The kakistocracy
Government by the most unprincipled citizens
May 24, 2004
The Iranian
To say the Islamic Republicanism of Iran is a failed
experiment in statecraft is to state the obvious. Exempting the
ones who have been vacationing in Mars for the past quarter of
a century, or those with an allergic reaction to reality and aversion
to living in a fantasyland of their own creation, a minute minority
still insist on the possibility of reform of the failed system.
Of course, the existence of such minority is no surprise. Throughout
history such diehard opponents have been--and are expected to be
around, regardless of
any failed ideology they struggle to validate. It certainly is hard to have
one's
dream to come true and then realize what a nightmare it has been.
Make no mistake
about it: the Islamic Republic is the worst nightmare of its most ardent
original supporters. By now, its true nature has become crystal
clear--even to the most
gullible of the bunch: they are a ruling clerical clan without the ability
to run a country and the intellectual acumen to learn from their
mistakes, as if
twenty five years has not been enough time!
To top the disaster, the kakistocracy
(government by the most unprincipled citizens) is corrupt to the core,
way down to the sub-particle level of the core; they seem to be
least
concerned about
the damage their behavior is causing Islam, the religion they use as the
vehicle for their crime.
One can be coy or try to put on a brave face or even drag out
historical wrap-sheet of other faiths, but at the end of the
day, it is the height of
the embarrassing
admission that, thanks to their misdeeds, Islam is now equated with barbarity,
backwardness, fratricide and terrorism. This is not just the view of the
non-Moslem population of the world; increasingly, many Moslem adherents
think thusly.
Should anyone have a sliver of doubt about this assertion, he should check
out the number
of conversion to other religions.
Christianity and, to a lesser degree,
other religions are having a bumper crop of new adherents, mostly
walk-ins; there
is even a healthy number of former Moslem Raelians, the beam-me-up-Scotty
religion. Some Moslems try to mask their faith, "spiritual" being the most
common self chosen designation. And of course the changing of names to
non-religious ones, at least in Iran, is so common that it does
not even bear mentioning.
Needless
to say, Islam has definitely nothing to be ashamed of; rather, some of
its self
professed followers are the ones who are the culprits. And, certainly
it is
not the first time that human beings have used belief in the higher authority
as
their personal, self aggrandizement tool. Follow any religious history
and you will find it littered with the same cast of characters
who were after
self indulgences
at the cost of other's sincere beliefs.
Amongst them one also
notices a special breed, the reformers. They are the ones who profess
the desire to be
the harbingers of change from doldrums. Of these, the ones who have
put their talent and energy into fashioning a less painful separation
of
temporal power
from the celestial are the ones that have either succeeded -- or opened
the door for others to succeed -- at saving the faith from a certain
abuse by ever present
charlatans. The others have been either demagogues, snake oil salesmen
or in the best case, faithful with a last ditch effort to fit a round
peg into a square
hole.
We have had our "glorious Islamic Revolution," and now that the time
to face up to the ugly reality has arrived, the diehards are busy concocting,
scheming or otherwise throwing a Hail Mary pass which, at best, prolongs
the agony of the deathwatch. The latter-day Iranian "Moslem Luther's",
"The Hermeneutical Expansion and Contraction of the Theory of Shariah,",
or
in colloquial Persian, sholkon-seftkon sharia is nothing but
an exercise in Persian mysticism laced demagoguery. Or his State side
acolytes, or if you
will, Luther in training, socio duo's taking out of context quotations
from Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes and alike and hammering together a wordy
high school level essay replete with tongue twisting jargons to impress
the uninitiated --
is the cure all elixir that can be spotted a mile away.
 Rehashing Shariati's
utterly failed Fatima is Fatima and Alavit vs. Safavit Islamic
theory that many of us have out grown, thanks to seeing it in practice
in
Islamic Republic, is
to say the least, passé. One has to give them credit, though,
for their creative abuse of facts, something that would make their
ideal, Ale-Ahmad, proud.
And lastly, the insistence that within the context of the present
Islamic Republic's
constitution, Islam can accommodate Democracy is a falsity.
The very
"reformist" president pushed that nonsense for seven years; gender
change of the pusher is not going
to change the nature of the oxymoron argument. It is time
to face the stark reality, in the words of Joseph Welch to Senator
McCarthy
at the end of his reign
of terror, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency,
sir, At long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" >>> News & politics
forum
May is Mamnoon
Iranian.com Month
Support your favorite site *
*
|
