 Outspoken or outsmarted?
The "high-jack" theory is another self-denial
attempt made by those who were outsmarted by the clergy
By Parkhash
August 12, 2003
The Iranian
The appearance of a letter by T. Zolfaghari in response
to another three-year old letter by Kambiz Ameli [Letters, 1 August:
"Dwelling
on the past"] was what triggered the writing of this piece.
In this bizarrely
belated, if not out-of-date response, to the spurious allegations
made by Ameli some three years earlier, Zolfaghari urges us to
drop the question of "who to blame for the revolution" and
move on. Ironically, it is Zolfaghari himself who, strangely after
a three-year lapse, is still hooked on the subject of on who to
put the blame.
Ameli's motives are, to say the least, questionable.
He shows all the symptoms of a deeply wounded (and betrayed) ex-affiliate
of the old regime, most likely through family connections, who
had found a chance to settle some old scores. His previous associations
with the regime is evident. Clearly he carries no affection for,
as he put it, the "communist-backed" Mossadegh, nor does
he pelt the usual venomous rhetoric at the Shah's Savak.
Ameli's
arguments are often so familiar that makes me wonder if he has
copied them from other letters of the same kind written by the
usual anti-Pahlavi fraternity. But his comparison with the Saudi
Arabia and its royal family is definitely original. Ameli must
be a zealous antifeminist who prefers to see the women under the
veil and in the kitchen - as is the case in the Saudi - as opposed
to seeing them reaching the professorial, ministerial and ambassadorial
posts, as was the case under the Pahlavis.
But I am not writing
this piece as a reply to Ameli's or Zolfaghari's letters as I
found their contents lacking any credible argument. However, what
I am
interested in is using the re-emergence of this topic, no matter
how untimely it might be, to address a wider question. The reality is that the causes behind the events
of some twenty five years ago which brought the rule of the fundamentalist
clergy
upon us remain to be a gripping subject and a burden on the national
conscious. Iranians, as a nation, have made it a habit to escape
from self-accountability. They go to great pains to find any excuse
to clear themselves from blames and self-guilt. But if they choose
to search deep and hard in their collective souls, they should
find, principally, only themselves to blame.
The evidence is compelling: All other nations
who staged a revolution at some point in their history, did
so in order to break with the "tradition" and
adopt a "modern" status. Iranians are the only nation
in the history who revolted against the "modern" and
returned to a dark and degraded "tradition."
This is a uniquely Iranian phenomenon, not explainable
by any Western analytical or sociological tool. The only way
to understand and
explain this retrograde development we call the "Islamic revolution" is
by revisiting our history and particularly the progression of the
Shiite culture - something that was totally ignored and even rejected
by our so-called progressive non-religious intellectuals.
These
pseudo-intellectuals are amongst those who prefer to claim that
the revolution was "high-jacked." This group who were
in fact the foot soldiers of the Ayatollahs were, in true sense
of the word, the collaborators. In their mind, there was nothing
out of line when they rallied behind a fanatical Ayatollah who,
through his writings and preaching, had made no secret of his intentions
to restore the Shiite's long lost pride and claim to power.
The
collaborators had no problem either when voted for the establishment
of an Islamic Republic. Only when the boundaries of the revolutionary
justice reached them did our collaborators realise how ignorant
they were. The "high-jack" theory is another self-denial
attempt made by those who were outsmarted by the clergy.
Yes, for now, we must move on. But a nation
cannot have a peaceful future unless it comes to peace with
its past. The past is always
there to haunt the future.
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Outspoken or outsmarted?
