Aadel Collection
Iran: The Terrified Republic
I rci .A PERSONAL VIEW BYROYB.MOTrAHEDEH Iran: The Terrified Republic N ews of the recent barbarous execution of 16 Bahais in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz has shattered the small remaining hope of many well-wishers of the Iranian revolution who kept saying, as I did: “Walt, give it time.” Six men and 10 women, including three teenaged girls, without publicly announced charges or public trial, were hanged, apparently for the mere crime of adherence to a religion. For, as the Islamic judge explained to the newspapers: “It is absolutely certain that in the Islamic Republic of Iran there is no place whatsoever for Bahajs and Bahaism.” It is becoming increasingly unclear for whom there is a place in Iran. It was possible to understand why the Iranian government felt that. there was no place for the radical left, which advocated armed struggle against the existing government. It was harder — but just possible, given the deep differences between peoples about ideas of propriety to understand why there was no place for women who went out in public without their hair covered. It was even harder to understand why there was no place for the Iranian Communist Party, which had repeatedly and slavishly declared itself to be In total support of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But no room for the Iranian Bahais? No room for the only people who, besides the Zoroastrians, consider Iran a sacred land and revere the Persian language as a language of revelation? For the only religion in Iran besides Islam that, however much it may look to a prophet subsequent to Mohammed, accepts the belief of Moslems that the MIDDLE EAST Koran is an infallible revelation from God, presented in a text that, unlike the Old and New Testaments, has never been corrupted by the tampering of men? Well-wishers of the revolution waited and gave It time — and for what? To see the promise of parliamen- tary democracy blasted by an intolerance of any politi- cal party that meckly disagrees with the government? Perhaps today's Iranian authorities find the Bahais a good focus for their genocidal fantasies precisely because this government wishes to make clear that It wants nothing to do with early hopes for a government Hang a few teenaged girls, and everyone will get the point: The rulers of Iran do not need to consult the Iranian people because they know what's best for Iran, whether Iranians like It or not — and, by the same token, they do not want a freely given moral consensus because they trust only coercion. Shiite Islam, the religion of the great majority of the Iranian people, puts a greater emphasis on reason than does any other form of Islam or do most other religions in the world. Do they trust coercion more because they have secretly admitted to themselves that they are unable to change anyone's opinion through reasoned discussion? Or, do they really believe that reason — or, for that matter, any form of persuasion that can win meaning- ful assent to religious truth — operates Only on people who live in the shadow of the hangman's noose? The Islamic Republic of Iran — how neatly and thoroughly it has come to belie every part of its name, It is hardly Iranian in that it finds It necessary to hang 16 Bahais — in addition to the scores It has killed in recent years — merely for the “crime” of professing a religion that believes Iran to be a sacred land, It is hardly a republic: A state that so terrifies and coerces its people is a republic in only some contorted sense of the word. ,i . o,k Ti,',.. R O I'. Mouah.'d, 'h, profrs.or of Itta,,,i. hi.ro.y and Persian and Acabit IiU,atar,, at Princeton tIni .ersity, i. writing a book on Shiite edacation in ,,,odrra Iron Son Francisco Ct -oiiide Wed. July 13, 1983 7. ___ I BP000543 religious In morality and democratic in method.