The weakest link
Sacrificing
longstanding universal truths
September 21, 2004
iranian.com
"... he would not reign over the people if they did not wish
it... "
-- Cyrus the Great
"The sons of Adam are limbs of one another
Having been created of one essence."
"When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest."
-- Saadi Shirazi
It is a prerequisite for any contemporary social order to endure
that it has to find a way that coalesces the trinity, which is:
respect of law, importance of science and logic and religion. To
expect such conditions to exist in theologically infested societies
within cores of the present world of Islam, that of Saudi Arabia
and Iran, is an unviable bet.
Naturally, their very theological constitution rarely helps to
find themselves in an enviable position in discovering this nirvana
of advancement and optimism. The issues of terrorism and barbarism
arisen in the present day and age have shaken the limbs of humanity.
It is however commendable that, despite insinuation and indirect
intervention, Iran has not been responsible for the kind of global
terrorism that finds its roots coming from extremist elements within
Saudi Arabia. Iran is far too sophisticated for that.
But to see the violations in terms of human rights abuses originating
from this great country is heartbreaking; particularly, a nation
ingrained with the utterances of Cyrus the Great, who 2500 years
ago said, "... he would not reign over the people if they
did not wish it... " and declared that he would not force
any person to change his religion or faith.
In very ancient times, it was Iran that taught humanity the interweavements
of Law with Science and Religion. Since Zarathushtra, when human
awareness was raised into the inviolability of religion and devised
into twenty-one Nasks or Holy Books, one third of Zarathushtra
works comprised Law, one-third Science, and one-third pure Religion.
Iran can be rightly termed as the cradle of civilization and of
being a "Lawgiver"; it has a rich tradition of culture
and diversity of thinking. As a region, Iran has given law to the
world; laws of the Medes and Persians acquired wide-ranging prominence.
Iranian history has a very close relationship to near the beginning
when humanity started living as a civilised society.
The first
Iranian rulers were lawgivers. Contrast it to today and one sees
the 21st century Iran under clergy as the biggest violator of
human rights. Its post-revolution decline from bastion and cradle
of
civilization to the lowest rung of civilized nation's ladder
is scandalous and disgusting.
Iran's contributions to codified law, so as to dispense justice,
are poignant, evidenced by the extensive corpus of pre-Islamic
texts on religious and scientific laws. The ancestors of the Persians,
the ancient Zoroastrians, covered texts from the laws applying
to soldiers to those on the cultivation of soil. It is perhaps
the tragedy that a few 'deranged ideologically motivated' leaders
have wasted the histological traditions of Iran in less than three
decades, the richness of thousands of years trampled in few years.
To live in peace without coercion is an indispensable human right;
terror campaigns violate the sacred trust of 'live and let others
live' that has been evolved over millenniums. Law started in Iran
in the beginnings of human history, however, this rich inheritance
has been wretchedly shattered by the in-attendance clerical tyranny
in Tehran.
Although it is generally considered that the most ancient code
of laws is understood by Western scholars to be the code of Hammurabi,
an ancient king of Babylonia, who ruled about 2100 B.C. Babylonia,
the first dignitaries to have rendered extraordinary service in
framing and codifying laws was Prince Uruvakhshaya, the brother
of the eternal idol Krsaspa (Garshasp) and the son of King Thrita,
the vicar of medicine. They were the direct ancestry of Yima, the
dazzling antediluvian monarch. This unquestionably demonstrates
insistence of early Iranian rulers to codify law and provide justice
to their subjects.
The other code known to civilisation popularly is the 'Justinian
code' Roman law that was promulgated by Justinian, the contemporary
of Khosrow, the Great of Persia who was more popularly known as
Anoshervan. The influences of Anoshervan on edicts of Justinian
code are extraordinarily evident. It is obvious however that the
more ancient cradle civilizations of Iran, China, India and Egypt
should have had earlier systems of law.
Seeing a rich traditional country like Iran deviating to these
low levels of turpitude of governance is incredible. The questions
today rightly being asked are: Can 16-year-old Atefeh
Rajabi's
execution for 'acts incompatible with chastity' be believed? Why
should the mullahs be allowed to hold kangaroo courts and dispense
summary justice to waste young peoples' lives on unskilled crimes
without firm evidence?
What kind of justice is this where Atefeh Rajabi was executed
for a crime when the man she allegedly had relations with was only
given 100 lashes? Is human life of a 16-year-old equal to 100 lashes
on the hard bottom of a grown up paedophile?
We need to reject
this grave attack on 'human civility and dignity' by a handful
of ideological thugs. It is the string of 'civility' that connects
our human village together, this source of respect towards each
other is a fountain of wellspring of mankind, and Iran has definitely
been the source of the universal tradition of civility.
Efforts to erase the Bahai minority from the Iranian mosaic are
gruesome. Nearly 1,000 Bahai university-age students in Iran were
recently shocked and betrayed by the new government regulations
requiring that, in order to attend a university this coming year,
they must accept identification as Muslims. Equality is a right
of every human being; Cyrus the Great granted that right, and literally
figures like Rumi and Saadi have structured within the Iranian
genre by saying:
"The sons of Adam are limbs of one another
Having been created of one essence."
"When the calamity of time afflicts one limb
The other limbs cannot remain at rest."
By that token, are Bahais not the sons of Adam? Unfortunately
the Bahais of Iran still face, day after day, methodical denial
of their rights, not only as Iranian citizens with regard to their
civil and political rights, but also in terms of their economic,
social and cultural rights as members of a world-wide religious
faith. The trample the customs of Cyrus the great and adage of
Saadi to annihilate a vibrant community that takes pride in its
Iranian roots is poignant day for Iran.
On July 1, 2004, an Iranian newspaper, Etemaad, published
an article headlined, "It is now the turn of the House of Mirza Buzurg-i-Nuri
to be destroyed." Mirza Buzurg was the father of Baha'u'llah,
the founder of the Bahai Faith. The demolition of the house of
Mirza Buzurg took place openly and quickly.
This was an act of
wanton desecration comparable to Talibans' vendetta of the destruction
of two priceless Buddha statues in Bamiyan. To obliterate the
heritage of minorities is not a service to Islam; rather, it is
an affront
to the religious convictions of pluralism.  The lack of respect for human life,
in Iran in particular, and the collective flippant attitude of
the world of 'political Islam'
towards mass human rights abuses in general, stems from sacrificing
longstanding universal truths like strings that have connected
the 'necklace of mankind' together.
The potency of these 'strings'
that connects our universal village together lies in the potency
of the weakest link. These longstanding universal truths of respect
for life and availability of justice are codified as a part of
broad-spectrum civility in our genes. What has recently happened
post revolutions is that some have discovered the weakest spot
in the string that holds the global village necklace.
Rediscovery of 'political Islam' in Shiite and Sunni worlds has
led to the redefinition of our human social contract evolved over
thousands of years through a process of survival of the best idea.
The legacy of thousands of years' human richness has been sacrificed
on the altar of holy interpretations of how we should administer
our life; unfortunately these interpretations are led by the likes
of Khomeini and Mullah Omar.
Ideologically provoked 'terrorism' has plunged a dagger into the
heart of our social contract, that of basic respect of human life.
It provides, through its ill-founded medieval judgment and jurisprudence,
the 'right to kill innocents' without hearing. The heart and mind
of every terrorist has become the 'temple of justice', with so
many elevated to dispense summary justice as they please the 'high
priests' with a 5 kg dynamite belt strapped around their waist,
out to avenge and settle scores with those who do not believe in
their vision of Dark Age living.
The suicide judges have rewritten the rules of engagement prevalent
amongst combatants; the 'holy repugnance' of taking one's own life
has been redefined as the revenge of the weak. With new ideological
jurisprudence in practice, we are living in a two-tiered world
of justice, one where justice demands evidence before someone is
convicted, the other, where convictions are handed by 21st century's
new inquisitors, those who are quick to dispense justice and are
able to craft and interpret the worst of atrocities in the name
of 'moral equivalence and ideological justifications.' 'Jihadi
and ideological instincts' are regrettably in dissent with the
contract of basic respect for life that works in concert with rich
traditional and cultural diversity of our society.
 Human beings have overcome a lot of this adversity in the past
and our combined human heritage is strong enough to accept this
new challenge. The holy inquisitions of the present age, like the
inquisitions of the past, are bound to fail. We as human beings
have shown that conscientiousness time and again.
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