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.
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BP000543
religious In morality and democratic in method.
