In the Name of God
If Only…
In his account of Hussein ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, at the point where Hallaj is being led to his execution and the incited crowd is stoning him, Attar of Nishapur writes: "Then everyone threw a stone. Shibli, to go along with them, threw a flower. Hussein ibn Mansur let out a sigh. They said: 'Of all these stones you sighed at none; what is the secret of sighing at a flower?' He said: 'Those who do not know are excused. It is hard for me to bear it from him, for he knows that he must not throw.'"1
In a recent interview with the Fars News Agency, Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi was asked the following by the reporter:
"Fars: A segment of the Tahkim Vahdat [Office for Consolidating Unity, Iran's largest student organization] activists, such as Ali Afshari and Sazegara, believe that one should even make use of a military attack against the Islamic Republic, and they themselves have established ties with the neoconservatives of the White House. The Nationalist-Religious camp, like Mr. Sahabi, is completely opposed to Sazegara and Afshari and reproaches them for this view. Where do you and the Freedom Movement stand: do you agree or disagree with the likes of Sazegara and Afshari and with a military attack on Iran?"
He replied:
"Ebrahim Yazdi: The cooperation of the likes of Sazegara, Afshari and the Tahkim Vahdat camp with America is regrettable, and I am strongly opposed to this view. Some of these gentlemen you named held such views even before they left Iran."2
Accusation and slander are the common currency of Iranian politics. I myself have not been spared, and I have heard plenty of accusations and slander against me. Some time ago, in an article titled "Two Incurable Ills," I wrote:
"You have surely noticed that in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially in the past 17 years during which Mr. Khamenei has held the position of Leader, every opponent has faced three accusations. The first is dependence on foreigners, particularly the Americans; the second is being a mercenary and taking money from foreigners; and the third, applied to some, is sexual and moral corruption. In fairness, when it comes to labeling and branding people, Mr. Khamenei holds first place. Over the past 17 years he has, without exception, leveled all three of these accusations, or some of them, against every one of his opponents.
Up to this point, the matter seems clear and understandable to me. The Leader and the apparatuses under his command, either because of a defective mental and psychological makeup, or to create a pretext for cracking down on opponents, or both, brand all opponents as foreign spies, salaried agents of foreigners, and sometimes as morally corrupt. But the story of this incurable ill does not end here. If it stopped there, perhaps it could be remedied. The problem runs deeper than that. This habit of accusing and labeling exists among all political activists and even among ordinary people. And to be honest, I am afraid to say that in my view this phenomenon has taken shape more from the bottom up than from the top down."3
For this reason I usually do not respond to such talk and write nothing. But when I saw Dr. Yazdi fall so readily into the trap of the interviewer from the Fars News Agency, which is known as the organ of the parallel intelligence apparatus, and become tainted with accusation and slander, my heart ached, and I thought I should write these few lines. A few lines earlier in the same interview, when the reporter, acting like an interrogator, asks him:
"Fars: Every time you travel to America, some people raise issues about you and your trip and say that medical treatment and visiting family are a pretext and that Ebrahim Yazdi has secret dealings with America and the White House. They say your trip is essentially an entirely political one. If you have anything to say on this matter, please go ahead."
Dr. Yazdi answers:
"Ebrahim Yazdi: Look, either we believe we are Muslims or we don't. Even if we are not Muslims, then according to the words of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him), 'Kunu ahraran fi dunyakum,' that is, we must be free-spirited in this world of ours. Therefore, if we make a claim, 'al-bayyinatu 'ala al-mudda'i' [the burden of proof lies with the claimant]. Those who say these things and fabricate these rumors must answer before their own conscience, before the history of the Iranian nation, and before ethics, and must present their documents and evidence; otherwise I too could say whatever I like about many people. There are people in this very government who are American citizens and are tied to major centers, and they do not even hide it, but the political atmosphere of the country should not be polluted with certain kinds of talk. So to those who say these things I say: 'Hatu burhanakum in kuntum sadiqin' [Bring your proof, if you are truthful]; if you have proof and evidence, bring it forward. Let us not forget that when our master Imam Ali (peace be upon him) was martyred in the mosque, the people of Syria said: 'Did Ali even pray?!'"4
Unfortunately, he forgets his own words, and a few lines further down he joins his voice to that of this news agency's reporter and forgets "Hatu burhanakum in kuntum sadiqin."
In recent years I have discussed these subjects in perhaps hundreds of interviews and articles. I must ask this dear friend whether he knows of even a single occasion or a single place where I have defended Mr. Bush's administration, supported an American military attack, or agreed to serve as an agent of a foreign government, America included. From the very start of the American military attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq until this very day, I have always opposed any attack on Iran and have stated explicitly that changing Iran's regime is the business of the Iranian nation alone and has nothing to do with any foreign power. However, changing this regime's behavior toward the people of Iran is something for which our nation needs the help of the international community, just as the nation of South Africa needed it to confront the apartheid regime, or as the nations under the bloody boot of tyrannical communist governments needed it, or as we ourselves needed it against the Shah's dictatorship, when we welcomed the international community's support for the struggles of the Iranian nation and its pressure on that regime. The pressure exerted by the administration of Mr. Carter, then President of the United States, on the Shah's regime was among the important factors in changing that regime's behavior toward the people, opening up the political climate, and setting the revolutionary movement in motion. Likewise, in the face of Iran's current regime, which unilaterally violates all the civil and human rights of the nation and daily tramples on the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we ask all the free nations and governments of the world to help by putting pressure on this regime to force it to change its behavior toward the Iranian nation, and to come to the aid of the Iranian nation in its struggle for freedom of expression, free elections, freedom of assembly and association, and its other civil rights. At the same time, we keep in mind Dr. Mossadegh's teaching that one can have relations with all foreign powers but can rely on none of them. I have repeated these few lines perhaps hundreds of times, in various languages and in hundreds of interviews and writings. It would have been enough for Dr. Yazdi to spend just a few minutes visiting my website to see my views.
I do not know where Dr. Yazdi found the audacity to accuse me so casually in the last days of the blessed month of Ramadan and to charge me and others with collaborating with a foreign government. The Dr. Yazdi I knew feared God and would not allow himself to toy with the honor of God's servants. Nor do I think Dr. Yazdi is so naive or speaks so rashly as to regard my use of the Voice of America platform as a sign of collaboration with America. For in that case, Mr. Khomeini's use of the platforms of hundreds of foreign media outlets during the revolution, and Dr. Yazdi's own use of them up to the present day, would also be called into question. Interestingly, I have been scrupulous in my use of this platform and have not even accepted the few dozen dollars of honorarium they pay for each appearance. Indeed, on occasions when I have traveled from elsewhere to take part in a program, I have not even accepted travel expenses. In short, to this day I have not taken a single dollar of the money that is the right of anyone who takes part in an interview with this or other media outlets.
When I saw this moral fall of Dr. Yazdi's, I was lost in thought and bewildered for several days. Personally, I have no grievance against him. Nor do I leave Dr. Yazdi to the Day of Judgment and the Sirat Bridge, for I have forgiven him from the bottom of my heart and hold nothing against him; I only pray for him and ask God to forgive the faults of him, me, and all the faithful. But I am worried about his presence on Iran's political stage and the dangerous game he is playing. I think to myself:
If only Dr. Yazdi realized that for years Mr. Khamenei and his security apparatus have fed on the divisions within the ranks of the freedom-seekers and used them to consolidate the foundations of despotism. Then he would not be played by the supporters of despotism such as the Fars News Agency.
If only Dr. Yazdi did not fall captive to the regime's propaganda campaigns, and, just as he himself rightly made use of international resources for long years of his life to fight the Shah's dictatorship, he now honored the activities of Iranian freedom-seekers around the world and moved toward a united front of freedom-seekers against the religious despotism ruling Iran.
If only Dr. Yazdi gave up this method of courting those in power and never said that he is prepared to form a coalition even with the Islamic Coalition Party (Mo'talefeh), the same Mo'talefeh that only a few months ago held a commemoration for Asadollah Lajevardi, calls him a martyr, is the only faction defending Mr. Kordan, and has dozens of other dark deeds to its name.
If only Dr. Yazdi realized that the project of "Islam and democracy," or "Islam and revolutionism," or "Islam and modernity," pursued through belief in a maximalist religion, as found in the works of Engineer Bazargan, Dr. Shariati and all the Islamists of the 1330s, 1340s and 1350s of the Iranian calendar (the 1950s through the 1970s), has failed, and that its natural outcome is this very Islamic Republic. If only he grasped something of the depth of the surgery performed by thinkers such as Dr. Soroush and understood that belief in the interaction of religious knowledge with other branches of human knowledge, and religious pluralism, are prerequisites of the project of Islam and modernity; that this is possible only on the foundation of a minimalist religion; and that this, in turn, remains an unfinished project without a rereading of the question of revelation. Then, when confronting a matter as vast as this, which is being seriously pursued by thinkers in the Islamic world and thinkers of other religions, he would not cling so superficially to a flimsy distinction between prophetic hadith, hadith qudsi [sacred hadith] and the Quran, and would not so openly expose his ignorance of the important debates under way among the younger generation.
If only Dr. Yazdi accepted that he has become incapable of even understanding the questions of the younger generation, let alone answering them, and realized that he cannot answer this generation's questions with the outlook of the 1340s (the 1960s).
If only Dr. Yazdi, when dealing with the Office for Consolidating Unity, understood that what this largest organization of Iranian students says, because of its democratic and elected character, is the voice of the main body of the country's students and youth. When the activists of this student organization do not submit to him and disagree with him, he would not accuse them of dependence on America and foreigners. Instead of breaking the mirror, he would see himself in the mirror of the country's younger generation.
If only Dr. Yazdi, at the age of seventy-seven, accepted that aging is natural for every human being, that with age the sharpness of the mind dulls and forgetfulness and error increase, and that in politics, as in any profession, one must one day retire and make way for younger people.
And dozens of other "if onlys" that come to my mind. Let me stop my pen here and ask God for Dr. Yazdi only God Himself.
May God grant all of us a good end.
Mohsen Sazegara
22 Mehr 1387 (October 13, 2008)
1- Attar of Nishapur, Sheikh Farid al-Din, Tadhkirat al-Awliya (Memorial of the Saints), the account of Hussein ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, p. 418, edited by Dr. Mohammad Este'lami, Pocket Books Company, first edition, 1352 (1973), Tehran
2- Dr. Yazdi's interview with the Fars News Agency, as quoted on the Mizan website
http://mizannews.com/default.asp?nid=824
3- Quoted from the Sazegara website
/persian/archives/2006/09/060901_034433.html
4- Dr. Yazdi's interview with the Fars News Agency, as quoted on the Mizan website
http://mizannews.com/default.asp?nid=824