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Sartre starts his essay “The Republic of Silence” in a very provocative manner, saying, “We were never more free than under the German occupation.” By this Sartre understands that each gesture had the weight of a commitment during the Vichy period in France. I always repeat this phrase in relation to Iran. It sounds very paradoxical, but ‘We have never been more free than under the Islamic Republic’. By this I mean that the day Iran is democratic, Iranian intellectuals will put less effort into struggling for the idea of democracy and for liberal values.

The time of philosophical ideas have come in Iran. Today in Iran philosophy represents a window on Western culture, on an open society and on the idea of democracy. This is the reason why Habermas, Rorty, Ricoeur, Berlin and many others are relevant in Iran. Most of the intellectuals in Iran today are struggling against different forms of fundamentalism, fanaticism and orthodoxy. Habermas is considered the inheritor of the Frankfurt School’s intellectual tradition that from the very beginning questioned all orthodoxies and authoritarianisms.

Arendt’s work on totalitarianism is key to showing us that evil is an important problem in everyday politics and that it has the possibility to emerge at any time and in any place. I believe that many have experienced in Iran what Arendt describes in the Origins of Totalitarianism as “the anti-political principle.” It is the end of ethics in the political realm and the unlimited degradation of civic morality. In 1979 the abyss between men of civility and men of brutal deeds was filled in Iran with the ideologization of the public sphere. One saw the breakdown of the old system, followed by the failure of political liberalism and the formation of the ideologies of 1979. One can say that when common sense breaks down or becomes impossible, hopelessness and resignation set in; people lose the capacity for action and despair over their ability to influence things.

The Tudeh Party (Iranian Communist Party) and the leftist groups in Iran have no explanation today of their political and ideological struggles against liberal and democratic ideas in Iran. Most of these Marxist groups supported the anti-democratic measures taken against women and against Iranian liberals. Most of them, not to say all of them, supported the hostage-taking at the American embassy in Tehran. Some of them even backed the hard-line clerics in the elections and contributed to the Jacobinization and Bolshevization of the Islamic Republic.

Now, I ask you the question: what do you think is left of the Left in Iran? Nothing! Some live in exile around the world. Some are doing business in Iran. Some have become collaborators. A few are good scholars who teach in American and Canadian universities. Many lost their lives and will never be back among us.

. . . what sounded fake to me in Iranian Marxism was that it was supposed to be a revolutionary philosophy and yet it produced ultra-conservative elements in Iranian society, who knew how to grow a Stalin moustache or put on a Che Guevara beret, but had retrograde ideas on social issues like women’s rights or children’s education. You can see the best example of this in the political attitude of the Marxist-Leninist groups in Iran regarding the first demonstration of women against the Islamic regime.

Both Edward Said and Noam Chomsky are very well known in Iran and some of their books have been translated into Persian . . . Chomsky stresses that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was put together from many different cultures that were not Western imperialists. So there is a real universal aspect to this Declaration. In other words, according to Chomsky, the principles of human rights are reasonable principles because they express the consensus that most reasonable people would agree to. So, one can say that both Chomsky and Said defend a sort of non-hegemonic and democratic universalism. This is another reason for their status in Iran. But I should add that Said and Chomsky are not only respected among Iranian intellectuals because of their radical and anti-conformist attitudes, but mainly because of their struggle against extremism and authoritarianism. . . Today the struggle of intellectuals in Iran is not only a quest for pluralism, but also a vital quest for ethical truth and human dignity, situating the intellectual endeavor in its responsible context. To have a free spirit and to be an unrelenting force for integrity is not a simple task for those who are confronted with lies on a daily basis. Few figures have been able to bring together the radical denunciation of cultural and political hegemony with such a deeply felt commitment to democratic universalism as Said and Chomsky. Today reading Said and Chomsky in Tehran is like living life at the edge. It is risky, but full of excitement and exhilaration.

Thanks to western traditions of thought, I learned to think philosophically and politically, but I have refused systematically, during the past 30 years of my intellectual life, to abandon the Iranian question as the focal point of my philosophical and political thinking. An independent and critical thinker in Iran who takes responsibility for the marginal status thrust upon him is like an acrobat walking on a tightrope.

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I guess we'll see a typical middle eastern style kangaroo court soon

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The difference between "middle eastern" style kangoroo court and north American style kangoroo court is that the former provides equal opportunity and the latter is reserved to the poor and powerless.

If you were in touch with reality, with the lives of the poor and powerless here in Canada or in the US, you wouldn't have come up with such comment.

By the way, what is this about Ministerial certificates, people rotting in jail without any charges against them, secret evidence and secret hearings ?

[ 20 July 2006: Message edited by: sidra ]

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Originally posted by sidra:

The difference between "middle eastern" style kangoroo court and north American style kangoroo court is that the former provides equal opportunity and the latter is reserved to the poor and powerless.

If you were in touch with reality, with the lives of the poor and powerless here in Canada or in the US, you wouldn't have come up with such comment.

By the way, what is this about Ministerial certificates, people rotting in jail without any charges against them, secret evidence and secret hearings ?

[ 20 July 2006: Message edited by: sidra ]

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My friend, those who are considered security threats in Iran and most other parts of the middle east do not get the chance to have a secret hearing. No one bothers to sign a security certificate for them. Hell they don't even get the chance to rot in jail.

They end up with 70 knife stabs in their chest. Simple as that. Run a search on the chain murder of intellectuals in Iran and you'll see.That would have been Jahanbegloo's fate if the international community had not started their protest.

For Iranian political prisoners, even a situation like Guantanamo sounds heaven. If you think the Canadian or American justice system is comparable to Iranian courts, you really need a reality check.

Equal opportunity? Be serious.

[ 20 July 2006: Message edited by: ghlobe ]

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The CSDS faculty has registered serious concern at their colleague’s detention. In early May, a delegation from the Centre met an official of the Iranian embassy in India to appeal to Iran “to review and reconsider” Jehanbegloo’s case.

On May 16, CSDS director Suresh Sharma wrote to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on behalf of the Centre’s faculty to “review with sympathy and an open mind the case of our colleague and restore to [him] the freedom to think, write and live as a philosopher-intellectual in Iran.”

The letter recalled that Jehanbegloo was invited by CSDS, a constituent of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, as part of its project “to formulate and reflect alternative imageries concerning politics, political-social theory and democracy,” in particular, democracy “as a universal human quest and not as something that simply could not belong to the world beyond Europe-America.”

The letter says that Jehanbegloo “immensely enhanced our sensitivity and knowledge of Iranian society and civilisation. Our engagement and concern for Iran goes beyond and deeper than the exigencies of current politics. The presence and participation of Ramin Jehanbegloo in intellectual life in India has brought to bear a civilisational vantage of rare quality. It has helped create the basis of a conversation between civilisations upon some of the most difficult and grave questions of our time.”

It describes Jehanbegloo as “a philosopher-intellectual committed to non-violence, peace and truth; and as a human being of exceptional decency. As a philosopher, (he) may have said things that some may find unacceptable, unreasonable or plainly foolish. However that be, his activities are all in the public domain. There is nothing even remotely secretive or scheming about (him). Philosophers and votaries of non-violence are unfit for espionage”.

The letter concludes with an appeal to Ahmadinejad “not to allow a philosopher to be punished for his writings in the land of Sadi and Hafiz,” Iran’s great medieval philosopher-poets.

Jehanbegloo has more than 20 books to his credit, which have explored personalities such as Gandhi, Isaiah Berlin, Rabindranath Tagore and Edward Said.

Jehanbegloo, an academic of international standing and wide-ranging interests, was arrested and taken to northern Tehran’s notorious Evin prison at the end of April. Although no formal charges have been framed against him, the police suspect him of espionage. Few in Iran’s academic community or civil society organisations believe this. Nor has the government made out a half-way credible case for detaining the scholar for so long.

A campaign for Jehanbegloo’s early release is gathering momentum across continents, with a strong focus on countries in Iran’s neighbourhood, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, and especially India, with which country the scholar has been closely associated.

His wife Azin told IPS over telephone on June 19, after visiting him five times in prison, that “he is in pretty poor shape and has lost a lot of weight. Even more painful for me and our 10 month-old child is the uncertainty over how long he will be away. We just live in desperate hope day after day. The authorities say they haven’t yet completed their ‘investigations’. Until that happens, he can’t even see a lawyer'’

Jehanbegloo’s detention is widely seen in Iran’s academic circles and the broader intelligentsia as an extremely menacing development. Says a social scientist at the University of Tehran, who insisted on anonymity for fear of persecution: “It amounts to harassment of an academic, who has never been, nor been seen, as an activist or a controversial public personality who has embarrassed the government.”

Adds the professor: “I cannot tell you how gloomy the mood is among our faculty and in civil society. The message from Jehanbegloo’s harassment seems to be: the regime will arbitrarily target anybody, whether he or she is an activist or not. This is profoundly demoralising and disempowering.”

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The case of Ramin Jahanbegloo, the Canadian citizen who has been detained without charge in his native Iran for the past three months, appeared to take an ominous turn this week. Reports from a hardline Tehran newspaper said the Iranian government has a videotaped confession by Jahanbegloo, in which he says he was planning to participate in a U.S.-backed revolution. Friends and observers of his case say the confession, if it exists, would almost certainly be doctored footage from interrogations.

According to the newspaper Resalat, Jahanbegloo allegedly said he was working with an ambassador in Europe and had been in touch with individuals in Canada regarding an Iranian "velvet revolution". That echoes statements made early this month by Iran's minister of intelligence, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, who said Jahanbegloo is part of a U.S. plan to back a "soft revolution" in Iran. But the news of a possible confession comes amidst mounting international criticism of Jahanbegloo's treatment (last week, the Council of the European Union issued a statement that said it was "alarmed" at Jahanbegloo's ongoing detention, and called for him to be allowed "immediate access to legal counsel").

"Tehran felt they had to justify his arrest," says Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Washington, and a close friend of the jailed scholar. Hence reports of an alleged tape. If it does indeed exist, it would surely have been made under extreme duress, and promises that he would be returned to his wife and family after making the statement, says Sadjadpour.

Last weekend, in London, the United States and in Iran itself, those who best understand his plight -- his fellow Iranians -- staged hunger strikes in support of Jahanbegloo and Iran's many other political prisoners. The Iranians in exile were joined by Iran's most prominent dissident and champion of democracy, Akbar Ganji, who was released from Tehran's infamous Evin prison this March -- after six years of detention and lengthy hunger strikes that left him emaciated and near death.

Ganji is a journalist who was jailed for criticizing the Islamic dictatorship that rules Iran. He continued to write in prison, smuggling out long letters that were full of political philosophy, poetry, humour and occasionally bitter sarcasm. "Zahra Kazemi is the only murder victim in the world without a murderer," he wrote, a reference to the Iranian government's claim that the Canadian photojournalist, who was raped, tortured and beaten to death, had died in an accident.

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The case of Ramin Jahanbegloo, the Canadian citizen who has been detained without charge in his native Iran for the past three months, appeared to take an ominous turn this week. Reports from a hardline Tehran newspaper said the Iranian government has a videotaped confession by Jahanbegloo, in which he says he was planning to participate in a U.S.-backed revolution. Friends and observers of his case say the confession, if it exists, would almost certainly be doctored footage from interrogations.

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There was once a video clip of an interrogation of an accused by the Iranian intelligence service; the clip had been leaked out thanks to reformist elements within the government a few years ago. It was horrible. In one scene the interrogator was trying to get the accused to confess that she spied for Israel. The poor woman cried "but I have never been to Israel, officer." The interrogator calmly responded: "wait until the end of the interrogation, and You are going to say that you did."

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Originally posted by ghlobe:
They easily get any confession under torture.

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Originally posted by sidra:
The difference between "middle eastern" style kangoroo court and north American style kangoroo court is that the former provides equal opportunity and the latter is reserved to the poor and powerless.

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Oh please. I mean, it's one thing to argue that the Canadian justice system is far from perfect. It's another thing to claim that the torturers and murderers in the entirely corrupt Iranian justice system are in any way comparable.

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Oh please. I mean, it's one thing to argue that the Canadian justice system is far from perfect. It's another thing to claim that the torturers and murderers in the entirely corrupt Iranian justice system are in any way comparable.

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I agree with you, Michelle. But I would also keep in mind that sidra was responding to this statement by ghlobe:

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I guess we'll see a typical middle eastern style kangaroo court soon

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And I would add this one:

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For Iranian political prisoners, even a situation like Guantanamo sounds heaven.

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Those statements are offensive, chauvinist generalizations. They reflect the kind of thinking which says, "Oh yes, that's the Middle East, bunch of despotic dictatorships, let's invade and teach them some democracy..."

Now that I think of it, as long as Canada has aggressive troops in the region, maybe we should think twice before giving the countries of that region lectures in "justice".

[ 21 July 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

However, I don't think that this statement that you highlighted is a generalization:

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For Iranian political prisoners, even a situation like Guantanamo sounds heaven.

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It's a comparison. Perhaps it's true, perhaps it's not. It's fair comment for debate.

[ 21 July 2006: Message edited by: Michelle ]

In response to unionist, I understand his concern, however in this case as a person born and raised in the Middle East, it is not "them" for me, it is "us". I am not hesitant in making it clear that the region that I have come from is indeed infested with despotic dictatorships and badly in need of true representative and democratic government.

In fact, the progressive forces of the world should be in the front of movements to topple and force out those dictatorships, not Bush and co for their own profits. Personally I do not think a progressive person should feel any sympathy or even tacit support for a government like the Islamic Republic of Iran just because of their supposedly anti-American stance on political issues.

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Originally posted by ghlobe:
Though I should say in case of Middle East there are very few countries that don't fit the description (Kangaroo courts for political dissidents). Turkey perhaps? Maybe Lebanon? For most others, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi, I think we all agree that the description fits.

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What about Israel? Oh I forgot, when you say "Middle East", you don't mean, of the United States.

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In fact, the progressive forces of the world should be in the front of movements to topple and force out those dictatorships, not Bush and co for their own profits.

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Well, no, I really don't agree. The people of those very countries should be in the forefront of movements to topple and force out those dictatorships. And once they do, we must respect their choices.

Otherwise, we will be stuck supporting the Bushes and Olmerts and Harpers and (yes even the) Brezhnevs in their "glorious struggles for liberty" to "topple and force out" the "dictators" who don't do their bidding, such as Hamas and Hizbollah and Saddam Hussein and the Iranian ayatollahs.

No, once we start to decide for them, we are lost. The fight must be carried by them. By you and your people, ghlobe. Not by me and not by Spector.

[ 21 July 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

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Originally posted by unionist:

No, once we start to decide for them, we are lost. The fight must be carried by them. By you and your people, ghlobe. Not by me and not by Spector.

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