Speech given in May 2006 at the anniversary of the 2-Khordad (May 23, 1997) with the title, "2-Khordad without Khatami's government," and the slogan, "Reform Movement or Reforming the Movement?"
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
The democratic movement in the land of Iran has a very interesting story: the story of liberals shamed by ghorme-sabzi.
First -- The ingredients of ghorme-sabzi: This is a traditional and very popular Iranian stew. It is a mixture of: peas, meat, onion, oil, water, salt, leek, parsley, and fenugreek. It is a human-made stew. One could call it by a different name, but its content won't change as long as it is made from its usual principal ingredients.
Now imagine people who voraciously eat ghorme-sabzi but feel ashamed by its name. A group that eat the stew publicaly in restaurants but when the observers tell them that they are eating ghorme-sabzi, they feel embarrassed and claim that they are eating ice cream. What one eats may be beneficial or harmful to one's health. In any case, one may deny what one has eaten out of different motives by changing its name. Consider the following three patients:
-- The nutritionist has advised a diabetic person to abstain from lamb broth, ice cream and cream puffs. The diabetic person eats all three and nevertheless claims he has in fact eaten zucchini, tomato and baked peas which are very beneficial to his health.
-- The nutritionist has told a weak and thin person to eat enough protein, fats and sugar, otherwise he would be bed-stricken. By reading medical instructions and observing other patients, our patient figures he has no other way. So, in order to save his life, he eats enough protein, fats and sugar, but at the same time, he claims he is only drinking water and tea that don't contain any calories.
-- The specialist has prescribed Albumin IV for a patient. The patient is given the IV, but the patient, being illiterate, claims it is lemon syrup, not Albumin.
After this introduction, we can take a cursory look at our democrats nowadays. The story of our intellectuals, leftists, and 2-Khordad (reformist) parties who demand democracy is very much like these three patients. The political theorists say at the theoretical level that: "democracy means liberal democracy," "liberalism precedes democracy historically and existentially," "without liberalism we cannot have democracy" and at the practical level they say: "liberalism is the necessary condition for the creation of democracy. First make your society liberal, so that it can become democratic afterwards."
But the intellectuals, leftists, political parties and activists [in Iran] take the position of the aforementioned patients.
One group strongly defends liberal teachings and works towards their practical realization. But due to ignorance and lack of knowledge about political schools of thought, they claim that their ideal is not liberalism and that all the teachings they believe in and advocate are democratic ones, not liberal.
The second group knows that liberalism solves their problems, so they knowingly defend liberal instructions but out of shame claim that they are only democratic principles.
The third group knows that liberalism is fundamentally at odds with their culture and religion and that it will make the root of their their beliefs tremble and fall apart. These, too, defend liberal teachings, but call them democratic.
Second -- The ingredients of liberalism: Like ghorme-sabzi, liberalism has some ingredients that together make up this system of thought. They are:
1. Skepticism about power (especially absolute power) and the endeavor to restrain the power of the state through:
1-1. Democratization: A democratic state is the most likely to provide for freedom and equality. The democratic government is viewed by liberals as a "minimal government." It is shrinking constantly. Its domain of activity is limited and it is sharply determined and controlled by law.
1-2. Acceptance, tolerance, openness: Pursuing policies that make tolerance, openness, and freedom of conscience possible. John Locke believed that the fist principle of liberalism (the first principle of humane and rational social life) is acceptance. Accepting the other, accepting differences and distinctions, accepting that we do not have monopoly over the ultimate truth. I have to relate to the other, to communicate with her, to reach an understanding, to clarify our differences. There is no other meaning to democracy. To build a common life with a different other in such a way that guarantees the freedoms of both of us. To try and to want to reach a common understanding of the world.
1-3. Rejecting paternalism: A good life depends on individuals. The government could not and should not enforce its own view of happiness and a good life on its citizens. People must be safe from the compulsory power of the state.
2. Separation of powers (separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers): We owe the principle of separation of powers to the liberals. Baron de Montesquieu put it forward. The principle that is included in the constitution of many countries and is often disregarded. This separation must be maximized. Liberals also emphasize an important point: the judicial power must be completely independent of other powers. Our experience in the past 10 years and the coming to power of the reformists [in Iran] attests to the central and fundamental importance of this point. Without independent powerful judges to defend the rights of the citizens against the state, democracy would be meaningless.
3. The rule of law: The famous liberal quote, that "in a constitutional government, law is the king, and in a dictatorship, king is the law" underscores the importance of a principle that everyone talks about today: the complete rule of law, equality of citizens before the law, ...
By accepting that "a bad law is better than no law", we, Iranians, must not forget the struggle for a good law. The struggle that liberals consider one of the most important. Any bill that simply passes is called a law. [But] A law must be just, and it must recognize the liberties and equality of all citizens.
4. Individualism: Protecting the independence and personal dignity of individuals before state compulsion, church and the society. Individualism, on the one hand means protecting people's independence and on the other hand, it has a deeper meaning: to expand the potentials and the creative abilities of the individuals. To accept the individual as a person who has rights and must be able to organize her life the way he likes. This means accepting her human dignity and rank.
5. Freedom: Protecting the basic freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly, and religion. Freedom in liberalism is so important that many consider freedom to be the essence of liberalism and define la iberal to be a person who, in case of a conflict between freedom and any other matter, chooses freedom (see Isaiah Berlin's discussion on the conflict between freedom and equality)
6. Equality: equality before the law, courts, equality of opportunities and possibilities. What was considered in classical liberalism to be equality as stated above has been improved and made more complete in today's modern liberalism. Liberal thinkers such as [John] Rawls, [Richard] Rorty, Putnam and [Ronald] Dworkin discuss justice as fairness and defend equality (especially in the domain of economy) on a new basis and take it to be equivalent to freedom. Modern liberalism takes equality to a new level.
7. Separation of church and state: Separation of religious and rational institutions. Rejecting state religion and religious state. Those who reject state religion and religious state do in fact offer a liberal teaching. As the next step, they must accept that the laws that organize people's lives must be taken from the real life, not from ancient texts, or in better words, from special interpretations of ancient texts. This is also a very important liberal edict that laws must depend on real life and be independent of any tradition or interpretation of texts.
Liberals always accept the religion in the private sphere. They protested the unity of the institutions of religion and government and still do. They are not anti-religion. Freedom of religion is a basic principle of liberalism. Contrary to orthodox Marxists who completely reject religion, even from the private sphere of individuals (since they considered it to be the opium of the masses), liberals believe that everyone must have the right to set up his life according to his religious beliefs. But the civic code must not be based on any particular religious teaching. It should guarantee the freedom of religion in personal life and personal morality. Incidentally, a law based on the teachings of a particular religion is unable to guarantee the freedom of all religions.
8. Capitalism: According to the Oxford Encyclopedia (1988), capitalism "is a system of economic coordination, based on market competition, in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are privately owned and managed by individuals or firms." In liberals' view, being committed to freedom means accepting the institutions of private ownership and free market.
The free market economy was taken as the basis for policy making during the presidency of Hashemi [Rafsanjani] and Khatami (1989-2005) and was accepted by almost all political players, 2-Khordad [reformist] parties, intellectuals and leftists. China's rapid growth since 1979 to the present is due to leaving the socialist economy and accepting and acting on free markets and privatization. If we look at this process from the point of view of democracy, [Hugh] Berrington was right to say: "No bourgeoisie, no democracy."
Marx had revealed the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie in the progress of the West better than anyone else:
"The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations put together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? ... The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. ... It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors" and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. ... The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. ... The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation." [Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Sec 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians]
John Gray was a liberal at first. But starting from late 1990's he passed from Liberalism to Post-Liberalism. In his trilogy (on Isaiah Berlin, John Stuart Mill, and von Hayek) and in "Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy" he gets away from Liberalism. But even he emphatically says: "Socialism, too, has been successful only to the extent that it has been absorbed in the essential elements of liberal civility"
The [free] market disintegrates and scatters the power and facilitates decision-making. It is also necessary for the realization of political freedom. When the state is the only source of income and employment there remains no room for real freedom or opposition. (Compare with Iran where %80 of the economy is run by the state and the oil acts as the biggest obstacle against the democratization of the political system. The government that does not depend or rely on the civil society and which has all layers of the society as its paid workers is not a democratic one.) [Friedrich] von Hayek considered socialism to be epistemologically impossible, in the sense that any political system in which the market is repressed or distorted is unable to efficiently use the knowledge of its citizens. According to Hayek's "self-generating order," social institutions are created by human action but not on a human design. Our knowledge of the world, especially the social world, is first reflected in our actions and skills and it is only in the second stage that it appears in our theories, thus at least part of the practical knowledge always remains unexpressed. The constructivist rationalism that wants, like a civil engineer, to build the whole society is considered undesirable and impossible by Hayek.
If we pay attention, we see that the European social democracy (especially in the form it has taken after World War II with the increasing growth of the "bourgeois" democratic governments and the development of the production means in the free market economy based on competition, ...) has no fundamental conflict with the capitalist life and methods of production. This is a point of which the Lenisist and Stalinist critics of social democracy tirelessly remind us, and in fact we observe that, both in theory and in practical life, social democracy has accepted "the economic basis of free market and free competition" and only makes certain suggestion for a fairer distribution of wealth, and for the larger welfare of citizens (in particular on the level of consumer life and the necessary educational and medical facilities, ...). These suggestion are not at conflict with the capitalist basis of the economical life, nor are they necessarily rejected by liberal thinkers and politicians.
Europe's social democrats have now understood very well that social justice is not possible without the realization of a democratic government and without the unconditional freedom of its citizens. The bitter experience of Soviet Marxism (and its satellites in Albania, China, ...) shows clearly to what kinds of repressive regimes such slogans of justice lead, to what frightening dictatorships and to absolute restrictions of citizens' democratic rights and civil liberties. Only those who truly believe that with the protection and expansion of civil liberties (and all their necessities including economic freedom) one could really establish a more just system and a [better] distribution of wealth and opportunities are the ones to have found the deep meaning of the word justice.
In contrast, those who talk about social and economic justice with no belief in, or practice of, the necessities of civil liberties, democratic and human rights, i.e. those who block the way to the realization of basic human rights (the most natural rights and freedoms) and who suppress them (or justify their suppression in theory), are the ones who do not suggest anything more than the "Fascistics justice" , and their proposed approach, in the best case, leads to the equal sharing of poverty and misery. A social poverty that is of course not shared by the ruling elite, who will on the contrary enjoy a well-off financial life together with safety and health.
9. Separation of civil society from the state: The civil society is a web of associations and self-governing groups independent of the state that interconnect the citizens in relation to the issues of people's interest, and that just by their existence or action can affect the public politics. The society can coordinate itself through such free associations and groups, harmonize its actions and determine state policies to a great extent or change its direction. These associations are an exercise in self-governence. For self-governece an infinite number of [great many] such associations is needed.
David Held is one of the current defenders of social democracy and global democracy. In his view "It is only a federation of states and democratic societies that could create democracy." A serious critic of liberal democracy, he writes: "We have no way but to accept a few fundamental liberal principles. Those that relate to the central principle of 'impersonal' public power, the constitutional guarantee and protection of rights, variety of sources of power inside and outside the government, and the mechanisms providing for competition and discussion between different political programs. This point also confirms the fundamental liberal idea that the 'separation' of civil society and state should be one of the elements of a democratic political system."
In the present time, Iranian reformist thinkers and activists, like many intellectuals [the world over] and even a number of leftists (especially those who believe in the necessity of a new reading of Marx's ideas), suggest that they should demand the separation of civil society from the state (by suggesting setting up professional institutions and associations, ... at the level of civil society) and also the separation of the public and private spheres. In a sense, they have based all their political project and programing on these ideas. In this case, they should be asked what are these suggestions (discussed as strategies) other than putting forward liberal principles? Why then can't they bring themselves to admit clearly that their most important suggestions have their roots in the liberal thought and practice?
10. Separation of public and private spheres: The function of the public sphere is to rationalize the authority of the state through the institutional effects of an informed discussion and rational consensus. Supporting the liberal teaching of public sphere and seeking to create it, is an approach that is correctly pursued by the liberals [freedom seekers]. About 44 years ago (1962) Jurgen Habermas published his Habilitation dissertation at the University of Marburg under the title "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere." He shows that the public sphere is the "offspring of the 18th century." We know that democracies shaped in early 20th century. In early 18th century there was no democracy. But liberals created the public sphere. In this respect, Thomas McCarthy writes in an introduction to Habermas' book: "The liberal public sphere that sat between the civil society and the state, and in which the public critical discussion of public issues was institutionalized, was shaped in special historical conditions and as a result of the development of free-market economy. The newborn bourgeoisie, in the process of the struggle against government's hidden acts and the bureaucracy of the unqualified government rule, gradually succeeded in eliminating the old form of public sphere in which the ruling power was reflected 'in opposition [to the people]' and replaced it with a new form of public sphere. In this new form, the authority of the government is controlled 'by' the people via an informed and critical discourse."
Liberalism is the very basis of Habermas' discussion that, in the public sphere it is the logic of dialogue that rules and even the form of rationalism (from its simplest to the most complex theoretical forms) is based on "conversational reason", i.e. communicative reason, and goes beyond the ancient form of instrumental reason. (This is the sphere in which, in Popper's words, a rational dialogue is made possible. In a sense, the Popperian World Three.) Habermas emphasized himself that he learnt about the public sphere from Kant. On the other hand, he writes that the "unfinished Enlightenment project" is the same as the "unfinished project of modernity." What was at a time (in the age of Enlightenment and the period of practical formation of liberalism) the basis for the progress of human creative abilities, is in our times bygone. Do we not hear the voice of the Enlightenment thinkers of past centuries? Has their belief in liberalism (in its most precise philosophical and political meaning) quenched?
11. Pluralism: Admitting variety and diversity of society and understanding and approving of different modes of life.
One can say with certainty that the experience of the 20th century reflects the following point: It is only based on liberal beliefs that variety and diversity in all aspects of life (every-day life, thoughts, arts) is accepted. Notice that all social and intellectual systems that were based on criticism of liberalism, ebded up blocking variety and diversity of life and thought with all their force. From Stalinist and Maoist Communism to Fascism and Nazism, they all sought "uniformity" and similarity. They sought the complete unity of all individuals (who were different with different opinions and human experiences). As Paul Ricoeur points out, the original basis of the "thought of accepting the diversity of thoughts" is liberal. In an intellectual system where the diversity of people is praised (ie. one that explicitly calls itself individualist) can one be certain of 1) the development of the individual's creative abilities, and 2) the possibility of dialogue and mutual understanding.
12. Rationalism (the critical reason of Kant, Popper, Habermas): Reason is shared by all human beings. We can improve our society through reasoning, [and] believing in convincing the other party through rational argumentation. Of the three thinkers mentioned above, Kant and Popper are clearly liberal. But Habermas, with his background in the Frankfurt School (and so in a critical, or as is known, "European" reading of Marxism) does not explicitly call himself liberal. But I would ask, is it not a liberal idea to place communicative reason before instrumental reason (whose unique feature is to convince the other of "my" certain truth)? Especially when we notice Habermas' definition of communicative reason whose basis is the logic of dialogue and the possibility of mutual human understanding. This discussion of Habermas, in which one finds through communicative reasoning a shared understanding with the other (in the sense of mutual agreement), is basicaly the acceptance of the other as an entity other than me, different from me. The origins of this idea is to be found in the works of liberal writers. Only there is it possible to say that my freedom means recognizing the freedom of others.
13. Human rights: Mark Haugaard says, "the usage of such terminology as human rights is liberal." Human rights are those collective demands that all human beings are justly entitled to ask for,simply because of being human. In the 17th century, these demands were called natural rights, [since] they were claimed to originate from the intrinsic nature of every human being. In later centuries it was replaced by, first the concept of the rights of man, and then that of human rights.
In Kant's view, people's rights must be respected since they are rational beings capable of obeying the ethical law. In his view, humans must be treated as the goal, and never as a tool. On this criterion, violating others' rights is the same as treating them as a mere tool, and hence impermissible.
Today's intellectuals, leftists, and reformists correctly defend human rights. A group of reformists even formed a front for demanding democracy and human rights, pointing to where the main problem lies. Then how can we justify forgetting the descent of human rights and ignoring the fact that human rights is the offspring of liberalism?
14. Reform vs. revolution: Revolutionarism is a leftist teaching and reformism is a liberal teaching. In the late 1960's an interview was made with [Herbet] Marcuse and [Karl] Popper that was published as "Reform of Revolution [: a Confrontation]." That interview shows two different approaches to solving social problems. Iranian leftists were revolutionaries too. But having read the works of Hanna Arendt, Karl Popper and other liberals and observing the practical consequences of the 1979 revolution [in Iran], it has been years that they have explicitly rejected revolutionarism and support reformism in its stead. If a leftist wishes to stay a leftist, he must still remain a revolutionary. But if he is "anti-revolutionary" he must know that he is a liberal, not a leftist. Liberals consider revolution, in the sense of abrupt changes in fundamental political, social, cultural and economic structure, as impossible and undesirable. But [Iranian] remorseful leftists and intellectuals do not have clear a view in this field either: Firstly, Hanna Arendt only rejected all-encompassing revolutions that seek to change everything. She supported the revolution that was aiming to establish freedom. Secondly, Popper did not rejected revolutions altogether either. After mentioning his reasons against revolution, he writes:
"I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent revolution. I believe with some medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers who taught the admissibility of tyrannicide that there may indeed, under a tyranny, be no other possibility, and that a violent revolution may be justified. But I also believe that any such revolution should have as its only aim the establishment of a democracy; {and by democracy I do not mean a vague concept like that of the 'rule of people' or the 'rule of majority'; what I mean is a set of institutions - especially public elections, that is the right of the people to change their government - that allow the public to control their rulers and fire them and to allow the people to attain without violence and even against their rulers' wishes, the reforms they want.} In other words, the use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible." ["The open Society and Its Enemies", vol.2 , chapter 19, p.166 - the text in {} is translated from Persian.]
In socialist tradition, especially in the Marxist tradition of thought and practice, there were forces (quite powerful in their own right) that supported reforms against revolution. The old Marx himself has been quoted in the final decade of his life from some of his political speeches and correspondences, where he supported the possibility of the securing of power by the proletariat to be possible through parliamentary and legal campaigns, and has even talked about the "sin of revolution" when conditions for nonviolent taking of power are present. People like [Eduard] Bernstein and [Karl] Kautsky (after 1914, the same Kautsky whom Lenin considered apostate and traitor) talked about the possibility of talking power by the proletariat through parliamentary and legal means. (Kautsky called this the "strategy of attrition.") Even Antonio Gramsci went back to these teachings by putting forward the concepts of "civil society," the "hegemony of the proletariat," and the "strategy of taking power through long-term struggle within the civil society." The continuation of these debates is found in Habermas' understanding of "constitutionalism" and the basic ideas of the thinkers of the Frankfurt School (especially Herbert Marcuse). Another example is Anthony Giddens. He is a left-leaning thinker who gave the Liberal Party [in Britain] a new life by establishing a new foundation for understanding party and political organizations and is today considered a party theorist who makes suggestions for the welfare of people starting from liberal principles.
But the important point is that, accepting reform and making suggestions such as the strategy of attrition is a return to liberal teachings. To engage in legal and political campaigns instead of revolutions is to return to liberal ideas of "improving the matters."
Third -- Liberal democracy: David Beetham says: "The assumptions and fundamental institutions of classical liberalism were proven to be indispensable for the protection of democracy at the level of the nation-states of the 19th and 20th centuries, to the extent that attempts to eliminate them or acting without them has been detrimental to democracy... historically, liberalism has provided a necessary basis for democracy." "the principles and institutions of classical liberalism... that were created before universal suffrage, have proven to be necessary for the survival of democracy in the age of collective politics. What we learnt by the end of the 20th century was that the attempts to annul these liberal features, under the guise of creating a healthier democracy, have only resulted in the weakening of democracy."
(The transformations of classical liberalism, whether we call it "bourgeois" or by any other name, have made undeniable contributions to these democratic orders, which consist of the struggles of liberalism itself to compel the absolute [rule of] government to be publicly responsible and to be under public supervision. In this sense, if we define liberal democracy to be the kind of democracy that is founded on these particular liberal components, there will be no serious democratic substitute for it.)
Andrew Levin, a critic of liberal democracy, writes: "Liberal democratic political systems, according to almost any measure, are better than the ones that have replaced them and are also favored against other social and political relations."
Fourth -- Dictatorship and the majority: Democracy means elective government, i.e. giving power to rulers by people through free and fair (competitive) elections. It means taking the rulers away from power by non-violent methods through negative judgement in the judgment day of election. Democracy is the rule of the majority, not that of the minority.
[But] if the democratic system is not constrained by certain conditions it could lead to the dictatorship of the majority. All the fears of John Stuart Mill, de Tocqueville, von Hayek, Karl Popper, and others were not for nothing.
The first condition that constrains the rule of the majority, is the condition of "respecting the rights of the minority." The majority does not have the right to pass laws that violate the rights of the minority.
The important point is that the right of the minority (its legal right to becoming the future majority by criticizing the policies of the current majority) is not trampled on. The important point is not that elections are held constantly in a country. (Our government officials never tire of saying that elections have been held constantly in Iran.) The important point is whether the minority forces have had the opportunity to participate in every elections. Were the opponents of the current government able to make their ideas known, explain their programs to people, and ask for their votes? It is exactly here where we see the weaknesses of what is called the "rule of people" [mardom-salari] in Iran. This "rule of people" is not "democracy." Because different opposition and minority groups did not have the right of expression and the right to participate in a fair competition.
The second condition is "respecting human rights." Human, by the virtue of being human alone, has rights. The democratic government cannot pass laws that violate human rights.
The third condition that constrains democracy is the condition of recognizing the so called "self-creation of citizens." The political system is a social construct. A means to reach the ends and values. No system is the end in itself. Democracy is the best system which provides for the possibility of the self-creation of citizens. The citizens want this means (the democratic system) for these ends: they want to be free, to choose freely, to choose a specific lifestyle freely, to create themselves as a work of art.
The last point, i.e. one's right to choice, to dissent, to choosing the way to be, to freedom in the private domain of one's life (from the choice of outfit and the necessities of living, the choice of government to the choice of the modes of existence) is the essence of this discussion. I ask, what is democracy but this very right to creating one's self, the way one desires, in the fashion that seems right in one's own view? Free life in this sense (the same sense shared by [Charles] Baudelaire and [Michel] Foucault: creating life as a work of art) is not possible except in political systems that are based on liberal beliefs and teachings. There are no other historic examples either.
It is for this reason that democracy, without liberalism, is no democracy at all.
In David Beetham's view, "five liberal components are necessary for the democratic system and its duration. A) Providing the freedom of expression, of association and the likes, so that there is a special legal support for individual rights. B) Separation of executive, legislative, and judiciary powers, for without this separation, the idea of the rule of law is no more than a dream. C) The institution of the assembly of representatives. D) The principle of limited government, and the separation of public and private spheres, whether we define the private sphere according to an independent civil society, [free] market and private ownership, family and private relationships, or according to individual conscience. E) The epistemic assumption that there is no ultimate truth that states what the good of the society (ie. a truth based on revelation, divine inspiration or a special knowledge) is, but that the only measure of collective good is what the freely coordinated people choose and not those commanded by the experts or prophets based on a higher level of knowledge. Here we see that the anti-patriarchal nature of democracy is the direct product of the anti-patriarchal nature of liberalism, and based on a similar epistemological foundation."
Fifth -- Theoretical insight, practical honesty and courage: Idealism and democracy not only need courage but also honesty. Liberalism is a compound of what was said [above]. We should not promote and defend liberal teachings under the name 'democracy'. Western societies became more and more liberal over the course of a few centuries. When liberal constructs were formed democracy naturally stood over these constructs in a few waves in the beginning of the 20th century and western societies became liberal democratic societies. We could and we should criticize liberal democracy. Feminists question the separation of the public and private domains and claim that not all the oppressions and injustices have their origins in politics, but that many of them have social roots. In their opinion, private affairs must not be separated from political ones; private domain and the family institution must be democratic. Socialists question liberalism's market economy and seek a just distribution of wealth. Anti-individualists question the abstract liberal notion of an individual with no history, tradition, and identity. Every group, while accepting the liberal teachings, criticizes and improves one or more of those teachings in order to open the way to a more open, more egaliterian, and more just society that allows different styles of life. But no one changes the name of liberalism. Liberalism, good or bad, is liberalism. If someone believes the liberal teachings, he must honestly and courageously declare himself a liberal or a liberal democrat. An ethical "social democrat" is also one who honestly and courageously confesses to be a liberal.
[Mohammad] Khatami, [Abdolkarim] Soroush, and [Mohsen] Kadivar and many religious leftists correctly point out that liberalism and religion are inconflict but honesty demands that they, as religious people, explicitly reject liberalism, not that they accept all liberal teachings, call them democracy and claim that democracy and Islam are compatible and defend this so called religious 'rule of the people' [mardom-salari].
What is the purpose of insisting on the element of honesty? Why do I consider this ethical principle to be such a pivotal part of this discussion? The famous hermeneutic principle of honesty demands our interpretations of any text, event, or other people's actions, to be as following: an interpretation consistent with the whole. A conclusion that is not just compatible with one or some parts, but with the whole of the text. [One that] does not overlook the internal consistency of the event or the text. Those who accept a multitude of liberal beliefs and teachings, but are not willing to call them by their real name, claim to be fighting for the rights that are in fact liberal rights of the people, but do not admit their liberal name; either they do not truly know liberalism, or call it by contrived names out of fear or caution. Honesty requires that when we mention liberal teachings or claim to be supporting them (or do so in practice), that we should call ourselves liberals. That we call these teachings by their true name. Not to try to reconcile them with ideas and practices that would ultimately negate them.
Considering the conditions and the atmosphere in which we live today, where there is no guarantee for many of our basic human rights, what is the use of writing against liberal democracy? What pleasure does the leftist view, which considers itself to be radical as well, take by constantly looking for evidence for the shortcomings of liberalism? Is there anything else except the hostility of Marx towards "bourgeois democracy"? Except the fact that Marx talked about "parliamentary disease" and "democratic foolishness"? Except the fact that Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, thought of democracy only as the "rule of the proletariat" and denied the possibility of a democratic bourgeois government? What plays down Marx's theoretical mistake, but does not justify it, considering the historical era in which he lived (although one may ask why John Stuart Mill and de Tocqueville did not make the same mistake), appears as a tragic comedy in our condition today . [The tragic comedy] that in today's painful condition we are willing to forego this direct path that brings us near our goal (if our purpose is really to guarantee freedoms and equality) and instead constantly recall teachings to whose falsity the history of Gulags and Stalinist dictatorship have already testified.
06 June 2006
23 May 2006
Message for the Celeberation of Ms. Simin Behbahani
In The Name Of Truth
To all the great Iranian mothers in diaspora, with greetings and best wishes for their happiness and prosperity.
As Jesus says, "the truth shall set you free" (John, 8:32). But which truth shall set us free? Which truth shall set us free from the clutches of ideology (false reason)? His eminence, Molana Jalal al-Din [Rumi] believed that the prophets have come to set the human kind free:
Since the prophets guide to freedom / to believers they bring freedom
O believers, be happy in your groups / Like cedars and lilies take in freedom
It is futile to think that the society and the political system will be democratized by sitting and playing with concepts like freedom, civil society, tolerance, approval, human rights, secularism and the separation of the public and private realms. The human rights are there for the protection of human dignity and the principle of personal autonomy. Freedom of expression is justified based on the right of the speaker to express her ideas, and the right of the listener to hear those ideas, and the collective good of a free society. But the society will not attain the freedom of expression, just by writing about it and its justifying bases. Belief without action, is no belief at all. It is not possible to claim belief in humanist values and ideals, but not to take a step to make them realize. We must leave a special place for courage, love and kindness in our moral value system. Courage is morally respectable since accepting dangers is selfless. It is a kind of devotion originating from being free of care, greed, and from going beyond one's own self. All moral values will be blind or a madness without reason, except for courage. Otherwise they are void. One wouldn't know how to fight injustice without reason, but without courage one couldn't even consider it. Philosophers need courage in order to think. But thinking alone does not make one courageous. This is why Kant considered the message of Enlightenment to be growing out of childhood and commanded: Sapere Aude (have the courage to know). We need courage in order to know. When a thinker faces the logical consequences of a reasonable claim, he may find the consequences to be theoretically or practically unacceptable or frightening, but a thinker must face the problems courageously and follow a reasonable claim to its logical conclusion. It may be that the argued claim pull the rug from under our feet, disconnect us from our tradition and our past, destroy the cosmos we were living in, without providing us with a new support. The truth-seeking thinker and intellectual, will courageously accept the practical consequences of his idea, so that the truth sets him free; but, at the same time, he does not consider his ideas to be immutable and absolute truth, unlike those who disguise egotism and selfishness in a sacred outfit and do not know that if one should worship anyone, it should be God and no one else. And an idea is not God. No one can think for us, suffer for us, fight for us. Intellectual courage, which is refusing to submit to fear in our thinking and refusing to accept anything but the truth, is now highly needed in our circles. Democracy and human rights need bold and courageous agents. People who believe in democratic values and show their belief by struggling against oppression and injustice. It is obvious [however] that courage in practice, without wisdom in thoughts, will not do.
The problem of the avant-garde intellectual before the revolution [in Iran] was the poverty of philosophy and not attending to theoretical studies. Theorizing was completely rejected as "bourgeois philosophy" and "capitalist abstraction." Everything was reduced to "pratique" and "struggle." Resistance and courage, if not based on a democratic-humanist theory, replaces one dictatorship with another. The 1979 revolution [of Iran] was the result of a 1970's discourse that was anti-West (anti-imperialist), anti-liberal, anti-democratic, based on a return to our selves ([alternatively] our Islamic, Asian, or communist class-free proletariat self), ideologic, utopian, and revolutionary. We should not think of that revolution as a detour. Trotsky wrote "The Revolution Betrayed" thinking Stalin had betrayed the ideals of the Bolshevik revolution. But no one betrayed the Russian revolution and what took place was the exact realization of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary ideology. The classical all-encompassing ideological revolution is an irrevocably big mistake. [Such a] Revolution does not lead to democracy and does not create freedoms. Therefore, the 1979 revolution was not betrayed. It was the objective realization of the 1970's discourse. The experience of the 1979 revolution guided us all to the fact that without reason and thinking we cannot go past our childhood and become democrat adults.
In the first two decades after the revolution, we gradually went beyond the 1970's discourse and shaped a new one. The new discourse was, in complete contrast to the old one, modern, liberal, democratic, non-ideological, non-utopian, of human rights, and reformist. But why, even with this new discourse, the intellectuals could not take the big step towards democratization of the political system and hope and enthusiasm turned to hopelessness, depression and isolation? The problem of the ivory-towered intellectual of the 2000's is escaping action, rejecting struggle and resistance, and being busy with philosophy and conceptualization. It is thought that all our problems will be solved by philosophy. The metaphysical tradition of [Mullah] Sadra and the mysticism of Muhy al-Din Arabi have taken us enough away from the world and social life. Then what need is there to Heideger, Nietzsche, and Carl Schmitt whose philosophy doesn't have any practical liberating aspect for us? ([Of course] all philosophies must be freely discussed in the public arena, but not all philosophies are liberating or truth-seeking and do not set one free from the darkness of mind.) Deliberating and thinking is not only our right, but also, strongly and emphatically, our duty. My emphasis, however, is on two pints: (1) Deliberation is the necessary condition for our prosperity, not sufficient. In order to provide the sufficient condition, acting on our ideas is inevitable. (2) From the limitless ocean of possibilities for deliberation, morality and humanitarianism rule to choose those that are not only theoretical, but those that will have some practical aspects sooner or later and can effect an improvement of the situation of the people. The analytical philosophy of Kant alone cannot get us to democracy, freedom and human rights. In order to build a democratic system we need not only empirical social sciences, but also action, steadfastness, movement, perseverance, ideals, courage, and civil disobedience, and very much so. In order to escape social responsibility, the ivory-towered intellectual resorts to the tricks of sophistry. He says: democracy, freedom and human rights, are not the issues of the people of Iran, but bread, water, clothing and shelter. He says: the knowledge and social prerequisites of democracy do not exist in Iran. He says: Iran will not be democratized in a hundred years. He says: the people are not ready to fight and pay the price for democracy, so why should the intellectual shoulder their burden and pay the price for them. He says: the modern era, is the era of separation of roles and division of social labour. The intellectual, is not a party or political activist, his job is to create thoughts and invent theories.
Even though all these claims are subject to criticism and leave ample room for questioning, let us suppose that they are all true. The question is: how can we deduce from these assumptions, silence before falsehoods, injustices, violations of human rights, and oppression? If the entirety of the people of a country are dictatorial and their political system is authoritarian, should the intellectuals be, following the people, dictatorial and support the authoritarian system? In any case and situation, for instance in fascistic conditions, the intellectual, even if single and alone, must stand against falsehood and courageously attack the violations of human rights. If the intellectual is only to defend his own rights, he must still stand against the sultanist system; because when intellectuals are butchered for being dissidents and different, tomorrow it will be the turn of the ivory-towered intellectuals who will be put in prison, in reality for dissent, but in appearance for imaginary excuses. If on the day when the first person was arrested and imprisoned, we had protested, if on the day when the first person was assassinated, we had stood up, if on the day when the first political opposition member was executed, we had resisted, now it would not have been my turn, the ivory-towered intellectual, to be arrested, imprisoned or assassinated.
Courage, this philosopher's stone of the world of intellect and reformism, is not limited just to the Kantian courage, that is the courage to know. We also need the [Baruch] Spinozan courage, which is the courage to overcome any of our psychological and moral failures and shortcomings, let aside the [Paul] Tillichan courage that wants us to see and accept ourselves as we are and not deny ourselves. Is not today's intellectual very much in need of this Tillichan courage as well? Does not the intellectual, in [Carl Gustav] Jung's interpretation, have a duty to accept the dark side of his existence as well, and is not a big part of this dark side, the intellectual's own past? And is there an intellectual who doesn't see in his past more or less dark spots, ignorance, mistakes, working with less than desired quality or quantity? And which intellectual is it who doesn't know that a considerable part of the misery and misfortune that has taken over his society is the consequence of his own ignorance, mistakes, and miscarriage? Why should the intellectual be so pessimistic and doubtful of people and optimistic and sure of himself?
Ms. Simin Behbahani is one of Iranian heroines, who, in the past years, has been in the front line of Iran's liberal movement. In this path, she has been insulted and beaten. She was treated unjustly and endured magnanimously. Behbahani could move a generation with her poems, but her work is not limited to poetry and literature. She actively and bravely defends the victims whenever the civil rights are trampled upon. One day she shows up in front of a hospital to defend the disregarded rights of an imprisoned dissident. On another day she is in a park to protest the extreme, unbelievable, and painful inequality of women compared to men and to say we are human too and human, on being human alone, is entitled to rights and dignity, and no regime, ideology, belief or culture could not and should not discriminate between human beings based on imaginary and ancient divisions and ignore their need to dignity. Still on another day, in another setting, she protests the murder of dissidents and with her poems keeps their memory alive. She has the courage to think.
Here I want to examine this issue from a different angle, and point out a valuable characteristic of the lady of the sonnet of Iran, which may have been less noted beside her beautiful and deep poetry. What boldly distinguishes the best contemporary poet of Iran, is her civil courage. Civil courage is a rare element in the Iranian society. It brings pride and honor, that a lady in the realm of literature reminds her compatriots, with her pen and her pace, of courage and civic duties.
With all the suffocating taboos surrounding women, by stating the most creative elements of the private realm in her poems, Ms. Behbahani not only breaks taboos but also presents Iranians the gift of negative liberty. The oppressed quiet of the liberal soles afraid of demanding their rights in the private and public realms, finds a liberating boldness in the sphere of Behbahani's poems. A pluralism of demands and needs in Behbahani's poetic space, provokes the reader against all ideological impositions and compulsions, against neglecting the private realm and against depressing and uniformity of the public realm.
However, the lady of poem and sonnet does not only teach the lesson of civil courage with her poems. She is a citizen from whom we may, without exaggeration, learn citizenship. Despite all the sufferings and injuries on her tired and fragile body, she endures the hardship of defending the rights of the dissidents, women, and intellectuals and reminds the forgetful rulers, with serenity and patience, of the dignity of human being and its morality, and never falls short of, and knows no limits to, civil action to enlighten them. The courage of Iran's great poet is linked with a civil responsibility. Understanding civil responsibility in dictatorial Iran requires courage, and should be rightly distinguished, from other false and crooked forms of courage, as civil courage. Her poems and thoughts, her knowledge and character, whether in the sphere of literature or society, has this same description; being responsible for the protection of human rights and the dignity of citizens, as human beings intrinsically deserving respect, and taking them as the ultimate objective. Ms. Behbahani's poems are very important in the theory of literature. Her creativity in the domain of Persian sonnet (which was likened by a famous literary scholar to Nima's*: Behbahani is the Nima of sonnet) shows that the courage and the creativity we see seen in her social commitment, is apparent and influential in her artistic and poetic work as well. In the social commitment discourse, there is always a concern for "seriousness," "strictness," and "firm belief." These are the imperative elements for political and social activities, but literature (especially poetry) adds a humanistic and emotional aspect, and in a sense, a new moral aspect to all of this. It is the language of poetry that expresses both human problems and their solutions. They show what is decaying and declining and what is coming out from within this decline. Poetry is internally and deeply related to human freedom.
Yes, it is this valuable and rare characteristic that distinguishes the lady of poetry of Iran and bestows influence upon her words and honesty upon her manners, and with this influence and honesty invites us all, and mostly the rulers, to do the same.
What can we say about the lady of Persian poem and sonnet, who as an artist is in the service of beauty, but firstly: has put beauty in the service of two other psychologically valuable elements, that is truthfulness (truth) and goodness (good), and secondly: her art is not only to show the beauties of life and being, but also to make them more beautiful as well. There are many artists who show the beauties of the world, being and life--and this is very valuable in its own right--but there are few who moreover try to make the world, being and life beautiful and in addition to displaying the beauty, create beauty as well. And Behbahani's descent is of the latter.
Behbahani is the symbol of an unequal battle with different kinds of falsehood, which only with human dignity has kept her stead. In these chaotic times, in spite of illness, she still stands tall, in the manner of cedars, and guards the sublime human values. Celebrating her is celebrating human dignities, especially dissent and being different.
May her existence be everlasting and her kindness be evermore.
Akbar Ganji
May 20, 2006
___
* Nima Yushij (1896-1959) is the father of modern Persian poetry
To all the great Iranian mothers in diaspora, with greetings and best wishes for their happiness and prosperity.
As Jesus says, "the truth shall set you free" (John, 8:32). But which truth shall set us free? Which truth shall set us free from the clutches of ideology (false reason)? His eminence, Molana Jalal al-Din [Rumi] believed that the prophets have come to set the human kind free:
Since the prophets guide to freedom / to believers they bring freedom
O believers, be happy in your groups / Like cedars and lilies take in freedom
It is futile to think that the society and the political system will be democratized by sitting and playing with concepts like freedom, civil society, tolerance, approval, human rights, secularism and the separation of the public and private realms. The human rights are there for the protection of human dignity and the principle of personal autonomy. Freedom of expression is justified based on the right of the speaker to express her ideas, and the right of the listener to hear those ideas, and the collective good of a free society. But the society will not attain the freedom of expression, just by writing about it and its justifying bases. Belief without action, is no belief at all. It is not possible to claim belief in humanist values and ideals, but not to take a step to make them realize. We must leave a special place for courage, love and kindness in our moral value system. Courage is morally respectable since accepting dangers is selfless. It is a kind of devotion originating from being free of care, greed, and from going beyond one's own self. All moral values will be blind or a madness without reason, except for courage. Otherwise they are void. One wouldn't know how to fight injustice without reason, but without courage one couldn't even consider it. Philosophers need courage in order to think. But thinking alone does not make one courageous. This is why Kant considered the message of Enlightenment to be growing out of childhood and commanded: Sapere Aude (have the courage to know). We need courage in order to know. When a thinker faces the logical consequences of a reasonable claim, he may find the consequences to be theoretically or practically unacceptable or frightening, but a thinker must face the problems courageously and follow a reasonable claim to its logical conclusion. It may be that the argued claim pull the rug from under our feet, disconnect us from our tradition and our past, destroy the cosmos we were living in, without providing us with a new support. The truth-seeking thinker and intellectual, will courageously accept the practical consequences of his idea, so that the truth sets him free; but, at the same time, he does not consider his ideas to be immutable and absolute truth, unlike those who disguise egotism and selfishness in a sacred outfit and do not know that if one should worship anyone, it should be God and no one else. And an idea is not God. No one can think for us, suffer for us, fight for us. Intellectual courage, which is refusing to submit to fear in our thinking and refusing to accept anything but the truth, is now highly needed in our circles. Democracy and human rights need bold and courageous agents. People who believe in democratic values and show their belief by struggling against oppression and injustice. It is obvious [however] that courage in practice, without wisdom in thoughts, will not do.
The problem of the avant-garde intellectual before the revolution [in Iran] was the poverty of philosophy and not attending to theoretical studies. Theorizing was completely rejected as "bourgeois philosophy" and "capitalist abstraction." Everything was reduced to "pratique" and "struggle." Resistance and courage, if not based on a democratic-humanist theory, replaces one dictatorship with another. The 1979 revolution [of Iran] was the result of a 1970's discourse that was anti-West (anti-imperialist), anti-liberal, anti-democratic, based on a return to our selves ([alternatively] our Islamic, Asian, or communist class-free proletariat self), ideologic, utopian, and revolutionary. We should not think of that revolution as a detour. Trotsky wrote "The Revolution Betrayed" thinking Stalin had betrayed the ideals of the Bolshevik revolution. But no one betrayed the Russian revolution and what took place was the exact realization of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary ideology. The classical all-encompassing ideological revolution is an irrevocably big mistake. [Such a] Revolution does not lead to democracy and does not create freedoms. Therefore, the 1979 revolution was not betrayed. It was the objective realization of the 1970's discourse. The experience of the 1979 revolution guided us all to the fact that without reason and thinking we cannot go past our childhood and become democrat adults.
In the first two decades after the revolution, we gradually went beyond the 1970's discourse and shaped a new one. The new discourse was, in complete contrast to the old one, modern, liberal, democratic, non-ideological, non-utopian, of human rights, and reformist. But why, even with this new discourse, the intellectuals could not take the big step towards democratization of the political system and hope and enthusiasm turned to hopelessness, depression and isolation? The problem of the ivory-towered intellectual of the 2000's is escaping action, rejecting struggle and resistance, and being busy with philosophy and conceptualization. It is thought that all our problems will be solved by philosophy. The metaphysical tradition of [Mullah] Sadra and the mysticism of Muhy al-Din Arabi have taken us enough away from the world and social life. Then what need is there to Heideger, Nietzsche, and Carl Schmitt whose philosophy doesn't have any practical liberating aspect for us? ([Of course] all philosophies must be freely discussed in the public arena, but not all philosophies are liberating or truth-seeking and do not set one free from the darkness of mind.) Deliberating and thinking is not only our right, but also, strongly and emphatically, our duty. My emphasis, however, is on two pints: (1) Deliberation is the necessary condition for our prosperity, not sufficient. In order to provide the sufficient condition, acting on our ideas is inevitable. (2) From the limitless ocean of possibilities for deliberation, morality and humanitarianism rule to choose those that are not only theoretical, but those that will have some practical aspects sooner or later and can effect an improvement of the situation of the people. The analytical philosophy of Kant alone cannot get us to democracy, freedom and human rights. In order to build a democratic system we need not only empirical social sciences, but also action, steadfastness, movement, perseverance, ideals, courage, and civil disobedience, and very much so. In order to escape social responsibility, the ivory-towered intellectual resorts to the tricks of sophistry. He says: democracy, freedom and human rights, are not the issues of the people of Iran, but bread, water, clothing and shelter. He says: the knowledge and social prerequisites of democracy do not exist in Iran. He says: Iran will not be democratized in a hundred years. He says: the people are not ready to fight and pay the price for democracy, so why should the intellectual shoulder their burden and pay the price for them. He says: the modern era, is the era of separation of roles and division of social labour. The intellectual, is not a party or political activist, his job is to create thoughts and invent theories.
Even though all these claims are subject to criticism and leave ample room for questioning, let us suppose that they are all true. The question is: how can we deduce from these assumptions, silence before falsehoods, injustices, violations of human rights, and oppression? If the entirety of the people of a country are dictatorial and their political system is authoritarian, should the intellectuals be, following the people, dictatorial and support the authoritarian system? In any case and situation, for instance in fascistic conditions, the intellectual, even if single and alone, must stand against falsehood and courageously attack the violations of human rights. If the intellectual is only to defend his own rights, he must still stand against the sultanist system; because when intellectuals are butchered for being dissidents and different, tomorrow it will be the turn of the ivory-towered intellectuals who will be put in prison, in reality for dissent, but in appearance for imaginary excuses. If on the day when the first person was arrested and imprisoned, we had protested, if on the day when the first person was assassinated, we had stood up, if on the day when the first political opposition member was executed, we had resisted, now it would not have been my turn, the ivory-towered intellectual, to be arrested, imprisoned or assassinated.
Courage, this philosopher's stone of the world of intellect and reformism, is not limited just to the Kantian courage, that is the courage to know. We also need the [Baruch] Spinozan courage, which is the courage to overcome any of our psychological and moral failures and shortcomings, let aside the [Paul] Tillichan courage that wants us to see and accept ourselves as we are and not deny ourselves. Is not today's intellectual very much in need of this Tillichan courage as well? Does not the intellectual, in [Carl Gustav] Jung's interpretation, have a duty to accept the dark side of his existence as well, and is not a big part of this dark side, the intellectual's own past? And is there an intellectual who doesn't see in his past more or less dark spots, ignorance, mistakes, working with less than desired quality or quantity? And which intellectual is it who doesn't know that a considerable part of the misery and misfortune that has taken over his society is the consequence of his own ignorance, mistakes, and miscarriage? Why should the intellectual be so pessimistic and doubtful of people and optimistic and sure of himself?
Ms. Simin Behbahani is one of Iranian heroines, who, in the past years, has been in the front line of Iran's liberal movement. In this path, she has been insulted and beaten. She was treated unjustly and endured magnanimously. Behbahani could move a generation with her poems, but her work is not limited to poetry and literature. She actively and bravely defends the victims whenever the civil rights are trampled upon. One day she shows up in front of a hospital to defend the disregarded rights of an imprisoned dissident. On another day she is in a park to protest the extreme, unbelievable, and painful inequality of women compared to men and to say we are human too and human, on being human alone, is entitled to rights and dignity, and no regime, ideology, belief or culture could not and should not discriminate between human beings based on imaginary and ancient divisions and ignore their need to dignity. Still on another day, in another setting, she protests the murder of dissidents and with her poems keeps their memory alive. She has the courage to think.
Here I want to examine this issue from a different angle, and point out a valuable characteristic of the lady of the sonnet of Iran, which may have been less noted beside her beautiful and deep poetry. What boldly distinguishes the best contemporary poet of Iran, is her civil courage. Civil courage is a rare element in the Iranian society. It brings pride and honor, that a lady in the realm of literature reminds her compatriots, with her pen and her pace, of courage and civic duties.
With all the suffocating taboos surrounding women, by stating the most creative elements of the private realm in her poems, Ms. Behbahani not only breaks taboos but also presents Iranians the gift of negative liberty. The oppressed quiet of the liberal soles afraid of demanding their rights in the private and public realms, finds a liberating boldness in the sphere of Behbahani's poems. A pluralism of demands and needs in Behbahani's poetic space, provokes the reader against all ideological impositions and compulsions, against neglecting the private realm and against depressing and uniformity of the public realm.
However, the lady of poem and sonnet does not only teach the lesson of civil courage with her poems. She is a citizen from whom we may, without exaggeration, learn citizenship. Despite all the sufferings and injuries on her tired and fragile body, she endures the hardship of defending the rights of the dissidents, women, and intellectuals and reminds the forgetful rulers, with serenity and patience, of the dignity of human being and its morality, and never falls short of, and knows no limits to, civil action to enlighten them. The courage of Iran's great poet is linked with a civil responsibility. Understanding civil responsibility in dictatorial Iran requires courage, and should be rightly distinguished, from other false and crooked forms of courage, as civil courage. Her poems and thoughts, her knowledge and character, whether in the sphere of literature or society, has this same description; being responsible for the protection of human rights and the dignity of citizens, as human beings intrinsically deserving respect, and taking them as the ultimate objective. Ms. Behbahani's poems are very important in the theory of literature. Her creativity in the domain of Persian sonnet (which was likened by a famous literary scholar to Nima's*: Behbahani is the Nima of sonnet) shows that the courage and the creativity we see seen in her social commitment, is apparent and influential in her artistic and poetic work as well. In the social commitment discourse, there is always a concern for "seriousness," "strictness," and "firm belief." These are the imperative elements for political and social activities, but literature (especially poetry) adds a humanistic and emotional aspect, and in a sense, a new moral aspect to all of this. It is the language of poetry that expresses both human problems and their solutions. They show what is decaying and declining and what is coming out from within this decline. Poetry is internally and deeply related to human freedom.
Yes, it is this valuable and rare characteristic that distinguishes the lady of poetry of Iran and bestows influence upon her words and honesty upon her manners, and with this influence and honesty invites us all, and mostly the rulers, to do the same.
What can we say about the lady of Persian poem and sonnet, who as an artist is in the service of beauty, but firstly: has put beauty in the service of two other psychologically valuable elements, that is truthfulness (truth) and goodness (good), and secondly: her art is not only to show the beauties of life and being, but also to make them more beautiful as well. There are many artists who show the beauties of the world, being and life--and this is very valuable in its own right--but there are few who moreover try to make the world, being and life beautiful and in addition to displaying the beauty, create beauty as well. And Behbahani's descent is of the latter.
Behbahani is the symbol of an unequal battle with different kinds of falsehood, which only with human dignity has kept her stead. In these chaotic times, in spite of illness, she still stands tall, in the manner of cedars, and guards the sublime human values. Celebrating her is celebrating human dignities, especially dissent and being different.
May her existence be everlasting and her kindness be evermore.
Akbar Ganji
May 20, 2006
___
* Nima Yushij (1896-1959) is the father of modern Persian poetry
30 July 2005
Letter to Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush
In the name of God
Merry is the gambler who lost all he possessed
'Till he was left with nothing but the urge to gamble more
Dear Professor Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush
I have received your compassionate letter of July 12, 2005. My dear teacher and professor you have shown kindness to your humble student and used titles for me that I do not deserve. Our relationship goes back to the beginnings of the revolution. To your classes of general philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of ethics, the [divine] origin and the resurrection, the evolution of the essence, the private sessions of the two of us where I posed my endless questions and you answered them with patience and I learned a lot from you. Our friendship began in 1979 and it never ended, we always learned new things from you. It is only fair to state that our generation owes you greatly, it was through you that we became familiar with modernity, various interpretations of religion and the concept of a human being with rights of his own. We stepped into new worlds with you, you washed our eyes to see differently. It was not all about analytical philosophy and critical rationality either. You kindled a fire in our heart by introducing us to Rumi and Hafez [great classical Persian poets], a fire that will never die out. Is it possible to get to know the love experience of Rumi and not flee afterwards from the fanaticism of populists? Hafez, who revealed and criticized the hypocrisy of mullah-style faith and religiosity, warns us that
He taught us that the preachers "do all that is contrary to what they preach / once they find themselves alone and unseen by others," and that since "they do not really believe in a day of judgment they change and cheat in [representing] the works of the ultimate Judge of All." They hide their corruption under their robes and their function is to open the gates of hypocrisy and deceptions. They are immersed in corruptions, but claim to be innocents. Their other service is to defend killers and murderers. They know nothing, but claim to be the holders of divine secrets. They are experts in breaking promises. The critique of Hafez of the religious society and its maladies is indeed endless, but his critique has to be complemented today. Hafez had no knowledge or experience of totalitarian societies and fascistic movements, because fascistic systems came to being only afterwards, after his time. The totalitarian system is one of pure fright and fear. It is the single-voice society where only the leader’s voice is to be heard, where civil society is completely crushed and the individual sphere is not recognized. The leader reaches the status of a god, and since he is a pathetic being full of fear of himself and of others, he covets to be feared by the people. The tyrant leaders see everyone in the shape of an enemy. Yesterday's friends are the enemies of tomorrow. He can't be satisfied even with the death of his competitors, but wants to annihilate every name and trace of them in history and memory of all. He alone is what people must see wherever they go and wherever they look. We are faced with the passionate lust to create such a system. All our efforts and struggles are directed towards fighting this aim. Hafez is not among us to criticize this lust, so others like the lady of Persian sonnets (Simin Behbahani) must picture this lust, and critique it relentlessly. Slaughtering the intellectuals and dissidents, shutting down all newspapers and imprisoning journalists, beating university professors and attacking universities like savages and barbarians, beating gatherings of pro-democratic forces with clubs and boxing-knuckles are no longer mere wishes and lustful dreams. They are real instances of that lust whose endpoint is fascism. These are part of Nazi legacy that has reached Iranian fascists. Imprisoning dissidents in solitary confinements and torturing them to write letters of repentance and confess to crimes they have not committed, are exact imitations of Stalin. Stalinism means solitary confinement, means self-destruction to please the leader.
My dear friend, Dr. Ghazian has disclosed only a tiny fraction of the mess behind the case of the pollsters and the filthy acts committed by Saeed Mortazavi to please the leader. If Abbas Abdi begins to talk about this case one day and reveal the truth about other parts of it, only then will the depths of rascality and meanness behind it become clear to everyone. Others must tell how they were tortured to confess they committed adultery with a certain married woman. Yes, Mr. Khamenei knew and knows of all this. As Khomeini used to say about the Shah, if he has no knowledge of all that was going on, he was no real shah (king), if he did, then he shared the burden of the crime. Yes, because Mr. Khamenei considered the media to be the base of the enemy and the intellectuals to be agents of cultural invasion [of the West], some of them were slaughtered and assassinated, some were thrown in jail, several of them were tortured, some were beaten and some other eliminated. It was supposed that by this not only the theories of the leader would prove right, but the imaginary enemies, the product of ‘His Excellency's’ [Leader's] mind, will be destroyed. You certainly remember what a fuss was made when the great espionage (the pollsters case) was discovered. But Abbas Abdi is now acquitted in the Supreme Court and Hossein Ghazian reveals part of the truth about what went through. Mortazavi made spies by using torture and fabricating false documents because Mr. Khamenei liked there to be spies among the reformists. They murdered intellectuals because Mr. Khamenei regarded them as enemies.
Dear Professor,
I'm sure you remember how ‘His Excellency’ [Leader] sent club-bearing fascists to beat you in the Technical Department of Tehran University and had it not been for Reza Tehrani and I, to surround you and bear some of the beatings and had you fallen into their hands, you would have been in a different situation today. Certainly you recall one of the heads of the gang on that day who has now become a theoretician on IRIB (Iranian TV) channel one and philosophizes for other fascists several times a week on television and rides to fight with the modern world in the style of Don Quixote. The theoretician of violence and the defender of slavery [Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi], the enemy of you and Dr. Shariati; once during the first years of the revolution sent someone to buy 2 kg of cheese, when that person returned with 3 kg, he quarreled with him a lot saying he didn't have enough money until the end of the month! Now the two children of the theoretician of violence are billionaires and he himself receives money-order to the amount of 70 billion Rials of sugar and sells it in free market with tens of billions of Rials profit. You know what a sophisticated system and order he has created for himself in the city of Qom. All of this are his rewards for attacking you and other dissidents and for his defense of violence, terror and assassinations. Why else is he called the next Allameh Tabatabi and Motahari? This is one example of the regime's fight against economic corruption! In other words shouting the motto of social justice and fight against economical corruption, and at the same time filling the pockets of agents of oppression, denying the likes of Dr. Soroush the career they deserve and handing it instead to the hooligans of the town.
Dear Professor,
We fought for freedom of speech and human rights, while dissidents were denied the right to live in this country. Once the terror and assassination machine was turned on inside and outside of the country to eliminate members of the regime's opposition, it knew no limits, and every single dissident had to be eliminated.
It astounds me that Mr. Khamenei calls Iran the freest and the most democratic country in the region. We should ask what freedom are you talking about, when dissidents have no right to live. If you believe in free speech, then the measure for freedom of speech should be open and clear criticism of you (Mr. Khamenei) in the media. If criticizing the political leader of the country is not possible, then no one can claim there exists freedom of speech in that country. The fact that someone has to bear extremely heavy costs for indirect critique of the leader is no sign of freedom, but of tyranny, and of a totalitarian version of it for that matter. In June of 1997 I gave a talk about the foundations of fascism in Shiraz University. I didn't think anyone would file a complaint against me, but with great surprise I was tried and convicted to one year of imprisonment by the Revolutionary Court under the charge of insulting the leader, instead of Hitler and Mussolini. When critique of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin is considered critique of the leader, how can anyone speak of freedom of speech and claim democracy? In a democratic system critique of fascism is not punishable. More interesting still is Mr. Khamenei's claim of democracy. How is it seen by men of knowledge when someone who has absolute power for life still claims his system is a democracy? It would be better if Mr. Khamenei only answers this one question: how can he be displaced without violence? How can one even talk of displacing him in power without getting slaughtered by knives? Mr. Khomeini used to say if the leader can’t or won't answer when he is questioned or impeached, he is automatically disqualified. Let us ignore all previous questionings and impeachments. I now want for Mr. Khamenei to be replaced as the political leader of the country. Mr. Khamenei must respond clearly how I can reach this goal in a non-violent manner?
It is said that Reza Shah once asked Modarres what he wanted and Modarres responded: I want you not to be anymore. Mr. Khomeini too used to say Shah must go. Even if I could ignore my 2000 days of imprisonment, I can't ignore the widespread breach of human rights by Mr. Khamenei, the tyrannical sultanist government, widespread governmental corruption, assassination of opponents and thousand of other cases. Khamenei must go, because he does not tolerate the others. Khamenei must go, because chain killings of dissidents took place during his reign. Khamenei must go, because more than one hundred journals were shut down and many journalists thrown in prison under his direct orders. Khamenei must go, because during the election process of the seventh Majlis (parliament) and the recent presidential elections he eliminated his opponents and elevated his devotees using oppressive and unjust methods. Khamenei must go, because he has forced millions of Iranians to disperse around the world and does not accept that Iran belongs to all Iranians. Khamenei must go, because hundreds of Iranian professors, Dr. Soroush is one example, do not have the right to teach and work inside Iran and instead of teaching the Iranian youth, they ended up teaching the youth of other nations. Khamenei must go, because he has brought to power those who decreed the murder of dissidents and the perpetrators of the murders of the prisoners in the summer of 1988.
Murderers became overlords
And the wise kept quite out of fear
Dear Professor
It saddens me considerably to see some who are under the impression that it is possible to confront the sultanist system by cautious words about democracy and free speech, and to make the transition to a democratic system this way. We must never forget the wise words of Montesquieu that force can only be limited by force. Only by mobilizing the masses and by forming the front for democracy and human rights through civil disobedience can we confront the sultanist system. In the appendix to the second volume of my Republican Manifesto, I showed that the front for democracy and human rights cannot and should not be bound to the present Constitution. Otherwise we couldn't move even a single step forward. Non-violence should be without a doubt a necessary condition for membership in this movement, but being bound in practice to the Constitution will never bring us to democracy and human rights.
Our intellectuals will achieve nothing if they choose to sit aside and leave politics. The need to participate in politics is our inevitable destiny. Today everything is bound in the pangs of politics. Ignoring this fact will not liberate us from it. Emigrating from the country and settling in the West might solve part of one's personal problems, but wouldn't help the liberation of Iran. The immense intellectual and human resource of Iranians living abroad must return to Iran and they must pay their debt to the Iranian people. We need the ideas of our elite. If courage exists it has to be watered with theoretical wisdom to be able to walk in the correct path. All the freedom loving and justice seeking Iranian democrats should move hand in hand and form the movement of liberation of our country from the coil of sultanism. Agreeing upon freedom, democracy and human rights can open up a bright future for us. Corruption, injustice, various forms of inequality can be reduced considerably within a democratic system. The aim should be a progressive democratic government.
Dear and beloved Professor,
The reason I have stood firm is to show that it is possible to stand against darkness and ruthlessness. The letters and notes I have written are all nourished from the essence of my life. For tens of pages that I have written, I have lost 25 kg of my very own flesh and blood. I wanted to show that even in the darkness of night, one can shine the light of hope. Otherwise, in the heat of July in Tehran, I lie down in a room with closed windows, with the air conditioners turned off, wearing two headbands over my ears and sinuses and with a blanket covering me to escape the cold, the coldness of winter that sorrounds me.
During 2002-2003 I did a full study of the relationship between "Islam and democracy and human rights." The result of my research turned out to be a text of 500-600 pages of a completely dissident nature and stand point. That work was meant initially to be published as the second book of my Republican Manifesto, but since I preferred to complete it outside of Evin prison and after discussions with specialists, I have left it with trusted people in a safe place so that it would be out of reach. If I die, that text will be published as the third book of my Republican Manifesto.
Dear Professor,
I have always relied on God's blessings and I know that he always looks down on his creatures with kindness and generosity. I miss you a lot. I wished circumstances made it possible for me to meet you again so that you could talk about Rumi and take me with you to his universe, the universe of death pondering birds, amorous gambling ...
I am certain that this night of darkness will not last long. The moon of freedom will finally step out from behind the clouds of religious tyranny, and will shine rays of joy upon us all.
Akbar Ganji
July 22, 2005
43rd day of hunger strike
--------------------------------------------
[* Uncle Yadegar was a coded expression in Shamlou's poems for the ruling tyrant of the time]
Merry is the gambler who lost all he possessed
'Till he was left with nothing but the urge to gamble more
Dear Professor Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush
I have received your compassionate letter of July 12, 2005. My dear teacher and professor you have shown kindness to your humble student and used titles for me that I do not deserve. Our relationship goes back to the beginnings of the revolution. To your classes of general philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of ethics, the [divine] origin and the resurrection, the evolution of the essence, the private sessions of the two of us where I posed my endless questions and you answered them with patience and I learned a lot from you. Our friendship began in 1979 and it never ended, we always learned new things from you. It is only fair to state that our generation owes you greatly, it was through you that we became familiar with modernity, various interpretations of religion and the concept of a human being with rights of his own. We stepped into new worlds with you, you washed our eyes to see differently. It was not all about analytical philosophy and critical rationality either. You kindled a fire in our heart by introducing us to Rumi and Hafez [great classical Persian poets], a fire that will never die out. Is it possible to get to know the love experience of Rumi and not flee afterwards from the fanaticism of populists? Hafez, who revealed and criticized the hypocrisy of mullah-style faith and religiosity, warns us that
The sign of a man of God is love, but keep this secret in your bosom
For I don't see even a resemblance of this among the sheikhs of our town
[Hafez]
He taught us that the preachers "do all that is contrary to what they preach / once they find themselves alone and unseen by others," and that since "they do not really believe in a day of judgment they change and cheat in [representing] the works of the ultimate Judge of All." They hide their corruption under their robes and their function is to open the gates of hypocrisy and deceptions. They are immersed in corruptions, but claim to be innocents. Their other service is to defend killers and murderers. They know nothing, but claim to be the holders of divine secrets. They are experts in breaking promises. The critique of Hafez of the religious society and its maladies is indeed endless, but his critique has to be complemented today. Hafez had no knowledge or experience of totalitarian societies and fascistic movements, because fascistic systems came to being only afterwards, after his time. The totalitarian system is one of pure fright and fear. It is the single-voice society where only the leader’s voice is to be heard, where civil society is completely crushed and the individual sphere is not recognized. The leader reaches the status of a god, and since he is a pathetic being full of fear of himself and of others, he covets to be feared by the people. The tyrant leaders see everyone in the shape of an enemy. Yesterday's friends are the enemies of tomorrow. He can't be satisfied even with the death of his competitors, but wants to annihilate every name and trace of them in history and memory of all. He alone is what people must see wherever they go and wherever they look. We are faced with the passionate lust to create such a system. All our efforts and struggles are directed towards fighting this aim. Hafez is not among us to criticize this lust, so others like the lady of Persian sonnets (Simin Behbahani) must picture this lust, and critique it relentlessly. Slaughtering the intellectuals and dissidents, shutting down all newspapers and imprisoning journalists, beating university professors and attacking universities like savages and barbarians, beating gatherings of pro-democratic forces with clubs and boxing-knuckles are no longer mere wishes and lustful dreams. They are real instances of that lust whose endpoint is fascism. These are part of Nazi legacy that has reached Iranian fascists. Imprisoning dissidents in solitary confinements and torturing them to write letters of repentance and confess to crimes they have not committed, are exact imitations of Stalin. Stalinism means solitary confinement, means self-destruction to please the leader.
My dear friend, Dr. Ghazian has disclosed only a tiny fraction of the mess behind the case of the pollsters and the filthy acts committed by Saeed Mortazavi to please the leader. If Abbas Abdi begins to talk about this case one day and reveal the truth about other parts of it, only then will the depths of rascality and meanness behind it become clear to everyone. Others must tell how they were tortured to confess they committed adultery with a certain married woman. Yes, Mr. Khamenei knew and knows of all this. As Khomeini used to say about the Shah, if he has no knowledge of all that was going on, he was no real shah (king), if he did, then he shared the burden of the crime. Yes, because Mr. Khamenei considered the media to be the base of the enemy and the intellectuals to be agents of cultural invasion [of the West], some of them were slaughtered and assassinated, some were thrown in jail, several of them were tortured, some were beaten and some other eliminated. It was supposed that by this not only the theories of the leader would prove right, but the imaginary enemies, the product of ‘His Excellency's’ [Leader's] mind, will be destroyed. You certainly remember what a fuss was made when the great espionage (the pollsters case) was discovered. But Abbas Abdi is now acquitted in the Supreme Court and Hossein Ghazian reveals part of the truth about what went through. Mortazavi made spies by using torture and fabricating false documents because Mr. Khamenei liked there to be spies among the reformists. They murdered intellectuals because Mr. Khamenei regarded them as enemies.
Dear Professor,
I'm sure you remember how ‘His Excellency’ [Leader] sent club-bearing fascists to beat you in the Technical Department of Tehran University and had it not been for Reza Tehrani and I, to surround you and bear some of the beatings and had you fallen into their hands, you would have been in a different situation today. Certainly you recall one of the heads of the gang on that day who has now become a theoretician on IRIB (Iranian TV) channel one and philosophizes for other fascists several times a week on television and rides to fight with the modern world in the style of Don Quixote. The theoretician of violence and the defender of slavery [Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi], the enemy of you and Dr. Shariati; once during the first years of the revolution sent someone to buy 2 kg of cheese, when that person returned with 3 kg, he quarreled with him a lot saying he didn't have enough money until the end of the month! Now the two children of the theoretician of violence are billionaires and he himself receives money-order to the amount of 70 billion Rials of sugar and sells it in free market with tens of billions of Rials profit. You know what a sophisticated system and order he has created for himself in the city of Qom. All of this are his rewards for attacking you and other dissidents and for his defense of violence, terror and assassinations. Why else is he called the next Allameh Tabatabi and Motahari? This is one example of the regime's fight against economic corruption! In other words shouting the motto of social justice and fight against economical corruption, and at the same time filling the pockets of agents of oppression, denying the likes of Dr. Soroush the career they deserve and handing it instead to the hooligans of the town.
Dear Professor,
We fought for freedom of speech and human rights, while dissidents were denied the right to live in this country. Once the terror and assassination machine was turned on inside and outside of the country to eliminate members of the regime's opposition, it knew no limits, and every single dissident had to be eliminated.
It astounds me that Mr. Khamenei calls Iran the freest and the most democratic country in the region. We should ask what freedom are you talking about, when dissidents have no right to live. If you believe in free speech, then the measure for freedom of speech should be open and clear criticism of you (Mr. Khamenei) in the media. If criticizing the political leader of the country is not possible, then no one can claim there exists freedom of speech in that country. The fact that someone has to bear extremely heavy costs for indirect critique of the leader is no sign of freedom, but of tyranny, and of a totalitarian version of it for that matter. In June of 1997 I gave a talk about the foundations of fascism in Shiraz University. I didn't think anyone would file a complaint against me, but with great surprise I was tried and convicted to one year of imprisonment by the Revolutionary Court under the charge of insulting the leader, instead of Hitler and Mussolini. When critique of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin is considered critique of the leader, how can anyone speak of freedom of speech and claim democracy? In a democratic system critique of fascism is not punishable. More interesting still is Mr. Khamenei's claim of democracy. How is it seen by men of knowledge when someone who has absolute power for life still claims his system is a democracy? It would be better if Mr. Khamenei only answers this one question: how can he be displaced without violence? How can one even talk of displacing him in power without getting slaughtered by knives? Mr. Khomeini used to say if the leader can’t or won't answer when he is questioned or impeached, he is automatically disqualified. Let us ignore all previous questionings and impeachments. I now want for Mr. Khamenei to be replaced as the political leader of the country. Mr. Khamenei must respond clearly how I can reach this goal in a non-violent manner?
It is said that Reza Shah once asked Modarres what he wanted and Modarres responded: I want you not to be anymore. Mr. Khomeini too used to say Shah must go. Even if I could ignore my 2000 days of imprisonment, I can't ignore the widespread breach of human rights by Mr. Khamenei, the tyrannical sultanist government, widespread governmental corruption, assassination of opponents and thousand of other cases. Khamenei must go, because he does not tolerate the others. Khamenei must go, because chain killings of dissidents took place during his reign. Khamenei must go, because more than one hundred journals were shut down and many journalists thrown in prison under his direct orders. Khamenei must go, because during the election process of the seventh Majlis (parliament) and the recent presidential elections he eliminated his opponents and elevated his devotees using oppressive and unjust methods. Khamenei must go, because he has forced millions of Iranians to disperse around the world and does not accept that Iran belongs to all Iranians. Khamenei must go, because hundreds of Iranian professors, Dr. Soroush is one example, do not have the right to teach and work inside Iran and instead of teaching the Iranian youth, they ended up teaching the youth of other nations. Khamenei must go, because he has brought to power those who decreed the murder of dissidents and the perpetrators of the murders of the prisoners in the summer of 1988.
Murderers became overlords
And the wise kept quite out of fear
Dear Professor
It saddens me considerably to see some who are under the impression that it is possible to confront the sultanist system by cautious words about democracy and free speech, and to make the transition to a democratic system this way. We must never forget the wise words of Montesquieu that force can only be limited by force. Only by mobilizing the masses and by forming the front for democracy and human rights through civil disobedience can we confront the sultanist system. In the appendix to the second volume of my Republican Manifesto, I showed that the front for democracy and human rights cannot and should not be bound to the present Constitution. Otherwise we couldn't move even a single step forward. Non-violence should be without a doubt a necessary condition for membership in this movement, but being bound in practice to the Constitution will never bring us to democracy and human rights.
Our intellectuals will achieve nothing if they choose to sit aside and leave politics. The need to participate in politics is our inevitable destiny. Today everything is bound in the pangs of politics. Ignoring this fact will not liberate us from it. Emigrating from the country and settling in the West might solve part of one's personal problems, but wouldn't help the liberation of Iran. The immense intellectual and human resource of Iranians living abroad must return to Iran and they must pay their debt to the Iranian people. We need the ideas of our elite. If courage exists it has to be watered with theoretical wisdom to be able to walk in the correct path. All the freedom loving and justice seeking Iranian democrats should move hand in hand and form the movement of liberation of our country from the coil of sultanism. Agreeing upon freedom, democracy and human rights can open up a bright future for us. Corruption, injustice, various forms of inequality can be reduced considerably within a democratic system. The aim should be a progressive democratic government.
Dear and beloved Professor,
The reason I have stood firm is to show that it is possible to stand against darkness and ruthlessness. The letters and notes I have written are all nourished from the essence of my life. For tens of pages that I have written, I have lost 25 kg of my very own flesh and blood. I wanted to show that even in the darkness of night, one can shine the light of hope. Otherwise, in the heat of July in Tehran, I lie down in a room with closed windows, with the air conditioners turned off, wearing two headbands over my ears and sinuses and with a blanket covering me to escape the cold, the coldness of winter that sorrounds me.
It's unfair how cold it is, it is that cold ... oh... .
...
The air heavy, doors shut, heads down, hands covered;
Breath coming out like clouds, hearts tired and sad,
Trees like skeletons made of crystals,
The earth dead, the roof of heavens low,
Full of dust sunshine and moonlight,
It is winter.
[lines of a famous Persian modern poem by Mehdi Akhavan-Sales]
During 2002-2003 I did a full study of the relationship between "Islam and democracy and human rights." The result of my research turned out to be a text of 500-600 pages of a completely dissident nature and stand point. That work was meant initially to be published as the second book of my Republican Manifesto, but since I preferred to complete it outside of Evin prison and after discussions with specialists, I have left it with trusted people in a safe place so that it would be out of reach. If I die, that text will be published as the third book of my Republican Manifesto.
Dear Professor,
I have always relied on God's blessings and I know that he always looks down on his creatures with kindness and generosity. I miss you a lot. I wished circumstances made it possible for me to meet you again so that you could talk about Rumi and take me with you to his universe, the universe of death pondering birds, amorous gambling ...
God knows without you the city is but prison for me
Wandering in the fields and deserts is what I desire
My soul is sick of Pharaoh and his oppression
The light of Moses son of Amram is what I desire
[Rumi]
I am certain that this night of darkness will not last long. The moon of freedom will finally step out from behind the clouds of religious tyranny, and will shine rays of joy upon us all.
In a moonlit night, the moon
will enter my dream
take me out of this jail
like a butterfly of night, with itself
take me to the pitch black night
there, until the light of dawn, the martyrs of our town
will yell and shout, holding lanterns of their blood
in all the streets, in all the squares
O uncle Yadegar [souvenir]*, you who bear an old grudge
are you drunk or you're sober? are you asleep or you're awake?
we are drunk and we are sober, O martyrs of our town
we are asleep and we are awake, O martyrs of our town
at last, in one of these nights
the moon will come out
behind that tall mountain, over that valley
will pass over the square, all smile and all laughter
in a moonlit night, the moon will come o-o-out.
[lines of a modern poem in folk language by Ahmad Shamlou, turned into a famous song by musician and singer Farhad]
Akbar Ganji
July 22, 2005
43rd day of hunger strike
--------------------------------------------
[* Uncle Yadegar was a coded expression in Shamlou's poems for the ruling tyrant of the time]
25 July 2005
Letter to Ayatollah Montazeri
Parrots of sugar-sweet words and pleasant songs we were
By you turned into birds that do naught but on death ponder
Freethinking clergy, fighter for justice and supporter of the oppressed
Grand Ayatollah Montazeri,
Your kind letter on 16 July sent fresh blood in my bloodless veins once more. For many years you have become the symbol of courage and resistance against the tyrants in my eyes and I have always wanted to learn courage from you.
After the widespread executions of the [political] prisoners in the summer of 1988 and the general silence against this crime against humanity, you were the only one who stood up against it; everybody else seems to have forgotten that whoever remains silent against crime, shares equally in that crime. Afterwards, when they kept you prisoner in your own house, you still defended all political prisoners regardless of their different beliefs and views and you were and still are a serious patron of their families. Your courage and consistency is such that even your serious enemies have had to acknowledge it many times.
Although you were one of the main writers of the constitution [of the Islamic Republic] and one of the theoreticians of the theory of the rule of the jurisprudent, you realized very early that the main problem is because of this very theory. This theory, once it descends from the abstract world to our earth and becomes reality, shows its true inhuman face. You tried to reduce the rule of the jurisprudent to the “supervision” of the jurisprudent so that the stagnation that the Islamic Republic is faced with might be resolved; but Iran’s problem can only be resolved through the decline of the concept of the rule of the jurisprudent and [the stepping down of] its instance.
My dear friend Mr. Hajjarian and I consider the sultanist system to be the most central problem of the Iranian political arena. Mr. Hajjarian published a long article prior to 22 May 1997 in the magazine “Etela’at-e Siasi-Eghtesadi” (Political-Economic Ettela’at monthly) about the sultanist system and the methods of transition from it to a democratic system. Hajjarian wants to reduce the power of the sultan and to turn him into a figure like that of the Queen of England [in the British political system]. But I say we don’t need any king or queen. The issue in dispute is the choice between constitutionalism and republicanism. In my view, civil disobedience is the most important tactic in the transition from sultanism to democracy. Saeed Hajjarian has coined the term “pressure from below” for civil disobedience. He wants to reduce the power of the sultan (the leader) through pressure from below.
"Non-cooperation" with the personal ruler, is another tactic on which I have stressed. Here me and Hajjarian are on the same side. The day after Abdollah Nouri was imprisoned in Evin, we held a meeting with the late Dr. Nouri [Note: a different person] in the office of the daily paper "Sobh-e Emrooz" about the question “What should be done". It was decided that Dr. Nouri should tell Mr. Nouri to turn back the leader's decree by resigning from his seat in the Expediency Council, since someone who is convicted of propagandizing against the system is obviously not qualified to decide the expediency of the system.
This is an example of the above mentioned non-cooperation with the personal ruler. Mr. Karroubi followed the same tactic after the present election, when he resigned from his position as an advisor to the ruler and his seat in the Expediency Council. All the rulings of the sultan are devoid of any legitimacy and for the transition to democracy we must choose the path of non-cooperation with the tyrant.
As far as Mr. Khatami is concerned it is clear that after August 3 [when his second and last term as President finishes] Mr. Khamenei [the Leader] will appoint him as a member of the Expediency Council, and the High Council of the Cultural Revolution as well as an advisor to the Leader. Mr Khatami lacks the courage of Mr. Karroubi, so he is going to accept the decree and take part in the sessions [of these assemblies]. But he will gradually participate less and less until he won’t participate at all, ie what Mr. Mirhosseyn Mousavi and Mr. Mousavi Khoeiniha have done before him; but the transparent non-participation is something else altogether.
Doesn't Mr. Khatami know how Mr. Khamenei used him to hold the illegitimate seventh Majlis and the [ninth] presidential elections in order to unify the government, and how he forced him to declare both elections sound and democratic? Mr. Khatami knows what a fair and free election is. Nevertheless, he calls Mr. Khamenei's life-time rule democratic and introduces him as the role model for the youth.
In my opinion, our elite are familiar, more than any other time, with the culture of democracy. The pioneers of democracy and those who developed the democratic process in undemocratic societies never consisted of as many philosophers and theoreticians as do our elite today. Our problem is not "lack of knowledge on democracy", but rather not being ready and willing to pay the price. Democracy needs men of action, women of courage, and resilient youth. Self-sacrifice and selflessness open the way to freedom and human rights, not just knowledge of modern culture. We should get to know modernity and modern society, and we should build a bridge between our knowledge and our actions in order to set up a democracy.
You know well why there was an attempt on Hajjarian's life that forced him to sit in wheelchair and why Ganji was imprisoned and became a death-pondering bird. Why Mohsen Kadivar and Abdollah Nouri were jailed for 18 months and 3 years respectively. Mohsen Kadivar has been showing for years that the theory of the Rule (or Guardianship) of the Jurisprudent is baseless and shaky, and Mr. Nouri stood up to the person of jurisprudent. In fact, Mr. Khamenei has occupied the whole place to such an extent that no matter where one steps, his space is trespassed and wherever a hand is laid, it will come into contact with him.
Esteemed Ayatollah!
You are well aware that the world of politics is different from the world of poetry. Ambiguity and equivocation are in the nature of poetry, but clarity and frankness are natural to the arena of democratic politics. So, Mr. Khomeini frankly said: "Shah must go!" Now we must say with perfect clarity and frankness: "Mr. Khamenei must go!" Why? Since based on Mr. Khomeini's theory, Mr. Khamenei is now automatically removed from Leadership. Mr. Khomeini says: "Any individual from the people of a nation has the right to directly question, in the public, the ruler of the muslims and the ruler has to give a convincing answer; otherwise, if he, ie. the ruler, has acted against his Islamic duties, he is automatically removed from the office of the ruler." (Ayatollah Khomeini, Sahife-i Nur, vol. 4, p. 190)
In the past years, Mr. Khamenei has been repeatedly questioned by different people, but he has not only, not answered their questions, but has suppressed his questioners with force. According to Mr. Khomeini's thinking, Mr. Khamenei is not the ruler of the Islamic Republic of Iran any longer and has been removed from his office.
Eminent Jurisprudent!
For this opinion I have so far endured more than 2000 days in jail in the period of Leadership of Mr. Khamenei. But now the media arm of the chain murders [project] [ie. Hardliner outlets like Keyhan newspaper etc.] talks about the project of Ganji's death, that is they are after killing me. Sunday night, July 17, 2005, Saeed Mortazavi came to visit me and said, my death is 100% in the interest of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but if you die and the foreigners make noise, it is a 50% loss for the system. We brought you to the prison to decrease the level of loss. Death in hospital is natural. He said he would deny it if I reveal his words. On the other hand, Martazavi has told one of the minsters that Ganji's wife has coerced him into the hunger strike with foul language. In an interview on Monday July 18, 2005 he claimed: "Those friends who are advising him to end his hunger strike, according to our intelligence sources, are his main patrons in unconventional activities." Your excellency, Dr. Soroush, Mr. Hajjarian, Mr. Kadivar and other friends have advised me to break my hunger strike and this has been broadcast in the media, but Tehran's prosecutor claims these dears are encouraging me to continue my hunger strike.
The issue is clear: they want to kill me and blame it on my wife and friends. But they must know that Ganji is not Zahra Kazemi. If Ganji dies in any way, his murderer is Mr. Khamenei. Mr. Khamenei may get rid of Ganji by activating Saeed Mortazavi and the media arm of the chain murders, but he cannot deny his responsibility for my murder. If Ganji is killed, his death is not the death of freedom, democracy and human rights. Ganji's death could be as water in the desert and irrigate the sprouts of freedom.
Akbar Ganji
Friday July 22, 2005
Forty-second day of hunger strike
By you turned into birds that do naught but on death ponder
Freethinking clergy, fighter for justice and supporter of the oppressed
Grand Ayatollah Montazeri,
Your kind letter on 16 July sent fresh blood in my bloodless veins once more. For many years you have become the symbol of courage and resistance against the tyrants in my eyes and I have always wanted to learn courage from you.
After the widespread executions of the [political] prisoners in the summer of 1988 and the general silence against this crime against humanity, you were the only one who stood up against it; everybody else seems to have forgotten that whoever remains silent against crime, shares equally in that crime. Afterwards, when they kept you prisoner in your own house, you still defended all political prisoners regardless of their different beliefs and views and you were and still are a serious patron of their families. Your courage and consistency is such that even your serious enemies have had to acknowledge it many times.
Although you were one of the main writers of the constitution [of the Islamic Republic] and one of the theoreticians of the theory of the rule of the jurisprudent, you realized very early that the main problem is because of this very theory. This theory, once it descends from the abstract world to our earth and becomes reality, shows its true inhuman face. You tried to reduce the rule of the jurisprudent to the “supervision” of the jurisprudent so that the stagnation that the Islamic Republic is faced with might be resolved; but Iran’s problem can only be resolved through the decline of the concept of the rule of the jurisprudent and [the stepping down of] its instance.
My dear friend Mr. Hajjarian and I consider the sultanist system to be the most central problem of the Iranian political arena. Mr. Hajjarian published a long article prior to 22 May 1997 in the magazine “Etela’at-e Siasi-Eghtesadi” (Political-Economic Ettela’at monthly) about the sultanist system and the methods of transition from it to a democratic system. Hajjarian wants to reduce the power of the sultan and to turn him into a figure like that of the Queen of England [in the British political system]. But I say we don’t need any king or queen. The issue in dispute is the choice between constitutionalism and republicanism. In my view, civil disobedience is the most important tactic in the transition from sultanism to democracy. Saeed Hajjarian has coined the term “pressure from below” for civil disobedience. He wants to reduce the power of the sultan (the leader) through pressure from below.
"Non-cooperation" with the personal ruler, is another tactic on which I have stressed. Here me and Hajjarian are on the same side. The day after Abdollah Nouri was imprisoned in Evin, we held a meeting with the late Dr. Nouri [Note: a different person] in the office of the daily paper "Sobh-e Emrooz" about the question “What should be done". It was decided that Dr. Nouri should tell Mr. Nouri to turn back the leader's decree by resigning from his seat in the Expediency Council, since someone who is convicted of propagandizing against the system is obviously not qualified to decide the expediency of the system.
This is an example of the above mentioned non-cooperation with the personal ruler. Mr. Karroubi followed the same tactic after the present election, when he resigned from his position as an advisor to the ruler and his seat in the Expediency Council. All the rulings of the sultan are devoid of any legitimacy and for the transition to democracy we must choose the path of non-cooperation with the tyrant.
As far as Mr. Khatami is concerned it is clear that after August 3 [when his second and last term as President finishes] Mr. Khamenei [the Leader] will appoint him as a member of the Expediency Council, and the High Council of the Cultural Revolution as well as an advisor to the Leader. Mr Khatami lacks the courage of Mr. Karroubi, so he is going to accept the decree and take part in the sessions [of these assemblies]. But he will gradually participate less and less until he won’t participate at all, ie what Mr. Mirhosseyn Mousavi and Mr. Mousavi Khoeiniha have done before him; but the transparent non-participation is something else altogether.
Doesn't Mr. Khatami know how Mr. Khamenei used him to hold the illegitimate seventh Majlis and the [ninth] presidential elections in order to unify the government, and how he forced him to declare both elections sound and democratic? Mr. Khatami knows what a fair and free election is. Nevertheless, he calls Mr. Khamenei's life-time rule democratic and introduces him as the role model for the youth.
In my opinion, our elite are familiar, more than any other time, with the culture of democracy. The pioneers of democracy and those who developed the democratic process in undemocratic societies never consisted of as many philosophers and theoreticians as do our elite today. Our problem is not "lack of knowledge on democracy", but rather not being ready and willing to pay the price. Democracy needs men of action, women of courage, and resilient youth. Self-sacrifice and selflessness open the way to freedom and human rights, not just knowledge of modern culture. We should get to know modernity and modern society, and we should build a bridge between our knowledge and our actions in order to set up a democracy.
You know well why there was an attempt on Hajjarian's life that forced him to sit in wheelchair and why Ganji was imprisoned and became a death-pondering bird. Why Mohsen Kadivar and Abdollah Nouri were jailed for 18 months and 3 years respectively. Mohsen Kadivar has been showing for years that the theory of the Rule (or Guardianship) of the Jurisprudent is baseless and shaky, and Mr. Nouri stood up to the person of jurisprudent. In fact, Mr. Khamenei has occupied the whole place to such an extent that no matter where one steps, his space is trespassed and wherever a hand is laid, it will come into contact with him.
Esteemed Ayatollah!
You are well aware that the world of politics is different from the world of poetry. Ambiguity and equivocation are in the nature of poetry, but clarity and frankness are natural to the arena of democratic politics. So, Mr. Khomeini frankly said: "Shah must go!" Now we must say with perfect clarity and frankness: "Mr. Khamenei must go!" Why? Since based on Mr. Khomeini's theory, Mr. Khamenei is now automatically removed from Leadership. Mr. Khomeini says: "Any individual from the people of a nation has the right to directly question, in the public, the ruler of the muslims and the ruler has to give a convincing answer; otherwise, if he, ie. the ruler, has acted against his Islamic duties, he is automatically removed from the office of the ruler." (Ayatollah Khomeini, Sahife-i Nur, vol. 4, p. 190)
In the past years, Mr. Khamenei has been repeatedly questioned by different people, but he has not only, not answered their questions, but has suppressed his questioners with force. According to Mr. Khomeini's thinking, Mr. Khamenei is not the ruler of the Islamic Republic of Iran any longer and has been removed from his office.
Eminent Jurisprudent!
For this opinion I have so far endured more than 2000 days in jail in the period of Leadership of Mr. Khamenei. But now the media arm of the chain murders [project] [ie. Hardliner outlets like Keyhan newspaper etc.] talks about the project of Ganji's death, that is they are after killing me. Sunday night, July 17, 2005, Saeed Mortazavi came to visit me and said, my death is 100% in the interest of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but if you die and the foreigners make noise, it is a 50% loss for the system. We brought you to the prison to decrease the level of loss. Death in hospital is natural. He said he would deny it if I reveal his words. On the other hand, Martazavi has told one of the minsters that Ganji's wife has coerced him into the hunger strike with foul language. In an interview on Monday July 18, 2005 he claimed: "Those friends who are advising him to end his hunger strike, according to our intelligence sources, are his main patrons in unconventional activities." Your excellency, Dr. Soroush, Mr. Hajjarian, Mr. Kadivar and other friends have advised me to break my hunger strike and this has been broadcast in the media, but Tehran's prosecutor claims these dears are encouraging me to continue my hunger strike.
The issue is clear: they want to kill me and blame it on my wife and friends. But they must know that Ganji is not Zahra Kazemi. If Ganji dies in any way, his murderer is Mr. Khamenei. Mr. Khamenei may get rid of Ganji by activating Saeed Mortazavi and the media arm of the chain murders, but he cannot deny his responsibility for my murder. If Ganji is killed, his death is not the death of freedom, democracy and human rights. Ganji's death could be as water in the desert and irrigate the sprouts of freedom.
Akbar Ganji
Friday July 22, 2005
Forty-second day of hunger strike
15 July 2005
Second Letter to the Free People of the World, 6.
6. Rejecting Sultanism, the Pre-Condition for Demanding Democracy:
Today, the opposition groups in the Middle East have opted for the strategy of fighting personal rulers. Egyptians demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, Syrians, of Bashar Asad, Libyans, of Moammar Gadhafi, Saudis, of Malek Fahd, etc. In the Republic of Azerbaijan democrats demand that Ilham Aliev, and in Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov should resign. Dictators for life are under attack everywhere. This is a time when democracy has worldwide appeal and lifetime rule is not at all defensible and should be sent to the archives of history. As if the personal dictators of the Middle East are not satisfied with decades of tyrannical rule over their countries, they want to extend their dictatorial rule in any possible way. We are witnessing in Egypt now that people in the streets of Cairo publicly demand that Hosni Mubarak should step down.
In the political arena, there is competition over attaining political power. But the necessary condition for such a competition is the presence of alternative leaders (with alternative programs). The person who wants to take control of the political leadership of a country should compete with other leaders in a free and fair election so he can hold the power for a limited time, and [later] peacefully relinquish his power to other leaders through free elections and the negative vote of the people.
I have clearly said time and again that 16 years of personal rule is enough for Mr. Seyed Ali Khamenei. Although expressing such demands in the Middle East has become commonplace and harmless today, the ruling regime of Iran considers such demands as equal to blasphemy. It is interesting to note that the regime of Iran broadcasts the demonstrations against Mubarak on the IRIB [state television] and shows that Mubarak's opposition do not get into much trouble, but here [in Iran] demonstration against Khamenei is impossible and costly, and even expressing the demand for his resignation by a dissident will cost that person dearly, i.e. the system [of Iran] admits that it has fallen behind and is less tolerant than the regimes of Egypt and Azerbaijan.
I do not believe at all in the theory of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent [Velayat-i Faqih] and I think it is anti-democratic and violates the human rights. I will not stand the master-slave relationship, the kind of relationship in which the Leader ascends to the ranks of a god and people descend to the level of slaves. I apologize in place of Mr. Khamenei to students, journalists, bloggers, isolated clergies who are Objects of Emulations [maraje'], families of the victims of serial murders, the family of Zahra Kazemi, ... for all that they have gone through these years. I strongly apologize in place of Mr. Khamenei to the families of the executed prisoners of the summer of 1988 all over the country. I ask for forgiveness in place of Mr. Khamenei from the noble people of Iran for what the Council of Guardians and the judiciary system have done in these past years. Six days from now (Saturday July 16, 2005) will be the 2000th day of my imprisonment (90 days in the first arrest in 1997 and 1910 days in the current one). That is, I was forced to endure 2000 days in prison for expressing my dissenting opinions and beliefs. But two thousand days of jail in the sultanist system is not sufficient for otherness, for being unconventional, and for dissent. The punishment for "difference" is much heavier. Tolerating difference is the essential and inseparable component of democratic politics. Intolerance and oppression are the main components of authoritarian regimes. I have never resorted to violent methods and have only demanded change in the current political regime through peaceful means.
In the first book of the Republican Manifesto (March 2002) I suggested that the regime should hold a referendum. But since it is clear that the regime will never accept such a demand, I saw the only way to reach this goal to be civil disobedience. I have preferred a republic to the system of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent since many years ago and I have considered civil disobedience to be the road that would lead to it.
This candle is about to die out. But this voice will not be silenced. This is the voice of peaceful life, tolerating the other, love for humanity, self-sacrifice for people, seeking truth, seeking freedom, demand for democracy, respecting the opponents, welcoming different lifestyles, separation of the state and the civil society, separation of the private sphere and the public sphere, separation of religion and state, equality of all humans, rationality, federalism within a democratic Iran, rejecting violence,... .
This candle is about to die out, but this voice will raise louder voices in its wake.
The black coffin of night
Resided in his eyes
The star turned off
And fell on the ground.
Akbar Ganji,
Evin Prison
July 10, 2005
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 4 >> Part 5
Today, the opposition groups in the Middle East have opted for the strategy of fighting personal rulers. Egyptians demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, Syrians, of Bashar Asad, Libyans, of Moammar Gadhafi, Saudis, of Malek Fahd, etc. In the Republic of Azerbaijan democrats demand that Ilham Aliev, and in Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov should resign. Dictators for life are under attack everywhere. This is a time when democracy has worldwide appeal and lifetime rule is not at all defensible and should be sent to the archives of history. As if the personal dictators of the Middle East are not satisfied with decades of tyrannical rule over their countries, they want to extend their dictatorial rule in any possible way. We are witnessing in Egypt now that people in the streets of Cairo publicly demand that Hosni Mubarak should step down.
In the political arena, there is competition over attaining political power. But the necessary condition for such a competition is the presence of alternative leaders (with alternative programs). The person who wants to take control of the political leadership of a country should compete with other leaders in a free and fair election so he can hold the power for a limited time, and [later] peacefully relinquish his power to other leaders through free elections and the negative vote of the people.
I have clearly said time and again that 16 years of personal rule is enough for Mr. Seyed Ali Khamenei. Although expressing such demands in the Middle East has become commonplace and harmless today, the ruling regime of Iran considers such demands as equal to blasphemy. It is interesting to note that the regime of Iran broadcasts the demonstrations against Mubarak on the IRIB [state television] and shows that Mubarak's opposition do not get into much trouble, but here [in Iran] demonstration against Khamenei is impossible and costly, and even expressing the demand for his resignation by a dissident will cost that person dearly, i.e. the system [of Iran] admits that it has fallen behind and is less tolerant than the regimes of Egypt and Azerbaijan.
I do not believe at all in the theory of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent [Velayat-i Faqih] and I think it is anti-democratic and violates the human rights. I will not stand the master-slave relationship, the kind of relationship in which the Leader ascends to the ranks of a god and people descend to the level of slaves. I apologize in place of Mr. Khamenei to students, journalists, bloggers, isolated clergies who are Objects of Emulations [maraje'], families of the victims of serial murders, the family of Zahra Kazemi, ... for all that they have gone through these years. I strongly apologize in place of Mr. Khamenei to the families of the executed prisoners of the summer of 1988 all over the country. I ask for forgiveness in place of Mr. Khamenei from the noble people of Iran for what the Council of Guardians and the judiciary system have done in these past years. Six days from now (Saturday July 16, 2005) will be the 2000th day of my imprisonment (90 days in the first arrest in 1997 and 1910 days in the current one). That is, I was forced to endure 2000 days in prison for expressing my dissenting opinions and beliefs. But two thousand days of jail in the sultanist system is not sufficient for otherness, for being unconventional, and for dissent. The punishment for "difference" is much heavier. Tolerating difference is the essential and inseparable component of democratic politics. Intolerance and oppression are the main components of authoritarian regimes. I have never resorted to violent methods and have only demanded change in the current political regime through peaceful means.
In the first book of the Republican Manifesto (March 2002) I suggested that the regime should hold a referendum. But since it is clear that the regime will never accept such a demand, I saw the only way to reach this goal to be civil disobedience. I have preferred a republic to the system of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent since many years ago and I have considered civil disobedience to be the road that would lead to it.
This candle is about to die out. But this voice will not be silenced. This is the voice of peaceful life, tolerating the other, love for humanity, self-sacrifice for people, seeking truth, seeking freedom, demand for democracy, respecting the opponents, welcoming different lifestyles, separation of the state and the civil society, separation of the private sphere and the public sphere, separation of religion and state, equality of all humans, rationality, federalism within a democratic Iran, rejecting violence,... .
This candle is about to die out, but this voice will raise louder voices in its wake.
The black coffin of night
Resided in his eyes
The star turned off
And fell on the ground.
Akbar Ganji,
Evin Prison
July 10, 2005
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 4 >> Part 5
Second Letter to the Free People of the World, 5.
5. Dracula, The Bloodsucking Vampire:
Franco Moretti writes in a psychoanalytic-marxist analysis of the novel Dracula: "Dracula does not like shedding blood. He needs blood. His ultimate goal is not to destroy and waste other people's lives out of indulgence, whim or fancy, rather his goal is to use their lives…. His nature forces him to fight to become unlimited and to dominate over the entire society. For this reason it is impossible to "co-exist" with the vampire. One must either surrender to him or kill him to rid the world of him and him of his curse… . Dracula is a real monopolist. He is lonely and a dictator and will not accept any competition… . He does not limit himself to joining to himself (in the literal sense) the physical and moral powers of his victims, he is up to making them his, forever… .man's condemnation before Dracula, like before the Devil, is "not for a definite period" but for entire life… . The vampire, just like the monopoly, destroys the hope that man's independence can one day return to him. He threatens the idea of personal freedom… . When Dracula threatens the freedom of an individual, that person is incapable of resisting or defeating him alone and by himself. Man's individuality is under the threat of being dominated by the Vampire. "a handful of isolated people don’t have the power to face the concentrated might of the vampire, either".
Although the dictators have managed to bring my body under their domination, since they have not succeeded in taking away my spirit and my thought and in making them theirs forever, they can't stand my face and so crave for my blood. Recently Saeed Mortazavi has told some officials in a meeting: "So what? What happened when Zahra Kazemi was killed? Human rights organizations condemned Iran in a couple of declarations and the case was closed. Zahra Kazemi is in her graves now. Ganji's death will also end after a couple of similar declarations. Ganji is better dead than alive".
In the alley screams an owl wet from rain
Someone's biting the dust by a tall wall
I have been imprisoned by the shadows of night
The night imprisoned by the cold net of the sky
I have to go on along with the shadows
Every night to the dark town of madness
The light of my star is fading out
I have been caught between life and death once more
Darkness comes along with his cold claws
In the cold earth my heart…….
The person who recounted these sentences to me, swore to me that "Your death is their dream. You are an obstacle for them. They can’t wait till you die". That compassionate person wanted to convince me by this to break my hunger strike. But I was reminded of Milan Kundera. In his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", recounting the situation after the "Spring of Prague", Kundera writes:" Is it better to shout out and hasten our death or to keep our silence and lengthen our slow and gradual dying"
With my silence of the past couple of years I was lengthening my gradual dying. My Acquiring all sorts of diseases in prison, only made them happy. Whenever my medical documents were presented so that I could be sent to medical centers out of prison, the prosecutor’s office prevented my leave so that I would gradually die inside prison. Now that I have shouted out I have hastened my death, but I have also managed to show to the entire world how ruthless and inhuman the sultanist system ruling Iran is in reality and what it has in store. This system has not yet actualized its complete tyrannical potential. Let the world learn what goes on inside "Hotel Evin" and its "Suites".
Hafez used to say:
The ease of the this world and the next is in the interpretation of these two words
With friends, compassion, with enemies, tolerance
But Motahhari used to say Islam has gone even further than this:
"With friends, compassion and generosity, with enemies, compassion and generosity too... to have compassion is to be compassionate towards one’s enemies as well."
Forget about compassion with friends and enemies: They aren’t strong enough to fight their enemies and have to retreat continually before them, so, they try to satisfy their frustration by pouring all of their wrath on the heads of internal dissidents.
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 4 >> Part 6
Franco Moretti writes in a psychoanalytic-marxist analysis of the novel Dracula: "Dracula does not like shedding blood. He needs blood. His ultimate goal is not to destroy and waste other people's lives out of indulgence, whim or fancy, rather his goal is to use their lives…. His nature forces him to fight to become unlimited and to dominate over the entire society. For this reason it is impossible to "co-exist" with the vampire. One must either surrender to him or kill him to rid the world of him and him of his curse… . Dracula is a real monopolist. He is lonely and a dictator and will not accept any competition… . He does not limit himself to joining to himself (in the literal sense) the physical and moral powers of his victims, he is up to making them his, forever… .man's condemnation before Dracula, like before the Devil, is "not for a definite period" but for entire life… . The vampire, just like the monopoly, destroys the hope that man's independence can one day return to him. He threatens the idea of personal freedom… . When Dracula threatens the freedom of an individual, that person is incapable of resisting or defeating him alone and by himself. Man's individuality is under the threat of being dominated by the Vampire. "a handful of isolated people don’t have the power to face the concentrated might of the vampire, either".
Although the dictators have managed to bring my body under their domination, since they have not succeeded in taking away my spirit and my thought and in making them theirs forever, they can't stand my face and so crave for my blood. Recently Saeed Mortazavi has told some officials in a meeting: "So what? What happened when Zahra Kazemi was killed? Human rights organizations condemned Iran in a couple of declarations and the case was closed. Zahra Kazemi is in her graves now. Ganji's death will also end after a couple of similar declarations. Ganji is better dead than alive".
In the alley screams an owl wet from rain
Someone's biting the dust by a tall wall
I have been imprisoned by the shadows of night
The night imprisoned by the cold net of the sky
I have to go on along with the shadows
Every night to the dark town of madness
The light of my star is fading out
I have been caught between life and death once more
Darkness comes along with his cold claws
In the cold earth my heart…….
The person who recounted these sentences to me, swore to me that "Your death is their dream. You are an obstacle for them. They can’t wait till you die". That compassionate person wanted to convince me by this to break my hunger strike. But I was reminded of Milan Kundera. In his novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", recounting the situation after the "Spring of Prague", Kundera writes:" Is it better to shout out and hasten our death or to keep our silence and lengthen our slow and gradual dying"
With my silence of the past couple of years I was lengthening my gradual dying. My Acquiring all sorts of diseases in prison, only made them happy. Whenever my medical documents were presented so that I could be sent to medical centers out of prison, the prosecutor’s office prevented my leave so that I would gradually die inside prison. Now that I have shouted out I have hastened my death, but I have also managed to show to the entire world how ruthless and inhuman the sultanist system ruling Iran is in reality and what it has in store. This system has not yet actualized its complete tyrannical potential. Let the world learn what goes on inside "Hotel Evin" and its "Suites".
Hafez used to say:
The ease of the this world and the next is in the interpretation of these two words
With friends, compassion, with enemies, tolerance
But Motahhari used to say Islam has gone even further than this:
"With friends, compassion and generosity, with enemies, compassion and generosity too... to have compassion is to be compassionate towards one’s enemies as well."
Forget about compassion with friends and enemies: They aren’t strong enough to fight their enemies and have to retreat continually before them, so, they try to satisfy their frustration by pouring all of their wrath on the heads of internal dissidents.
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 4 >> Part 6
Second Letter to the Free People of the World, 4.
4. Socratic Death:
Socrates was in pursuit of two things at once. First: Autonomy of the individual against the society (the right to live as an individual). Second: Thinking freely and questioning everything. Socrates did not falter for a moment to put his personal life in danger and invite death in order to show the significance and superiority of individual thought over the group, the society and the government. He proved himself before the city as an individual, by welcoming death. By his death Socrates became the symbol of an individual who existed and lived for himself and independent of the city. But one must not forget that his death was a defeat for the city-state, because it revealed a fundamental deficiency ie. the weakness to recognize the freedom and the autonomous existence of the individual, it revealed that the city-state could not accept the individual's freedom and his autonomous existence.
Tokvil correctly notices: "Our fathers did not know the word "self-belief" that we have devised for ourselves, since in their days no person could have been found who didn't belong to some group, or who was able to consider himself absolutely alone." In the pre-modern times, the idea of an individual, an individual free in his choices and alone in his privacy, was unknown. The birth of a subject who was the master of himself, who was defined by the commitments brought about by his choices, is symptomatic of the fact that he no longer understood himself primarily as a part of an organic whole. A person dissolved in a community cannot make use of the creative and critical facilities of his mind and thought. This is not possible unless the person can see himself as separate from the group and the community.
Foucault quotes Baudler as saying that modern man is an individual who creates himself as a work of art. The autonomous individual is a dissident, he "differs" from others, he is a maverick. Not only does he create the style of his own living, but he chooses the fashion of his death by himself as well. Isn't death also the creation of a work of art? Particularly in a system where individualism and freedom of thought are not recognized.
Difference is the necessary condition of man's growth and flourishing. It bestows upon each member of the human race, man and woman alike, the choices that give value and meaning to his or her autonomy. Individual autonomy can only be realized in a "multi-cultural" society, a society where the presence of different cultures makes meaningful choices possible. It has to be accepted that autonomous individuals are capable of choosing between several teachings and life patterns. According to Ulrich Beck, the German sociologist, individualization in modernity means that people have to create their own life story in the absence of certainties and fixed obligating traditional norms, and by the emergence of new ways of living that are constantly under change and evolution.
Socratic death is a style of living, a style of living that men of wisdom have not ceased to praise throughout the history. The choice of death, if one is forced to deny one's individuality, and is deprived of the opportunity to think freely, talk freely and live freely, is a choice, against which reason has no objection left to present. Unconditional freedom or indefinite hunger strike is based upon such theoretical background.
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 5 >> Part 6
Socrates was in pursuit of two things at once. First: Autonomy of the individual against the society (the right to live as an individual). Second: Thinking freely and questioning everything. Socrates did not falter for a moment to put his personal life in danger and invite death in order to show the significance and superiority of individual thought over the group, the society and the government. He proved himself before the city as an individual, by welcoming death. By his death Socrates became the symbol of an individual who existed and lived for himself and independent of the city. But one must not forget that his death was a defeat for the city-state, because it revealed a fundamental deficiency ie. the weakness to recognize the freedom and the autonomous existence of the individual, it revealed that the city-state could not accept the individual's freedom and his autonomous existence.
Tokvil correctly notices: "Our fathers did not know the word "self-belief" that we have devised for ourselves, since in their days no person could have been found who didn't belong to some group, or who was able to consider himself absolutely alone." In the pre-modern times, the idea of an individual, an individual free in his choices and alone in his privacy, was unknown. The birth of a subject who was the master of himself, who was defined by the commitments brought about by his choices, is symptomatic of the fact that he no longer understood himself primarily as a part of an organic whole. A person dissolved in a community cannot make use of the creative and critical facilities of his mind and thought. This is not possible unless the person can see himself as separate from the group and the community.
Foucault quotes Baudler as saying that modern man is an individual who creates himself as a work of art. The autonomous individual is a dissident, he "differs" from others, he is a maverick. Not only does he create the style of his own living, but he chooses the fashion of his death by himself as well. Isn't death also the creation of a work of art? Particularly in a system where individualism and freedom of thought are not recognized.
Difference is the necessary condition of man's growth and flourishing. It bestows upon each member of the human race, man and woman alike, the choices that give value and meaning to his or her autonomy. Individual autonomy can only be realized in a "multi-cultural" society, a society where the presence of different cultures makes meaningful choices possible. It has to be accepted that autonomous individuals are capable of choosing between several teachings and life patterns. According to Ulrich Beck, the German sociologist, individualization in modernity means that people have to create their own life story in the absence of certainties and fixed obligating traditional norms, and by the emergence of new ways of living that are constantly under change and evolution.
Socratic death is a style of living, a style of living that men of wisdom have not ceased to praise throughout the history. The choice of death, if one is forced to deny one's individuality, and is deprived of the opportunity to think freely, talk freely and live freely, is a choice, against which reason has no objection left to present. Unconditional freedom or indefinite hunger strike is based upon such theoretical background.
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 3 >> Part 5 >> Part 6
Second Letter to the Free People of the World, 3.
3. The Project of Heroism and Myth-Formation:
The age of heroism and looking for saviors is gone. It is as if heroes and myths cannot be approached. They belong to the forbidden quarters. Some are of the opinion that Ganji has created a situation where he cannot be criticized; so the way out of this dilemma is for him to somehow change this situation. I do not know what kind of reasoning is this that argues that since the unwanted outcome of enduring and resisting tyranny and human rights violations in undemocratic societies is that those who act as such, turn in some people's minds, into heros or mythical figures, then we must not confront tyrants and human rights violators. This approach is, in my opinion, completely false for the following reasons:
3-1. Instead of giving up the resistance against tyrants and those who violate human rights, we should refute the pre-modern illusions of the people. We should point out that there are no saviors. All men are regular people and prone to error. Earthly human is sinful and erring.
3-2. We should relentlessly criticize everyone's opinions and beliefs, including those of the dissidents, through deconstruction. Criticism occurs in the public arena. When Sadegh Hedayat, Ahmad Shamlou, Shariati, Motahari, Khomeini, Soroush, Mojtahed Shabestari, Malekian, Shayegan, Ashouri, Javad Tabatabaei etc. could not escape criticism, how then could an average journalist? It is not at all important that a person is not tolerant of criticism, neither is it important that the disciples of a political thinker or activist consider him immune to error, what is important is that criticism should be possible, so that everyone would get criticized in the public arena, and no one could deceive the people with totalitarian ideologies. Brave intellectuals and thinkers are the ones who should be building the public arena, instead of waiting for the ruling regime to build it for them. Critical rationality is the only weapon in fighting heroism.
3-3. The issue at hand has nothing not to do with heroism. The issue is the following: An individual has been thrown in jail for years due to his dissenting opinions and views, but they haven't stopped at this unfair, unjust and illegitimate act, and have forbidden him communication by telephone and medical treatment; they say: "you must write letters of repentancee and criticize and reject all your previous beliefs, otherwise not only will there be no improvement in your conditions, but after the current sentence is over we will keep you in prison for many years to come by setting up new trials." Is resisting this unfair process heroism? Do my critics invite me to write letters of repentance? The goal of the system is to break and destroy me. Although I have been broken physically during these years, I have been trying not to break mentally and spiritually, and to say "no" to the ruling tyrants. A "no" that is costing me my life. This body is on the verge of complete deterioration, but since I believe in the conjectures I have made (all my opinions), I see no reason to deny their truth. It is a trivial fact that all these conjectures must be tested with the sword of falsification. Commitment to "critical rationality" is different from "giving up our beliefs by force of prison."
3-4. The political regime of a society is a dress cut to fit the build of its people. If the people prefer a tyrannical political system and think it will answer their needs, no one can prevent them from getting what they have chosen. The people can choose a dictatorship or a democracy, to raise the flag of democracy or to put on the veil of dictatorship. Is being a hero for people who compromise with and tolerate tyrants worth anything, to induce one to sacrifice his life for its sake? "The people, who obey dictators and who are at the same time aware of the redundancy of these same dictators one way or the other. The way they mediate between these conflicting view points is by assuming that they themselves are the cruel rulers and oppressors."
Prison has not trapped me in illusions. Dejection, hopelessness, despair, isolation, escape from politics and abandoning public arena, going after life and its pleasures, all have become prevalent in our society today. I have never been under the illusion that someone (people) will be awaiting me outside of prison. Not only that, but my closest friends do not accept my thoughts, talks, writings and attitudes. But none of these facts obliges me to bow before the tyrants so that they may release me from prison. Life in slavery is not worth a dime in my eyes. In the same way that some allow themselves the option to cooperate with tyrants, or to remain silent before human rights violations, I too have the option to oppose the tyrants and to say "no", in a loud voice, to them and to their attitudes. This is a right that the Mohammedann law confirms:
La yuhibbu Allahu aljahra bialssoo-i mina alqawli illa man thulima wakana Allahu sameeAAan Aaaleeman [An-Nisah:148]
God loveth not the utterance of harsh speech save by one who hath been wronged. God is ever Hearer, Knower. [Women:148]
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 4 >> Part 5 >> Part 6
The age of heroism and looking for saviors is gone. It is as if heroes and myths cannot be approached. They belong to the forbidden quarters. Some are of the opinion that Ganji has created a situation where he cannot be criticized; so the way out of this dilemma is for him to somehow change this situation. I do not know what kind of reasoning is this that argues that since the unwanted outcome of enduring and resisting tyranny and human rights violations in undemocratic societies is that those who act as such, turn in some people's minds, into heros or mythical figures, then we must not confront tyrants and human rights violators. This approach is, in my opinion, completely false for the following reasons:
3-1. Instead of giving up the resistance against tyrants and those who violate human rights, we should refute the pre-modern illusions of the people. We should point out that there are no saviors. All men are regular people and prone to error. Earthly human is sinful and erring.
3-2. We should relentlessly criticize everyone's opinions and beliefs, including those of the dissidents, through deconstruction. Criticism occurs in the public arena. When Sadegh Hedayat, Ahmad Shamlou, Shariati, Motahari, Khomeini, Soroush, Mojtahed Shabestari, Malekian, Shayegan, Ashouri, Javad Tabatabaei etc. could not escape criticism, how then could an average journalist? It is not at all important that a person is not tolerant of criticism, neither is it important that the disciples of a political thinker or activist consider him immune to error, what is important is that criticism should be possible, so that everyone would get criticized in the public arena, and no one could deceive the people with totalitarian ideologies. Brave intellectuals and thinkers are the ones who should be building the public arena, instead of waiting for the ruling regime to build it for them. Critical rationality is the only weapon in fighting heroism.
3-3. The issue at hand has nothing not to do with heroism. The issue is the following: An individual has been thrown in jail for years due to his dissenting opinions and views, but they haven't stopped at this unfair, unjust and illegitimate act, and have forbidden him communication by telephone and medical treatment; they say: "you must write letters of repentancee and criticize and reject all your previous beliefs, otherwise not only will there be no improvement in your conditions, but after the current sentence is over we will keep you in prison for many years to come by setting up new trials." Is resisting this unfair process heroism? Do my critics invite me to write letters of repentance? The goal of the system is to break and destroy me. Although I have been broken physically during these years, I have been trying not to break mentally and spiritually, and to say "no" to the ruling tyrants. A "no" that is costing me my life. This body is on the verge of complete deterioration, but since I believe in the conjectures I have made (all my opinions), I see no reason to deny their truth. It is a trivial fact that all these conjectures must be tested with the sword of falsification. Commitment to "critical rationality" is different from "giving up our beliefs by force of prison."
3-4. The political regime of a society is a dress cut to fit the build of its people. If the people prefer a tyrannical political system and think it will answer their needs, no one can prevent them from getting what they have chosen. The people can choose a dictatorship or a democracy, to raise the flag of democracy or to put on the veil of dictatorship. Is being a hero for people who compromise with and tolerate tyrants worth anything, to induce one to sacrifice his life for its sake? "The people, who obey dictators and who are at the same time aware of the redundancy of these same dictators one way or the other. The way they mediate between these conflicting view points is by assuming that they themselves are the cruel rulers and oppressors."
Prison has not trapped me in illusions. Dejection, hopelessness, despair, isolation, escape from politics and abandoning public arena, going after life and its pleasures, all have become prevalent in our society today. I have never been under the illusion that someone (people) will be awaiting me outside of prison. Not only that, but my closest friends do not accept my thoughts, talks, writings and attitudes. But none of these facts obliges me to bow before the tyrants so that they may release me from prison. Life in slavery is not worth a dime in my eyes. In the same way that some allow themselves the option to cooperate with tyrants, or to remain silent before human rights violations, I too have the option to oppose the tyrants and to say "no", in a loud voice, to them and to their attitudes. This is a right that the Mohammedann law confirms:
La yuhibbu Allahu aljahra bialssoo-i mina alqawli illa man thulima wakana Allahu sameeAAan Aaaleeman [An-Nisah:148]
God loveth not the utterance of harsh speech save by one who hath been wronged. God is ever Hearer, Knower. [Women:148]
Part 1 >> Part 2 >> Part 4 >> Part 5 >> Part 6
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