The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution Page 10
This industry of the absurd assumes giant proportions in the village of Jamkaran, some eighty miles southeast of Tehran. According to legend—taken as fact by the faithful—the Hidden Imam, who disappeared in 941 A.D., visited a pious local man in a dream and asked him to build a mosque in the village. The imam’s implicit promise was that once the mosque was built, he would visit it to lead the prayer that would mark his Grand Return. A modest mosque was built and the legend was propagated that the village well was connected to a well in Samarra, Iraq, some seven hundred miles to the west, where the twelfth imam had started his Grand Occultation. Because Samarra was no longer a Shiite city, the assumption was that the imam would reappear in Jamkaran to be among “his own people.”
In 1972, the government of Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda financed the building of a road to make Jamkaran accessible from Qom. At that time, Iraq’s Shiite shrines were closed to Iranians because of bad relations between Baghdad and Tehran, and Hoveyda intended for Jamkaran to become an alternative to Iraqi shrines. Qom, about a hundred miles south of Tehran, has for decades made a fortune from the mausoleum of Massoumah, a sister of Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shiism. The “holy” sister, whose very existence is questioned by historians, is supposed to have died there of dysentery at the age of nine. The village of Qom grew into a town in the eighteenth century as the Shiite “holy” cities in Iraq fell under Ottoman rule and were closed to Iranians. With a population of 1.2 million, Qom today hosts more than three hundred Shiite seminaries and research centers, which constitute a veritable industry employing an estimated 150,000 people. On Hoveyda’s orders, a modest inn was also constructed in Jamkaran to host a few dozen pilgrims. It was not until the 1990s, however, that a group of young entrepreneurs discovered Jamkaran’s commercial potential. By 2000, many of the estimated 12 million pilgrims who visited Qom also spent a few hours in Jamkaran.
Ahmadinejad is supposed to have visited Jamkaran in 2005 to ask whether the Hidden Imam would support his presidential candidacy. The Hidden Imam is supposed to have endorsed the mayor of Tehran, even though public opinion polls at the time gave him support rates of under 1 percent. Since then, Ahmadinejad has promoted Jamkaran as the most important site for Muslim pilgrims, and its mosque has been reclassified as Masjed Muqaddas (Holy Mosque), a title that even the mosques of Mecca and Medina do not bear. In 2008, the president allocated $17 million to expanding the mosque and providing additional facilities for pilgrims. He has held several meetings of his cabinet in the mosque, where secretaries of state and other senior officials have received rosaries made of the mud extracted from Jamkaran’s soil. The government has commissioned the composition of special Jamkaran prayers and set up research groups to produce books on miracles attributed to the Hidden Imam and Jamkaran.
It is not only esoteric products with an Islamic accent that have become fashionable in the Khomeinist republic. A huge market has also developed for all kinds of esoteric oeuvres imported from the lands of the infidels: nostradamus, Joseph de Maistre, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, biographies of Pythagoras and Cagliostro, books on alchemy, and the like. There is even Khomeini’s own assessment of ancient Greek philosophy, where he presents Socrates as the first “monotheist Muslim” and as the victim of “a Jewish conspiracy.” The idea is to reject rationalism and to inject into Iranian society a syncretism in which rulers run a supermarket of superstitions.
The fourth characteristic of generic fascism is its rejection of modernity. While mullahs can be seen flying in helicopters and wearing glistening Colts under their mantles, the modern world to them is essentially the product of a “Judeo-Christian conspiracy.” Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad went further in October 2003 when he told a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference that the modern world was a “Jewish creation.” He also claimed that the Jews had “invented” such modern ideas as democracy, human rights, and communism. Because rejecting modernism means rejecting the achievements of humanism since the Enlightenment, de Maistre’s critique of the French Revolution is appreciated by the ruling mullahs in Tehran. Khatami, the mullah who acted as president of the Islamic Republic between 1997 and 2005, frequently quotes de Maistre in his criticism of “Western” rationality. Modern ideas such as the intrinsic worth of the individual, freedom of conscience, and the rule of law are spurned as “Western” or “colonial” values to be resisted at all levels. In an address at the University of Florence in 1998, Khatami branded the Renaissance as the starting point of “human decline into barbarity,” a time that “led to imperialism and the burning of weak countries by the strong.” Khatami’s fellow mullah Ayatollah Muhammadi Gilani likes to describe modernity as “the cult of unbridled sex, wife-swapping, and sodomy.” In his weekly live television series in the 1980s, the ayatollah portrayed the West as a modern version of Sodom and Gomhorra. (The authorities decided to end the series when they realized that it actually made the West more popular by presenting it as a kind of Shangri-la where carnal pleasures denied to frustrated young Iranians were readily available.)
The fifth characteristic of generic fascism is the cult of the chief. There are, of course, many nonfascist systems that also practice such a cult, but in those cases one only has to obey the chief; one does not necessarily have to love him or acknowledge him as a guide in all aspects of life. In Iran, on the other hand, the cult of Khomeini has developed into a secular religion. He is called imam, thus turning Twelver Shiism into a cult of the Thirteen. His iconic image is carved into giant rocks and shaped in cedar forests on mountain slopes. Prayers start and finish with his name. His fatwas remain valid forever, annulling a well-established Shiite principle under which an ayatollah’s rulings die with him and cannot be followed unless endorsed by a living authority. The Supreme Guide of the day has the constitutional right to suspend the basic principles of Islam, but cannot cancel the fatwas of the dead chief. The slogans Khoda, Koran, Khomeini (“God, Koran, Khomeini”) and Allah Akbar, Khomeini Rahbar (“God is One, Khomeini is the Leader”) remain the war cries of Hezballah in Iran and other Muslim countries where the party has branches. (In Arabic the slogan is: Allah Wahed, Khomeini Qa’ed!) Men, women, and children march in front of ten-foot portraits of the “Imam” in Tehran and Beirut, giving the salute. The titles Pihsva and Rahbar, used to describe the leader, are Persian equivalents of the German Fuehrer. The imam belongs to the same tradition of political iconography as the Fuehrer, Il Duce, the Caudillo, the Zaim, and the Rais.3
This is how one of the earliest theoreticians of “Red Shiism,” Ali Shariati, described the role of the leader in the ideal Shiite system:
The imam does not [stand] alongside the executive; he is not connected with the state, and has no coordination with the policies in place. He has direct and exclusive responsibility for the community’s politics. The direct leadership of the economy, the armed forces, culture, foreign policy, and the administration of all other internal affairs are also his. This means that the imam is both the head of state and the head of government. Shiism counsels obedience to the imam on the basis of the [Koranic] verse that says: Obey Allah, obey the Prophet, and obey those in charge of your affairs. The phrase “those in charge of your affairs” means the imam. God has put obedience to imam on the same level as obedience to Himself and to His Prophet. In Shiism, this obedience extends to the vicars of the imam.4
Khomeini himself demanded blind obedience to the Leader: “If [the imam] orders you to capture such-and-such a place, set such-and-such a house on fire, wipe out such-and-such a group that is harmful to Islam, you have to obey. For [the imam] orders only what is just. Obeying him is incumbent on all. Anyone refusing will be a rebel against God.”5 His disciples have taken this position further: “In this country, people today see their national identity, culture and history reflected in the presence of the imam,” the Islamic Review editorialized in 1983. Khomeini’s tomb, in a mausoleum south of Tehran, is officially designated a haram (shrine) and described with
the adjective muqaddas (holy). In Islam, no one and nothing but Allah could be described as “holy.” Mecca is honored with the title “the Generous”(Al-Mukarramah ) and Medina is known as “the Luminous” (Al-Munawwarah). The Khomeinist regime took the cult of the chief to new boundaries in 1990 by starting an industry for manufacturing hadiths (sayings or anecdotes) related to the ayatollah, thus equating him with Muhammad and the twelve imams.
In 2008, a similar operation was launched for Khamenehi, the junior mullah who had succeeded Khomeini as Supreme Guide in 1989. Since then, every one of his sayings and doings has been recorded, interpreted, and used as authoritative sources along with the Koran and the prophetic hadiths. State-owned media are full of panegyrics for Khamenehi, showering him with the kind of adulation that would have made any shah blush. In April 2008, the Islamic Republic news Agency reported in deadpan language that the famous flowers of Shiraz were “smelling twice as sweet” because of Khamenehi’s visit to the city. (Only a week earlier, Shiraz had witnessed an explosion that claimed scores of lives.) One of the titles often used for Khamenehi is Tali’eh Khorshid Tashayyu’e, which means, in literal translation, “the advance ray of the Shiite sun.”
The sixth characteristic of generic fascism is its exploitation of social and economic grievances. It recruits from among the lower middle classes, poor peasants driven into cities, and pseudo-intellectuals who look for certainty and fear doubt. Hatred, envy, jealousy, and suspicion are major themes in the discourse of generic fascism. The “dispossessed” (mustadhafeen) are told that while they are suffering, others live fantastic lives of luxury.
Well-to-do Iranian “protest intellectuals” used to buy secondhand clothes in the bazaar to present themselves as being among the mustadhafeen. This led to a whole new style of clothing known as khaksari (down-to-earth), in which expensive material is treated to look rough. By wearing his notorious five-dollar shirts, Ahmadinejad presents himself as a khaksari model. The khaksari style rejects Western clothes and condemns the wearing of neckties or bowties as a sign of “submission to the Crusaders.” One of the charges brought against Muzaffar Baqai, an early ally of Khomeini who soon turned against him, was that he wore bowties to underline “the submission of Islam to the infidels.” Ironically, the necktie, mentioned in the One Thousand and One Nights and Islamic histories, was invented in Baghdad in the ninth century by Jaafar Barmaki, the Iranian grand vizier of the Caliph Haroun al-Rashid, as a way of hiding his long neck. It was with one of his neckties that Barmaki was eventually strangled on the caliph’s orders. Today, however, Islamist fascists regard the wearing of a necktie as a sign of ill-gained wealth.
A true Muslim may cheat and steal and embezzle, amassing vast fortunes, as is the case with many Islamist fascists in Iran and elsewhere. What he may not do is flaunt his wealth. In the early days of the revolution, much was made of Khomeini’s supposedly austere lifestyle; only later did people learn that he and his family possessed vast tracts of land in and around Qom and were proud owners of a cement factory and a number of smaller businesses. Ahmadinejad, too, has made much of the fact that he lived in a modest bungalow and drove a battered old car. Much is also made of Osama bin Laden’s decision to abandon his life of luxury and live in caves in Afghanistan. Looking poor is honored, while such words as “rich” and “wealth” are used as terms of abuse.
The wealthy at home are to be detested, and foreign powers hostile to the regime are branded as “the rich powers” or “the wealthy empires.” This terminology implies that the regime will keep the masses stuck in poverty. Fascism does not and cannot promise a good life of comfort and ease, because once such a living standard is attained, people might begin to demand pluralism and freedom.
The seventh characteristic of generic fascism is xenophobia. To Hitler, of course, the Jews were the “other” to be most feared and hated. Mussolini warned the Italians that they might become “Africanized” and turned “subhuman.” The “other” may be defined not only by race or ethnicity, but also by religious or political beliefs or by ideological “deviations,” real or suspected. In this “us versus them” worldview, anyone could cease being one of “us” and become one of “them.” To remain one of “us” requires total obedience and complete acceptance of the political line of the day. In this Manichean duality, the “other” is blamed for all the shortcomings and failures on “our” side. Even when we massacre revolutionary comrades and brothers, the fault lies with the “other” who deceived them and made them abandon the right path. Some apologists of the Khomeinist regime have even blamed the “other” of the moment for what Bazargan called “the ultimate failure of our revolution.”
In Iran, the “us versus others” culture has developed into an intricate system of relations within the establishment. Those who belong to the “us” camp are known as khodi (literally, “of our own”). All others are branded as ghayr (literally, “other”) or biganeh (“foreign”). Often the khodi are allowed to say and do things that could lead to imprisonment or death if said and done by the ghayr. In 1979, Sadeq Qotbzadeh was one of Khomeini’s closest aides, and thus a khodi par excellence. He was forgiven everything, including his dalliances with questionable ladies in Paris when he visited the city as foreign minister of the Islamic Republic. Two years later, having become ghayr, he was hanged as a “traitor to Imam and Islam” because he had been imprudent enough to criticize the ayatollah.
Many other labels are used against the “other,” including gharbzadeh (literally, “West-smitten”) and elteqati (literally, “mixer,” meaning someone who tries to mix Islam with modern ideas). The term munafiq (hypocrite) is used for Islamist-Marxists who, having first allied themselves with the mullahs, broke with them and took up armed struggle. Over the past three decades, the Khomeinist regime has targeted different groups and nations as the “other” to be hated, among them Baha’is, ethnic Kurds, Afghan immigrants, and gays and lesbians. But the status of “other” has remained unchanged in three cases: women, the United States of America, and Jews.
The eighth characteristic of generic fascism is its cult of death. From the Phalangists’ “Viva la muerte” and the nazis’ love for the scalp symbol to the Islamist fascists’ passion for martyrdom, we see love of death, often linked to hero worship. The martyr instantly goes to paradise. The poor, illiterate Iranian teenagers sent into Iraqi minefields during the 1980-88 war were given plastic keys to hang from their necks; they were called “keys to paradise” (mafatih al-jinan). The regime employed professional actors to play the role of the Hidden Imam, appearing at decisive moments to urge the child soldiers to flood the minefields or jump under enemy tanks to stop them. Dressed all in white, the actor playing the Hidden Imam would appear on an elevation near the encampment of the child soldiers and call on them through a megaphone to start the final phase of their journey to paradise.6 On arrival there, the hero-martyr would immediately have access to seventy-two perpetual virgins.
Khomeini’s most favored dictum was “To kill and be killed are the supreme duties of Muslims.” Islamist fascists often wear shrouds during street demonstrations to symbolize their readiness to die at any moment. One of the “holy” places of the Khomeinist regime is the graveyard known as Behesht Zahra (Paradise of Flowers) in a Tehran suburb. Originally built to meet the needs of the capital until 2020, the graveyard was filled within the first decade of Islamist fascist rule. At the center of the vast sprawl stands the notorious “Fountain of Blood,” a concoction of iron and concrete spouting a red, viscous fluid. Most of those buried in the Behesht Zahra are teenage boys or young men killed in the Iran-Iraq war or in the ethnic revolts that have shaken the regime since its inception. They are the martyrs whose blood “irrigates the tree of Islam,” as Khomeini liked to say. The religious fascist never names a street or a public edifice after a living person: only those who died for the movement are honored. For example, the street on which the Egyptian embassy in Tehran stands is named after Khalid Showqi al-Islambouli, the assassi
n of President Anwar Sadat. By contrast, the Egyptian nobel laureate neguib Mahfouz is never named except to be insulted.
The Islamic Republic has adopted black, the color of death and mourning in Iranian culture, as its favorite hue. Visitors to Iran experience a visual shock by the sea of black they see everywhere in the cities. One has to travel to rural areas to see the eternal Iran of bright colors. (The irony is that the color of Muhammad’s Bani Hashem clan was green, while black was the color of Bani Abbas, the clan that persecuted Shiites for centuries.) Dozens of official ceremonies in the Islamic Republic center on themes of death and mourning. The months of Muharram and Safar on the Arabic lunar calendar are reserved for mourning Hassan and Hussein, the second and third imams. In all Muslim countries, the fasting month of Ramadan is an occasion for evening feasts and lightheartedness, because the first verses of the Koran are supposed to have been dictated to Muhammad during that month. In the Islamic Republic, by contrast, Ramadan is a grim season of wearing black and mourning Ali, the first imam. The Khomeinists expect Iranians to wear black on no fewer than sixty days each year, marking the “martyrdom” of various imams and other real or imagined heroes of Shiism. One of Iran’s most popular novelists, Fereidun Tonkaboni, describes the culture promoted by the Khomeinist regime as “an inhuman culture, a culture of sadness and mourning, a culture of death and nihilism. This is a culture that forbids happiness and joy. . . . The only thing not forbidden in the Islamic Republic is death and shedding tears at funerals for the dead.”