Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer
GANJI CALLS ON IRANIAN DIASPORA WOMEN TO ACT
In a well argued letter To all the great Iranian mothers in diaspora Ganji calls on Iranian women to follow the example of the Iranian poet Ms. Simin Behbahani who not only writes but acts in a manner taught by Gandi and Martin Luther King:
Ms. Simin Behbahani is one of Iranian heroines, who, in the past years, has been in the front line of Iran's liberal movement. In this path, she has been insulted and beaten. She was treated unjustly and tolerated magnanimously. Behbahani could move a generation with her poems, but her work is not limited to poetry and literature. She actively and bravely defends the victims whenever the civil rights ware trampled upon.One day she shows up in front of a hospital to defend the disregarded rights of an imprisoned dissident. On another day she is in a park to protest the extreme, unbelievable, and painful inequality of women compared to men and to say we are human too and human, on being human alone, is entitled to rights and dignity, and no regime, ideology, belief or culture could not and should not discriminate between human beings based on imaginary and ancient divisions and ignore their need to dignity. Still on another day, in another setting, she protests the murder of dissidents and with her poems keeps their memory alive. She has the courage to think.
She thinks because she understands what many Iranian apologists like their Communist predecessor refuse to acknowledge. She understands that just as yesterday's USSR was not a perversion of Communism, today's Iran is not a perversion of Islamism.
The problem of the avant-garde intellectual before the revolution [in Iran] was the poverty of philosophy and not attending to theoretical studies. Theorizing was completely rejected as "bourgeois philosophy" and "capitalist abstraction." Everything was reduced to "pratique" and "struggle." Resistance and courage, if not based on a democratic-humanist theory, replaces one dictatorship with another.The 1979 revolution [of Iran] was the result of a 1970's discourse that was the anti-West (anti-imperialist), anti-liberal, anti-democratic, based on a return to our selves (alternatively our Islamic, Asian, or communist class-free proletariat self), ideologic, utopian, and revolutionary. We should not think of that revolution as a detour.
Trotsky wrote "Betrayed Revolution" thinking Stalin had betrayed the ideals of the Bolshevik revolution. But no one betrayed the Russian revolution and what took place was the exact realization of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary ideology.
The classical all-encompassing ideological revolution is an irrevocably big mistake. [Such] Revolution does not lead to democracy and does not create freedoms. Therefore, the 1979 revolution was not betrayed. It was the objective realization of the 1970's discourse. The experience of the 1979 revolution guided us all to the fact that without reason and thinking we cannot go past our childhood and become democrat adults.
Behbahani acts because she has courage and Iran needs Diaspora women to follow in her footsteps.
And an idea is not God. No one can think for us, suffer for us, fight for us. Intellectual courage, which is refusing to submit to fear in our thinking and refusing to accept anything but the truth, is now highly needed in our circles. Democracy and human rights need bold and courageous agents. People who believe in democratic values and show their belief by struggling against oppression and injustice. It is obvious that courage in practice, without wisdom in thoughts, will not do.
Ganji urges Iranian intellectuals, indeed, all intellectuals not to succumb to passivity born of despair in the value of their own people:
He says: democracy, freedom and human rights, are not the issues of the people of Iran, but bread, water, clothing and shelter. He says: the knowledge and social prerequisites of democracy do not exist in Iran. He says: Iran will not be democratized in a hundred years. He says: the people are not ready to fight and pay the price for democracy, so why should the intellectual shoulder their burden and pay the price for them. He says: the modern era, is the era of separation of roles and division of social labour. The intellectual, is not a party or political activist, his job is to create thoughts and invent theories.
After all, intellectuals too made mistakes and they too need courage to accept those mistakes:
Courage, this philosopher's stone of the world of intellect and reformism, is not limited just to the Kantian courage, that is the courage to know. We also need the [Baruch] Spinozan courage, which is the courage to overcome any of our psychological and moral failures and shortcomings, let aside the [Paul] Tillichan courage that wants us to see and accept ourselves as we are and not deny ourselves. . . . .And is there an intellectual who doesn't see in his past more or less dark spots, ignorance, mistakes, working with less than desired quality or quantity? And which intellectual is it who doesn't know that a considerable part of the misery and misfortune that has taken over his society is the consequence of his own ignorance, mistakes, and miscarriage? Why should the intellectual be so pessimistic and doubtful of people and optimistic and sure of himself?
I could not agree more. Unfortunately, such courageous intellectuals are not easy to come by and for every Chris Hitchens we have a plethora of Noam Chomskys, George Galloways and Tony Judts.
The Freedom Lover who translated this letter did all of us a great favor for it is well worth reading in its entirety. He, unlike John Murtha, is a true profile in courage. But that would have required a Kennedy Center in possession of some real imagination.
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