Everything You want to Know About Iran, Islam, and the Islamic Republic

Ladan Boroumand is one of the most orginial thinkers of our time. Professor Alan Johnson, the founder and editor of Democratiya, a co-author of The Euston Manifesto and Unite Against Terror, interviews this fascinating author and human rights activists. The article is a bit long but full of information and original thoughts you rarely hear from political pundits. The interview also takes you step by step through the debacle of Iranian revolution, which led to the totalitarian establishment of theocracy instead of its original intent, Democracy. Absoulte MUST READ!!Only a few of very important paragraphs:

[...] Human Rights and Democracy in Iran: An Interview with Ladan Boroumand


Détente or Regime-Change?

Alan Johnson: Your view of the reform movement contrasts with that of Ray Tekeyh's in Foreign Affairs in Summer 2007. In urging the West to abandon regime change and pursue détente with Iran he argued the Iranian democratic opposition should be cut adrift on two (mutually contradictory, it seems to me) grounds: it is 'non-existent' and it is an obstacle to détente. Democratisation, he argued, should be pursued indirectly through bolstering 'moderate' conservatives such as Larijani, and by the long-term benefits of 'integrating Iran into the world economy and global society'. How do you respond to that argument?

Ladan Boroumand: There are several points to make here. First 'regime change' is an unfortunate expression. It really doesn't mean anything. It does not tell you what will come after. I mean, there was a regime change in Iraq. When the West has diplomatic leverage it should use it only with reference to 'human rights' and 'democratic principles'. This would leave it less vulnerable to criticism.

Second, what people like Tekeyh are promoting is really just the old traditional realpolitik based on the absolute sovereignty of nation-states. His 'solution' has already been tried in the 1990s and it failed. At the time of Rafsanjani that was exactly the stance taken by all western countries, including the United States. But they could not persuade the Islamic Republic to stop supporting terrorism in the region, or behave like a normal nation state. The plain fact is that the Iranian government is not a normal nation-state. Khomeini's people erased the notion of 'nation' from the name of the country's political institutions – the National Assembly was re-baptised 'Islamic Assembly'. There is no 'nation' in the constitutional text of Iran. It is a universalist Islamist regime that has an international agenda.

Third, we must return to the question of 'the West'. The western polities are also a mutating phenomenon. They are in the midst of very profound changes – the sovereignty of the nation-state is giving way to new transnational political and economic forms. One of the reasons for inconsistency and contradiction – such a tragic paralysis with regard to pushing forward democratic agendas - is that foreign policy is pushed in contradictory directions due to this unfinished political mutation in the West itself.

We must also acknowledge the problems of 'interventions' from above. We have, thus far, a failed intervention in Iraq, and Afghanistan is not a real democracy. There are serious arguments about how to pursue pro-democracy policies and we human rights advocates and democrats should think of ways of organising at the level of international civil society to make us independent of the short-term political agendas of governments. We should organise a vast network of solidarity that could provide moral support, even material support to people struggling for democracy. It is vitally important for the Iranian reform movement to know that it has supporters in the West beyond President Bush (who is quite popular in Iran).

Fourth, the West has an ideological stake here. To treat the Iranian reform movement in the way Tekeyh suggests would only weaken the West's own ideological foundations and encourage Islamist terrorists. And, anyway, why should the Islamic regime be allowed to support the Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, or other groups in Iraq, while the democratic polities are not allowed to support their fellow democrats!


The Politics of Iranian 'Elections'

Alan Johnson: You have pointed out that Khatami's election victories were 'largely inconsequential' because 'while reform kept winning votes, the unelected organs of the state kept tightening the screws'. The election boycott movement emerged in the 1990s because high turnouts had only 'strengthened the regime's international position without bringing any increase in political freedom'. However, boycotts led to Ahmadinejad. (A turnout in 2003 of a mere 12% in Tehran - an Islamist rump - gave us Mayor Ahmadinejad, and, in 2005, President Ahmadinejad.) So how should progressives treat elections in Iran? Are elections still 'a subversive element within a closed ideological system'? Was the 2005 boycott a strategic error? What should democrats do in 2008?

Ladan Boroumand: The Islamic Republic confiscates elections, empties them of their real meaning and turns them into their opposite. Genuinely free elections are an institution that crystallises on the political level the autonomy of the individual. The Iranian regime uses elections to crystallise the negation of the autonomy of the individual. A Guardian decides who is apt to rule you and how they will rule you and which laws they will impose on you. And the regime then calls on you to go and choose who is to do all this to you, from a range of people they have pre-selected! When you play this game you become an accomplice of the denial of your own autonomy. It has been a major ideological success of the regime to trick citizens to go and vote.

Many who have suffered terribly at the hands of the regime do vote, of course. I have a friend who voted for Rafsanjani, knowing full well that Rafsanjani killed his uncle. Many people feel like prisoners, and look to voting to create a 'bigger window in the cell', so to speak. I do not judge them - it's a moral and individual choice. But Havel says you pay a price when you become an accomplice in your own persecution. We have to defend with all our strength the dignity of democratic institutions and recapture these institutions from the hands of the regime that has confiscated them.


The meaning of Ahmadinejad

Alan Johnson: You have described the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as 'a man who stands squarely at the nexus of radical-Islamist ideology and terrorism'. What is the political meaning of his rise to power, so soon after the high hopes of the reform movement? And how should we interpret the regime's recent actions – the pursuit of the bomb, the Holocaust denial conferences, the 'wipe Israel off the map' rhetoric, the kidnapping of the 15 British sailors? Are these actions the expressions of a newly confident Islamic Republic or desperate efforts to escape deep problems?

Ladan Boroumand: The election of Ahmadinejad is directly linked to the reformist episode. Khatami's new reformist language stimulated the opposition while his drive to modernise Iran's image on the international scene forced the regime to water down its radical ideological rhetoric and rein in, rhetorically at least, its violent agents. But this created new dangers for the regime. The regime risked alienating its own agents causing them to waiver in their loyalty or even fear their own arrest. The regime was running the risk of losing them, psychologically. Now, if elections and modernisation are bringing many electors to the polls, and the world is being given the impression of a 'popular' Iranian regime, well OK, that is a risk worth running to gain international recognition. But once the reform movement grew, and once the boycott began to bite, the regime said, 'Well, we must nurture our own base'.

Under Ahmadinejad, once again the police and security forces can shoot people with impunity and women can be harassed in the streets. His rhetoric about Israel is another expression of this strengthening of the regime's orthodoxy. (Actually, it is a less euphemistic expression of what the Islamic Republic has always advocated.) His policies are aimed at remobilising the hard core supporters of the regime who had been disheartened by 8 years of Khatami's ambiguous rhetoric. America's difficulties in Iraq have certainly boosted the regime self confidence, but this is deceptive. Since the election of Ahmadinejad Iran has faced three major popular uprisings in Kurdistan, Azerbaijan and Khuzistan. And it has been challenged by student activists, the women rights movement, teachers', and sporadic strikes and demonstrations by workers.


Part 3: Reforming Islam

Alan Johnson: Let's talk about the reform of Islam. The Iranian human rights lawyer, Shirin Ebadi argues that 'an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith'. Drafting a women's rights law she relied on the central texts of Islam taught in the seminaries of the holy city of Qom, and proved that 'a basic right for a women could be guaranteed within an Islamic framework of government provided those in government were inclined to interpret the faith in the spirit of equality'. Like Saad Eddin Ibrahim, interviewed in Democratiya 8, she defends the idea of reinterpretation, or 'ijtihad', to create a space for 'adapting Islamic values and traditions to our lives in the modern world'. However, she also warns that ijtihad is 'a tricky foundation on which to base inalienable, universal rights' – 'patriarchal men and powerful authoritarian regimes who repress in the name of Islam can exploit ijtihad to reinterpret Islam in the regressive unforgiving manner that suits their sensibilities and political agendas'. Is Islam compatible with democracy, equality and women's rights? How can the gates of ijtihad be opened?

Ladan Boroumand: There are several questions here. First, is religious truth compatible with democracy? You can say 'yes' and 'no'. 'No', because democracy is based on the assumption that truth is unattainable. Individuals are fallible - what they think is the truth might not be the truth. Democracies organise so each person can individually speak truth but not impose it on the society. But religions insist they know the truth and represent it. So there is always tension between religious faith and democratic beliefs. On the other hand, 'yes', because according to all Abrahamic religions God is transcendent and there is nothing sacred about the world, which is only the creation of God. Nature is just nature, and man is sovereign on earth. Now, once man is defined as a free-willed entity that will be accountable to God after death, we have the conceptual ingredients for democratic systems. I know from my own studies of the theological origins of human rights that monotheism has been a key element in the nurturing and development of democratic philosophy. A nature that is profane, and a man defined by reason, fallibility, and freewill - historically these elements have come from Abrahamic religions.

The difference between Islam and Christianity is the difference in the role of the Prophet. Muhammad ruled the political community whereas Christ thought his dominion was not in this world. And that is what allowed Christianity to evolve. In the space evacuated by Christ, men could make human-made laws and deal with their temporal lives. We have a problem in Islam with Sharia law. A profound reform is necessary, but it is also possible. In some areas, Islam is more progressive than Christianity, particularly in the area of gender, because ontologically, in Islam, men and women were created equal, from the same earth, whereas in Christianity woman was created from the spare rib of the man. In dignity and creation man and women are absolutely equal in Islam. You can argue from the ontology of Islam to a reform of Sharia law.

But a reformation of Islam will require profound intellectual debate among theologians. And here is a problem. Christianity has a much stronger intellectual backbone than Islam – there have been thinkers of the stature of St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, the debates of the nominalists in the 13th and 14th centuries, the example of William of Ockham, and the controversies about the status of human beings on earth fought between the Papacy and the Empire. All of this intellectual tumult created elements for a philosophical debate that ended in the social contract. We just don't have this kind of background in the Islamic tradition. That's why it would be very fruitful for Muslim theologians and thinkers to know these debates. One of the projects we should support is the translation of the political and theological debates that took place at the end of the Middle Ages, which were really the key to the birth of democratic ideologies.

Perhaps the Shia are more open to ijtihad at the moment. They have the example of the imams who renounced political power. The tradition of the twelfth imam is that he did not go after the power. The only person who waged war and has become a revolutionary hero for Muslims today is the third imam, Hussein. But if you read the traditional stories about Hussein and the war he waged in Karbala you can draw a totally opposite conclusion. The original texts tell that on the eve of the final battle Hussein conversed with God and was given two options; to win the war and rule the community of the faithful, or to be killed and join Him, God. Between the two options – temporal power and joining his friend, God – Hussein chose to be killed. And this could be the symbolic myth we need - the religious leader, the heir to the prophet, renounces political power for the love of God.

Alan Johnson: It seems likely that Tony Blair will set up a Foundation after he leaves office and one of its aims will be to stimulate inter-faith dialogue.

Ladan Boroumand: There is a problem right now with traditional theological studies. They are really boring – how to wash your hands, and so on. They spend a lot of their time on nonsense. So intelligent elements of society are drawn to modern studies – engineering, law, and so on. Those who go to religious studies are not necessarily the brightest minds. It is very important to create a space where bright minds will be drawn to the intellectual challenge of theological reform and have the opportunity to study Judaism and Christianity and the debates of these traditions. But we need to be careful. Those interested in the real debate are often in hiding, or are not well known or are scared. The space for inter-faith dialogue must not be confiscated by the well-funded Wahhabists, and other brands of totalitarian Islam, who will seek to stop an authentic dialogue.


'Leninism in Islamist Dress'

Alan Johnson: You have described the Sayyid Qutb's ideology as 'Leninism in Islamist dress' and noted the western 'revolutionary' language in Sayyid Abu'l A Mawdudi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Pakistan. Modern Islamism, you insist, marks the continuing influence of a modern Jacobin-totalitarian European ideology of the 'virtuous revolutionary minority'. You identify a lineage running 'from the guillotine, and the Cheka to the suicide bomber'. Can you please explain your thinking about the relation of the European Jacobin tradition to European totalitarianism and contemporary Islamism?

Ladan Boroumand: They are so many points of continuity. For instance, to read the Iranian newspapers in 1979 and 1980 was to read a 'Leninist' discourse, but instead of 'the communist ideal' we had 'the Islamist ideal'. In both cases you could detect a power that saw itself as God on earth, organised as an all-powerful state, denying the right to individual belief, and reserving the right to define truth about and for the individual. The Iranian regime would look into the eyes of a believer and say 'you are not a true believer, you are not a true Muslim, and you are at war with God'. This was straight out of the Moscow Trials. It was not enough for the person to 'I am a Muslim, I do believe in God, but I don't believe in you'. That distinction was not allowed to exist, just as it was not possible, as Trotsky put it, to be right against the Party. Another point of continuity was the revolutionary tribunals of the Iranian regime, which were exactly like the Soviet trials and before them, the French Revolutionary tribunals. And of course the status of the leader in the Islamic Republic is very similar to the status of the Leader in fascist or communist systems.

And we have not paid enough attention to the role of 'sacrifice' in Islamism or its roots in the death-cults of the European totalitarian tradition. One of the major achievements of Abrahamic religion was to put an end to human sacrifice for Gods. The symbolic event, of course, is when the Angel stops Abraham from sacrificing his son for God. Suicide bombing is reinstituting human sacrifice. This would be outrageous to the Prophet - we have no precedent for that kind of behaviour. It is heresy. In all of this Islamism is more like the modern totalitarian death-cults than a religious faith.

Alan Johnson: Since 9/11 the consequences of Islamism for the West have been plain. But you have written with passion of the tragic consequences of Islamism for Islamic societies, arguing that '[We have] lost the keys to our own culture' as a 'degenerate Leninism … pass[es] itself off as the true expression of a great monotheistic religion'.

Ladan Boroumand: Totalitarianism in the west did not arise from the confiscation of a religion. It did so in our culture for a number of reasons. First, Islam lacks a formal organised church as an authoritative institution. Second, we lacked the rich philosophical and intellectual inheritance enjoyed by the West. Third, we experienced a rapid modernisation and a turbulent shift from tribal monarchies to nation-states. Fourth, we inherited political institutions from the West and did not go through the intellectual, political and socio-cultural struggle of inventing them. Fifth, latterly we have been awash with forms of 'revolutionary' ideology, as the West was. So we were poorly equipped to defend ourselves against the ideological attack of the Islamists. Moreover, the traditional religious seminaries had been more or less deserted by intelligent people and became stultifying places. They could not resist Khomeini's assault. They were outraged by Khomeini but they could not respond intellectually.

Alan Johnson: Is it your view that to defend and advance democracy we must - in part - defend Islam against Islamism? That we need to frame Islamism as having imported the worst of the West – the totalitarian idea – against which a reformed Islam and an internationalist democratic impulse must join forces to defeat? I'd like to talk about this as you strike me as one of the very few people who seek to think strategically about the battle of ideas we need to wage and win.

Ladan Boroumand: As a liberal and secularist I am not the best person to defend Islam against impostors. As a student of political ideas however, I believe deconstructing Islamism in the name of Islam would be a good strategy. There are now a new generation of theologians who are more learned, and deplore the manipulation of the faith by Islamists. Many have non-theological backgrounds in engineering and other modern disciplines. There are religious thinkers in Iran who have put forward alternatives. One is Mohammad Modjtahed Shabestari who is thinking religion in terms of human rights and believes there is no contradiction. This movement is just emerging and should be nurtured. These thinkers are persecuted and the West should seek a protective role. For instance, a religious scholar Iran who was a feminist spent years working on the texts, finding a basis for equality between men and women. In a blink of an eye they stormed into his house, arrested and defrocked him, and confiscated all his notes. We have not heard from him since 2000.

Alan Johnson: How can we protect these reformist theologians?

Ladan Boroumand: In Europe protection came as a by-product of the tension between the Papacy and the Empire. The Imperial Court would protect those theologians who argued against the Pope's right to control temporal life and political power. If the worldly Princes had not protected these theologians they would have been burned at the stake. So what the West could do today is to create safe spaces for these debates to take place, free from the assaults of the revolutionary Islamists. We should have seminaries in the West to stimulate a real dialogue. I do not mean a culturally relativistic polite exchange of pleasantries, but challenging debate of the kind we witnessed in the 19th century between Ernest Renan and Jamal-el-din afghani. Renan wrote a piece sharply criticising Islam and instead of taking umbrage, burning embassies or beheading hostages, Afghani took his pen and responded to him. We should be uncompromising about freedom of expression if we want a real debate to take place.


Part 4: The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation

Alan Johnson: You co-founded and help to run The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the promotion of human rights and democracy in Iran http://www.abfiran.org/ How did you come to set it up and what are its goals?

Ladan Boroumand: The Foundation was created in March 2001 by my sister, Roya Boroumand and myself. We talked earlier about our father's assassination as an encounter with evil and how, slowly, we learned to live again. But the feeling of guilt never left us. The four children are all still dealing with this and we all believe that it is our duty to make sure that justice is done. When we saw the changes in Iran in the 1990s, and the rise of a new generation that wants democracy, we decided the time was right to set up the Foundation. We had long had this in mind.

Alan Johnson: Please tell me about the Foundation's memory project for victims of the Islamic Republic – Omid.

Ladan Boroumand: In 1982 we published a report 'Iran: In Defence of Human Rights'. At that time we were outraged that each political party was defending the rights of its own 'martyrs' while supporting the execution of those outside their ranks. We realised the problem was not just persecution by the Islamists but the failure of much wider layers of Iranian society to understand that no one's rights could be protected unless everyone's rights were protected.

Omid is a bi-lingual virtual memorial, library and resource-centre. We seek to list every person killed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and create a file and a virtual memorial to them, telling the story of how and why he or she was killed. The only common denominator is that each victim is a human being who was killed while the due process of law was violated and his or her rights as a defendant were denied. It is our way of paying homage to the victims and to posthumously restore their rights.

Omid (HOPE in English) is our way to remedy the irremediable. Evil consists in the eclipse of humanity and in Omid we can acknowledge each victim's humanity and create a space for empathy. We provide their loved ones with a forum to talk about them and even to mount the defence that they were not allowed to mount when they were alive. We are also sending a message to the killers: here are the people you wanted to erase from the surface of the earth and they live on in a virtual world and they are demanding justice.

We want justice for our father but we wont get it if we don't fight for the right to justice for all fathers, all brothers, all mothers, all sisters, and all children. There is no right for us if there is no right for them. Our individual interest will be protected only when theirs is too. We want to tell our fellow citizens that we understand this, and invite them to understand it. And we want to send a message to the world about the Islamic Republic of Iran: this regime pretends to be an 'Islamic' regime but has killed thousands and thousands of Muslims; it pretends to be popular but rests on violence.

Grief is profoundly unsettling. You can collapse, but you can also be overwhelmed by the need to understand and act. Your mind can become very open to learning. We want people to visit Omid and to learn - about human rights and how to argue for them. So we have also created a virtual library, and are translating the most important human rights instruments and classical texts on democracy. It is a work on progress. We have also dedicated a collection of the library to the memoirs of former prisoners, to tell their story. We also offer scholars and activists a resource bank of information about the Iranian pro-democracy movement.

We have had over 400 people completing online forms, telling the story of their loved ones, many from the Islamic Republic of Iran. We interact with them without knowing them. They send pictures of their loved ones and we complete the case of each person slowly by interacting with the victims. Omid is the initiative of the Boroumand Foundation but we want it to be the project of the Iranian nation one day.

Alan Johnson: What are you working on now?

Ladan Boroumand: At the Foundation we are working on the translation of democratic classics. Right now we are translating John Locke's Second Treatise, Vaclav Havel's The Power of the Powerless, and some of The Federalist papers. I am also working on an article for The Journal of Democracy assessing the prospects for the civil society movement in Iran. Later I would like to write a book based on our work at Omid, about the pattern of violence exerted by totalitarian regimes.

Visit Omid (HOPE IN ENGLISH) Memorial in defense of human rights here.