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 Sultanate of reformists The king is renamed "reform" December 18, 2002 The Iranian Burn down the Disco, Hang the blessed DJ, Because the music that he constantly plays It says nothing to me about my life Hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ Hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ hang the DJ - "Panic", The Smiths 1. "I'd better Reason with him." For the most part in the 90's I listened to the arguments from the popular rock and roll scene, and yes, I even took surfing. This was not an escape from the political, but a refuge from the science of it, the raw material production and forgetting; which was then my day job as a bachelor. With forgetting, I now hear, and must think about forgiving, as the result of my current day job at which I am not particularly good, but which has its moments. Forgiving, truth and reconciliation, impossibility of the possible, Time, Being, being-there... nothingness. Are you still there? That Iran can only be a construct has always been really beyond debate, more than anyone else, to the exiled. But throwing it away like any other construct was part of the training for stepping outside and making a decision, something which is necessary for the science to be scientific. And outside of course was where everyone was exiled, even those who didn't know it; even those who deluded themselves or justified themselves to theories as metaphysical homes: this "ism" and that "ism," always fighting and progressing, reforming the same fucking shit, over and over. I watched the football match between Iran and the United States. I watched it in a secured American armed forces village in the middle of Germany. That is where I was working, and I could work there, because I am an American citizen. That was really when things looked great. I started buying Iranian newspapers at the Bahnhof to stay informed of the developing events, and I hoped. Now, several years later, the hope has ended, but a simmering rage has replaced it, and I see this rage mirrored almost on a daily basis in the pictures that get transmitted from Iran despite the reformists. 2. The Reformists on Re-run And this was the fall: the hope that things might get better. And of course by the time I left Germany to come to New York, it was all too clear that the reform really was what it was, a gradual re-formation of the old antiquated archaic laws, carefully and slowly as not to offend the mother fucking patriarch, cruising towards modernity with an anachronistic pomp and circumstance, and in declarations beyond one's station; professions of the knowledge of Western philosophy in a trying accent, and so on and so forth: the show. The problem with reform is the fact that it still is trying to conform to some form, and preserve some form from deformation. This is what makes it preservative - something conservative while using the jargon of the new. This point needs no belaboring as even the insiders admit to having colonized the language of various schools of thought, (while calling others doing the same thing "gharbzadeh" and "taaghuti.") Consequently the new is never new, but always a reformation of the old. In Professor Ahmad Sadri's recent cover story "Challenging the Government of God", one sees the final concessions that this reformation is ready to make in order to stay what it is. And yet, at the same time, it has never so blatantly been what it has - in its origins and before the repetition of its retarded recovery of the "re," - had formed itself to not be. It is here that we encounter the echoes of that which it has created and sustained itself against. The sentence, "reform is dead, long live reform," shows the nature of the "reformists" as it parodies the English language with one important difference: the Shah is missing, and the king is renamed "reform." What it is then, is merely a new aristocracy hidden behind words such as Republic and Islamic. This is classic, it is always the case that at some point the revolutionaries kill their own, and crown themselves. But what is really at stake, and what no reformist is even qualified to reform is Iran and her population, her young, her future and her past. Islam needs reformation, God knows. And so does the Republic; and Professor Habermas knows that one. But Iran is a much bigger problem for the traditional Islamic experts, and the reformed ones with philosophical lingo, because it needs no fucking reformation; it is pre and post and sideways of the fucking reformation. It is reformation's grand daddy, bitch! Sorry, it's the transcendental wine talking. And so as Freddy Mercury once said, the show must go on. The latest development in this medieval Trauerspiel, is the incorporation of the very same tropes, against which the rebels against modernity started their revolution. Republic=good, kingdom=bad, the Soviet Republic of Iran, the Bundesrepublik Iranenland, The Islamic Republic of dumb-fucks and company, (but that one's still under consideration, because we have to make a differentiation between that, and the Velayee-Republic now,) and of course how about the Mossadegh Republic of Iran, with the old aristocrat/prime minister as the embodiment of the great Idol of Republicanism. Professor Sadri: "Iranian reformists are at pains to decouple modernity from its imperialist carriers. While defending national and cultural autonomy of Muslims, they call for facing the challenge of modernity." What the hell does the "national and cultural autonomy of Muslims" mean? National? There is an Islamic nation? Where the hell is that? How about cultural autonomy of Muslims? Has there ever been a Muslim culture free from the influences of other and in some cases (Iran) older cultures? To summarize the most recent developments: there is currently no talk of Iran; there was never any republic; and Islam now is unveiling himself, and all his miserable deficiencies are paraded by The Barbarians United (unLtd) from all around the globe on the fucking BBC. So, what better time for the coronation of the incompetent: Reform is dead, long live reform. Now, many have crowned themselves during the course of human history. But that usually signified that there was a change and a break with the previous order. The coronation of the poker-playing Napoleon, now however, while announcing itself as a dynastic one, and ever preserving of the original essence that brought the whole thing up, uses English courtly tropes, because it is after all, Multikuli! Well, Hip-hip Hurrah then, jolly good fellows: Reform is dead, long live reform. 3. Rerun kills the Unique, while professing it "There is a lot that is unique about the Iranian fundamentalism," begins the second sentence of Professor Sadri, and I think I read something about unique on the Iranian dot com. The writer derived unique from the Old Iranian Neek. The Iranian word sounds to me like something apart from the dualities of Khub (good) and Bad, and certainly beyond Good and Evil, something extraordinary, but not merely good, also perhaps nice. Is this what Professor Sadri has in mind? Later he comes back to the Unique, after again paying lip-service to the Jewish reformation (?) and its connection or non-connection to Moses Mendelssohn and Baruch Spinoza. He writes: "The reform movement in Iran is unique in the Islamic world because it is not driven by the genius of a few intellectuals. On the contrary; it is the disenchantment of the Iranian masses with the government of God that is 'channeled' by the reform intellectuals. The demands of the reform movement in Iran go beyond political reform, democracy and human rights. It aims for nothing less than a redefinition of religion in the context of a secular social, cultural and political system." That there is no genius to be found in any of this doesn't need reiteration. But what I find interesting is the self sacrifice of the reformers who are willing to "channel" the people's disenchantment, like on the psychic hotline. Thank God for the reformers; indeed: "Reform is dead, long live reform." But for crying out loud, can we start with the unimportant, less grandiose project of "political reform, democracy and human rights," before we get to the reformation of the Islamic Nation? 4. The Myth of Reformist Transparency: the Habermas Interview Another point the chairman makes, is that Iranian Fundamentalism is innovative and eclectic, and now, the reformists are after transparency. If I just said "bullshit" to this, it would be unscientific, and so, let me try and "reason" here by bringing up some examples of what the Islamic Reformist means by "transparency." Last summer, Jürgen Habermas, the last remnant of the famous Frankfurt School for Social research of critical-theory-fame beamed down to the planet Islamic Republic to survey the primitive, and to witness the improvements in terms of the incorporation of the new German sociological lingo. This was of course the philosophical affirming needed for the EU to start seriously trading with the Mullahs at the expense of the people of Iran, something which is about to go through any day now. So in the May of 2002 Jürgen Habermas spends a week in the Islamic Republic. The text of the "report" that was then published in Iran by the "reformist" paper Hamshahri (Habermas-interview in the "Jahane Farhang" section, on 18th of June 2002 (no. 2753) under the title: Interview: Habermas gozaresh midahad, "Interview: Habermas Reports.") was mainly based on the Frankfurter Algemeiner Zeitung interview with the philosopher (FAZ Feuilleton, Seite 47, Nr. 142, 16.07.2002) but differs from it in that it leaves out some proper names mentioned by Habermas in the context of his Bedenken "misgivings" before going to Iran. Hamshahri (The Citizen) is the hip and colorful Tehran daily in the camp of the reformists. The highlighted portion below was not published in Iran (all translations from the German and the Persian are mine): "Which expectations did you have, which reservations? No one allows oneself to be used by the wrong people as a poster for a wrong thing willingly. From Chicago came from one of my students a worried email. The list with the name of political prisoners would become always longer. I received a letter from the wife of Khalil Rostamkhani, who has been imprisoned now for a long time. The German PEN-Center let me know that the seventy-year-old journalist Siamak Pourzand had just been condemned to eight years imprisonment." But this is not the only portion of the interview that was different. The language throughout the interview had been heavily manipulated to serve a certain Dr. Mohajerani, who is currently being groomed as the future President of the Islamic Republic. But Habermas knows this. FAZ introduces the interview thus: "In Iran, Habermas appeared before a large audience in a place of symbolic value for the Islamic Republic: at the University of Teheran, where every Friday afternoon, an Ayatollah, authorized from the religious leader, holds the famous Friday Prayer, he spoke about "Secularization in the post-secular societies of the west." The demand was so great, that the students held lively discussions outside the auditorium. The Iranian press recorded the speeches and suggested the bridge to the present political situation. Criticism came only from the press of the opposition to the reform, who used the earlier positions of Jürgen Habermas regarding Salman Rushdie to attack his hosts, primarily the cultural minister Ataollah Mohadscherani who has been let go because of his liberalization politics a year and a half ago." That Salman Rushdie was cut out of the Persian translation published by Hamshahri is because he is supposed to be dead to begin with, but these additions to the description of Ataollah Mohajerani in the Iranian version of the text are of note (from the Persian): "In this midst, Ataollah Mohajerani, the former Minister of Islamic Culture and Propaganda [vasir e farhang o ershade Eslami] for Iran, was the target of the waves of criticisms from the opposition news papers. It should be said that Mohajerani stepped aside from his position at the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Propaganda because of his cultural politics. Below you will read the dialogue between Habermas and the Frankfurter Algemeine." Cultural politics is indeed the operating term here. Criticism may have been allowed to come only from "the Press of the enemies of the reform," but what the German Press fails to realize is that: there is no other form of criticism allowed; and this not through the workings of a "systematic" suppression of the press, that Europeans can easily relate to and identify, and the logical consequences of which they can foresee, but by the socio-political atmosphere constructed after years of violent rule of terror which now will respectfully be relaxed to accommodate the German guest. When it comes to terms like oppression and crimes against humanity and so on, in fact, the Germans believe that they have cornered the market on that, and everything else indeed pales in comparison to their experiences. This also plays a factor in their all too common willingness to negotiate with oppressive regimes. Here is a little more of the "dialogue" that was cut in its entirety out of the Iranian translation of Jürgen's answer to "Did your fears find justification?  Naturally, the legal discrimination against women,
the political persecution of oppositions and, if the State Department is right, the
support for Hezbollah, cannot be ignored. Also immediately disturbing were the larger-than-life
posters with the heads and mottos of the two religious leaders of the revolution,
which were somehow reminiscent of Honecker's East Germany. They play a different
role than do the posters in the streets of Tehran and across the countryside depicting
the bearded faces of the "martyrs" meant to preserve the memory of those
that fell in the long and bloody war against Iraq." The best of Persian Adab and Adabiyyaat (ethics and literature) will have been showcased for the European guest: of everything from Goethe and Hafiz, to all the various leftist readings of Hegel and Marx and all the other sociologists in this tradition; together with Kant and Heidegger and Niezsche and some other required readings, as part of the poker-game of "dialogue amongst civilizations" - as Herr Philosoph provides the most ample occasion for the demonstration of the local talent in providing the thinker with a wide range of sophisticated performances on the theme of "European Philosophy." I wonder if Professor Habermas encountered any of "the dancing philosophers," while he had such "unforced" conversations with the ruling "intelligentsia." This dialogue amongst institutionalized means of exercising a "rational" law-affirming Citizenship (Hamshahri) forced through re-formed and re-coded systems, time and again on the marginalized, and the "outsiders," the excremental, and the taaghuti (part of, or a sympathizer with, the taaghut, or the old ways; often is used with zedde enghelaab, which means counter-revolutionary,) the faased (spoiled, rotten, both like a fruit and like the Brit-popper Johnny Rotten,) the gharbzadeh, (inflicted with the disease of the west, Westoxicated,) the kooni (from koon meaning arse: homosexual,) the mofsed al fel arz, (from the Arabic, translated roughly to: "the element of corruption on earth") and whatever the new expressions for the same are today, is legitimized by the exclusion of a group. The exiled appear in various forms: the émigré, the refugee, the asylum-seeker, the inner-émigré, the mad, the fag, the Westoxicated student or otherwise alienated. The dialogue that is being conducted then is between "Islam" and the "West," and its goal is the legitimating of the authority of those who hold the means of violence in Iran with the help of tenured professors of the west. The scissions and decisions needed to provide a binary system of east and west, to justify orientalists and their discourse with occidentalists is at the expense of the unclear foundations of orient and occident. In fact, Iran could be said to be at the foundation of both the east and the west, providing at least one system of judgment that has prevailed throughout the known centuries influencing all of the various "civilizations" that we enjoy today, whether we are an "oriental" or an "occidental."  Everybody else and their cousin have a claim on The (Islamic-Leftist)
Revolution. Of course the people of Iran never collect from it, not only because
it only offered transcendental bullshit on repeat like a broken record, (the precursor
of ... yes you guessed it, "reform is dead, long live reform") but also
because it is in itself an insult to intelligence, like a bad melody that was popular
in the late seventies for some insane reason in some insane year, and now you can
order during commercial breaks from a toll-free number (except as a forced and enforced
theory of government, always promising great things that like their wine-interpretation,
has nothing to do with the thing there are talking about, but is rather transcendental
hocus pocus even in the language of the New School.)Now, apart from "everybody and their cousin," there is the people of Iran who are by and large switching to hard shit, and can only abuse others' and take on their own body parts for sadomasochistic needs on the fringes of (any) economy, LIVE and on-going, like the reform; the children who are comparing Taliban in Tehran to that of Kabul in broad brush strokes and through home-maid underground pop (!) are the unlucky ones who didn't manage to escape that hell hole. 5. Comparative Fundamentalism for the Reformjugend But to get back to Professor Sadri's minifesto: there is within the first paragraph an immediate switch to the worldly transcendental, as a new pitch to a new possible angle for the sake of framing and better understanding. This time "the connection to the Abrahamic fundamentalisms" the world over, is chosen as an angle of approach before reverting to the Hegelian language which illuminates the nature of the reform in Iran: "Islamic fundamentalism," has an antithesis, Chairman Sadri says, and that is "its reformist antithesis." The synthesis is the Mehdi who fell in a well more than a thousand years ago. So, bring entertainment of your own, because it's gonna be a long reign for this ongoing reformist project. Although God is great in that he showed true mercy and didn't keep Khomeini till the revolution of Mahdi as the pre-reformers kept requesting, yet he definitely has a sick sense of humor, (of old-Testament-proportions) - as Martin Luther Gore of Depeche Mode says, for sticking us with Khamenei and his antithesis, the gang of superhero reformists Hegelians. Professor Sadri: "Since it has succeeded in establishing a state, Iran's Islamic fundamentalism has generated its own opposite (the reform movement) in proper Hegelian fashion. No such movement exists in Christianity or Judaism at present time." No fucking shit! There is no Fundamentalism with a state, except the one to the continuation of which the not so young Islamic-Nationalist Hegelians contribute. Easier than anywhere else, however, this reform (may it live longer than the 1000 year Reich,) is to be read out of that which it excludes, neglects, declares to be residues, (tofaale) and dumps in the trash-can of history.  Although there are definitely signs of "other"
oppositions to the regime, through their manifest inability to read the future of
this stalling-tactic as from the residues on the bottom of the Turkish coffee, the
enlightened reformers, - even the sociologists amongst them, - continue to only see
the "society" they wish to see: perpetual reform of the reformers.
And yes, here comes the refrain again, everybody now, Hama baa ham:
Reform is dead, long live reform. The question is: how long do they seriously think they can write political descriptions of their friends and belated manifestos of some "ism" or another in imitations of dead German philosopher-wannabes and economists, kicking and screamingly denying the fact that the re-volution they sold to Iranians all those years ago was always already re-tarded. Professor Sadri asks: "The intellectual reform movement recognizes that Islam remains a pre-enlightenment religion. It asks: what would it take for Islam to come to terms with the paradigm shift in political arrangements of modernity that posits a rights-based, social-contracterian, secular framework for private and public life?" I don't know what it would take, but as an Iranian I have to ask the professor to reform his useless religion on his own time and apart from its connection to Iran. And here is the final sentence of the Sadrifesto that I would like to comment on: "The young generations of Iranians are taking bets on the wing span and bright colors of the new, post-Khatami Reform." Because Hamshahri and other lame cooperationist reformist sources of reporting don't let this come out, I would like very directly to let Professor Sadri know, that young Iranians, should they be allowed to express their ideas in a true democratic fashion and as they deserve it, would dump the reformist together with the conservative and everyone else who tries to prolong this misery called the Islamic Republic, and so when he talks about "wing span and bright colors," he may be right quite in spite of what he means only if we take works such as Kiarostami's "The Wind Will Carry Us," and Pahlavi's "Winds of Change," as the winds beneath these wings, not the winds that the reformists have been passing all these years. 6. The Unique As the Only Possibility But let me finish by coming to the beginning, and letting the word "forgiveness," bakhshesh, dividing, and giving, ring out again. But to forgive, as an impossibility, and yet necessity for going on (because simply forgetting doesn't work, I have tried it, I know,) is contingent upon a realization that there is something to forgive.  In
the Iranian Daad, we have a third person singular of the verb to give daadan
which could act as a sentence because the personal pronoun is often omitted.
And yet, as a sentence, as a judgment, it cannot be specific without a particular
"reading" because we don't know who gave, and what gave, and what was given.
Yet to help, to listen and to hear a daad for help and justice, is all we
can do. We cannot do that by again and again forcefully excluding what we want
to hear in an attempt to perpetually sustain something that is and has always been
irrelevant to begin with. So, justice is always different and always perhaps "unique." To explore this uniqueness, is to begin to think about Iran, the rest is a political struggle at the expense of it in appropriated words and in clubs with exclusive memberships. And to do justice is never, and has never been, to follow manifestos, or holy books, or dominant readings, it is to recognize the uniqueness of every situation, while seeing its infinite connections to the always already. Does this article have spelling or other mistakes? Tell me to fix it.
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