[Mb-civic] FW: Amir Taheri: Iran's perilously honest man

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:05:06 -0500
Subject: Amir Taheri: Iran's perilously honest man



Begin forwarded message:

> 
>  
> IRAN'S PERILOUSLY HONEST MAN
> by Amir Taheri
> New York Post 
> November 8, 2005
> November 8, 2005 -- AS Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared to mark his first
> 100 days as president Saturday, his foes within the system were conducting a
> massive campaign of character assassination against him with leaks, sound
> bites and outright attacks in the media and public gatherings.
> 
> Two mullahs, former presidents, led the campaign. One, Hashemi Rafsanjani, has
> not yet recovered from the shock of losing to Ahmadinejad, whom he had once
> dismissed as a "lightweight." The other, Muhammad Khatami, is sore because
> Ahmadinejad cut the budget of the "dialogue of civilizations" that the former
> president had created to hoodwink the Western powers and the Arabs into
> believing that the regime was burying its Khomeinist ideology for good.
> 
> Both mullahs also worry about the audit that Ahmadinejad has ordered of public
> finances over the past 16 years that is to say, during the Rafsanjani and
> Khatami presidencies. An initial report claims that some $120 billion out of a
> total of $600 billion in Iran's oil income since 1979 is not "properly
> accounted for." And many in the Khatami-Rafsanjani faction have also lost the
> plum jobs they had secured over the past 16 years. The purge started by
> Ahmadinejad has spread to major public corporations, long milked for favors.
> 
> All this could pull the carpet from under the feet of the elite of rich
> mullahs and their hangers-on that formed over the past quarter-century. Some
> of the new rich produced by the Islamic revolution have already fled the
> country for the West. Others are selling their assets hence the "take the
> money and run" collapse of the Tehran Stock Exchange.
> 
> But rich mullahs also hate Ahmadinejad because he is reviving the original
> revolutionary discourse of Khomeinism without dissimulation.
> 
> The concepts and ideas that Rafsanjani and Khatami treated as mere metaphors
> are being redefined as literal truths under Ahmadinejad. One key concept is
> that of the Hidden Imam, the awaited Mahdi of the Twelver Shi'ites. To
> Rafsanjani and Khatami, this has little immediate relevance to the actual life
> of society. Ahmadinejad, however, has restored it as the central truth of
> Iran's political, cultural, economic and social life.
> 
> The new president has written and signed a pact with the Hidden Imam ? and has
> asked all officials to do so. Taken to its logical conclusion, this move
> dispenses with the need for any mullahs ? including the "Supreme Guide."
> 
> This reinterpretation of Twelver Shi'ism excludes not only any form of rule by
> the mullahs but also any form of electoral democracy. In this way, Ahmadinejad
> hopes to outflank the two principal political forces that have been fighting
> for power in Iran since the middle of the 19th century. His message is:
> Neither mullahrchy, nor democracy.
> 
> Ahmadinejad has also changed the Islamic Republic's international profile.
> Rafsanjani and Khatami spoke one way inside Iran and another way outside;
> Ahmadinejad uses the same discourse everywhere. He addressed the United
> Nations just as he does a gathering of Jihadists in a Tehran suicide-bomber
> training camp.
> 
> Where Rafsanjani and Khatami tried to redefine Islam to please the modern
> world, a world that is shaped and dominated by Western ideas, Ahmadinejad is
> trying to revive the purest definition of the faith. He asserts that Islam is
> an alternative to the current global system, not a candidate for becoming a
> small part of it.
> 
> Those who have tried to build a life on the basis of a little bit of Islam and
> a little bit of Western modernism are made uncomfortable by Ahmadinejad ? who
> is forcing everyone to take sides.
> 
> Seen in that context, his pledge to wipe Israel off the map like "a stain of
> shame" is an attempt to force everyone to take sides. He is asking everyone to
> decide the nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Is it only about
> statehood, borders, security, sharing of water, settlements and diplomatic
> relations? If so, it cannot, should not, be treated as a religious conflict,
> Muslim vs. Jew. It would be a political conflict, one of countless such
> throughout history ? and all the religious energy injected into it over the
> past half-century must be regarded as misplaced.
> 
> But if we face something other than a political conflict, there can be no
> question of ever accepting the existence of Israel as a state within any
> frontiers. Treaties signed with Israel become documents not of political
> expediency but of apostasy.
> 
> In 100 days, Ahmadinejad has shaken many mullahs on their pulpits and more
> monkeys up their trees ? by asking everyone to be honest with themselves. He
> believes the world is heading for a clash of civilizations in which Islam is
> the only credible alternative to Western domination. And he is convinced that
> Islam will win.
> 
> It is now up to everyone to decide whether to take that analysis seriously, or
> dismiss it as the juvenile illusions of a novice who will, in time, learn that
> the real world is different.
> 
> But the dilemma that Ahmadinejad has created for Islamists inside and outside
> Iran remains. He says Islam is not just a flavor to add to policies that are
> not, indeed cannot be, Islamic. Either we go the whole way and abolish
> politics as a space distinct from religion, or we stop using religion as a
> device to give our policies the legitimacy they do not deserve.
> 
> Posing such questions is no mean feat.
> 
>  
> 



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