Secularism

Heated debate has ensued over Kadivar’s lecture (see previous post), involving defenders and opponents of secularism (or positions associated with it). An article by Esmaᶜil Nuri-ᶜAlaᵓ in particular (“It would be better for Mr Kadivar to remain in his gelim”) has given rise to a range of responses in the 27 Aban/18 November edition of his ‘new secularism’ publication (www.newsecularism.com/index.htm). The main, critical rejoinder is by ᶜAbbas Musaᵓi (“From absolutist religious thinking to absolutist secularist thinking”), and also appears on the Greens’ Mowj-e Azadi site (www.mowjcamp.com/article/id/65037). Why, one wonders, does Akbar Ganji not figure more prominently in these and similar exchanges, given the multifaceted and clearly reasoned position he has developed on this matter (qualities one doesn't always encounter in other contributions)? In any case, an unresolved fundamental issue is involved here which will undoubtedly become more pressing to effectively address to the degree that the Green Movement makes further advances.

Yousefi-Eshkevari's perspective on the Islamic Republic and the Green Movement

http://www.roozonline.com/persian/opinion/opinion-article/article/2009/november/09//-5e28cad714.html

RoozOnline

!سرداران درنگ کنید

"Do you recall the words of reformers such as Behbehani and Tabatabai on the day of the Russian military assault on the constitutional Majles, and the words of Bazargan in the year '57 [1978-1979]? On that basis, military commanders, defer a bit!"

Article 18 Aban/9 November

Kadivar's perspective on the Islamic Republic and the Green Movement

http://www.mowjcamp.com/article/id/63074

Mowj-e azadi

متن کامل سخنرانی دکتر محسن کدیور در دانشگاه نورث وسترن شیکاگو

ضرورت‌های نخستین مرحله جنبش سبز 

"The focal point of decay in the Islamic Republic is religious despotism, not the source of religion [....] The Islamic Republic is neither Islamic nor a Republic [....] Faced with the excesses of the regime, we must not fall into the trap of extremism ourselves [....] The first stage of the Green Movement consists of raising and enforcing the withheld sources of the Constitution [....] Go act on the Third Chapter [....] Whichever [the state form] will be, that is for the people of Iran to decide [....] A referendum will determine it [....] The place for those debates is the second and third phase, not the first."

speech 9 Aban/31 October

Marja‘'s call to free political prisoners

http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=8891

Peyk-e Iran

Ayatollah Bayat-Zanjani:

Keeping political prisoners is in violation of the Sharia, as is the ground for their arrest

published 5 Nov. 09, quote 4 Nov. 09

آيت‌الله بيات زنجاني: ماندن زندانيان سياسي در زندان مانند اصل بازداشتشان خلاف شرع است
ايلنا:آيت‌الله بيات زنجاني تاكيد كرد:ماندن زندانيان سياسي در زندان مانند اصل بازداشتشان خلاف شرع است. به گزارش ايلنا،شب گذشته، تعدادی از اعضای فراکسیون اقلیت مجلس برای عیادت و دیدار با آیت‌الله بیات زنجانی در بخش سی سی یو بیمارستان ولیعصر(عج) قم حضور یافته و با ايشان برای دقایقی سخن گفتند. اين مرجع تقليد ضمن تقدیر و تشکر از حضور نمایندگان محترم، حضور آنان در مجلس را یک نعمت الهی برشمرد و گفت: همین حضور شما، باعث دلگرمی است و انشاء الله که خداوند شما را در مسیر حقتان یاری خواهد کرد. وي در ادامه با اشاره به وضعیت زندانیان سیاسی نیز گفت: تمام تلاشتان را برای آزادی آنان بکنید و بدانید که ماندن آنان در زندان مانند اصل بازداشتشان خلاف شرع است. آيت الله بيات زنجاني خطاب به اعضاي فراكسيون اقليت مجلس تاكيد كرد: من برای شما دعا می‌کنم و مطمئن هستم که موفق خواهید بود و فشارهائی که تحمل می کنید نیز نشان از همین موفقیت ها دارد چراکه اگر موفق و موثر نبودید، از فشار و اذیت هم خبری نبود.
[تاريخ مطلب: چهاردهم آبان ۱۳۸۸ برابر با پنجم نوامبر ۲۰۰۹]

A case for (re)linking nuclear issues and repression

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110403873.html

The Washington Post

Ray Takeyh — ›Iran's nuclear diversion‹

Thursday, November 5, 2009

As the Obama administration grapples with the conundrum of Iran, it must balance its proliferation concerns with its moral responsibilities. Iran's post-election tremors have hardly subsided; in fact, the regime is systematically eviscerating its democratic opposition. Amid their merciless efforts to consolidate power, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies see discussion of the nuclear program as a means to silence the criticism that their domestic behavior merits. In the coming months, Iran will no doubt seek to prolong negotiations by accepting and then rejecting agreed-upon compacts and offering countless counterproposals. The United States and its allies must decide how to approach an Iranian diplomatic stratagem born out of cynical desire to clamp down on peaceful dissent with relative impunity.

International scrutiny remains trained on Iran's nuclear program, but outside that glare, the structure and orientation of the Revolutionary Guards are changing dramatically. The regime in Tehran is establishing the infrastructure for repression. The leadership of the Guards and the paramilitary Basij force have been integrated and are much more focused on vanquishing imaginary plots by a (nonexistent) fifth column. Indeed, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, warned in a speech last month that the structural changes were intended to "take on cultural divisions and the opposition to the soft war." To oversee the new campaign of repression, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, formerly deputy director of the Quds Brigades intelligence apparatus, has been appointed head of the Basij. Hossein Taeb, the notorious former commander of the Basij, has assumed leadership of the Guards intelligence bureau. Both have a history of involvement in torture and assassination campaigns at home and abroad, and they have imprisoned journalists and reformist politicians on trumped-up charges.

A peculiar trait among Iran's younger generation of conservatives is the extent to which they idealize the early 1980s. Most objective observers of Iran see those years as a time of foreign invasion, ethnic separatism and social division. But the leaders of Iran's security forces and many politicians today, including Ahmadinejad, see a time when the Islamic Republic salvaged its mandate from heaven through devotion and steadfastness. To fend off the forces of secularism and liberalism, their thinking goes, the Republic of Virtue unleashed its reign of terror and, with violence and a cultural revolution, managed to cleanse the nation.

Similar measures are being contemplated. Consider that in recent months, former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi have been threatened with arrest; universities targeted by "purification" campaigns; civil society activists given harsh prison sentences after contrived judicial proceedings. The callow followers of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, are mobilizing the machinery of state for a ruthless purge of the system.

Yet as the regime seeks to restore its grip on power, the Islamic Republic is once again moving in contradictory directions. On the one hand, the clerical state is busily impugning its critics as agents of the West while simultaneously expressing a desire to engage those foreign powers. The masters of the theocracy have learned from the protests that followed the June presidential election; they appreciate that in the era of social networks and other electronic communications, their unsavory practices are vulnerable to international exposure. Images of protesters being beaten and university dormitories stormed can trigger international calls for sanctions and further ostracize an already isolated theocracy. To mitigate such calls, Tehran will sporadically offer to discuss the nuclear issue to whet the appetite of Western powers -- before moving against its remaining domestic detractors. The powers that be in Iran hope that a prolonged and inconclusive negotiating process will cause the West to recoil from criticism, much less impose sanctions over Iran's human rights abuses.

Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran's hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.

Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs."