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.