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Friday
May 4, 2001

Not shying away from zoor-gooz

I decided that anyone who spends so much time answering a letter of mine deserves a response ["Molla apologist"].

First of all, I did not write an article but a simple letter in which I claimed that Mohammad Reza Shah was no Mossadegh. The editor made a mistake and put Reza Shah. I do not know what you mean by second article. Because I have a job and other responsibilities, I have not written an article in a long while. But I am glad that my little five-minute opinion letters appear so polished that you have elevated them to articlehood!

Second, my father was a member of parliament under Reza Shah and a senator in the first Senate. I apologize for having called him a senator when he was just a member of parliament (vakil-e-majlis). I was not trying to be deliberately misleading.

But in any case, my point would not have changed. He was one of the few outspoken MPs and senators in the Pahlavi majlis. The record of his positions and stances are all public. If you really have so much time on your hands to write such lengthy polemics, you might want to take a trip to the library of the Majlis and see for yourself.

My father was blocked from the Senate and prevented from running for another term largely due to his outspoken contempt for the last Shah's dictatorial rule. I have heard that the Shah turned against him because of a poem that my father had written. But since in those days everyone feared the SAVAK, children were not told these things.

He was not a revolutionary, he just backed off rather than leaving the country or causing more trouble. Many times I questioned him on why he did not leave and avoid living under such a regime. He always answered by saying that he loved Iran too much and was too old to be a revolutionary.

Anyone who knew him knows that he was the furthest anyone could be from a "courtier". He too believed that the country was more secure after Reza Shah but he did believe that Reza Shah was an illiterate thug with a voracious appetite for other people's land. If my father were alive he would provide you with ample examples and anecdotes to back his assertions. Like me, he did not shy away from confronting zoor- gooz!

On his position on land reform as well as his views on the corrupting influence of courtiers, see his article in Rahavard (LosAngeles, 1998?).

My father, like many of his generation, abhorred Reza Shah's megalomaniac son. Like me and many other Iranians, he believed that Mossadegh was the greatest figure and hero of our modern history not to be placed on par with any Pahlavi. My father, like myself, had great contempt for the mollas as well.

He spent his last years in exile writing his memoirs and composing anti-clerical poems, some of which can be found in Shojaeedin Shaffa's collection of exile poetry. It is possible to be a secular Iranian who dislikes both the Pahlavis and the clerical regime!

Now, about me. I was in high school in America at the time of the revolution. But I, like many others, was happy to see the ousting of the Shah. It did not take too long before I became disillusioned with the theocratic turn of the revolution.

I have never blamed all the wrongs of this government solely on the mistakes of the ancien regime. Of course you can read what I write in anyway you want. It seems the royalists amongst us are particularly creative in misreading what I write.

I have been a very outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic in this netzine. I only speak my mind about what I believe. I do believe the Pahlavis did more harm than good. I do believe that it is preposterous to equate Mossadegh and Mohammad Reza Shah. I do believe that you can be a modern Iranian woman and still not admire Reza Shah.

I do believe that there is a secular tradition in Iran that precedes the Pahlavis. It comes form at least as far back as the enlightened thinkers of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. I see nothing hypocritical about being both a secularist free thinker and disliking the Pahlavis.

Stop telling us that because we are women and free thinkers, who want the rule of secular law in our country, we have to admire the Pahlavis! It serves the conservatives on both sides well to claim that whoever is not a royalist has to be a molla apologist or vice versa.

Setareh Sabety

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