Q. I’d like to devote my first question to the crisis stemming from
the publication of offensive cartoons of the Prophet of Islam.
I
remember that, more than six years ago, I saw you and Dr. Samuel
Huntington, ‘the clash of civilizations’ theoretician, at a
gathering of thinkers in Nicosia, Cyprus. At the conference, you
criticized the theory of the clash of civilizations. Now, several
years later, can we see the crisis arising from the publication of
offensive cartoons of the holy Prophet as the beginning of the
coming to fruition of Huntington’s theory or can we hope that there
can be understanding and dialogue between Western civilization and
the world of Islam?
A. As you said, a few years ago, in the early days of Mr. Khatami’s
presidency, there was a conference in Cyprus attended by a number of
Iranian scholars and politicians, as well as by Mr. Huntington, in
which I, too, participated. As it happened, a subject of heated
debate there was Mr. Samuel Huntington’s theory of the clash of
civilizations, towards which I had and still have a critical view.
I
might add that, five years ago, i.e. when the attack on the Twin
Towers took place, numerous seminars were held across the USA,
including at Harvard University, where Mr. Huntington happens to
teach. And Mr. Huntington took part in some of the seminars. But I
noticed that he was not keen to talk about the theory of the clash
of civilizations at any of the seminars or to view that terrible
incident as corroboration of his theory. I think that if you put
the question that you put to me to Mr. Huntington, he would still
not answer you with any certainty about whether the insult against
the noble Prophet and the reaction to it in the world of Islam was a
corroboration of his theory or not.
But I think that Huntington’s theory is, in the first instance, a
theory that has two components. One component is demographic and
relates to the study of populations. And the second component is
cultural-conceptual. The demographic part of the theory states that
the population growth in the world of Islam – whether the minorities
who live in European countries or in the US or Muslims who live in
Islamic countries – is very high. Huntington believes that this
very high growth rate will one day turn into a political, security
and cultural problem for European countries and the West in general,
and that Muslims will outnumber Westerners.
But the second point in Huntington’s theory, which is a more
important point, is the emphasis that he places on the West’s
cultural characteristics. Huntington believes that some concepts,
such as freedom and human rights and the separation of religion and
the state – are Western cultural concepts and that they have no
place in Islamic culture. And that it is impossible to sow the seeds
of these concepts in the realm of Islamic thought. That these
concepts are and will continue to be fundamentally alien to Islamic
culture. Hence, he believes that these civilizations will try to
settle scores with each other one day.
Apart from the truth or falsehood of the two components of
Huntington’s theory (and I think there is a great deal to be said
about the second component), in the context of political science and
sociology, his theory is such that it can work simultaneously to
prove and to disprove itself.
What I said at the Cyprus conference was that Huntington’s theory
can both disprove itself, in the sense that, once it has been
expressed, others can act to prevent it – as was the case with
Marx’s prediction about the emergence of socialism and, then,
communism in Europe – and prove itself, in the sense that some
people might try to expedite it and bring it to fruition. In fact,
after the cartoons affair, I saw that some writers had made some
efforts to this end and had tried to show that the war of
civilizations (between Islam and the West) had started and that
these were its signs. But what we saw in the world of Islam –
especially in those reactions to this affair that were carried out
in a civilized way – showed that this is preventable and that it is
not by any means possible to talk of an inexorable clash of
civilizations. Moreover, you and your learned viewers know that
nothing in history is inexorable and that we can only ever speak of
possibilities. And these possibilities can become stronger or
weaker. And this strength or weakness depends on how well the actors
and responsible parties deal with things, the historical and social
status that they attach to an event, and the destiny that they forge
for a theory or prediction.
Q. Setting aside the fact that the publication of these cartoons
was indefensible, you’re aware that the effect that it had on some
Muslims was to inflame their wrath and hysterical hatred towards the
perpetrators and supporters of this reprehensible deed. Now, bearing
in mind that you have, for many years, been a critic of the
perpetrators and theoreticians of violence, can this reaction by
Muslims also be viewed as reprehensible violence? And, here, I’d
like to add the following explanation: I noticed that, after you
wrote a piece in castigation of the publication of the cartoons,
some people objected to your stance by saying that Dr. Soroush has
portrayed this row as the fire of freedom versus the fire of zeal,
whereas a confrontation between the fire of freedom and the fire of
zeal is a contrived idea, and it is confrontations between religious
zeal and religious zeal that has bloodied the arena of history, and
history is full of religious wars, especially intra-religious wars,
and Muslims have mostly been felled by Muslims.
A. Yes, I read the retort to which you are referring and I found it
surprising and regrettable.
I
said in a short piece that I wrote about the cartoons incident that
we were witnessing a confrontation between two fundamentalisms in
this affair; secular fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism.
And that it was these two fundamentalisms that had produced this
untoward event. In other words, on one side, some people had turned
secularism into a stick with which to beat others and were using its
contents, i.e. human rights and freedom, as a pretext for attacking
other people’s sanctities, insulting them and tormenting the
faithful Muslims who are devoted to their Prophet – and viewed this
as their right! And, on the other side, when Muslims are angered,
sometimes they know no bounds and they recklessly launch into
inappropriate reactions, such as setting embassies alight, which is
not acceptable. The author of that critical piece, for his part,
cavilled at this and said that secularism is not a religion. I
didn’t say that secularism was a religion and, even if I had, it
wouldn’t have been a bad thing since it would have amounted to a
sanctification of secularism! What I was saying was that some
people use secularism in exactly the same way that some religious
fundamentalists and fanatics use religion; i.e. they use secularism
as a stick with which to beat others and wield it with fanaticism,
without consideration for moral criteria. And, when I referred to
‘by the fire of freedom’ or ‘by the fire of zeal’, if my critic had
looked at the text carefully, he would have seen that I’d placed
quote marks around the words ‘freedom’ and ‘zeal’; i.e. ‘so-called
freedom’ and ‘so-called zeal’. Hence, just as pretentious religious
zeal is not real zeal, this secular exploitation of freedom is not a
real commitment to freedom either. My intention was to say that
some people have exploited ‘freedom of expression’ to inflame
others. Today, if someone insults your father, you’ll take offence
and you won’t see it as something proper and a corollary of freedom
of expression. So, how can it be appropriate for some people -
wittingly or unwittingly - to insult a vast community’s spiritual
father?
This secular critic of mine also used the opportunity to take a
swipe at religion by saying that history is filled with religious
wars. I won’t deny this, but let me ask this: were the first and
second world wars, which put all other wars in history to shame and
left 50 million dead, religious or secular wars?
Speaking in this way amounts to the secular fundamentalism to which
I referred. The interesting point is that, if we’d raised this
question a generation ago, Marxists would have said that there’s no
such thing as religious wars in history and that all wars were class
wars!
All this going to one extreme or the other stems from obsessions
that rob people of their sense of balance.
Now, let me broaden the scope of our discussion a bit beyond this
criticism of me. As I’ve said in some of my writings, I’m of the
view that one of the problems of liberal civilization today is that
they haven’t delved fully into the rights-morality relationship. And
even if they have, the subject has not been taught well and remains
unknown to the public. It’s true that we have some rights but, in
some instances, morality places some boundaries and limitations on
our rights. That is to say, although I have a right to freedom of
expression, I don’t have the right, morally, to offend or insult
someone or to assist the propagation of pornography. I’m of the
view that this conflict between right and morality has not been
resolved in the West. What we are witnessing today is that right
has advanced like floodwater and washed away some of the territory
belonging to morality. This is what offends some people and it leads
some beneficiaries of rights to invade the territory of morality and
to arouse other people’s wrath and protests. I believe that one of
the great imperatives of our day is to respect the boundaries of
these two things and to keep them in their own place.
My criticism of the West is not that they are liberal; it is that
they aren’t liberal enough. My criticism is not that they are
democratic; it is that they aren’t democratic enough. My criticism
of and my stance on this affair is distinct from those people in
Iran who use the publication of these cartoons to attack Western
liberalism and democracy. But I also have no doubt that Western
civilization merits criticism and should be criticized. We mustn’t
imagine that these offensive cartoons are the achievement of
democracy or freedom of expression in the West. In fact, these are
instances of abusive exploitation, which must be recognized and
prevented.
Q. But, following on from the subject of criticizing violence, I’d
like to turn to domestic Iranians issues for my next question. In
a recent interview about criticizing violence and the proponents of
violence in Iran, you turned Ahmad Fardid into the focal point of
theoretical work promoting violence in Iran since the revolution.
Don’t you think that this is a slight exaggeration? After all,
regardless of who Fardid was and regardless of what he said, his
deeds and thoughts cannot be considered so far-reaching as to allow
the linking to his ideas of all the violent activities and stances
undertaken by some layers of the state. So, don’t you think you’ve
exaggerated Fardid’s position and stature?
A. As you know, I said these things about Fardid and his cronies
for the first time in an interview about two months ago. Although
they were in the back of my mind, I’d never spoken or written about
these things during the 27 years that have passed since Iran’s
Islamic Revolution. And this is simply because I see now that some
of these ideas are gradually taking up the seats of power officially
and are reaching out from the sleeve of power to instigate violence.
This is why I tried to reveal some of the founts of violence in
society and, if you look carefully, you’ll see that what I said
about Fardid is a tiny fraction of what there is to be said. It
wasn’t my intention to exaggerate the importance of Fardid’s ideas.
As I said in the interview, his ideas are not important. I really
saw and see Fardid as someone who had a confused mind and an even
more confused mode of expression. But there it is; he gained
importance and authority within a limited circle of people and
gradually this limited circle reproduced, and not only among
pseudo-intellectuals but among some seminarians and clerics and
publications, such as ‘Kayhan’ newspaper and the journals ‘Soureh’,
‘Howzeh-ye Andisheh’ and ‘Honar-e Eslami’.
We are now living in times in which, over the past few months, many
of these people have attained power and scaled the walls of power.
I
deliberately spoke about this subject because I saw that some people
were, wittingly or unwittingly, pointing in the wrong direction and
linking everything to the Hojjatieh Society. Of course, I’m not a
defender of the Hojjatieh. It was a clan that has really become
extinct now. And the individuals whom I know about and am acquainted
with had no wish to enter the political arena and basically didn’t
have a political theory. The fact that the current president harps
on the Hidden Imam [12th Shi’i Imam] and considers his
return to be imminent and bases some of his political stances on
this must not deceive us into imagining that Hojjatieh members have
infiltrated politics and are speaking through the president and
through others. I wanted to reveal the real founts of these words,
theories and stances. Whatever and whoever the Hojjatieh consisted
of, they were not proponents of violence, but the Fardid circle is a
different matter.
Just yesterday, I noticed that a group of students who belong to the
Basij [volunteer force affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards] had
said at one of their meetings that democracy is the materialization
of carnality. These aren’t the Hojjatieh’s words; they are Ahmad
Fardid’s words. They have used phrases of this kind to disparage
and impair all the good achievements of the West which we could
really do with a bit of today when our country is in the grip of
this exaltation of violence.
They’ve used terms like carnality, global arrogance, Westoxication,
Freemasonry and decadence to invalidate all the West’s good ideas
with ease and without any supporting argumentation and to deprive us
of them. And the only thing they have offered in return is
violence. This is why I placed such emphasis on this issue and
tried to show exactly where the problem lies. You remember what his
students, like Reza Davari, said and did a few years ago in the
programme called ‘Hoviyat’ which was broadcast on Iranian TV, and
whose purposes the programme served. [‘Hoviyat’ (Identity) was a TV
programme - broadcast in a few dozen instalments in 1996 - which
castigated some named writers and intellectuals, and portrayed them
as ‘Westoxicated Iranians who have lost or betrayed their cultural
identity’ and as virtual fifth columnists for the West.]
You also remember how, a few years ago, one of the Tehran Friday
prayer leaders, who remains in this post to this day and who has
done nothing in the long, fruitless life that God has given him
other than to attack others, attacked Popper’s Open Society
in one of his sermons without ever having read a single page of it.
I believe that this is the product of the link that those same
gentlemen had with this Friday prayer leader. And they gradually
extended their links to other clerics through him and this is how
they were able to spread their ideas. On the whole, what passes for
opposition to and hatred of the West and Western civilization and
democracy and human rights in our country – which is presented in
rather subtle and ornate packaging – is the product of the factory
of the same gentlemen, who are all linked to Mr. Ahmad Fardid in
some way. Interestingly, after my interview, about two months ago,
about Fardid and his approval of Ayatollah Khalkhali, I received an
angrily-worded letter from Mr. Khalkhali’s son in which it was said
that Mr. Khalkhali had numerous meetings with Fardid. This is
another confirmation of what I said earlier about the fact that not
all the pro-violence stances of faqihs [experts in Islamic
jurisprudence] arise from fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence]; the
philosophy of these fascistic philosophers has also played its part.
Of course, criticizing the West is another matter and I’m not
opposed to it by any means. As I said earlier, there are
philosophers in the West itself who criticize the West. We, too,
shouldn’t accept anything unquestioningly. But a violent
anti-Western stance and spreading hatred of the West was and is the
inauspicious legacy of the proponents of Fardid’s thinking who are
still busy recruiting foot soldiers for their camp.
I
believe that it is a duty to recognize and to help others recognize
this sickness and these sick people, especially so in view of the
fact that we are now witnessing that some of them have gained
positions of power.
I
know that these people have infiltrated not just segments of the
press but also layers of the Revolutionary Guards; they have spread
their ideas there too and have created a situation in which a
disturbed and unbalanced mentality towards the outside world has
emerged among us. Worst of all is the anti-Semitism. This is
really a strange phenomenon in our country’s history. Anti-Semitism
has never been our problem. We’ve never had problems with the
Jews. There are occasions when I’m talking to Western professors
and colleagues abroad and they ask me about the Jews. When I tell
them that the Jewish community in our country has a representative
in parliament, they’re all amazed, because they think that we’re all
standing there with clenched fists, ready to attack Jews and throw
them out of the country. I explain to them that this is not the
case. Neither religion nor humanity permits us to do such a thing.
Fortunately, the Jews who still remain in Iran enjoy the same
benefits as everyone else. Now, in a country like this - which has
never had problems with Jews and Judaism, which even has a laudable
record and boasts a Cyrus in its history who rescued the Jews from
captivity and registered this honour for Iran - some people teach
enmity towards Jews to the children and philosophy students of this
land and make them assess philosophers on the basis of whether they
were Jews or not, all because of a bunch of false ideas that they’ve
learnt from this or that German thinker or because they lived in a
particular, poisoned environment in Germany at some point in time.
This is one of the most ill-advised things that has been done and is
being done in our land. I’m even of the view that the President’s
unfortunate, extremist remarks about the destruction of Israel arise
from these ideas to some extent.
Hence, I believe that, now that this thinking has taken on these
dimensions, it is not at all an exaggeration for us to point out the
founts of these ideas and to work hard to fill a well, which
contains nothing but snakes and scorpions, so that we can have a
more healthy environment.
Some time ago, Cyrus Alvandi’s film ‘Rastegari’ [Salvation] was
shown in Iran. In the film, a young man with a thick beard and a
pleasing, philosopher-like demeanour wanted to cleanse society of
uncleanliness. And his method was to abduct and kill people. In
the young man’s study, a picture of Heidegger was hanging on the
wall and he also had a book on Heidegger’s philosophy in his hands.
I realized that the clever filmmaker had put his finger on the
sensitive point and on the source of the virus. I said, ‘Bravo’.
‘A fascist reading of religion’ is the best designation for Fardid’s
sickness-inducing school of thought, which has, unfortunately, also
claimed victims among the clergy.
Q. But, after your recent stances, criticizing the violence
stemming from Fardid’s views, an Iranian website claimed that ‘this
person, who has now become a critic of radicalism and violence, did
not lack an affinity to this approach himself in the early years of
the revolution’. And they mainly pointed the finger of blame at
your presence in the Cultural Revolution Headquarters during the
years when universities were closed, during the cultural revolution,
which led to the extensive purging and expulsion of many professors
and students.
A. This is an old tale. They’ve said this again and again, and
I’ve answered them again and again. And the strange thing about it
is that not only my opponents or the opponents of the Islamic
Republic say this and accuse me in this way, but the accusation is
also repeated inside the country by some state officials and by
people who are students of the same philosopher whose name was
mentioned; of course, each side does this from their own particular
perspective and on the basis of their own a particular motives and
aims. For my own part, I thank God that I’m not and never was a
proponent of violence. My writings, too, contain nothing that could
be interpreted as the propagation of violence. The sum total of my
offence and sin, which made me liable to some chastisements and
imposed some costs on me in Iran, was precisely the fact that I
always advocated tolerance and opposed violence.
But I’ll explain the tale of the cultural revolution once again and
I’m grateful to you for having given me this opportunity with your
question.
We need to distinguish between two completely separate things: the
cultural revolution and the Cultural Revolution HQ. The cultural
revolution consisted of the occasionally bloody incidents that took
place throughout the country and at some universities. There were
attacks on universities and relatively fierce clashes occurred which
led to the closure of universities. The question of what the
motivation was behind these clashes, who was supporting them and
which political factions were strengthening the attackers still
remains largely unanswered. I don’t know myself and there may be
hardly anyone who knows, until a day when light is shed on things
and truths revealed. However, two months later, the leader of the
revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, decided to hand over universities to
some trusted individuals so that they could draw up new programmes
for universities and, then, reopen them. This is how it came about
that he designated seven people and issued a decree, asking them to
establish the Cultural Revolution HQ and to strive to reopen
universities. Hence, we have two completely distinct events: one is
the violent cultural revolution and the blood-strewn closure of
universities; and the second event is the reopening of universities
which, far from being violent, quelled the violence.
In the judgments that are made, these two issues are mixed together,
knowingly or unknowingly, deliberately or accidentally. What we
were doing at the Cultural Revolution HQ (which I think merits
gratitude from anyone who is aware of what we did and all the
students who are now studying at universities) is to try to
establish a safe teaching environment at universities and to halt
the radicalism. Anyone who has witnessed the early days of a
revolution will know that all revolutions are similar at that
stage. If they’re not all identical throughout the course of their
development, they’re at least identical during their first few
years; notably, radicalism is at its height and reason is at a very
low ebb.
This is the situation that we faced in the country. At the time,
anyone who was more radical, anyone who shouted out the most radical
and violent – and, as they put it then, the most revolutionary and
the most hezbollahi – slogans was the most victorious and had the
greatest number of followers. And how difficult it was for people
who advocated tolerance and reason to work in such circumstances.
Most of our energy at the Cultural Revolution HQ was spent on
thwarting and tackling this tide of radicalism and violence at
universities, so that we could gradually create a secure teaching
environment at universities. We succeeded to the extent that that
atmosphere and that framework allowed, and we reopened
universities. Hence, the inaccurate and topsy-turvy judgment that
has been made in this respect is based on the confusion of events
before the establishment of the HQ and after the establishment of
the HQ, describing them both as ‘the cultural revolution’ and
judging them on the same basis. This judgment is not correct. I’ve
spoken about this many times.
But most amazing and bizarre of all is the remarks made by some of
the right-wingers and the security people and hezbollahis. In order
to drive out one of their opponents and critics, they’ve put their
finger on the tale of the cultural revolution and muddied the
water. The fact of the matter is that, even if there had been
violence at that juncture, I was not the only member of the Cultural
Revolution HQ; the HQ had six other members. If officials are going
to level this accusation, they must level it at all those
individuals; quite apart from the fact that, to do this, is to
attack one of the – as they would put it - achievements of the
revolution. But these calculations aren’t important to them at the
moment; the important thing is to suppress a specific individual.
This was the truth of the matter. Fortunately, the Cultural
Revolution HQ was relatively successful in quelling that tide of
violence and we even persuaded those students who really wanted the
closure of universities to last longer to abandon this notion,
because the land needs universities and knowledgeable people and it
should be run by knowledgeable, not ignorant, people. Of course,
explaining these things was accompanied by its own particular
difficulties at the time and it was after a year and a half that we
were able to reopen universities and to return to universities a
huge army of young people, who passed the time aimlessly in the
streets or who were trying to leave the country, and to re-establish
the normal course of higher education.
This covers the story over the time when I was at the HQ. Then, the
Cultural Revolution Council was established and I left in the early
days of the council and I haven’t had any links with it for more
than 20 years now.
Of course, I have a complaint against the council myself. My
complaint is that all these violent groups, which sometimes go under
the name of Ansar-e Hezbollah
or under the name of plainclothesmen,
emerged during the 20 years since the establishment of the Cultural
Revolution Council and I was one of the first victims of these
violent people, at the University of Esfahan, the University of
Tehran, the University of Mashhad, and in Qom and Khorramabad. In
all these places, I was one of the victims. And the Cultural
Revolution Council saw these acts of violence and said nothing and
it still continues in this same way. Now, things have reached a
point where even Islamic students unions inside universities face a
thousand obstacles before they can hold a meeting at which they can
speak about Islam; an Islam which may be slightly different from the
state’s Islam. Of course, today, this is a valid criticism of the
Cultural Revolution Council; a Cultural Revolution Council in which
(I return again to your earlier question) several students of that
same Mr. Philosopher are regular and influential participants, and
they turn a blind eye to these acts of violence, if not to say they
add fuel to the flames.
From the moment when I entered the Cultural Revolution HQ, I knew
what I had to do and where I had to lead the convoy, to the best of
my ability. My method was one that later earned me two
designations, given to me by two people. One of them was Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi and, the other, a friend of Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi, i.e.
Hojjat-ol-Eslam Ahmad Ahmadi, who is now a member of the Cultural
Revolution Council and a Majlis deputy. He also teaches at the
University of Tehran’s Department of Philosophy. Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi
used a milder word and said that there were infiltrators at the
Cultural Revolution HQ, meaning me and the fact that I was against
violence. But Mr. Ahmadi - in view of his charming disposition -
used a stronger word and said that there were hypocrites at the
Cultural Revolution HQ. Of course, I take both these terms, which
they used to condemn me, as praise. In fact, they both refer to the
fact that I wouldn’t allow the approval of some radical measures at
the Cultural Revolution HQ. This is a source of pride to me and I’m
thankful to God for it.
Q. Since you mentioned Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, I’d like to link my
next question to him in a way. In your recent stances, you placed
people like Fardid alongside Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi. Subsequently,
an Iranian website asked you in this connection: how can he place
Mesbah-Yazdi, who is a follower of Mulla Sadra and Ibn Sina
[Avicenna] alongside Fardid and the likes of Davari? Since when
have clerics like Mesbah-Yazdi been needful of Plato and Heidegger
for the likes of Davari and Fardid to be of any use to them? And
how can Fardid be considered a true follower of Plato and Heidegger
anyway? And most importantly, how can this person, as a well-known
expert in theology, have so lost his grip on philosophy as to think
that nothing can come out of Heidegger’s teachings but fascism?
A. First, let me say that I don’t at all believe that nothing can
come out of Heidegger’s teachings but fascism. Of course, there can
be no doubt that Heidegger had some dealings with Nazism. As it
happens, just a few days ago, I was speaking to a philosophy
professor in France and he told me that a much-talked-about book
about the links between Heidegger and Nazism was due to be published
at the end of March 2006. There are many books and articles to this
effect in the West. But my contention was not at all that Heidegger
teaches Nazism or that he only teaches Nazism and nothing else. In
fact, the treachery committed by that anti-Semitic group in our
country is that they brought Heidegger into disrepute.
Alongside some improper political stances, for which he was rightly
discredited, Heidegger has a creditable philosophy, which can be
assessed. He can be studied and evaluated like any other
philosopher. Again, another of the treacheries that Heidegger
suffered in our country was that his philosophy was never
evaluated. Heidegger wasn’t a god or a prophet after all. He was a
human being, with human ideas, which can be evaluated and
criticized. What happened in our land was that Heidegger’s devotees
and followers tried to teach and spread unquestioning devotion and
submission to Heidegger. They never said or wrote anything by way
of an evaluation of Heidegger. Of course, there were two reasons
for this: one was their own intellectual weakness, which made them
incapable of evaluating anything, and, second, they basically didn’t
believe in evaluation; what they taught was unquestioning devotion,
because Heidegger was more suited to their pro-violence political
stances. At any rate, my contention about Heidegger was that, like
any other philosopher, we should read him, understand him, evaluate
him and then move on; we mustn’t become fixated.
But the tale of Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi and his link with Fardid and his
ilk is not confined to a philosophical link. It wasn’t my intention
to portray the geography of philosophy in our country in that
interview. If that had been my intention, I’d have had to speak
about many other issues; there’s so much to be said. Hopefully,
I’ll find the time to do this one day.
Yes, it’s true that Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi knows little about Heidegger’s
philosophy and has no particular interest in it. I’m well aware of
this. But the fact of the matter is that, although Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi
is not at all shy about criticizing people he doesn’t like and
attacks them without any consideration for anything, I’ve never
heard him criticize this group of people.
Let me begin by saying that I have no personal quarrel with Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi or those other individuals. It’s a question of thought
and society, and their negative effect on our young people and on
society that has made me speak candidly about them on occasion.
I’ve said in many of my writings that Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi is a leading
scholar on the subject of Islamic philosophy. I’ve even ranked him
higher than Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli in this respect. That is to say,
as far as I’m aware and based on my understanding of his writings,
Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi is a more competent evaluator of Islamic philosophy
than his peers. When I was one of the judges of the book of the
year, it was on my insistence that one of Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi
philosophy books, i.e. the late Ayatollah Tabataba’i’s
Nahayat-al-Hakameh
which has been annotated by Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi and which is a valuable and creditable book, was
declared the book of the year. Hence, I hope no one imagines that I
have a personal problem with him.
I
think that, as far as Islamic philosophy and thought are concerned,
Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi deserves high marks. But, unfortunately, when you
step out of this arena, the jagged edges and the ugliness manifest
themselves. I’ve really never met anyone with such poor taste as
Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi when it comes to religion and politics.
Judge for yourself: in times when people like the late Ayatollah
Motahhari was trying to resolve the tale of slavery somehow and to
explain to Muslims why slavery was imposed on the Prophet of Islam
and how the social circumstances forced him to give official
recognition to slavery and create laws for it – and, at the same
time, to create laws for the liberation of slaves – in a situation
like this, Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi, with the utmost poor taste, endorses
slavery in his public speeches and says: ‘Today, too, if there’s a
war between us and the infidels, we’ll take slaves. The ruling on
slavery hasn’t expired and is eternal. We’ll take slaves and we’ll
bring them to the world of Islam and have them stay with Muslims.
We’ll guide them, make them Muslims and then return them to their
countries.’
Such poor taste is really extraordinary. When there was a debate
between Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi and Mohammad Javad Hojjati (I’m telling you
about these instances off the top of my head; otherwise, if it was a
question of an exhaustive study, there’d be many more examples) – I
witnessed the debate myself: Mr. Hojjati was telling Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi that being disrespectful towards the audience when
making public speeches is not a seemly thing to do and, instead of
amending his way of speaking, Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi retorted by saying:
‘No, you’re wrong; we have sermons in the
Nahj-al-Bilaghah
which show that Imam Ali also used to
insult his audience when he delivered sermons.’
When terrorism was a topical subject, Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi said
explicitly in one of his pre-Friday prayer speeches: ‘We must wipe
away the shameful stain whereby some people imagine that violence
has no place in Islam. We’ve decided and are determined to argue
and prove that violence is in the heart of Islam.’
Such poor taste really makes freedom-loving people cry out in
horror; a cry that arises from both the depths of humanity and the
depths of Islam. I never and by no means believe that Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi cares about Islam more than our reformist friends. My
stances towards Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi simply result from the fact that I
believe that, these days, he plays the biggest role in presenting an
ugly image of Islam; an Islam which I, too, care about. I, too,
like many of God’s other creatures on the face of the earth, am
attached to it and believe in it. This Islam mustn’t be
disfigured.
Islam is too great and too dear to us for us to abandon its
interpretation to a handful of violence-loving clerics with poor
taste. This huge asset and this sacred legacy of the venerated
Prophet of Islam must be taken out of their hands. They’re not
trustworthy keepers of this precious legacy. If I expend my energy
and struggle, it is to this end. Worst of all is that we should
witness an inauspicious and unholy alliance between some of these
clerics with poor taste and those violence-loving
pseudo-philosophers. This causes one the greatest pain. You can
see that their words, their analyses, their arguments, the concepts
that they use are exactly the same as what the pseudo-philosophers
express in the name of opposition to the West, opposition to
democracy and opposition to human rights.
Once, in one of his pronouncements, Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi said that not
everyone who places a few metres of cloth on his head is a cleric
and an expert on religion. I don’t know how many metres of cloth he
has on his head, but I basically agree with his statement.
Not once have our clerics held a seminar to discuss religious
tyranny. We’ve had hundreds of seminars on the
velayat-e faqih
[system of rule by a cleric], but we
haven’t had a single seminar to discuss the tale of religious
tyranny. This is simply because the spirit of violence has seeped
into them.
One of the amazing developments is that we find that this same Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi, who used to foam at the mouth with rage against Dr.
Shariati at one time and used to say that Shariati was burning in
the fires of hell now, is gradually starting to use Shariati’s
revolutionary and pseudo-revolutionary analyses in his speeches in
order to sell his pro-violence wares. In the midst of all this, the
most innocent and wronged victim is tolerant religiosity and gnostic
religiosity, which is not being given its due.
Once, the late Shariati strove to reconcile Islam with revolution.
Today, some clerics, in alliance with some violence-loving
pseudo-philosophers, are trying to reconcile Islam with violence,
and they even want to present Shariati as a member of this convoy
and this camp.
But there is a third camp, which wants to reconcile Islam with love
of freedom and tolerance and gentleness and kindness, and to prevent
the violence-lovers from holding sway. I’ve seen some opponents of
religious intellectuals who put their finger precisely on this
point. They say to me and to people like me that the Islam that you
speak about isn’t the real Islam; the real Islam is the one that
Mesbah-Yazdi, Khaz’ali, Hassani, Jannati and the like present. This
is no small problem. We have to explain and show and – sometimes at
great risk to ourselves – declare that it isn’t so; that Mr.
Mesbah-Yazdi and violence-lovers like him are absolutely not the
spokesmen of the beloved creed to which Iranians and other Muslims
are devoted.
Q. I’d like to close the discussion of violent Islam at this point
and to ask you a question about the reformist movement.
In a talk you gave in Germany a few months ago, by way of criticism
of the reformist movement, you voiced some complaints about Mr.
Khatami’s performance and said something to the effect that his
practical vacillation was a product of his theoretical vacillation.
At the same session, in response to a question about Akbar Ganji’s
contention that religious thought cannot lead to democracy, you said
that Ganji was basing his contention on rigid readings of religion,
such as that of Messrs. Mesbah-Yazdi and Khaz’ali, whereas it is
possible to attain that aim on the basis of other readings.
But, in a recent exchange of letters that you had with one of your
critics, you said something similar to Ganji’s contention; you said
that the extension of prophets’ infallibility to the Imams in Shi’i
thinking is an impediment to the attainment of democracy in Shi’ism.
And we saw that this view upset some reformists to a certain extent
and Dr. Kadivar took a swipe at you by saying: People who advocate
the theory of multiple readings of religion are expected to exercise
some self-restraint.
Now, can we see this shift as a sign of vacillation in you? And is
theoretical fluidity or lack of rigidity essentially reprehensible
or laudable? And should the end of Mr. Khatami’s presidency be seen
as the end of the reformist project in Iran?
A. I won’t deny that I’ve said some candid and possibly cutting
things about Mr. Khatami. But it has all been out of friendship.
It was because it is possible to converse with Mr. Khatami. At the
present time and with the current president, this door has
unfortunately been closed. Mr. Khatami was, moreover, holding an
office and in a position whereby my remarks were not personal; what
I was saying was addressed to his position. This is why we had to
speak candidly, for the sake of enlightening present and future
generations.
I’d noticed this problem in Mr. Khatami, a problem which I’d
previously spoken about in more general terms: lack of vision
theoretically leads to lack of courage in action. If you are
committed to a line of thinking clearly and decisively, you’ll also
find the courage to act. But if the thinking is unclear and lacking
in theoretical vision, you’ll obviously also vacillate when it comes
to action. I believe that, in addition to the external impediments
which prevented the implementation of his and his allies’ ideas and
programmes - and I have no doubts about the reality of these
impediments - Mr. Khatami also suffered from some internal
impediments. In other words, when he spoke about concepts such as
freedom, human rights and civil society, which was his primary
slogan, apparently these concepts’ scope and reach were not entirely
clear to him.
He’d sometimes go one way and sometimes the other way. He’d raise
an idea and others would follow him and then he’d suddenly slam on
the brakes. He’d pull back and come to a grinding halt and startle
everyone. This was most evident on the subject of civil society.
He raised the idea of civil society. I remember that many, many
articles were written, analysing and explaining civil society. Very
good light was shed on the subject and a concept that had been
relatively unfamiliar till then became familiar. And our academic
community, our educated people gained a good command of it. I
remember that I delivered several talks on this subject and several
pieces by me were published in this connection. And others, too,
wrote and spoke to this end. But suddenly we found Mr. Khatami
saying: what I meant by civil society was the Prophet’s Medina.
This poured cold water on everyone. Either this was the
understanding that he had of civil society from the start or he
later changed his mind for particular political and theoretical
reasons and replaced civil society with the Prophet’s Medina. This
was clear vacillation in his thinking.
We witnessed this same vacillation when he spoke about freedom. Of
course, if I were to compare Mr. Khatami with our other statesmen or
politicians, I’d say that there’s no comparison.
At any rate, I noticed this problem in Mr. Khatami which can be
called vacillation and I considered it to be the source of some of
his practical problems. I believe that this caused some failures,
which are now blamed on the ideas of religious intellectuals or on
Islamic democracy and so on.
In response to the second part of your question, I have to say that
Mr. Khatami was neither a representative of religious intellectuals
nor the founder of the theory of religious democracy; he was a
product of religious intellectuals’ ideas. So, it cannot be
concluded on the basis of his failure or vacillation that the work
of religious intellectuals or religious democracy has come to an end
and has failed absolutely. This is not the case. I believe that
religious democracy has both a clear meaning and clear methods of
implementation. Its opponents and the lovers of violence
permitting, it can be put into practice and can serve as a good
model for the entire world of Islam; especially so because
democratic discourse has become the dominant discourse in our
society now. That is to say, democracy has become its own
justification. It is self-justifying; it needs no supporting
argumentation. Exactly like the word ‘revolution’ in the early days
after the victory of the revolution when ‘revolutionary action’
carried its own justification and proof because it contained the
term ‘revolution’. Now, if you attach ‘democratic’ as an adjective
to anything, you give it the same kind of justification and proof.
And, this is a very auspicious development, of course, which we have
to value. Islamic democracy and religious intellectuals’ work are
still justified and defensible.
As to the point that we can have different readings of religion, I’m
in no doubt about this. And, as you said and in keeping with the
words of a dear and esteemed friend to which you referred, I was the
one who began spreading this notion. But I have to mention the
following cautionary point: subscribing to the notion of a
multiplicity of readings does not mean that chaos rules in the realm
of religious readings and that any reading is possible and
justified. I’ve made this point in my writings too. If it was
possible to extract any meaning from any text, it could only mean
that the text has no meaning. But if there’s a limit to a text’s
meaning, we must strive to find that limit. Of course, I don’t
believe that a text has a single meaning or that meaning equals the
speaker’s intention. However, I can declare and underline one
point: a text does not lend itself to just any meaning. I believe
that no one can claim one day that it is also possible to extract
polytheism from the Koran. The Koran is so abundantly explicit on
this and places such emphasis on it and repeats it so many times
that disregarding all of this and discounting it is tantamount to
blindness.
I
believe that the contention that Islam can be reconciled with a
just, democratic state is a justified contention and many reasons
can be given in support of it. Of course, there’s a long distance
to cover before arriving at this reconciliation. I’m not at all of
the view - as are Fadhl-al-Rahman and many other Arab writers - that
some elements within religion, such as pledges of allegiance and
consultative councils and the like, can be used to extract a kind of
modern democracy. This isn’t possible to my mind and all the
efforts that have been made to this end in the past have proved
unsuccessful. We must have theories about revelation, about the
relationship between God and the world, about the position of
religion within history, about the position of
fiqh
within religion, and basically about
the meaning of religion and the meaning of God’s discourse and so on
and so forth. If we leave all these things untouched and only look
within fiqh
and try – with some simple additions
and subtractions - to push back some rulings and pull forward some
other rulings; if, without any justification, we deal selectively
with religion’s teachings and contents, we won’t achieve a good
result. And whatever result we do achieve, it will be a suspect
result. We need a comprehensive theory of religion. It is at the
heart of this theory of religion that we can read some modern ideas
or demonstrate a religious way of using them. And if this proves
impossible, we can decide where we stand.
Our problem is not to make democracy compatible with the teachings
within religion or to pull it out of the teachings within religion.
We have to show how one can be religious in the present age and live
in a just society and polity. And I mean a modern-day justice, one
side of which is adjacent to democracy and human rights; another
side of which is related to freedom of expression; and, another, is
cheek by jowl with an accountable, responsible, criticizable state.
We have to struggle to this end and, if we manage it, we can then
speak of religious democracy. At any rate, all of us, whether
Muslim or non-Muslim, want justice and we haven’t abandoned this.
And when this justice is translated into modern forms and in today’s
complex society, it cannot merely be confined to the ruler’s
justness; it must be a structural, social and economic justice.
Hence, I repeat: not just any reading is possible. I believe that
some of the understandings that exist in our society today of the
Imams or of the Mahdaviyat
[Shi’i belief in the 12th
Imam’s return] or even of the concept of God are not particularly
compatible with an accountable state and do not allow society to
grow and develop in the modern-day sense. These understandings do
not give pride of place to the concept of right and do not give
people sufficient freedom. These are things that have to be looked
at. As to the question of whether there has been vacillation in my
views or not, I’ll let others be the judge of that.
Q. Following on from this, we’ve seen that, with the ending of Mr.
Khatami’s presidency, some secular intellectuals have presented the
reformists’ defeat in the recent presidential election [in June
2005] as the defeat of religious intellectuals. They’re basically
declaring that religious intellectualism is an irrelevant project
which is essentially meaningless and immaterial.
A. The truth of the matter is that these people are politically
motivated, but they pursue their political motives by improper
means. Why should being a religious intellectual be a contradiction
in terms? Intellectual work is a branch of thinking. Unless we
believe that thinking and being a thinker is incompatible with being
religious. Now, if anyone makes such a claim (and, on the face of
it, this seems to be the crux of what these claimants and critics
are saying; i.e. they believe that a religious person cannot be a
true thinker), then, we can argue with them both on the basis of the
meaning of these concepts and on the basis of experience.
On the basis of experience, at least, it can be shown that the top
thinkers in the history of the world – not just the history of the
world of Islam – have hailed from the ranks of believers. No one
can deny that Farabi was a thinker, or Ibn Sina or great masters
like Hafez. Or, in the West, Hegel, who struggled hard to harmonize
philosophy and thinking with Protestantism. These were all thinkers
who, as it happens, were drawn to faith and religion. And, of
course, if anyone denies that these were true thinkers, then we’ll
start having doubts about this person’s own thinking.
There are also people who’ve said that, when we think, we don’t
bring our religious interests into play. This, too, is not
something that can be used as an argument; it is a dull blade.
First of all, one must not bring any of one’s interests into play in
the context of justification. It has been narrated that the Prophet
of Islam said that three things lead to a person’s salvation; one of
them is setting aside one’s likes and dislikes when making
judgments. Any attachment – whether to religion or to other things
– which blinds you when you’re making judgments, must be set aside.
This is not confined to religion. When love for someone or
something or likes and dislikes come into play, judgments are
obviously clouded. Besides, when something is not relevant, it
must, of course, not be brought into play. When I’m making a
philosophical judgment, I must, of course, not bring my knowledge of
chemistry into play; just as, when someone speaks about the earth’s
motion or about existence and essence, they must not bring their
religious attachments or any other attachment into play.
I’d also like to add a third point: thinking is fundamentally not an
individual matter but a collective matter; just as knowledge is a
collective and ongoing matter. You cannot forbid someone from
thinking or speaking because they’re religious. A religious person
is like a non-religious person; they say what they have to say
within the community of thinkers and the community responds and
assesses it. The outcome of this collective process is called
knowledge.
A
thought that sits in a corner by itself is not called thinking and
knowledge. Modern epistemology tells us that knowledge is a
collective and ongoing matter. And this is what is meant by
evaluation or criticism. You say what you have to say and others
evaluate it. This presence of others is a proviso for the
production of knowledge. Hence, the question of whether you’re
religious or not religious, whether you belong to this sect or to
that sect is basically irrelevant. You have to look at the end
result of a contention and in a collective context at that, where
the contention has been subjected to the evaluation and the
counter-contentions of other thinkers.
Religious intellectuals present their contentions, along with their
religious faith and belief and reasoning, to the community of
thinkers. And they welcome criticism. And the outcome of all this
turns into knowledge. We cannot by any means prevent someone who is
religious from thinking and speaking. This eliminatory approach,
which some secular people have opted for, is an extremely
undemocratic, unscholarly and anti-scholarly approach and it is very
harmful. Far from being useful in our present circumstances, it
will be very deleterious for our culture and our knowledge.
What great hardship religious intellectuals have undergone to bring
about a situation in which everyone can speak; now, when others have
started to speak, the first thing that they do is to call for the
elimination of religious intellectuals.
Q. For my last question, I’d like to get away from the realm of
thought and to ask you something about topical politics affairs.
In the final days before the presidential elections, contrary to the
expectations of some reformist political parties, you pointed to
Hojjat-ol-Eslam Karrubi as the more suitable presidential
candidate. Was this choice a token of your realistic acquaintance
with the hierarchy of power in Iran, a hierarchy in which people
like Mr. Karrubi can play a more effective role than others?
A. If I wanted to speak frankly, I’d say that I still consider Mr.
Karrubi to be Iran’s president, because the votes were for him. As
to why I named Mr. Karrubi, it was because of my knowledge of
Iranian society and I’m glad that my understanding was not wrong;
the number of votes that were cast for him testifies to this.
I’ve previously explained why I think Mr. Karrubi is more suited to
the presidency in the current circumstances – without questioning
other people’s merits. As you know, suitability is always defined
and established within a totality of conditions. I’m a close friend
of Mr. Mo’in. I respect his thinking and, if it was a question of
defining our camps, Mr. Mo’in and I have close stances. But based
on what I’d seen of Mr. Karrubi’s conduct, especially when he was
the Majlis Speaker, and his clerical associations, his occasional
behind-the-scenes efforts as an elder statesman, the relatively free
atmosphere that he brings about for thinkers and scholars – the
totality of these things told me that Mr. Karrubi is more suited to
the presidency than others in the present circumstances; suited in
the sense that, during his presidency, we’ll have the chance to test
or implement some of our theories without having executive
responsibilities.
Later on, too, I was glad to see that I hadn’t been too off the mark
and our society went in that direction based on their own reasons
and apparently without any prompting or encouragement from me (in
view of the last-minute dissemination of my remarks).
For the time being, we have another president and we’ll hold him to
account within the framework of the law. And our advice to him is
that he should speak more judiciously. He mustn’t add new problems
to the nation’s problems with his remarks. If I were in his place,
instead of [speaking about] sending the Jews to Alaska, I’d invite
them to Iran and I’d say that those of them who aren’t pleased with
Israel’s policies can be the guests of Iranians. This is more
Cyrus-like. And if it is at the level of words only, it is more
amiable. And if expresses the truth, it is a more beautiful truth.
I
respect everyone who serves our land and nation and listens to
criticism and I hope that God will assist them in the difficult task
that they’ve taken on.
Translated from
the Persian by Nilou Mobasser
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