders, and we have a right to be that way. If we ever let the outsiders in, they can do horrifying things to us and we won’t have any other choice but to submit. See what the outsiders did to us: Sluggishly, and carelessly, they interpreted all this into our being “cowards” and have commonly ignored how all these natural conditions have turned us into industrious and creative people. Yes, I should say, there are “others” out there that we are afraid of.

I’m afraid that I have to keep this guess on the list. I’m half Yazdi myself and as an insider I can testify to the accuracy of this bit of inside information that President Khatami has this “Yazdiness” in him. See how he talks differently and courageously whenever he is in the vicinity of Yazd, like when he recently said, “People have the right to change their government if they want too.”

4- He feels freer outside Iran. This is true and I’m certain that is the case, and even if he denies it and swears to God or anything else, I won’t believe him. There is more freedom outside Iran and there is no use denying! But doesn’t he get into trouble when he comes back? I hope not, and so far he has not, though after his trip to the United States, Mrs. Elham (Rajabi) called for his being defrocked. That did not happen either. Anyhow he feels free out there, therefore he says more intelligent things, like what he said about liberty, freedom and justice. I personally do not blame him. One cannot talk about those things in Iran. Europeans understand them better. They wanted to be free and have the liberty to decide for their own lives, so they formed their lives and governments on that basis, while we did not. Didn’t we vote for Islamic Republic? Didn’t we choose to be slashed in public? Didn’t we choose to be stoned to death? Didn’t we choose those few unelected people to decide over every aspect of our lives? And justice? Yes, that too. Their notion of justice is based on equality, all are equal according to law and everyone has equal rights to basic human needs. No one is to be denied education or access to health care or the ability to secure ones livelihood. People may have to pay different prices to receive different quality of their needs, but they have the right to have it, while our notion of justice is based on charity and benevolence. There are the poor and there are the rich, and the former must rely on the latter’s benevolence. There are the wise and there are the ignorant and the ignorant should be at the mercy of and guided by the wise. There are the powerful and there are the weak and deprived, and the later are definitely at the mercy of the former. Let’s call this Islamic Justice. The velayat faqih is the embodiment of this notion of “benevolent justice.” So naturally Khatami can never deliver those speeches in Iran saying that “justice is not real justice if it is not coupled with freedom and liberty.” How could we entertain such an expectation?! How could he talk about freedom in the country in which even Google is filtered? Yes, that could be his concern, and he is right. He had better say all these things in Spain and Germany and Italy. So let’s keep that on the list.

5- The real face of Islam? Most of President Khatami activity is hooked to that tiny little phrase. All those talks and all those lectures and smiles and comings and goings and fancy cloak and turban and neatness, all those quotations from Leibniz, and Kant and Descartes, all that talk about justice and freedom, all and all are aimed at one end—to show the “true face” of Islam to the world. That is why we do not hear any of it in Iran, where we don’t need it. We are Islam, we see it ourselves everyday and every night. We know how just it is, how fair it is, how humane it is, how free it is, how it respect liberty. We know all that, we live with it day and night. We do not need to hear about something that we have hands-on experience of.

Some of Khatami’s followers have complained about why Iranian television and radio do not broadcast these talks. I think these people are out of their minds. Why should the government broadcast that recent speech, in which every phrase is precisely against all the government’s actions? Indeed, if Khatami himself wants to say any of these things in Iran, instead of all those mediocre talks he usually delivers there, he could go to Tehran University or any of hundreds of universities throughout the country and deliver them his speech in Persian. Or even better, he could go right into the office of the Supreme Leader and say what he has in mind and see if he agrees with him.

I’m afraid I have to keep this on my list and insist that this is the most frightening and disappointing and yet the truest guess in my list, and I dare say it is the one I prefer to be wrong on, but don’t think I am. Khatami is the Islamic Republic’s show case, he is the only presentable character they have. We are not his targeted audience and indeed we are deluding ourselves if we consider him one of our own. It is true that we love him and more than that we need him. But how many times, and with what language should he tell us that he does not need us, he is not concerned with our needs, and he cannot help us. He has a different mission in life and is doing his job fine.

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Thus Spake Imam Khomeini

February, the anniversary of Revolution is a good market for those who are still alive and shared the flight with Khomeini to Tehran, or were present in the Alavi School and participated in the firing squad show on its roof, to bring us anecdotes and present them like antiques to customers like me browsing and surfing online for something interesting.

This year, in addition to the general and generic words of the Imam’s wisdom on freedom, human rights, democracy, independence, plenty of special anecdotes or stories appeared in the memoirs of his friends, all related to the problems at hand: election and government turning to the military and security forces. Oddly enough, most of these anecdotes were narrated by the reformists, and not a single one by fundamentalists.

Among the anecdotes there was one from Ayatollah Nateq Nuri’s memoir:

“In the early days of the revolution, there was a rush of women to come to visit Imam. They all wore black chadors, head to toe covered; and many of them, in order not to get lost, tied their chadors together. They would go into a frenzy and emotional crying and sometimes fainted. We were very worried for safety and security; it would have been very easy for a bomb to be carried under them. But we knew that if we had told the Imam to bar women for that reason, he would not agree. We were also concerned about the lack of female paramedics to help in case of an emergency. Sometimes the Imam would go to the second floor to rest, and when these women arrived he had to come downstairs. So one day I told the Imam that these coming and going up and down tired him, but the Imam noticed my real concern and said, 'Do you think that the revolution happened because of my tapes or because of you? No it happened because of them.'”

I like this anecdote. If I were in the Imam’s position I would have said the same. As a matter of fact, most of the sayings attributed to him are simple, sensible, true, and almost the best, and many of them, as Iranians say, are “tooth-shattering.” Even the timing should not be objected to; today is as good as any other day. Even instrumental usage of these sayings, to corner the fundamentalist as a devoted followers of Imam, is justifiable up to a point, although it has been proven ineffective. But the important question remains as to how long we should use a failing method. I never expected of Ayatollah Nateq Nuri to ask Imam, “Well sir, if these people made the revolution and not me or your tapes, then why is it that there is no place for them in the government?” It never occurred to me that he would be able to ask these questions since this kind of dialog has never been the part of that generation’s discourse. However, thirty years later I do expect that young journalists and thinkers or even younger clerics, who constitute the bulk of the reformists, would take a critical approach, and substitute a dialectical or analytical discourse for the kind of discourse once fashionable in Najaf and Qom's seminaries.

Since the revolution, the Imam’s words have become a kind of syllogism by itself. Being dealt with as the absolute, they have been legitimized and accepted by all as ultimate truths that do not need any further proof or arguments. “The people’s vote is the ultimate criterion,” “Our politics is the same as our religiosity,” “Islam should come for the strength and survival of the Islamic Republic and not vice versa,” are all from this category. They all sound good, some of them are even self-evident, and some are universally accepted. It is quite irrelevant to discuss the content of the Imam’s words of wisdom which, like many of their kinds should be cherished by those who have a taste for them. Though, the troubling is the usage of his statements as documents and manifestos, as substitutes for law, as ultimate guidelines as how to run the country and how society ought to conduct itself. How long should a country rely for its basics and fundamentals on the saying of a man who considered himself very ordinary and who made a massive mistake in appointing incompetents to be in charge of the peoples’ life remains a question.

Not only are older clerics, who shared the Imam’s beliefs and ideas, but even young lay journalists and analysts still wrap their pleas for justice in the Imam’s words and appeal to his ideas to salvage the last vestiges of what is called the Islamic Republic before it completely turns into a military-security state or explodes into chaos.

All these cries for justice have fallen on deaf ears, with flat denials of the leadership’s spokesman, Hosein Shariatmadari of Keyhan who refuses every argument given by reformist by misquotes from the Imam or anyone else who might be of any help, and with a simple clear bold answer of Mesbah Yazdi who once said: “All this talk about the people’s vote and people’s rights are nothing but a marionettes show. We are doing our duty and nothing could or should keep us from our duty.” His callousness aside, there is a bitter truth in what he is saying. These men in the Guardian Council are given a nonnegotiable right to do what they are doing. Indeed, the reformists are fighting an unbalance and unequal war, armed only with the Imam’s words whispered in someone ears, against those who are given the master key to all the Imam’s army and treasure.

All this came to a head just days ago when Ayatollah Tavasoli, rest in peace, in a formal session of the Expediency Council, of which he was a member, during his emotional opening speech passed away due to heart attack. It was indeed a great lose to the reform movement to loose one of its main bodies in a high place. The speech that caused his emotional outburst was none other than the same old routine, nothing worth dying for. The story of the couple who claimed they had met the Twelfth Imam and were rejected by the Imam as “crooks” had been told last year by Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Also the account of the Imam’s will barring military interfering in politics and taking sides with either party was the topic of Akbar Ganji’s article in Rooz Online several weeks ago. To argue against the militarization of government, Ganji, in his recent article The Government of Ahmadinejad and Ruling of Sultan, has invoked Imam Khomeini’s will “… the military should keep away from all the political parties, even the most Islamic one, and stay away form all the other branches of government. It is the only way that military could be trusted to defend the country.” (Ganji forgets that the main reason for the formation of the Revolutionary Guards was to protect the government internally against the possible internal opposition.) His invocation of the Imam was indeed very surprising from the man who boasts that he is a champion of a critical approach and defines himself as “dissatisfied intellectual,” one who would remain critical even if we would have the most democratic system.

As why should Rafsanjani wait so long to reveal his document, his correspondence, and his anecdotes about the Imam now or gradually as they are needed? I’m not surprised at all. That is our pragmatic Rafsanjani! But one wonders how a person like Ganji should wait so long to address such an important issue as the role of the military, and in this context, and in this fashion. That military should not get involved in the affair of government is accepted by many constitutions including ours; it is argued for, it is challenged, and it is proven as fair and just. While we all may accept and respect this principal, we are only bounded by it since it is an article of our constitution. If the Imam is especially emphasized it, that is his privilege; otherwise, it does not and should not have any substantial effect in its significance or its being honored. Making the case for this on the basis of its having been mentioned in the Imam’s will, in fact not only does not add to its value and its importance, but only reduces it to the triviality of whatever goes in one’s will. Indeed, as is the case with the laws governing wills, they are always subject to more scrutiny and further objections of the beneficiaries. It is a disgrace for documents of such importance to be safeguarded in one’s will. Indeed, the Imam’s emissaries do not do him any favors, either, by turning him into such an irresponsible role model of statesmanship for those who want to follow his footsteps.

The novelty of Ayatollah Tavasoli’s speech was in Hasan Khomeini’s recurring dream of his grandfather’s appearance in them. However, the reformists, using their last arrow in their quiver, not only exposed their despair but somehow acknowledged their defeat as well. Judging from the front pages of the newspapers, even the reformists’ press, this news could not arouse any sensation among the people, or breathe any fresh breath into the lifeless body of the reformists. It was business as usual. Khamenehi went public in Azerbaijan, his native Azeri-speaking and zealous Muslim providence, to urge Azeris to vote. He harped on the necessity of participating in the elections. It is interesting that he abandoned the commonly-used term “religious duty” as well as the call for “splendid participation” which detracts from the solemnity of the act of participating in election, and does not have any alarming ring to it; instead, he used the uncommon term mojahedat, endeavor or fighting for Islamic principals. (The close relationship between the term mojahedat and jihad, holy war, was probably meant to send a double message to the people as well as to the reformists.) It seems that while our reformists have lost even their last arrow for nothing, the fundamentalists are ready to take over new equipments.

I can not believe that it happened so quickly and so easily, as if it had been rehearsed a hundred times. Reading the newspapers online these last several nights, the mute reaction of the public to all the recent events, the blunt answer of Keyhan (the spokesman of the Vali Faqih) to Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-pur’s speech in the memorial service held for late Ayatollah Tavasoli, and calling the content of his speech as lie and fabrication; more crying and complaining by the reformists; the already semi-retirement of Mehdi Karrubi and his wife (at least according to the state radio, TV and Press), and finally the last-minute agreement of the reformists to participate in the elections in spite of all the humiliation brought upon them, Sayyed Mohammad Khatami’s embarrassing speech which was uncharacteristic of his usual profound talks calling on the people to participate in the elections as “cheerful victims” to foil their plot (!), I feel that the parliamentary elections would not have a better fate than the last presidential elections. I feel that one more time we have to accept the humiliation of being defeated unfairly, once more we are defeated and crushed by a coup rather by a fair competition, once more those who appear to be with us are turned against us, once more our generals naively picked up fake and rusted weapons in a serious decisive battle. And once more our leader surrendered with a fake smile.

Hey Mssrs. Reformists, get real! It is our destiny you are compromising. It is time for alertness and awareness. It is not the time for exchanging niceties. It is not a good time to take a nap; didn't you learn that from the last presidential election? It is not the time for day dreaming either. I hope and I pray to God that the inventory of the Imam’s words and tales soon runs out, I hope he appears in everyone’s dream every night and instructs them and then finish with that as well. Then we would both feel free. He would feel free of us hanging to his shroud and will rest in peace, and we would be free, knowing that the legacy he left behind is not the windmills of Cervantes and we can’t fight with them like Don Quixote. Indeed what he left behind is monstrous and dangerous as hell. We need something more substantial to fall back upon, like a good constitution with plenty room for amendments.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Reform

When in 1997 President Khatami was elected president of Iran, reform was somehow implicit in his very short campaign promises. It was later on that his presidency and his followers were labeled “reformist.” This being an “Islamic” republic, based on Islamic laws, I concluded that any reform, even if it were directed towards the social or political system, would necessarily mean religious reform. Khatami, however, never used this expression. He emphasized on civil society and the rule of law, though he never said which law; and he referred many times to those invisible "unnamables" that are obstacle in achieving a true civil society.



Khatami’s opponents inside Iran criticized him and his government for corrupting the Islamic system of government, while his followers criticized him for not being assertive enough. They are still angry that while he was president, even with the majority of seats in the parliament during his first term, he remained ineffective.

Opposition groups and individuals outside the country are his biggest enemy. I have read many articles attacking him and the reformists in general, even now that none of the reformists have any responsibilities in the government. Even the journalists who work for the pro-reformist newspapers are not immune of their harsh criticisms.

And in between, there are two groups which are hard to pigeonhole. One consisted of ordinary, apolitical Iranians. I recall a relative, a housewife, a mother of two teenagers, who blamed Khatami for raising expectations in people which could not be realistically fulfilled. She said, “He talks about civil society and law and lawfulness and democracy. Our kids believe it and outside the home they become disappointed and frustrated not meeting any of these institutions.”

The other group is the most interesting. They grin and say, “Reform is dead.” They do not even bother to argue or explain what they mean by “reform” or “dead.” They just grin. Their grin is most bitter these days, with the election crises in Iran, when reform and the reformists are breathing their last while we watch them, obsessively worrying for their very survival.

The dictionary definition for reform says 1- to improve by correcting errors or removing defects; 2-to abolish abuse or malpractice; 3-to give up harmful or immoral practices. Knowing Khatami as too good a  thinker to not have foreseen the paradoxical nature of this term, I think the term was imposed on him by his wishful followers, and even by some clever faction of government expecting to have some pragmatic advantage, just as when “moderate” became the permanent descriptor for Rafsanjani.

The term, which united those dissatisfied by the Islamic Republic who viewed Khatami’s campaign as a window of hope, placed Khatami in the paradoxical position of aiming to correct “errors, defects, abuse, or malpractices” within the very system of which he himself had been one of the founders, and to which he has a firm commitment to its survival and its principles. The situation has even become embarrassing when he had to keep his alliance to the office of the Valiye Faghih, who is solely responsible for appointing those very individuals who created whatever Khatami objects to.

In a historical context, reform remains a neglected and unexamined phenomenon. As the ambiguity and lack of precision is an invitation to abuse, violation, and manipulation, the reform movement was destined to be harassed and brutally crushed, and it seemed totally wiped out. Khatami recently, after almost all the reformists were barred from being candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, admitted, “It was a very strange clean up!” Nevertheless, there was no attempt to establish a firm and legitimate foundation for the movement to prevent this disastrous blow beyond a weak reference to Imam Khomeini expressing the importance of the “people’s will,” which, it seems, not so many have ever believed him meaning anything but just a word.

Reform’s history is as old as Creation. The first reformists were Adam and Eve, who did not obey God and did what they were told not to do. They did what they thought was better, both in the Biblical version, where they ate from the Tree of Knowledge (and I still do not know why God forbade it; what was wrong with knowledge?) or the Koranic version of eating wheat and making a mess in Heaven. Well, they wanted to do it their own way and paid a price for it; God deported them from Heaven. In fact, the punishment was not harsh at all; God created another heaven for them, the earthly kingdom, with milder and gentler rules supervised by his emissaries, the prophets.

As a matter of fact, even the prophets were reformists in their own way. The first one was Abraham, who, answering God’s call testing his piety, took his son, Isaac, to be sacrificed. Being a God-fearing man, Abraham “stepped over his heart” and took his son to the appointed place with a dagger to kill him. He did not listen to his wife’s cry, nor took notice of his innocent son’s horror. He just listened to God. He fastened his son to the stone, took his dagger and raised it high, though that dagger never came down. An angel told Abraham not to sacrifice the child and he “raised his eyes” and saw a lamb, sacrificing it instead. Not only Isaac was saved, but God appeared as merciful, giving up his demand for Abraham to prove his loyalty and grants life to Isaac. However, the most important was that it was the Abraham who did not kill his son. According to the Reform movement in Judaism, this story is a God’s blessing for Reform. The Rabbis found enough in the Torah to appeal to and to argue that Reform is the original point of the religion and their arguments founded on such a firm ground, their holy book, that the movement won the majority of believers. It is worth noting that, Reform Judaism was never persecuted by Jewish orthodoxy.

In one of my trips to Iran, in the autumn of 2003, I heard so many people influenced by Abdol-Karim Soroush and even Ali Shariati talking about a reform, a sort of Islamic Protestantism. I heard this from various people in various stations, accountants of small offices, owners of some small industry, merchants in the bazaar, and workers in a tourist spot in Yazd. I heard it from housewives, government employees and students, all in a very casual tone: “Something like what Calvin did, or what Soroush says.” The expression on their faces and their language was so casual and so ordinary that I did not dare get involved into arguments with them. It was not only their simplicity and the legitimacy of their demands which stopped me from quarreling, nothing ever does, but the fact that I did not want to destroy their peace and naivety. I could not imagine where they had learned about Protestantism that they made it sound so simple. It is true that the Reformation was initiated by a “call” by Calvin and Luther, who argued against the authority and hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but it was never settled by that call alone. Unfortunately, Protestants did not have it as easy as Reformed Jews, who took their mandate from the Torah. It took centuries of pain, bloodshed, martyrdom, migrations, executions, torture, and hardship to establish itself as a legitimate branch of Christianity.

Aside from religious reform, there are social, political and economical reforms in history as well. Our epic, the Shahnameh, has enough reform-seeking stories in it; heroes, Siavash, Sohrab and, to a great extend, Esfandyar bear reformist ideas, as well as the theme of some stories such as that of Kaikavus and the Seven Divs of Mazandaran.

Pre-Islamic Iran bears witness to several reform-seeking kings. Among the Achamenids, kings Cyrus the Great and Xerxes are the most associated with reform. But most reformism appeared in Sassanid Iran, of which we have better recorded history. In this period, there were reforms done by rulers, Anushirvan for example, which were carried out successfully, although like most of reforms of this nature were more geared to strengthen and centralize their political powers; and those which were demanded by opposition forces who were resisting the establishment, at least partially, such as those of Mazdak and Mani. The first one failed and was suppressed brutally; the second fared rather better; due to its advance and progressive nature. Traces of its tenets are observed not only in Iranian culture, but in Christianity as well.

As a matter of fact, reform never has come in an easy way. One has to pay for it. I wish life would have been as easy like what Shariati and Soroush thought it was, that one can say, “I think, therefore let it be so,” but alas it is not. In every stage of human life, when a reform is called for, there is a hazardous road ahead. Every year for three days, the Shia observes the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. Indeed, it was a bloody event in Islamic history. The gist of the matter is that Imam Hussein wanted to resist the corruption of Islam. He thought that his way, either the just way, or better way, or God’s intended way, was not his opponent’s way. However, willful that he was, he lost the battle and made the ultimate sacrifice for what he wanted to do. He stood for his belief, he bore witness to history, and Shia Muslims of the world still observe his testimony, his martyrdom.

Since several year before revolution when some intellectuals tried to use religion instrumentally for their own ends, Imam Hussein’s martyrdom was  referred to, conveniently, as a revolution rather than a reform, just to fit into a model for the Iranian opposition and meanwhile capture that minority of religious people who up to that time did not have a real place in the opposition to Shah. Today, this revolutionary reading of Ashura still remains as such to the Islamisists of Iran, while to a layman it could be viewed as a reform. Imam Hussein did not change or overthrow the whole system of Islam, he simply wanted to change the existing injustices of the ruling caliphs.

Indeed, Iranian history, as we studied it at school, never referred to any movement as reform or revolution. Instead, the word qiam was used to indicate that people took the lead to change. Only the Constitutional Movement was referred otherwise. Amir Kabir, Nizam ol-Molk, Sani od-Doleh, Mossadegh, Mohammad Ali Bab, and Kasravi were just a few of those who were simply blamed or praised for what they did, but never referred to as reformers. They all were killed or banished, indiscriminately, but the kind of reform they wanted to bring in the Iranian somehow survived. Each one came out boldly and courageously with a definite idea and a clear target to strike, as well as a willingness to pay the price. Today, when we look back, we should thank them all for the price they paid.

Khatami’s reform movement, however, is a totally different matter. While Iranian reformists have a mandate for reform and it is given to them by God, the holy book, history, tradition, people’s votes, and, more importantly, by that vaunted rationality, upon which Shiism claims to be based, their torch bearer refrains from committing his reform to any of the essentials of the reform. The very crucial position of reformists requires some clarity and purposefulness which is missing here. Judging from its ten year history, it seems that reform in its true sense had never been intended; rather, it was just an instrumental use of the institution by the Islamic Republic to unite the people with the government to buy time to regroup its forces. Khatami as a reformer (not a president—he remains the best we ever had) appeared as a trinity of Abraham, Isaac, and Lamb all in one. In a few swift, whirling moves, he changed from the reformer Abraham to a sacrificial Isaac and then to a sacrificial Lamb and then in a magical move everything changed. Poor Iranians who followed him turned out to be those who were really sacrificed. Khatami survived, though sadly defeated, embarrassed, disgraced, and bewildered as how to all this. “A strange swap” was the way I heard him put it most recently.

I read the news everyday to see how he will emerge from this new situation. He is buying time; he is waiting for the Guardian Council decision to save a few reformist candidates and then what? More lamentations? And that is all, the end of a legacy, reform movement!

The bitter grin of the oppositions who say that “reform is dead” is coming true after all, though for a different reason. Reform died. It died in its cradle due to its lack of identity, been born out of nothing, out of no background, with no precise message and aim. The movement died since it has no umbilical cord.

After ten years we still do not know what is it that Khatami wanted to correct or abolish. We do not know his opponents and their issues. We do not know with what means he wants to reform them. We do not know where he receives his mandate—the people, God, the constitution or what? In none of his talks does he ever refer to the Constitution, which must be above anything else, he never holds any one responsible, he never referred to any institution as corrupt or harmful. He never referred to any other reform movement to set a precedent to his reform movement. His reform movement is devoid of any history, any identity, any meaning. His reform in nothing but a name, something that cannot withstand even a blow.

His reform will die, but fortunately he himself will survive. He will see old age, he will hopefully live to see his great grandchildren. One day in the future, one on his grandchildren might come to him and ask “Grandpa, why did not you divide your love and goodness to all equally, a little for God, some for us, and some for all those people who loved you and trusted you and stood behind you and were looking up to you to do something for them, you the emissary of God who were to provide a peaceful government on earth, modeled after Heaven, the same as God did for Adam and Eve. Why did not you do that?” I hope he would have a better answer than just another sweet smile.
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The Islamic Republic 's Third Phase

Almost at the end of the third decade of the Iranian Revolution, it seems it is about the time to demystify what was for three decade intentionally confused and mystified. The whole world was shocked at the birth of this “monster” that no one knew anything about. American president Jimmy Carter said “he was surprised.” The deposed Shah of Iran seemed woken up by a nightmare. Empress Farah in her memoir claimed that “they had no clue about it.” The journalists went to Iran and returned with their mouths gaping in awe or dismay. The experts, with their display of shock, added to an already existing enigma and sense of mystery which the public sees around the Islamic Republic of Iran. And we Iranians did not do any better. All of us were waiting for a hint from those whom we thought were a little closer to religion, like Mehdi Bazargan. He did give us directions, though they were wrong. He was as shocked as everyone else. His Islam was very different from what was born and growing so fast, yet he still endorsed it.


Several books on Shiism were all new even to us Iranian. The clerics in Qom were given the status of Oxford and Cambridge dons by one western scholar, and Qom was described as another Heidelberg or Sorbonne. Iran and Iranians and clerics and Shiite Islam all fused into each others, wrapped up in a halo of mystery, and each expert and each journalist only added another layer. The whole country and its people became so unfamiliar even to us that I did not even dare to go back home, like many of us, for over twenty years.

The most distressing of all were non-Muslim scholars who were so zealous and defensive of the Islamic Republic and completely denied the sufferings of secular Iranians. Most of them became apologists for the Islamic Republic, as if criticizing it meant denouncing their own existence. Mandatory Islamic hejab for women was a horrifying imposition but was taken so lightly, the family laws changing to laws of Shari’a was another which was not given any attention, the problem of the religious minority, particularly the Bahai’s, was dismissed totally. I do not recall any of the Iranian (non-opposition) or Western scholars gave any weight to these matters except en passant. They defended the Islamic Republic so firmly and strongly that one wondered why they didn’t join the club and convert. Anne Marie Schimmel was at least honest enough to say “I prefer my glass of wine.”

On the other hand, there were those who made Iranians out to be some strange, somehow dangerous, species. I will never forget, night after night, listening to the news and commentators talking about “Allah,” as if Shiites worshiped some genie. I never figured out why it became a problem to understand that just as God is an English world for the deity, whom the French call Dieu and the Greeks, Theo and the Russians, Bog, some Iranian use the Arabic term Allah, though they themselves have one hundred and one names for Him in their own language—Khoda, Izad, and Yazdan being the most common. A simple matter as such was turned into a puzzle and amusing games for the nighttime shows on TV; and alas none of those experts in Shiism came to help.

Then came the “confusion” period, when every single sentence uttered by any of those clerics came as a mystified code which needed to be decoded, even simple words, such as moderate, money, punishments, apology, and independence. After every speech by Imam Khomeini or the Friday Imams of the time, everybody would fall over the Shiite dictionary to unravel its meaning. Then would come the analysis of the experts from various levels of the State Department or those think tanks in Washington D.C. or all the Middle Eastern Studies departments of the universities in the United States. It is interesting that after some thirty years, people are still referring to that the famous saying of Khomeini, who wished to “cut the hands of foreigner,” although this was simply a literary mistranslation of an expression used in Iran equivalent to “talking one’s hands off something.”

The whole artificial attempt to “understand them” was not only unhelpful, but only added to the confusion.  They mislead the public to a misconception that the Iranians got what they ask for and what they deserve: They want to be ruled by mullahs, they want to go backward, they like having their hands cut off, they want to be told how to perform every step of their most trivial affairs of life. Once, watching a documentary on PBS about the Iran-Iraq war, the reporter interviewed an Iranian war veteran on wheelchair. We could hear the veteran’s line being fed to him by his minder, i.e. that everything was staged. We wrote to PBS and reminded them of their obligation of professional honesty, and pointed out to them the futility of such phony documentaries. Some PBS flack wrote back that if a “nation” wants to portray itself as such, we have to cooperate and air it as they wanted! A strange sense of professionalism indeed!

In the last few years there were few books by journalists, The Last Great Revolution (at least its last half), Persian Mirrors, Neither East Nor West, and The Rose Garden of Martyrs, or travelogues, which tried to depart from the apologetic tradition of the academics and Middle East experts of the first two decades. However, each one of them very cautiously took off only one layer of the mystery. One explained that not all Iranian went to the front to get killed to be martyrs; war was run by a well-calculated manipulative machinery. Another explained that teenagers in Iran are the same as teenagers the world over, even a bit more cheerful and playful. Another revealed that in spite of all the efforts by the clerics to undermine the status of women, their presence and their influence in the overall society is still undeniable. But none took the trouble to explain the system of the government so the people won’t rush to the bunkers out of fear that Iran’s president who has no power as such would eliminate them from the earth. It seemed there was a limit to excavating this great tomb, one inch at a time would have to do.

And now finally it seems it is the time for demystification. I’m not sure that we have arrived at this stage since it is a convenient time, or it is just the American way of learning something. Perhaps the revolution has reached its zenith and now is going to merge and blend with Iranian culture to disappear, and this allows the observers have a better perspective. Books are being published which are more exposing, articles are written which are more revealing, clerics inside the country are saying things which makes one wonder why they hadn’t said them twenty-five years ago. People talk about the government’s corruption, clerics are criticizing clerics, and in spite of all the arrests on charges of endangering national security and social order, people are still outspoken. And we hear more and more the forgotten word “secular” in a variety of contexts. For the first time, thanks to internet, news travels over the boarders more freely. It might be for this very reason that journalists and commentators follow suit and are becoming more open to talking about Iran, however cautiously. In any case, I welcome this third stage; though, had we done this from the start, we would have been saved much trouble.
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