03 May 1998 Sunday 06 Muharram 1419

Change or status quo?



By Eqbal Ahmad

UNLIKE the 1970s when the National Front liberals, Tudeh party Marxists, and the youthful Mujahideen-I-Khalq leftists had challenged the fundamental premises of Islamism, the idea of Islamic statehood is not being questioned in today's Iran. At issue rather are opposing perspectives - a radical Islamist on the one hand and liberal reformist on the other - on the shape of an Islamic state and society. Many of the protagonists are men educated in religious schools and women from clerical families. The contestation is taking place in the context of praxis more than doctrine. It is a struggle between the forces of change on one side, and of the status quo on the other. Whatever its outcome, it is likely to have a significant impact on the rest of the Muslim world.

The struggle is centred around the person and government of Mohammed Khatami. But he is more a product of it than the initiator. His election as President last May by 70% of the votes in a four-way race was perhaps as big a surprise to him as it was to his detractors. He had after all been a Minister for Culture and Islamic Guidance in the cabinet of Hashemi Rafsanjani, and was sufficiently disliked for his liberal outlook to have been booted out under radical pressure. Yet his electoral nomination was approved by the Council of Guardians; its members must have judged the cerebral cleric to be a marginal candidate likely to garner the votes only of a negligible intellectual minority.

His victory by an overwhelming majority revealed something about contemporary Iran that the ruling clerics may have neither known nor wanted to know: that post-revolution Iran had developed a split personality; its people lived at two contrasting levels of reality, one private and the other public, one political and the other social, one conformed to the officially ordained codes of behaviour and the other did not. Nearly all Iranians I met during a visit in 1991 were living double-lives, a self-incriminating existence that made most of them uncomfortable. "Effectively, we are teaching our children to be hypocrites," said an old friend.

I met a young woman in a park wrapped in hijab head to foot. As soon as I had finished exchanging pleasantries with her brother, she was keen to discuss Michel Foucault and Edward Said and the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Every time some other walker passed by, she fell silent. "I have also read Salman Rushdie, all his work except the Satanic Verses," she confided at one point. In a family home, a woman novelist discussed Iranian writers for more than an hour. A fundamental challenge for us, she said, is to deal in "safe and meaningful ways with this most searing reality" that "honest people have to cheat all the time." As she wrapped up to leave, I stepped out with her as I too had to go. "No, you can't," she said, "you are a na-mahram. We have cheated. Remember?" Smiling, she walked away. "How do you feel about wearing the hijab?" I had asked the women and both had given the same reply: "Don't mind it. Other things are more important." The novelist's latest work was held up by the censor; she did not know when or if it will be released. Mahmal Baf grew up poor in a shanty of south Tehran and became a militant activist of the Islamic revolution. Self-educated, he made propaganda films for the Islamic regime, then directed films which won international prizes. When I visited Tehran, his latest film - Nobat-i-Ashighi (time for loving) - was proscribed. Mahmal Baf was too proud and felt too hurt to talk. A literary publisher who had been in business since the Shah's days talked about the changes in publishing since the revolution. "It's a new environment now. There is a large reading public. Serious readers. And there are writers, good ones; and so many first rate translators. It's a publisher's dream. We have a hundred titles I could print tomorrow." "What explains this surge of creativity?", I had asked. And he had said: "It is due to the revolution and in spite of the government."

These encounters occurred in 1991, year of my last visit to Iran. I wrote about it then, albeit discreetly lest I compromise the people and places I had visited ( Dawn; June 16, 23, 30 and July 14, 1991). Tension between the radicals and reformist were then simmering but Iran appeared to be on the threshold of an intellectual renaissance more meaningful than it had known in centuries. Despite the censor which prohibited or merely held up hundreds of manuscripts, publishing was good business.

Tehran is the only city in the world where I saw queues outside book shops. Inside, one could find shelves full of Persian translations from works in foreign languages - Arabic, English, Spanish, French and Russian. American women writers barely known in Europe - e.g., Jean Rhys and Fedora Velty - were available in translation. Similarly, a livelier art scene I had not witnessed anywhere in the Middle East. In the last decade of the Shah's rule, there were three art galleries in Tehran, all patronized by Raza Shah's twin, Princess Ashraf. In 1991, when the Thermidor had just started under President Hashemi Rafsanjani, there were fourteen galleries, all private and none patronized by power. Iranian music was experiencing a most creative transformation.

Iranian cinema enjoyed a certain official indulgence. Officially approved films were allowed to enter international festivals. Many won prizes and most received lavish praise from critics. American and European newspapers and magazines frequently published glowing reviews on Iranian films. 'Once again Iran has sprung a great surprise...' was a common refrain. Yet, no one ever asked what these films conveyed about the state of culture in Iran.

Films, after all, are products of collective endeavour. Good film making depends on the availability of good scripts, actors, composers, cameramen, editors, technicians and, above all, a sizable and discerning audience. Films reflect cumulatively the state of art, literature, and outlook in a society. Until Mohammed Khatami's electoral blitz surprised the world, it kept missing the signals from Iran.

The world was focused on the Iranian state while ignoring the society. There was a preoccupation with power not processes. This same mistake was made - and perhaps is still being made - by Iran's Islamic radicals who controls the institutions of power and patronage. If they noticed it at all, they assumed that the cultural renaissance was confined to an intellectual minority alienated from the Iranian mainstream. In fact, its constituency was broad-based involving millions of Iranians.

Several factors contributed to this phenomenon: One, Iran's educated population has increased greatly. Thanks to the policy of the Islamic regime, large numbers of rural and working class youth have had access to higher education. Hence, education in Iran has a broader social base than most, perhaps any, Muslim country. Two, it is a noteworthy fact that Iran's educational system is, by and large, modern in its emphasis on contemporary science and social sciences, and does promote a habit of reading and inquiry among students. Three, Iran's intellectuals write and speak in Persian and, in other ways too, their medium of expression remains Iranian.

Unlike the English speaking South Asian writers', theirs has been not a foreign but a growing Iranian audience; hence they have non-exotic connections to Iranian life and realities. Four, the Islamic regime sought to change Iran's culture, and in this pursuit discouraged even such popular mediaeval poets as Ferdowsi and Hafiz whose works have been central to Iranian identity and aesthetics. Naturally, public discontent became gradually linked to the question of cultural freedom.

Mohammed Khatami's electoral campaign provided the framework for the 'coming out' of the other Iran. As the cleric who had favoured greater freedom as Minister for Culture and was dismissed for it, he was believed capable of significantly advancing Rafsanjani's liberalizing agenda. His electoral promises of reforms from within the Islamic system, rule of law, end to abuses of privacy and human rights, an opening to the world, and the creation of a "safe environment" in which "everyone, including dissidents who respect the law, can enjoy their liberty" had broad appeal.

His emphasis on the "promotion of civil society, progressive ideals of Islam and equal opportunity for women" ignited the enthusiasm especially of younger and women voters. His campaign assumed aspects of a mass movement whereby, as an Iranian commentator put it, "fear vanished and people gained self-confidence."

What Iranians now call the "soccer revolution" symbolizes the new mood. It happened last November when Iran's team won a closely contested match against Australia, qualifying for the 1998 world cup matches. This was the first such victory since the revolution. Also, the team's Brazilian coach had replaced, on public pressure, an Iranian coach more keen on getting the team to pray than play. Citizens went wild with joy. There was dancing in the streets, bakers distributed away their sweets and pastries, shops closed, housewives brought out halva, and some women even let their hair down. The dreaded Komiteh wallahs and Basijis were ignored when they tried to intervene. At the 100,000 capacity all-male stadium 5000 women too turned up to greet the team, demanded and got a section assigned to themselves. "The only time I saw such happiness break out was during the revolution itself," Mahmud Daulatabadi, the well-known novelist is quoted in the media.

The popular commitment to change may be put to a severe test soon. The guardians of the status quo are gearing up for a showdown. On April 29, some school teachers and shop owners were arrested in Najafabad, the hometown of Hussein Ali Montazeri, for having participated in a strike to protest against the Ayatollah's persecution. On the same day, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, chief of Iran's National Guard spoke ominously from Qom against "newspapers which are threatening our national security," and "liberals who have entered the foray with cultural artillery. They have taken over our universities and our youth are now shouting slogans against despotism... We are seeking to root out anti-revolutionary elements wherever they are. We have to behead some and cut off the tongues of others. Our language is our sword." As though this were not enough, General Safavi identified Minister of Culture Ataollah Mohajerani and the Ministry of Interior which is led by another Khatami ally as the main culprits. Iranian law forbids the General from meddling in politics. If the Faqih does not fire him, the wrong message will have been conveyed.