Thirty-five years, the
lifetime of a generation, has passed since the 1979 Revolution in Iran; a
revolution against the despotism of the Pahlavi monarchy that led to the formation
of a so-called “Islamic Republic” in Iran. Since its very inception in February
1979, contrary to the initial popular aspirations to liberty that had resulted
in the overthrow of the monarchy, the Islamic Republic descended upon the civil
society like the hammer of gods and embarked upon an overwhelming, systematic
violation of human rights and at the same time a calculated movement away from the
expected democracy.
Executing the officials
and affiliates of the former regime without any trial (or after drumhead trials);
continuous cracking down on the various political/cultural/social trends and
movements; establishing strict and at times humiliating institutions for
control of social behavior in general and making the “Islamic hijab” mandatory for
women in particular; persecuting the ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities; systematic
purging of critical intellectuals and political opponents both inside and outside
of Iran; keeping in custody countless prisoners of conscience in dreadful detention
centers where organized torture and mass execution is the order of the day; suppressing
student and popular movements for liberty and democracy; politically/militarily
intervening in the neighboring countries and attempting to make them satellite
states through the use of terrorism, oppression and massacre; and the most
nefarious of all and the source of all evil, drawing up a constitution based
upon religion and revolving around the Shiite concept of “Guardianship of the
Jurist” – which grants immense executive powers to the Supreme Leader as the
sole representative of God on Earth; these are only a handful of the
substantial anti-humanistic and anti-democratic procedures and practices of the
Islamic Republic which, in Hanna Arendt’s words, have made “evil” not only in
Iran but also in most of the Middle East “banal”.
Of course, during the
past thirty-five years many different voices have been raised in protest
against the said regime, demanding its overthrow and replacement with a
democratic system amenable to the principles of human rights. All the same,
these protests have done little so far in the way of fundamental change in the political
system in Iran. I believe that among the reasons why the protests and movements
against the Islamic Republic have generally failed, alongside many other
problematics, one has been a dearth of deep and extensive theoretic understanding
of the nature of the regime and how it functions; another has been the absence
of a prevalent “subversive/transformative” discourse with a strong theoretical foundation;
and last but not least, the nonexistence of a comprehensive democratic program
to replace the Islamic Republic.
Not that there haven’t
been steps taken in that direction; for a rather good number of informed and
committed individuals from different walks have been treading that path for a
long time now. However, the thinness of their subversive/transformative
discourse against the thickness of the discourses opposing it on the one hand
and the limits on the range of their discourse – most importantly, strictures
on the public access – against the wide range of their opposing discourses on
the other hand have rendered them for the most part inadequate and thus ineffectual.
In that light, the aim
that I follow by publishing this collection of essays is to make the
subversive/transformative discourse more far-reaching by dint of introducing
and investigating a number of rather uncharted concepts and problematics in that
regard; for it is only through the “consensus” of similar particular discourses
that a general and popular discourse can take shape and have practical effect. This
I hope will help the concerned audiences to get a better grasp of the situation
in Iran which will in turn assist them in taking proper measures to set it
right. As such, the essays in this book have been penned first and foremost in
order to show that to put an end to the banality of evil and establish the
principles of human rights and achieve a democratic system not only in Iran but
also in the wider Middle East it is essential to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Although in different
essays I have occasionally reflected upon the “method” of that subversion, and my
personal inclination is towards a popular revolution, that method is not necessarily
the core of concentration of this book. That is because I believe the method of
subversion is in practice the result of a host of different factors contingent
upon a significant number of conditions that emerge in a given time in a given
place, and are therefore mostly unpredictable. Nevertheless, what is a given
for me is that for the reasons enumerated in this introduction and expounded on
in the body of the book, it is mandatory that the Islamic Republic as a system be
eventually overthrown. This is the “teleological” claim of this book.
However, I do not take
for granted this teleological claim and commit myself throughout this book to
explaining and expounding upon it by means of “accumulation of evidence”
against the existence of the Islamic Republic. The whyness of this teleological
claim will be investigated through an attempt to answer the question “what is
the Islamic Republic”. In other words, this collection of essays will be in
essence a study in the “ontology” of the Islamic Republic. I consider the
whatness of the Islamic Republic an assemblage of particular “phenomena” whose
coming together constructs the general phenomenon of the Islamic Republic. This
is the “methodological” claim of this book.
According to The
Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (2004), phenomenon is the
“[p]erceptual appearance in general, that is, what may be observed and how things
look” (517). According to Heidegger, “Phenomenon means that which shows
itself in itself” (517). My critical interpretation of these definitions is
that phenomena are what are generally recognizable – if not necessarily
acceptable – “objectively”, that is, through the five senses in the medium of
time and space, for many individuals with similar experiences and a rather
common historical background.
As it happens, Blackwell
also emphasizes this objectivity when it mentions that “Husserl’s phenomenology
was deeply influenced by Descartes’s demand that knowledge be clear and
distinct and opposed relying on any a priori assumption that has to be
justified elsewhere” (517). The study of phenomena is duly called
“phenomenology”. To some extent predicated upon the given definitions of phenomenon,
again according to Blackwell and in keeping with the approach adopted by
a school that included such heterogeneous thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre,
and Merleau-Ponty, the “slogan” of phenomenology is “to the things (phenomena)
themselves” (517). That is exactly what I am going to do in and with this
collection of essays: to study the things (phenomena) as they are.
However, I and the
classic phenomenologists part company at this very juncture; for when
phenomenology as an “approach”, and that mostly in its common definition, is
our shared instrument, the “material” we study proves to be different. Simply
put, whereas for them the material is a universal set of “subjective” phenomena
including the mind and the “structure of consciousness”; for me in this
collection of essays the material is a very particular set of “objective”
historical, political, social and cultural phenomena that either construct or reinforce
the Islamic Republic. These phenomena encompass a broad range of subjects such
as Islamism, isolationism, extrinsicism, Israelophobia, false
alternatives, non-reformability, crisis creation, extralegality,
cultural hegemony, atomization of society, regional imperialism, and foreign
intervention, with each of which I have dealt in detail in these essays in an attempt
to define, explain, and analyze them.
Here I must clarify that not
all these phenomena belong in the realm of the state or immediate state
politics, and neither has their inception necessarily occurred in the era of
the Islamic Republic. However, their discursive extension in the course of
history which has heavily influenced not only the Islamic Republic but also the
Iranian society as a whole has made them the subject of study of this book. It goes
without saying that there is a logical possibility that any given phenomenon
and its features will not remain the same in the passage of time under the
influence of different factors and conditions; therefore, it is quite possible
that the characteristics and even the very existence of the phenomena studied
in this book may not hold true in the long run. What is crucial here is that
the existence and characteristics of the phenomena under study hold true
“according to existing evidence” in “their time and place of study”.
The fact of these
phenomena holding true at present can also prove useful for the understanding
of the past by the future generations. As such, a written testimony as to the
howness of the present will remain for the coming generations so that they can
keep track of their past and thus won’t commit the same mistakes that their
forerunners did; as Iranians of today have done many times due to the compulsory
separation from their near past and especially the era of the Constitutional
Revolution (1905-1907), the first revolution with strong tendencies towards
democracy in all of Asia. It is true that every generation should take care of
its own immediate problems, but it is only fit and functional that it does so
in the context of history. Of course, in doing that, it should avoid entangling
itself in the mesh of the ideas of the past; for the past is to be the torch of
the future, and not the fetter around its feet.
It must be emphasized
right here that we must also be wary of reducing a system (a general
phenomenon) to a number of visible constituents (particular phenomena), for the
end result of a system is not necessarily the sum total of its “visible”
constituents, and there are always invisible factors within or even without the
system that influence its whatness and at times how it functions. For instance,
the Islamic Republic is not just Islamism, the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards,
brainwashing, torture, and execution; it is all of them plus many other things
that are not necessarily immediately visible. Occasionally, the Islamic Republic
is we ourselves when we unconsciously get to play in the confines of its
discourse; and when we forfeit our initiative by leaving it to the individuals and
organizations close to the regime, futilely believing that what they do
constitutes a movement towards democracy. In that situation, the Islamic Republic
is not separate from us and has no life apart from the life of those thoughts
and behaviors of ours that help extend it.
Nevertheless,
an intense study of the visible constituents of a system and accumulation of
evidence about them is certain to
help us understand more profoundly
the general “behavioral patterns” of that system, and such understanding is
likely to result in an improvement in our ability to predict those behaviors,
which in turn is important for choosing the proper method for dealing with that
system. That said, I do not claim to have studied all the phenomena that construct
the Islamic Republic, for that is an impossible feat. For me, it is enough that
the fundamental phenomena studied here be set before the eyes of the reader so
that the whatness and howness of those phenomena could clearly drive home the
necessity of subverting the Islamic Republic.
The
objectivist methods employed in this book follow, implement and articulate,
with different degrees, the five very basic principles that any objectivist theory
needs to consider, i.e. occurrence, frequency, and distribution of phenomena, and having an
explanatory and a predictive nature. Should these methods become popular,
everybody else could utilize them in order to study any other phenomena on
their own; hopefully, this would also allow me to enjoy their discoveries and
by that improve my knowledge and understanding of other phenomena.
I
must now turn to the opponents of the discourse of subversion/transformation. For
years, through a host of deceptive moves, they have taken to promoting an
ambiguous discourse both inside and outside of Iran so that they can actively
prevent the popularization of the discourse of subversion/transformation in the
Iranian public sphere. They have engaged in activities such as hobnobbing with illustrious
international thinkers, philosophers, and political, social and human rights
activists; and procuring noteworthy international human rights and journalism
awards; and by all these have drawn a black veil of ignorance on the anti-humanistic
and anti-democratic essence of the Islamic Republic and its banality of evil.
Through
the so-called discourse of “Religious Intellectualism”, these opponents of
democracy have put forward the paradoxical concept of “Religious Democracy” that
intends to maintain the status of religion in the area of politics by merely making
modifications to the structure of the present regime and granting some limited
social freedoms to the people and therefore keep the Islamic Republic in place by
hook or by crook. However, this whole charade only constitutes a misrepresentation
of the truth by this coterie who call themselves “Reformists” and
“Religious-Nationalists”.
Many
of these people are in fact the former officials and close affiliates of the
Islamic Republic themselves, and they have been benefiting from the
illegitimate and unmerited political, social, and economic rewards of being
part of that regime. They are, therefore, naturally for the maintaining of the
regime through the use of the many means they have at their disposal. However,
by frequently putting themselves up as the “opposition” to the Islamic Republic,
they in effect intentionally push to the margins the genuine but not so well-to-do
opposition to the Islamic Republic. Since this coterie and its discourse
constitutes a particular phenomenon within the larger context of the general
phenomenon of the Islamic Republic, it will be challenged in this book.
The Religious
Intellectuals’ classical Islamic reading of the Platonic and the Aristotelian worldviews
makes them oriented towards accepting and applying the binary divisions of “form”
and “substance” (Plato) and “accident” and “essence” (Aristotle), i.e. the very
divisional deficiency that Derrida diagnoses as the root of “Western
Metaphysics”. Based on that binarism, the Religious Intellectuals consider the
existent Islamic Republic as the “crust” – that according to them can take a
different shape – and, as opposed to that, they consider the nonexistent, ideal
“Islamic State” as the “core” – which according to them must definitely be constant
and permanent.
However,
contrary to their stance, I believe that the core and the crust are the same;
for after all any
phenomenon is the sum total of its components, i.e. its ideas, discourses, and practices.
In other words, the “essence” of a phenomenon is very much its “appearance”. As
Berkeley says, “esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived)”. Predicated on that
principle, it can be claimed that the ontology of a sociopolitical phenomenon
to a great extent also constitutes its “epistemology”; which means that the
“whatness” of that phenomenon is to a great degree equal to the “howness” of
its ideational methods and behavioral patterns. Thus, the “truth” of a
phenomenon is what it “is”, and not what it can or should “be”. Indeed, no
rational/empirical mode of thinking will justify “what-is” on the basis of
“what-is-not.” That which references “what-is-not” in order to justify “what-is”
is neither science nor scholarship; it is religion, whatever appellation it is
given.
It
is with regard to these very binaristic, subjectivistic, and pseudo-religious
fallacies of the Religious Intellectuals that the phenomenological study of the
Islamic Republic becomes critically imperative; for the study of the Islamic Republic
as an assortment of phenomena assessable in keeping with factual evidence will shut the door on the extremely
abstract and anti-evidential ideations and interpretations of the Religious Intellectuals
who are intent upon salvaging their beloved Islamic Republic based upon those
abstractions.
Since
phenomena are constituted/located in a given spatio-temporal medium and are therefore
tangible via the five human senses, it is only natural that the study of
“metaphysics” and “divine matters” lie outside their territory. It is exactly
because of this that the Religious Intellectuals who are constantly concerned
with religion and its interpolation into politics should not take kindly to
phenomenology or any other objectivist method, and instead stick to abstract
musings and hermeneutical ravings that leave the way open for their subjectivist
and anti-historicist interpretations. Accordingly, the main task they have set themselves for
the past couple of decades has been to eliminate historical differences “on the
paper” via the panacea of hermeneutics so that they won’t have to acknowledge
the validity of those differences in reality and get to deal with them “in
practice”.
By
taking advantage of the long and influential presence of mysticism in the Iranian
mindset; by exploiting rhetoric and excessively playing with words and thereby
reducing the truth to the text; by frequent term- and name-droppings; by adopting
an “argument-from-authority” attitude instead of aspiring to achieve
elucidation and helping the reader really “understand” whatever the argument
and its point is, and in so doing compelling the reader to bow to the
“erudition” of the author and stoop to the sublime and incorporeal “grandeur”
of the text; by all these means the Religious Intellectuals conveniently confuse
the undeniable historical facts of religion and obfuscate the nature of the “religious state” in Iran and occasionally
the rest of the world in order to justify the necessity of religion in and for
state politics. And this has become possible for them only because their
particular kind of approach – which they have made popular via the means at
their disposal – grants them such license.
By brewing
together the various and at times contradictory ingredients adopted from the
works of the Islamic sages, polemicists, and poets, and the ancient, medieval,
modern and postmodern Western thinkers and philosophers, these present-day sophists
and modern-time alchemists have made a soporific potion only a sip of which
instantly kills off the desire for the truth. They who are to a great extent
indebted to postmodern approaches, without giving much credit and weight to the
anti-authoritative, liberatory, and justice-demanding aspects of postmodernism
and with unduly dwelling on its relativistic nature, take advantage of the
discursive diffusion predicated upon that relativism in order to advance their
own anti-democratic and at heart anti-humanistic agenda. As a consequence, such
has become the situation today that amidst this bedlam of absolute relativism
these “intellectuals” have created day cannot be told from night.
It
is first and foremost in defiance of this gloomy way of intellection that I
have chosen in my works to write vividly and to study hard evidence instead of
speculating about mere abstractions. This text and many others by my pen are explicable and assessable by reference
to facts beyond them. Very simply, one can go and look for what has been
studied in the text “outside” of it, and if it couldn’t be found out there,
reject the text. In other words, verifiability or falsifiability of this text is
predicated upon the existence or nonexistence of the evidence outside of it
upon which it draws, and not on abstract notions and metaphysical matters to
which the human senses have no experiential access whatsoever.
All
the articles in this book concentrate on an objective study of phenomena that
have constructed the Islamic Republic. My aim in taking that approach has been
to popularize a set of objectivist methods in the intellectual sphere of Iran
that for different reasons have either not been established or if established
have been pushed to the margins today. Such marginalization of those ways has
left the door open for the invasion of absolutely subjectivist methods, which
in turn has led to the contemporary sociopolitical, intellectual, and cultural
catastrophe. As such, it can be said that the entirety of this book constitutes
a “discourse on the method”.
Here
I must clarify that my emphasis on phenomenology does not necessarily entail an
exclusion/avoidance/negligence of other approaches and methods of study, for in
this collection of essays I have employed many different, mostly objectivist, methods
for the study of different issues. What I mean by underscoring phenomenology,
however, is that my concern has been an objectivist study of the phenomena –
with the specifics explained above – that construct the Islamic Republic;
phenomena that I believe for their anti-humanistic and anti-democratic
existence the Islamic Republic must be overthrown.
From
what has been said so far it must be deducible that I do not believe in any a
priori “grand narrative” and ready-made prescription that has already
assigned the points to be accepted and rejected; and the objectivist approach
that I put forward and use in this book also demonstrates that I do not accept
or reject any phenomenon unless I have studied it in light of concrete evidence in the medium of time
and space and against the backdrop of humanistic and democratic principles.
This is in essence a pluralistic approach that is in line with the final goal
of this collection of essays which is the promotion and establishment of
democracy.
In
the end, I must express my gratitude to the people who undertook to make this
book available to the public. My special thanks goes to my dear friend, Dr.
David B. Downing, who suggested valuable amendments and improvements to the
text. Past that, this book is the fruit of the toil of a group of people,
especially Amir Ezati of the Literature Club, who have undertaken to publish it
without benefiting from any state or corporate funding and without having
access to massive propaganda machines to promote it. Whereas in the past thirty-five
years the publishing industry in Iran has come under heavy supervision,
regulation, and censorship by the Islamic Republic and thereby has lost much of
its enlightening and edifying function, the Iranian publishing houses in exile
– whether Internet-based or paper-based – despite all the hurdles in their way,
have managed to pull the weight of improving the knowledge and understanding of
Iranians both inside and outside of Iran. This calls for great appreciation.
Reza Parchizadeh
Indiana,
Pennsylvania
Summer of 2014
