Despite mounting tensions between the US and Islamic Republic of Iran over the current nuclear dilemma, despite the fact that US embassies do not officially issue visa for ex-members of a communist or a fascist party, the Bush administration granted a visa to Khatami, one of the key figures of the Islamic fascism in Iran, to enter the US.
Khatami’s visit proves that the Bush administration continues ignoring concerns about the steady deterioration of human rights in Iran. The catastrophic situation of human rights is not a recent issue, but a permanent problem since the IRI exists, also during the Khatami’s presidency. The visit has been sparking a new wave of anger for various motives among Iranian and American people.
Khatami should be brought before an international court for his crimes against humanity. He was one of the high ranking leaders of the IRI during the massacre of many thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988. During his presidency many innocent people like Zahra Kazemi, Darioush Forouhar were brutally slaughtered.
From the beginning of the revolution, he was in different ruling positions of the IRI. During the first decade of bloody repression in Iran, he was a minister in Khamenei’s cabinet for the Culture and Islamic Guidance. During the second decade of repression, Khatami was also an active member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution. He finally became the fifth president of the IRI from 1997 to 2005, elected because there were no better candidates.
Khatami is regarded by some western media as Iran's first reformist president, the focus of his presedency was however on the rule of law and democracy in the framework of the IRI’s Islamic Constitution. In actuality, Khatami’s presidency was the continuation of the IRI’s totalitarian system with repeated acts of terrors: violence and repression against the values of democracy, maiming of peaceful student demonsterations of Tehran University, closure of over 20 reformist newspapers, systematic assaults against Iranians like, “bad veiled” women, religious minorities and all the freedom-loving people of Iran are just a few samples during his presidency. His claims of reform was in fact an attempt in making up a democratic face for his brutal political Islam.
In his role since leaving the presidency, Khatami has made his efforts and services to absolutely maintain the framework of political Islam in Iran. Khatami’s tour in the US can be a product of several factors, but his main purpose is not related to controversial relations between the US and Ahmadinejad’s government, as some political analysis speculate. People like Ganji or Khatami, as a faction of the IRI, are on their tour to bargain over a new credibility for their bankrupt political Islam.
Once again, it is a mistake to believe that the greed for power is the only factor taking over the Islamist activities. No, Islamists are convinced to use any method to maintain the regime in Iran — all possible methods including terror and jihad are their justified divine means. Khatami, who has made a career out of attacking upon all human and cultural values of Iranians, tries to maintain the IRI by ignoring the fact that most Iranians are fed up with anything with the word “Islam” attached to it.
Despite the international community, along with a continuously increasing number of people living under the yoke of political Islam, do not want that Islam occupies an imposing position in their social life, the US shamelessly receive one of the top leaders of the IRI, a former president of the totalitarian IRI. Iranian people do not forget this act of US diplomacy, as they have not forgotten the role of the US in the coup of 1953. Receiving Khatami is a new US slap in the face of all freedom-loving Iranians.
The IRI considers an attack against Islamic values as unacceptable, many thousands of executions of “profanes” in Iran are the proof of this prejudice. At the same time that Iranian people are deprived to choose their dress, to have their belief, to behave as they like, a turbaned Mullah is in the US to present a new image of Islamic democracy.
If the West with its colonial background was responsible for genocide of indigenous population in North America, abusing and exploiting peoples of Africa, South America and Asia, the West is now more responsible to tolerate political Islam, as an ideology of Islamo-colonisation.
Because Islam, by doing the worst, has wiped out many original cultures and advanced civilisations in the name of God – something that many Muslims of courtiers like Iran, Egypt, Syrian have not yet realised.
Today, to whitewash such similar crimes, wherever political Islam emerges, besides cruel people like Khamenei or Ahamadinejad, we can see a “moderate” clique of Khatami and his 2nd Khordad play a reconciliatory role. It is not a secret, through such tours; these cliques of Islamists absolutely want the international community to close their eyes against barbaric aims of political Islam.
But the majority of people living under the yoke of political Islam do not want to bow to the political Islam. And the image that the international community has of Islam comes to a large extent through the permanent crimes and violations of human rights during the IRI’s rule, including Khatami’s presidency. The US government is therefore demanded to immediately deport Khatami, if cannot or does not want to deliver him to an international court for his crimes against humanity.
Khatami and his clique cannot find a neutral terrain which can offer a space for dialogue over democracy. They cannot conceal their own point of view by hiding it under the table because their ultimate goal is to patch up Islam with their political rule, these “moderate” Islamists have historical reactionary roots, and they have always been the enemies of the Left, secularism, modernity and democracy.
Khatami is the mirror image of Islamist opportunism. He has practically neither interest for democracy nor for the cause of people, his aims are to find a middle way to save his Islam and his God’s state.
Today in the West, Ganji and Khatami, brothers and rivals of the same front should at least talk about the reasons and results of their achievements for humanity. They must first justify the commands of their religion. They should define the very controversial command of jihad as the main historical pillar of today’s “dar-al-Islam”, territory of Islam. Their Koran demanded the forced submission of conquered peoples in the name of Islam (the Koran 9:29), and Mohammed’s successor, the Caliph Abu Bakr or the supreme leader of the first God’s state, emphasised that “we will treat as an unbeliever whoever rejects Allah and Mohammed, and we will make holy war upon him.
For such a religion, there is only the sword and fire and indiscriminate slaughter.” It is not an illusion that such a religion based on “submission” to God cannot itself “submit” to our understanding of democracy and universal human rights. Is there in such a religion enough room for Khatami’s Dialogue of Civilisations?
If Islamic violence is to be condemned, it is not because Islam is misunderstood or Khatami could not democratise his Islamic Ummah but because it violates basic human rights. Islamic terrorism, Sharia, misogyny … are not morally wrong because theologically questionable – they are theologically questionable because morally wrong.
As a Mullah who happens to have a university degree in philosophy, Khatami proposed his theory of Dialogue Among Civilisations, implicitly, as a reponse to Huntington's theory of Clash of civilisations. Needless to mention that none of these theories respect an idependent status for human being above all the vacuum of religion– individuals are unfairly identified based on their socially imposed cultures and religions.
Khatami tries to extremely put in relief religion as a formation of the identity of each Iranian, the question of being Muslim or not plays a big role. Like all Islamists, Khatami tries to abuse a moral failure that simple people are reflexively looking for differences and restrict Muslims find them most easily in religion.
This, moral failure, imputed to all Muslims, is not only abused by Islamists, but also exaggerated by the West: the claim is that all people living in the Islamic countries portray an uncritical and dogmatic way in relation to their religion. In this perspective, people like Khatami or Ganji propagate a moderate image of Islam in a period where political Islam is internationally condemned. After all, a “smiling “face of Khatami might be more representative than a hideous face of Ahmadinejad. But the reality is that a great majority of Iranians do not want any model or any face of political Islam at all.
To put it cynically: people like Khatami are blind as far as religion is concerned. Insofar as Islam expands and extends, they set aside all the advanced particularities of human values. That is what Khatami and his “brothers” have done in Iran in the last three decades of IRI’s existence.Khatami has political reasons to distance himself from the hardliners of the IRI, but has never disavowed IRI’s crimes against humanity.
All leaders of the IRI are not monolithic: there are believers of solely repressive methods and believers of combined methods of repression and dialogue. Besides very usual means of repression, Khatami believes in a conciliatory dialogue to clam down people. However, what all Islamists from different calibres want is that religion be the central element in the life of the Islamic world. And this is the most important reason of Khatami’s tour, and this is what we must exactly denounce.
The west should forget Khatami’s Dialogue of Civilisations. He had better off just look at himself in the mirror and he will certainly find behind his cynical smile the tortured faces of many victims of his “Dialogue of Civilisations”.
Khatami and his like believe that when religion occupies a central place in a society’s identity, then they seek to distinguish themselves from the rest of the world; Muslims defend Islamic morality as a political position against all secular values, at the same time affirming that Islam has superior and divine values.
But based on all progressive ideas and realities, firstly, the civilised world does not need religion at all, secondly, the morality of Islam is a belated transformation of a primitive culture from Arabian pagans, a culture of violence and misogyny for a clan society. This “morality” has been violently imposed upon our civilised people by the early Islamic invaders (Khatami’s ancestors). Thirdly, Islam is not a religion with any provable sign of divinity.
