The condition of intellectuals in Iran

[Behrouz]

The condition of intellectuals in Iran

Part 1: Islamic conquest to 1942

Bagher Momeni

One could equally speak of "the calamity of Iranian intellectuals".

If we extend the term to include thinkers and scholars in previous epochs,
the description of calamity can be extended even to the remote past. Such
were the Majian Gaumata (died 522 BC), Mani who founded Manichaeism (276-215
BC), Mazdak founder of the egalitarian religion Mazdaism (died in the first
half of the 6th Century AD) among countless other pre-Islamic thinkers and
social and intellectual reformers put to death at the hands of Archeminian
and Sassanian kings and Zoroastrian high priests.

Turning to the 13 centuries since the Islamic conquest of Iran the number of
intellectual thinkers and reformers who died at the hands of autocratic
kings and religious reaction are truly uncountable.

Silenced in their prime

Some walked up the scaffold, were stoned to death or were beheaded before
they were even 40. Ibn al-Muqaffa' Abdollah Ruzbeh who translated the
classic Kalileh va Dimneh and some Manichaean texts and many other works
from the pre-Islamic Iranian language Pahlavi to Farsi was killed in 756 AD
on orders of the Caliph Mansur accused of polytheism and Manichaeism. He was
about 36 years old. Philosopher and mystic Ein al-Qozzat Abdolah Abulma'ali
(1098-1131 AD) was hanged as a non-believer aged 33. Shahabeddin Sohrvardi
(1153-1191 AD) philosopher and illuminati theologian was strangled aged 38.

Seven centuries later Seiyed Ali Mohammad Bab (1821-1850 AD) religious
reformer and claimant to being the resurrected Mahdi was shot at the age of
29 and many intellectuals close to him, including the early feminist woman
warrior-intellectual Fatmeh Qarr'at al-Ein (1817 - August 1851), were
slaughtered along with thousands of Bab's followers. The irony was that the
order for the massacre came from another reformist intellectual - the then
Chief Minister Mirza Taghi Khan Amir Kabir, himself murdered some years
later at the orders of the Shah.

Half a century later Iran enters the chapter of the Constitutional
Revolution (1905-8) which for the history of intellectual life registers
nothing but calamity. The first young victim was Mirza Jahangir Khan Sur
Esrafil (1875-1908) pioneer journalist, strangled at the orders of the
absolutist monarch. His crime was to support the constitutional monarchists.
The last in this line was Dr Taghi Arani the many-layered Marxist
intellectual and teacher who was arrested for being a communist and after
suffering a long period of torture was deliberately infected with typhus in
prison and died on January, 4 1940. He was only 35.
Different routes to silence

But if we go beyond the young pioneer thinkers the caravan of deaths is
beyond counting. Two examples: in 775 AD al-Moqanna' Hashem ibn Hakim and
his white-shirted followers in Khorasan and Transoxania (modern Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan) committed suicide and one and a half centuries later (922
AD) his red shirted followers were hanged after being defeated in a 21-year
struggle.

The tragedy appears in different forms. Legend has it that Hassan Sabbah
(died in 1124), Khajeh Nizam al-Mulk (1017-92), and Omar Khayyam (1050-1123)
were school mates. The first rebelled against the ruling powers and founded
the Ismaili Shi'ite sect and took to assassinating political opponents. The
second rose to become the chief minister under the Mogul king and
reorganised the state and religion in the kingdom and ironically died at the
hands of an Ismaili assassin sent by his old friend and the third withdrew
into astronomy, poetry, overhauling the calendar, and satisfying himself
with grape-water, heavenly and earthly beauties. It was only decades after
his death that some of his heretical philosophies saw the light of day.

If the above story of a shared schooling has little historic credibility,
there is a more recent example of social comrades ending up in totally
divergent paths. All three started their political career by spreading
progressive ideas of democracy, the rule of law and liberation from
absolutism. In their different ways all three were prevented from fulfilling
their historic role - enlightenment: pioneer journalist Mirza Jahangir Khan
Sur Esrafil was murdered in his youth (see above), Said Hossein Taghizadeh
(died 1969) rose to become minister and senator under another autocratic
Shah, and Ali Akbar Dehkhoda (1880-1965) withdrew into his mountain of
ancient books. This pattern is repeated again and again. The pioneering
intellectual is either murdered, joins the system of authority or withdraws
into obscurity.

The same tragedy reappears in another form especially in the second half of
the 19th century: exile Among the many dozens one can name Iran's first
playwright, Mirza Fathali Akhundzadeh (1812-1878) who introduced political
theatre to Iran, Abdol-Rahim Talbof (1834-1910), Mirza Malkam Khan whose
paper Ghanun (law) influenced the Constitutionalists enormously, and Mirza
Agha Khan Kermani (1854-1896) all highly influential in forming the ideas
which culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-8. All of them
spent most or all their life in exile.

Some of our intellectuals suffered what, for a thinker, is tantamount to a
living death: being unable to communicate your thoughts. The pioneer of the
Iranian modern novel, Sadegh Hedayat (1902-1951), modern Farsi poetry, Nima
Yushij (1897-1959) and modern Iranian theatre, Abdol-Hossein Nushin all had
only a brief moment in time to blossom: the short breathing space between
the departure of one dictator (Reza Shah) and the appearance of another (his
son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). Hedayat committed suicide in Paris, far from his
people, Nushin was exiled to the USSR where there was no place for his
artistry and spent his time studying Iranian epic poetry until his lonely
death in exile, and Nima withdrew to the silence of seclusion for the
remainder of his life.

Works destroyed

Exile or imprisonment also caused yet another tragedy for the intellectual:
their neglect or destruction of their works. Akhundzadeh's fear of being
associated with his book Maktubat was so strong that, despite living abroad,
it was first published in the Soviet Union in 1924, 46 years after his
death. It had to wait for almost a century after his death to see print in
Iran, and then in secret, away from the eyes of the censors and only in a
limited edition of 500. The fate of Mirza Agha Khan Kermani's books were
even more tragic. He himself was beheaded by the order of the autocrat
Mohammad Ali Shah. His book, "Three Correspondence" (Seh Maktub) appeared
abroad in a limited edition of 1000 in 1992, a century after his death. A
second book "One Hundred Lectures" (Sad Khatabeh) is still in hand-written
form in a handful of large libraries or gathers dust in the attic of some
admirer.

Tragedy did not just hit those who swam against the tide. Even those who
helped the authorities subjugate other intellectuals did not escape the
sword. I have already alluded to the great reformer and moderniser Mirza
Taghi Khan Amir Kabir, who had his wrist cut in 1852 by order of Naser'eddin
Shah whose Chief Minister he was. More recently Ali Akbar Davar, the brain
behind Reza Shah's autocratic rule and organiser of Iran's modern
bureaucracy and judiciary, committed suicide on orders of the Shah in 1936.

Forward to the past

What happened to Iranian intellectuals bears little comparison to their fate
in the West. In the West society evolved naturally and the intellectual
developed alongside it, struggling against, and gradually pushing back or
defeating home-grown reaction and autocracy. The intellectual realm was
gradually extended in an atmosphere that became increasingly free.

Iran's history has repeatedly and at frequent intervals gone through major
upheavals. Over the last 1400 years the country has been the scene of
numerous invasions from culturally more backward tribes: Arab, Turk, Mogul,
Afghan. The country saw major upheavals and numerous cultural relapse.

At a time when Europe was stepping into the era of enlightenment Iran
entered an age of cultural darkness with the Safavid Dynasty (1501-1732).
During the whole of this period all thought was religious, without a single
exception. Not for one moment does a spark light up the air.

Moreover, unlike his/her European counterpart who looked ahead, the Iranian
thinker always looked back to a past that they had lost. Intellectuals gave
their life, sometimes literally, in order to keep or recreate what they had
once possessed. The conquerors not only prevented the natural growth of
civilisation, but inevitably imposed their own more primitive culture on the
country. The clock was, so to speak, turned back again and again .

For Iranian intellectuals the struggle for social progress was often no more
than a return to roots and the ideas of their predecessors: for ideas that
were ceaselessly and everywhere searching for the victory of light over
darkness. Hundreds of renowned thinkers and dozens of large sects with a
variety of beliefs were accused of polytheism because they turned to their
past culture and civilisation. And because they wanted to restore
Manichaeism and Mazdaism to Iran. These were religions which in contrast to
the unitary nature of Islam believed in the duality of creation in the form
of light and darkness, the ceaseless battle between the two and the ultimate
victory of light over darkness. The duty of humankind is to help the victory
of light in its struggle. It is no coincidence that the whole of Iranian
literature is suffused with hatred for the night and a greeting of the dawn,
which sadly continues up to the present.

Barring brief instants of historic time, our intellectual has always lived
in the night, has spoken in hatred of the night and has been in struggle
against the night. A recent example is the father of modern Iranian poetry,
Nima Yushij. He has over ten poems with names including the word night, not
counting dozens of others where the poet shivers in fear of night and awaits
dawn. In only two poems, appearing in a seven-eight year brief interlude in
a life of over 60 years, does the cock crow, the night flee and dawn
arrives.

The Constitutional Revolution 1905-8

If the European intellectual left behind the dark ages and the Inquisition
finally and for ever with the enlightenment, their Iranian counterpart, who
in the space created by new ideas now steps into the path of the
Encylopaedists and carries the title of "enlightened thinker" (Monavvar
al-fekr), begins a new era in his/her life's tragedy and a new struggle
between light and dark.

Time has, apparently, not changed. The door revolves round the same axis.
The motion of history, as the poet Hafiz said, "is on the same character and
manner as was". Our intelligencia has at this stage left behind the Arab,
Turk and Mogul occupations, has absorbed the whole historic experience into
him[her]self and has achieved a blend of civilisation, that while reflecting
all their influence, remains uniquely his or hers. Driven by his/her
intellectuality and a very human and natural desire to push forwards s/he is
attracted to the culture and civilisation which had developed in the West in
an open climate and through a process of global give and take.

But now our intelligencia does not face primitive forces of invasion and
occupation. Instead s/he faces the invasion of Western neo-colonialism,
having at its disposal the most advanced achievements of human civilisation,
and trying to harness the craving of the Iranian "enlightened thinker" for
those very achievements to its own self-interests.

A new calamity is about to begin; everything becomes topsy turvey and the
Iranian intellectual is pulled left and right by several grinding stones:

Some take refuge with the colonialists against the despot and others with
reaction against the colonialist. Our intellectuals, almost despite
themselves, stumble from one pothole to another. Some turn to nationalism.
Others advocate Islamic unity. Yet more turn back the clock a thousand
years, and identifying with exiled Zoroastrians of ions ago, call the ghosts
of the Arab conquerors to combat. Or fascinated by mere appearances they
mistake the mirage for modern culture and civilisation. These either become
stuck in a dead end or tumbled down the slippery slope of decay.

In the midst of such confusion there are a mere handful of intellectuals who
draw a clear line between themselves and colonialism, despotism, and
reaction by lighting the torch of advanced civilisation in the heart of
society. A tragic destiny would only be natural for such Promethian
characters. They either cried out in the wilderness or lost their head.

Akhunzadeh's writings gather dust in his attic; Yusef Mostashar al-Dowlah
was blinded by having his book repeatedly banged on his head, Mirza Agha
Khan Kermani was beheaded; Malkam lived in exile all his life. Even the
reformist aristocracy like Moshir al-Dowlah and Amin al-Dowlah had to leave
their ministerial post under pressure of religious and political reaction.

Despite all this the movement for a constitutional monarchy succeeds through
the direct or indirect influence of such intellectuals. The despotic monarch
packed up and left and the field was opened up for opinions to be expressed.
Alas! The era of freedom and circulation of views was brief, too brief. The
revolution caused instabilities mixed with muddled thinking and plenty of
conflict. The setting was set for the emergence of a new despot.

Darkest of dark

The colonial powers helped set up a new autocrat spiced with the colours of
modernism. The new dictator, Reza Shah, established his rule by suppressing
progressive movements in various parts of the country and killing their
leader-intellectuals such as Sheikh Mohammad Khiabani (1880 - September 14,
1920), Haydar Amu-Oghlu (killed 1921), Colonel Mohammad Taghi Pessian
(murdered October 4, 1921). Reza Shah combined trappings of modernism with a
ruthless thought terror in ways only possible in a modern state The new
ruler, whose main business was to protect the interests of the greatest
colonial power of its time in Iran, also had to act as a dam against the
spread of the new communist ideology that had now taken over Iran's northern
neighbour and had been welcomed by progressive and democratic Iranian
intellectuals.

A new problem was introduced into the intellectual life of the country. Some
progressive intellectuals became confused by the modernising face of the new
dictator. In its pursuit of centralisation and totalitarianism, the new
regime on the one hand launched military campaigns against feudalism and to
put an end to the chaos caused by the warlords. On the other, as part of his
superficial modernisation of the state, Reza Shah launched a campaign
against the power and interference of the Shi'ite clergy and organised the
new state bureaucracy. Faced with these actions a section of the progressive
intelligencia become relatively paralysed. The revolutionary intellectual
faced an added problem. S/he now has to stand up, at one and the same time,
against both reaction and a modernism closely linked to the dictator.
In this way on the eve of the establishment of a modern dictatorial order
the Iranian intellectual has to grapple with a new tragedy. Some liberal
intelligencia belonging to the old aristocracy withdrew as soon as the
dictator tightened his hold. Others, as we discussed, knowingly or
unknowingly, welcomed the advance guard of the new order. Yet others rose up
against it and bit the dust in their efforts to circulate their independent
views.

One after another, Mohammad Mossadegh, Soleiman Mirza Eskandari, Mohammad
Ali Forughi withdrew to their homes. The poet Aref Ghazvini (1879-1933) died
alone after years of forced internal exile under guard. Mohammad Reza
Mirzadeh Eshghi (1893-1924) was assassinated at the age of 33 for the sin of
propagating revolutionary thought and a love for freedom. Mohamad
Farrokhi-Yazdi (1888-1939) died in the prisons of the modern autocrat
accused of socialist tendencies as did Taqi Arani, in the same year, for
being a communist.

Violent or tragic death was not confined to the anti-dictatorship,
revolutionary socialist or communist freedom lover. Anyone with an
independent view or free thought, even if they stepped along the same
intellectual-political path as the autocrat, was condemned to death merely
for their individuality.

An example is Mohsen Jansuz (1914 - March 12, 1940) who was arrested aged 25
and shot on the totally trumped up charge of armed rebellion against the
monarchy and attempt against the life of the crown prince. His main crime
was to have nationalist-chauvinist ideas which he had discussed with some
close friends. He had also translated Hitler's Mein Kampf. Yet within a
short while after taking power, Reza Shah's regime had itself given sway to
nationalist and chauvinist views and at the same time openly displayed
Germanophil tendencies. The dictator's rage could not tolerate an
independent intellectual with character, even when in the service of his own
ideas.

Similarly, Ali Akbar Davar, one of the Pahlavi king's most faithful
servants, architect of the modern state and the founder of the most
important new organs of this state, was ordered to commit suicide.

Only a few independent-thinking individuals survived these dark years: those
mainly spreading safe and divisive ideas. The modern autocrat was busy
reining in their power and influence of the clergy. He therefore needed to
give space to intellectual activity along the limited lines of some types of
nationalism, modernism and secularism. A number of progressive nationalist
and popular intellectuals fell into this trap. They mistook a superficial
modernism for intellectual and cultural development, or anti-Arab and
anti-Islamic Iranism for an anti-imperialist nationalism. Even such
enlightened intellectuals as Sadegh Hedayat, Zabihollah Behruz and Bozorg
Alavi were not immune from this fallacy and, to various levels, devoted
their intellectual energy to it.

The most persistent example of these who wasted his energy for a period was
the historian Ahmad Kasravi (1890-1945). Yearning for a "clean language" he
spent years cleansing the Farsi language from Arabic words, and fought hard
against Sufism and Shi'ism. He even went so far as to introduce a new
religion and put himself forwards as a prophet.

His work may have attracted the nationalist, and somewhat superficial,
appetite for anything new of some in the younger generation. Yet it was not
out of step with the intellectual system of the dictator. For this reason
the autocrat did not obstruct his activities. Yet even Karsavi did not
escape death. After the occupation of Iran by the Allies in 1942, in the
interregnum of freedom after the dictator was removed, he was stabbed to
death by two fanatical Muslims right inside the Justice Ministry. They did
so without fear of being caught or punished.

The fear and intellectual sterility of this period of Reza Shah's
dictatorship is starkly reflected in some of the surviving literary works of
the time. Nima, in the closet of his home, shouted in dread:

Where on this murky night shall I hang my tattered garment

In this murky night, which lasted twenty years, those intellectuals who had
something to say either wallowed in their own blood, disappeared into a
corner of total silence, were led up deviant by-roads, or placed their
thought and intellect entirely at the service of the autocratic order and in
glorifying the dictator.

One can perhaps claim that at no time in our history has the calamity of the
intellectual been as grave. During this period not a single progressive
creation in art, thought or literature was offered to Iranian society. The
talents that, so to speak, stepped into being during this period had to wait
until Reza Shah's totalitarian rule was dismantled. For a period, the
intellectual life of Iran went into a deep coma resembling death. If the
World War had not taken place and Iran not occupied by the Allies, there is
no knowing how long this deathly crisis of the intelligencia would have
lasted.

The Shi'i version of Islam believes that the leadership of Muslims passed
down along a direct line from Mohammad - the Imams. The 12th Imam, Mahdi,
was occulted in 10th century AD and will return to lead the faithful to the
day of judgement.

The Ismaili used impregnable mountain forts as their base and sent their
assassins to eliminate political opponents. The term "assassin" is
attributed to their practice of allegedly giving hashish to the assailants
before they were sent off on their mission.

Dehkhoda compiled a massive and most authoritative Farsi dictionary

Religion founded by Mazdak during the reign of the pre-Islamic Sassanid king
Anushiravan whose basis was extreme egalitarianism

The Constitutional Revolution which ended the absolutist monarchy and
introduced a constitutional monarch with an elected lower house, the Majles.

Great Britan was the dominant colonial power in the Middle East. Although
Iran was never directly colonialised, the colonial powers, and in particular
Imperial Russia and Great Britain repreatedly intervened in the internal
affairs of the country. Reza Shah was installed with the help of the
British. See Between the Two Revolutions, Ervand Abrahamian, Princeton,
1982.

Mossadegh, later became nationalist prime minister nd was deposed by a CIA
coup in 1953, Soleiman Mirza was a founder of the Tudeh Party, Foraughi
becaame prime minister on a number of occasions during the inerregnum of
democrtric freedom after the Allied invasion.

Poet and jounalist

Poet and journalist. In Reza Shah's prison his lips were sewn together.

Marxist philosopher and teacher who is considered the intellectual founder
of the Tudeh Party which he did not live to see.

All progressive writers
Calamity of Intellectuals in Iran
Part 2, 1941- present
Glimpse of dawn

The allied invasion of Iran in 1941 put an abrupt end to the "murky night"
of Reza Shah's reign. Over the next twelve years hidden and imprisoned
tallents resurfaced. A new generation of intellectuals were born full of the
passion for life. It was to greet this dawn that the father of modern powtry
Nima Yushij, now released from the fear of the night sang:
to the secrets flees the blind night
.....
dawn arives, the cock crows

This also is the time Sadegh Hedayat comes out of his cocoon and instead of
the melancholia of The Blind Owl or the agonizing death of the Stray Dog
speaks about The water of life, attacks fascism in Velengari (carelessness)
and writes about the evolution of life and human society. In the visual
arts, Nushin found a new and innovative theatre with The Bluebird, Gogol's
The Government Inspector and Montessera and educates a huge wave of young
artists in his artistic-intellectual school.

The intellectual of this time rides his or her boat on the wave of the
mass-worker movement and rowing and dancing sings his way towards a horizon
of joy. New ideas have space to expand. Creativity blooms everywhere. The
intellectual climate, reminiscent of the warm days of the Constitutional
Revolution, but at a higher plane and from a more progressive vantage point,
rediscovers its own destiny. The mass movement, now epitomised in the Tudeh
Party, becomes the haven for progressive intellectuals of whatever variety
and brings them all together under its wings. The intellectual create
associations through and around this party and find a direct link with the
people and are in turn influenced by them. These are years of creativity and
the growth of art, culture and ideas. A new generation of intellectuals join
those who were silenced in the Reza Shah and enter the scene. The
intellectual of this era is essentially "left" and under the influence of
progressive socialist views.

Historic dysjunction

Yet the intellectual movement of this era is also afflicted with a number of
maladies: historic disjunction. A deep crater made by 20 years of
dictatorship had separated the intellectual of this era from the history and
experience of the constitutional movement. Attracted by new ideas, and even
wallowing in them, made them alien to the ideas of previous Iranian
thinkers.

New ideas were copied hastilly and without deep thought encouraging an
intellectual dependency. An intellectual dependency not just to crude
borrowed concepts, but a fascination with foreign thinkers, became an
infectious general malady. Moreover, the intermingled and chaotic thinking
made dizzy our intellectuals, who came from different horizons and very
varied social bonds. These all cause a crisis whose mal-consequences only
surfaced much later.

With the growing movement for nationalising the oil industries in the late
1940's the intellectual movement takes on a new breadth and lustre. Yet,
while it encouraged a new intellectual movemnet, it also sharpened the
borders between Tudeh and nationalist thought.
Too much politics?

The intensity of events, and the rapidly evolving political scene in the 40'
s meant that politics ruled intellectual life. While this had a positive
aspect in that it brought the intellectual and the masses into closer
contact. The influence was in both directions. It did, however, bring with
it a problem. The intellectual was tainted with the blight of
over-politicisation and a general diversion to trivialities. The the power
of thought was to a large extent wasted on petty political conflicts or even
in errors and deviations.

In any case this era of progress and refinement did not pass without its
potholes. The first blow was the defeat of the democratic movements in
Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. The more fragile of the intellectuals lose their
optimism. When the second blow is delivered in February 1949, and the the
Tudeh Party was banned after an assassination attempt on the life of the
young Mohammad Reza Shah many more left the scene in dissapointment. The
coup d'etat of August 1953 was the last and most effective blow. A black
veil of dictatorship once again descended on the political scene of the
counrty. The thinking and cultural space of the country went into another
phase of darkness.

The first blow which buried the Azerbaijan and Kurdistan autonomous
republics also began the splits in the intellectual line-up. The clash and
conflict of these groupings peaked during the movement to nationalise the
oil industries where the nationalist and Tudeh party came into ever greater
conflict. The bitter battles in politics and thought paralised a significant
section of the intellectual life of the country. Some of those who left the
Tudeh party is weakened somewhat or led along deviant paths. A notable
example is the fate of Khalil Maleki. Having split from the Tudeh Party, he
obstinantly wasted an enormous amount of energy responding to the political
blows of that party. In the end, tired and alone he melts away.

Two years later the banning of the Tudeh party and the arrests that
followed, forced many intellectuals to abandon real and living action to
flee the country. These included Iraj Eskandari, Reza Radmanesh, Ehsan
Tabari and many of Tudeh leaders. Many others lose hope in the new political
atmpsphere and in one way or another become paralysed.

Of the political leaders Ghazi Mohammad, head of the Kurdistan Democatic
Party and briefly president of the Mahabad Republic, is hanged (March 30,
1947). Later after the coup which overthrew the nationalist premiere
Mossadegh (August 1993) Hossein Fatemi who had been savagaly wounded when
government thugs arrested him was executed on a stretcher (November 10,
1954) and Khosrow Ruzbeh was led to the firing squad leaning on a stick (May
11 1958)., weakened by the gunshot wounds inflicted during the chase which
ended in his arrest.

Another long tarry night

And the long tarry night swallows up society and Forugh Farrokhzad sees how
the intellectual:

in the dark panick-ridden street,
squashes underfoot
her heart
like something rotten

Such was the darkness that reigned that even if a light flickered in the
distance, the poet doubtingly warned:

that bright spot,
is the eye of wild wolves
And the night was so cold and biting that it robbed sleep off the poet's
eyes. Sohrab Sepehri, who normally moved above the clouds, feels that in the
desert of the silent and asleep
the night...
moves across the seconds
with the slowness of a lament

And the poet deciding on flight involuntarily searched for his shoes
whispering:

there is a smell of migration
my pillow is filled with the songs of swallows' feathers.

The tragedy was that even those intellectuals who took to migration were
becoming fossilized or rotting away in their place of exile.

In this new murky night, now accompanied by a severe winter, and a cold that
erodes life and reason not everyone has the legs for flight and exile. Those
who stayed behind in the country are fearful. They avoid from one another,
collars pulled up. The intellectual is sterile, disillusioned, hopeless, and
helpless. His mind frozen over and her cry snuffed in the throat. The
intellectual either faces the firing squad, rots in prison or takes refuge
in seclusion and opium:

Mohammad Hossein Shahyar, who once wrote victory choruses for the victors of
Stalingrad, Fereidun Tavalloli who with his new and original satire had made
fun of the whole apparatus of power, ad Akhavan Saless who wanted to write
epics of the heroics and balads of the hopes, crawls from the bitter cold of
the totalitarianism to the brazier and burns his life away if the crackles
of opium: he writes laments and recites verses of fear. The poet, his only
friend and companion his shaddow, faces one of only three alternatives:

The first, a road of drink, comfort and joy
soaked in shame, but facing garden, town and habitation.
Route two, half shame and half fame
if you raise your head, turmoil, and if you hold you breath peace.
The third, the road of no return, no end.

Yet there are intellectuals who chose neither the road that leads to drink
tainted with same nor had the courage to raise their head and face turmoil
nor the legs that takes them to the perilous road of no return and without
end.

Many of these went on to negate and reject their past. They cursed the lies
and deceptions of the past, yet see nothing ahead but a mirage. Inevitably
they make themselves, in the words of Akavan Saless "a guest of wine, opium
and hashish"

The tragic tale of the intellectual in the era Mohammad Reza Shah's
autocratic rule does not always end in repentence, self-rejection,
withdrawal, and intoxication. There aree others who make up for past
privations when they followed progressive ideals now give their whole being
to serve the despotic new order. Their attacks are more savage than the
original elements of the autocracy. They vault, many steps at a time, up the
stairs of social and political power.

The confrontation, and resulting discord and hostility, between the two main
currents of intellectual life in Iran - left and nationalist - wasted the
intellectual energy of the country. This battle became even more capacious
in the new era.

The newly reinstated autocracy attacks leftist and socialist thought with
all its might while giving enough reign to liberal and nationalist thought
not to pose any danger to itself. In turn, the nationalist, who blamed the
defeat in the movement for nationalising the oil industry on the Tudeh Party
uses up all its energy against the ghost of its old rival - ironically now
totally thrown out of the political arena. Anti-leftism becomes a real
current of thought right up to this day. This part of the intellectual force
of the country, which should have pointed its arrows on the apparatus of
despotism, is totally squandered, caught up as it is in a vulgar politicism
and a long-lasting enmity and bitterness.

White revolution

The age of the imperial White Revolution lasted for a decade. With a new
aristocracy which controls everything and which plunders the national wealth
new social forces raise their head. The nouvea-riche turn the sixties into a
period of total sterility tainted by of intellectual pretentions and
posturings. The apparatus of the autocrat, led by the Shah's wife, Shahbanu,
takes a number of new intellectuals looking for fame and fortune under its
wings. There are numerous glittering state-sponsoned cultural and artistic
events. The despotic court spreads a table full of new and coulourful
western foods, and attracts a number of newborn intellectuals who have yet
to learn to walk, with its colourful toys and papier-machets.

There are others join this oppulent and colourful table, without content,
knowing full well what they do. They gurgling and regurgitate half-digested
Western thoughts which they had swallowed uncooked. This is an era of
deception, of treachery and there are many like Raviz Nikkhah who while
encouraging the modern corrupt and hollow imperial culture organise the
campaign to ridicule progressive thought and culture.

There were others who mistook cafes such as Riviera in the capital's
fashionable Naderi Street for Montparnasse and Saint Germain. There they
spent hours in interminable discussions, over a glass of beer, on "art for
arts sake" or other spontaneously thrown up cultural and artistic school.
There weer many small cultural or artistic circles, usually around a well
known guru, which discovered a new genius every second and persented their
brillinat creation to society. This was how the intellectual movement of
Iran became a mere intellectual game and snobism became its main
characteristc.
The religious intellectual

A new creature - the "religious intellectual" - stepped into this chaotic
mess. He rapidly grew and drew trength because of the carelessness, and also
the deliberate connivance, of the dictator. The dependent autocrat still
felt that the real danger to his rule came from the progressive ideas of
man, including Marxism and socialist tendencies. He therefore turned a
relatively blind eye to this new development. After all the religious
intellectual might be able to slow or prevent the spread of these leftist
thoughts. Religious reaction used this opening to send out its forces.

Gradually hatred for the autocrat and the new classes he had created and
fattened became strong among the people and in particular among the mass of
educated youth. Yet the Shah had savagely repressed the progressive
intellectual and vanguard movement, and at the other end of the spectrum a
corrupt movement, pretending to intellectualism, was serving the apparatus
of power. One of the faces of this hatred for the despot, therefore, took on
an opposition to the culture and civilistation of the West and to
intellectuals and intellectualism. They called on the anti-Tudeh nationalist
intellectual to take their side. At the same time reactionary religious
circles send out their forces with an xenophobic and anti-progressive bent.

They combined in their more acute and extreme form to create two currents
born of the same blood: against westernisation and for religious reform.
They found an enthusiatic audience among the generation of youth who were
against imperialism and the dependent-capitalist dictatorship. The spokesman
of the first, Jalal Al Ahmad, had been at various times a Tudeh member, a
nationalist-Third Forcer, the born-again Shi'ite convert. The other was led
by Ali Shariati the new theorist for religious renewal who called the
Iranian intellectual a fake copy of their European counterpart, acting as a
"guide" to neo-colonialism.

This current occupied a section of the intellectual space of the country for
less than a decade. Al Ahmad and Shariati both drew swords on intellectuals
and intellectualism and exhorted enmity with the West and all the
achievements of human civilization. They preached a return to the
reactionary past. Our religious "intellectual", the advocates of a return to
the past, tries to brighten up his mouldy commodity by using statements from
some disgruntled and disillusioned Western intellectual or some of the
backward new Third World thinkers, either writhing under racist humiliation
or in an anti-colonial struggle which has yet to shed its initial rawness
and immaturity.

Thus a large part of a new generation which entered the realm of thought,
revolting against the neo-colonial rulers, sickened by the phony glitter of
the dictatorship and angered by the intellectual snob, went astray and
followed the wolf mistaking it for sheep.

The existing intellectual vacuum led another group of the younger generation
to search for progressive thought in any hole. They fell prey to those who
sold brass for gold. Many freaks and deformed creatures came out of these
schools.

During this decade pseudo-modernism and snobbism at one level, intellectual
reaction at another and pure charlatanism masquerading as empty
progressiveness at a third level encircled the unofficial intellectual
atmosphere of the country.

The disastrous effects and consequences of this murky night and severe
winter and the scene settings of this endless emptiness on the world of the
intellectual was described in many poems and writings. A few years before
her premature death in 1967 Forugh Farrokhzad wrote:

the sun was dead...
all the same life panted in secret. And some
....instead of flowers in the earth in their gardens
sewed machine guns and granades
and some
cover up
their tiled ponds
and the tiled pond
without wishing it
are secret stores of gunpowder
and children .... fill
their school satchels
with tiny bombs.
Cracks

And suddenly the wall of political autocracy, and reactionary and modernist
thinking cracks. The guerilla movement announces a new era in the life of
intellectualism in Iran in the eve of the 1970's. A wave of intellectuals
line up in its defense.

The apparatus of autocratic power sets out to crack brains with even greater
ferocity. Prisons fill up, particularly with the younger generation of
intellectuals and artists. Many of the nascent intellectuals are destroyed
even before they can stand on their own feet. Others meet an early death by
a variety of means.

Parviz Puyan and Hamid Mo'meni die in street gunfights, Mohammad Hanif Nejad
and Khosrow Gol-Sorkhi are executed by firing squad, Bijan Jazani and his
fellow prisoners are murdered in secret. New prisons are being built, and
embraces those who write without permission of the neo-colonial autocracy.
Within these physical and mental torture is permanent. A significant section
of progressive intellectual force of the country is spent in either
organizing or justifying the armed struggle. The weapon takes the place of
thought.

On its side reactionary religious forces also become more active against
modernism, and the bourgeois imperialist reforms of the ruling order. Yet
the Shah's apparatus of power, while dealing even more savagely with the
radical revolutionaries, turns a blind eye to a large part of these forces,
and even at times enlists them as allies against the revolutionaries.

Revolution

In these circumstances the advance guard of the revolution emerges on the
horizon. The apparatus of the dictator bargains in panic with religious
circles and the leftover fossils of nationalism in order to stop the
radicalization of the revolution. When the revolution ultimately arrives,
the radical revolutionary forces are sidestepped in the transference of
power. This was not surprising as over the years the birds of dawn had been
slaughtered while vampire bats were allowed to live and grow.

A new era, one of religious reaction, followed the revolution of 1979. It
was an era of darkness and mediaeval ignorance. The mass democratic
revolution is baptized as the Islamic revolution and gives birth to a
bastard child named the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those intellectuals who
had in one way or other survived the bleak winter of absolutism were the
victims of black-shirted "hezbollah" and "jondolah" even before they could
find themselves.

Attacks by the religious fascism started with book-burning, closed the
universities in the so-called cultural revolution and rapidly spread to
closure of newspapers of all kinds, and imprisonment and murder of any
independent thinker who dared to move.

The country witnessed an extension and development of the imperial autocrat'
s individual and mass murders to mass slaughter of intellectuals, political
activists and opponents and even opponents of the Islamic Republic in
thought alone. An exodus unknown in Iranian history began. The educated and
intellectuals in their thousands and thousands left for Europe, USA, Canada,
Australia and anywher else that would take them. According to one estimate
in the first five years of the revolution 7,400 academics left the country.
The intellectual who for whatever reason stayed behind feels the sword of
Domocles on his/her neck even when asleep.

The question is not over intellectualism, progress or modernism. The very
act of thinking or pretending to think carries the death penalty.
Representing the creator of the world, the velayet faghih "thinks" for
everyone and in place of everyone. And the and pasdaran of Islam
(revolutionary guards) search the deepest receses of ones homes in case a
glow worm had hidden itself there. To think and to love are haram
(forbidden) and the words thinking and love are the words of kofr (heresy):

they smell your breath
in case you had uttered I love you;
and the poet who should cry out love
at every cross road
and light beacons on heights
warns with a fearful whisper
"hide love and light in the closet of your home"

A prolonged exile, and dispersion afflicts the intellectual community with a
variety of maladies. Many tire and become downhearted. Others spend their
time on trivialities. Some survive by grinding their teeth at fellow exiles.
A group kneel at the alter of their conscience and pass their time lamenting
and asking for forgiveness for past deeds. Some sophistically whisper
reconciliation with the wardens of ignorance and darkness ruling Iran today
into the ears of others. Some sink into sufism and mysticism, while others
slowly melt into the cultural and scientific community of the host
countries. Finally there are those who seek the decayed bones of their Arian
ancestry in the dust bowls of time.

Only a handful persist in singing battle hymns, without any assurance that
they are being heard by the addressees. Even fewer are those who are
reconstructing themselves without any assurance that their intellectual
stores are up to the task of responding in time to the needs of Iranian
society today and tomorrow.

Religious intellectual

But inside the country, hatred for the religious Islamic government grows as
each day goes by, despite the killings and the pressures. People are falling
out not only with its policies, but even with its convictions - which are no
other than Islamic instructions. It is in this bedlam that a phenomenon
called "religious intellectual" surfaces to save Islam and attracts a
section of the younger generation for whom the world of progressive thought
has been closed and who has been denied any chance to think freely. This
phenomenon is embraced even more avidly as it is vehemently opposed by the
ruling ultra-reactionaries. Where the velayate faghih rules, even a Muslim
cannot think, criticize or express any views.

A new danger, the "religious intellectual", therefore threatens the newly
reborn intellectual society of Iran. It is here that the role of the
progressive thinker inside the country becomes difficult and complex. The
true intellectual, for whom the constant threat of death has not been
removed, will continue to defend the idea of free expression of all ideas
(including the free activity of the religious reformist). Yet he or she
must, with a particular delicacy, to oppose those religious teaching with a
misleading message. We must not allow the Iranian intellectual society to
once again find itself disarmed by such vulgar schools of thought as
"westoxification" and "progressive Islam".

The other danger facing the progressive intellectual is to run away from
ideology. This has become fashionable among some of our secular
intellectuals, driven there by the presence of a religious government in
Iran, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socio-political
developments in some socialist countries. Disillusioned by the official
socialist ideas, some now label as ideological all Islamic religious
deliberations and beliefs. By arriving at a negation of all ideologies, they
unconsciously disarm themselves, and others, in the battle of ideas.

New resistance

There is another side to the rising schools of religious reform and their
confrontation of the executive and cultural apparatus of the Islamic
Republic. They demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of the present regime's
policy of attacking culture and intellectualism.

The non-religious intellectual is also braving the very real dangers to poke
their heads out of their shell. Critical views are openly being expressed,
often dressed in a variety of guises, and widely disseminated. They are
struggling to erect cultural-intellectual institutions. There are an
increasing number of independent publications precariously expressing their
opposition to the reactionary and autocratic cultural and intellectual
policies of the regime. Newspapers published abroad are being accessed
inside the country despite the difficulties. Even more interestingly some of
the banned books published abroad are being reproduced in substantial
numbers inside the country and are secretly distributed and passed around
from hand to hand. All these sow the seeds of hope.

It looks as if a new era of intellectual resistance has begun. Its
fundamental characteristic is a serious struggle against religious thinking
in all aspects of intellectual social and political relations. During the
run-up to the Constitutional Revolution at the beginning of the century and
in the years of the absolutist rule of dependent capitalism the problem for
the intellectual was the existence of political absolutism. They therefore
ignored the negative role of religion, or did not think a serious struggle
with it necessary. At times, the intellectuals recruited the religious
elements in their battle against the dictator.

Today, the actual opponent of the intellectual is the clergy and Shi'ite
religious thought. And today's struggling thinker or writer is well aware of
past damages on Iranian society, and its intellectuals, by such
superficially attractive theses as westoxification, and "religious reform
and revival".

The real intellectual in today's Iran is strictly secular and favours the
institution of a civil order. While loving his/her country and nation, s/he
opposes false- and ultra-nationalism, which ominously also stands to grow in
its opposition to religion. He is anti imperialist and anti-monarchist
because he has tasted the bitter taste of both. Being global she remains
Iranian, and will use mankind's progressive achievements in thought and
culture, without any obligation or dependency to the various global
intellectual power centres, to raise the level of thought and culture among
her own people.

Regardless of his own view, he is scrupulously democratic and believes in
dialogue and criticism because s/he has learnt from all the experience that
thought can only exist in a free and democratic space allowing criticism and
dialogue among opposing beliefs. Being a democrat also means that our
intellectual also retains a critical view to the political and intellectual
power which rules, even if elected by his/her choice.

Today's real intellectual does not gladden the heart of reaction and
imperialism by an anti-left fever and hatred. He or she will understand that
no intellectual judgement or deduction is possible outside, and
un-influenced by, an ideology. Therefore, s/he will only not oppose ideology
but, accepting as a principle that all intellectual anxioms are relative and
changeable, will rely on ideology to guide him-her in the exchange and
challenges of thought.

Most importantly the intellectual in whatever political line-up they occupy
tries to digest the distant and recent past history of Iran, avoiding the
prejudices of any politics or school of thought. It is only in this way that
the historical fissure which rules the intellectual society of our country
can be bridged. They will step into the future and higher planes by using
past experience. We can be sure that if intellectuals of this calibre prepar
e their war against the religious fascism ruling Iran without doubt in the
end light will conquer darkness and reason ignorance.

8.8.1375