REVOLUTION

Every time the Islamic

Every time the Islamic Republic feels threatened you see Khatami appear as a moderate figure to represent an alternative candidate. This is a clever tactic of the Islamic Republic to prolong its hold on power.

Khatami (personally maybe more moderate than others) has been a senior member of this government and has never to my knowledge protested its actions.

The idea of drumming the "Moderates" has prolonged the rule of the Islamic Republic. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, it seems to me that no true moderate could survive in the senior ranks of this organization for long.

Beating a dead horse...

Revolution occurred in February 1979 and died a month later when Ayatollah Khomeini described his own past claims and promises and then present behavior best by saying "khod'eh kardam" (I lied). He lied about shah and he lied about what he promised to bring to people. Had shah magically survived, none of us would be living in the west and none of the majority of other 70 million inside would run around trying to find a way out to dubai, indonesia, malaysia, or anywhere else that they can get visa from.

Revolution died in a month when khomeini who had complained about atrocities of Savak, killed in a month, without due process, more than shah had killed in his entire regime.

Revolution died in a month when khomeini who had complained about thievery of shah's regime, filled planes with iranian assets (arms, treasure, and arts) and shipped to his brothers in lebanon.

Revolution died when khomeini who was complaining about lack of free speech master-minded ransacking of Ayandegan newspaper office when he disliked what it had written and hanged the first newspaper editor few months later.

Revolution died when khomeini who had complained about authoritarian rule of the shah institutionalized rule of vali-faghih over People and law of sharia over all aspects of people's lives.

...

The only ones who still support revolution are those who still live in 1970s, have financial ties to the regime, or are ideologues for whom "iran" and "iranians" are secondary to their fights elsewhere, let it be for islam, for arab causes, animosity with pahlavi regime, or negative attitudes towards the west. Even they, when they have been able to, have run away from the islamic republic and voice their support for the 30 year old Ponzi scheme of fraud and deceit from outside iran, as they find in iran no place for them to educate, to make a living, or to tolerate the atrocities of the regime. They are none but run-away hypocrites who dare not living inside yet remain imprisoned in their love for their ideology more than any affinity that they may or may not have for iran or iranians.

Supporters of the regime are still cheering around a dead horse whose only evidence of existence is nothing but the smell of the rotting corpse that they enjoy while accusing others who place iran above any religion or ideology with the same old rhetorics of zionist, imperialist, monarchist, ...; the terms that have long lost their appeal; accusations that have failed to produce anything useful, bread on the table, job, prosperity, freedom, for iranians within.

May khomeini and his supporters rot in hell forever; may MY country be free of any legacy of that criminal whose regime cannot be compared to any previous iranian regime, as none oppressed iranians as much as IRI, and as only invaders and aggressors and occupiers of iran can be compared to the disaster that that beast brought to iran and iranians.

FYI/Iran arrests women's rights campaigner (AFP)

Iran has arrested a women's rights activist involved in an award-winning campaign that seeks changes to laws deemed unfair to women, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Security officials arrested Nafiseh Azad on Saturday in the Darakeh mountains north of Tehran while she was collecting signatures for the campaign's petition, the Sarmayeh newspaper said.

Iran arrests women's rights campaigner

Most comprehensive analysis of Iranian revolution after 30 years

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 is an event defined as much by its ironies and paradoxes
as by its novelties and cruelties.
It was, by scholarly near-consensus, the most “popular revolution” in modern times —
almost 11% of the population participated in it, compared to the approximate 7% and
9% of the citizens who took part in the French and Russian revolutions. As a concept,
revolution is itself a child of modernity, in that it revolves around the idea that legitimate
power can emanate only from a social contract consecrated by the general will of
a sovereign people. Before the rise of modernity and the idea of the natural rights of
human beings, “revolution” as a word had no political connotation and simply referred
to the movement of celestial bodies. The word took on its new political meaning — the
sudden, often violent, structural change in the nature and distribution of power and
privilege — when the idea of a citizenry (imbued with natural rights, including the right
to decide who rules over them) replaced the medieval idea of “subjects” (a passive populace,
bereft of rights, deemed needful of the guardianship of an aristocracy or royalty).
In Iran, despite the requisite popular agency of a revolution, events in 1979 paradoxically
gave rise to a regime wherein popular sovereignty was denigrated by the regime’s
founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as a colonial construct, created to undermine
the Islamic concept of umma (or spiritual community). In Ayatollah Khomeini’s
treatise on Islamic government, the will of the people is subservient to the dictates of
the divine, as articulated by the Supreme Leader. In this sense, his concept of an Islamic
Revolution is an oxymoron and its concomitant idea of Islamic government — velayate
faqih, or rule of the Jurist — is irreconcilable with the modern democratic ideal of
popular sovereignty. On the contrary, velayat-e faqih posits a population in need of a
guardian, much as minors need guardians. The people are, in other words, “subjects,” not
citizens. On the other hand, he called the same populace to a revolution —historically,
the defiant act of a citizenry cognizant of its ability and right to demand a new social
contract. The most popular of all “modern revolutions” then led to the creation of a state
whose constitution places absolute power in the hand of an unelected, unimpeachable
man, and whose basic political philosophy posits people as subjects and pliable tools of
the Faqih. If this constitutes the philosophical paradox of the Islamic Revolution, there
is also a stark historic paradox evident in its evolution.The Islamic Revolution was in a sense a replay of Iran’s first assay at a democratic constitutional government, one that took place in the course of the 1905-07 “Constitutional Revolution.” At that time, a coalition
of secular intellectuals, enlightened Shi‘ite clergy, bazaar merchants, the rudiments of a working class, and even
some members of the landed gentry came together to topple the Oriental Despotism of the Qajar kings and replace it
with a monarchy whose power was limited by a constitution (Mashruteh). Indeed, the new constitution emulated one
of the European models of a liberal democratic polity, one that allowed for elections and separation of powers, yet had
a monarch as the head of the state. In those years, the most ideologically cohesive and powerful opposition to this new
democratic paradigm was spearheaded by Ayatollah Nouri — a Shi‘ite zealot who dismissed modern, democratically
formulated constitutions as the faulty and feeble concoctions of “syphilitic men.” Instead, he suggested relying on what
he considered the divine infinite wisdom of God, manifest in Shari’a (Mashrua’). So powerful were the advocates of the
constitutional form of democracy that Nouri became the only ayatollah in Iran’s modern history to be executed on the
order (fatwa) of fellow ayatollahs. For decades, in Iran’s modern political discourse, Nouri’s name was synonymous with
the reactionary political creed of despots who sought their legitimacy in Shi‘ite Shari’a.

In Ayatollah Khomeini’s
treatise on Islamic government, the will of the people is subservient to the dictates of
the divine, as articulated by the Supreme Leader. In this sense, his concept of an Islamic
Revolution is an oxymoron and its concomitant idea of Islamic government — velayate
faqih, or rule of the Jurist — is irreconcilable with the modern democratic ideal of
popular sovereignty. On the contrary, velayat-e faqih posits a population in need of a
guardian, much as minors need guardians. The people are, in other words, “subjects,” not
citizens. On the other hand, he called the same populace to a revolution —historically,
the defiant act of a citizenry cognizant of its ability and right to demand a new social
contract. The most popular of all “modern revolutions” then led to the creation of a state
whose constitution places absolute power in the hand of an unelected, unimpeachable
man, and whose basic political philosophy posits people as subjects and pliable tools of
the Faqih. If this constitutes the philosophical paradox of the Islamic Revolution, there
is also a stark historic paradox evident in its evolution....read the rest!

//www.mideasti.org/files/Iran_Final.pdf

aghay-e mohtaram! Kabir

aghay-e mohtaram! Kabir Khan! This regime survives only becuase it has since its birth created crises after crises! And by riding these crises the regime prolongs its longevity! This regime does not give damn about the Palastinians, they need Israel and Isarel needs them back. Both to justify their actions in the name of whatever God, Land or Mammon! "Mardom-e hamish-e hazer dar sahne-ha" should always tell you something! Akhe koja-e donja mardom-e bikarand ke beravand tazahorat or Namz Jomeh, dar edare-jat beran namaz, pas to in mamlekat ke kar mekon-e! This regime does not give a damn about Iran and the wealth or health of the Iranians! The future of Iran is at risk, by the way please write a bit about corruption in the IRI for a change ...

PS! If you delete my post, then the hell with you!

Regards Fatollah

who do u think....

is behind the mullahs????? you're dear friends at MI6!
and mossadegh was no damn akhoond....this time around, the brits have fulfilled their long lost fantasy of raping iran under the table without anyone being able to question it.....
where is carter to cry for human rights?
don't try to legitimize the mullahs as a valid entity to govern....they are and always will be a tool of foreigners....they have brought nothing but misery, bloodshed, shame, oppression.....and every other negative and shameful word you can think of

give iranians the "real choice" to pick....and we'll see if the mullahs will last 1 more sec in power!

Today Women outnumber their

Today Women outnumber their male counterparts"

Disingenous, gratuitous, and misleading:

There are more women, because the men are unemployed because the IRI cannot create jobs for them. They can't afford to have wives and have family;hence, women have to fend for themselves and getting an education is the only way.

Also, religious families during the shah's era did not allow their daughters to attend secular schools because they deemed them as Haram but after the revolution the relgious families were comfortable to send their daughters to school with Hejab having been made compulsory by the Islamic republic of repression.

Islamic Repulic is a failure

From all economic and social indications the revolution of the last 30 years has been a dismal failure, with a 25% inflation rate, higher than any modern country, and an unemployment rate reaching 30%, i am not sure how the author justifies even an inkling of success in this failed experiment of Islamic theology.  Christianity came to this conclusion almost 400 years ago, and despite all the calls, Muslims still have their heads in the sand.  We just have to repeat the same mistakes christianity made until we realize, theology and politics dont mix.  Unfortunatley in the process our beloved Persia might be destroyed.

So what?

Among the achievements of the Islamist republic you enumerate you say: “Today women outnumber their male counterparts in institutes of higher learning.” 

That is the case among others in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well, so what of it? The brutality of the Islamist republic and your “unassuming and kindly reformist President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami” is not that incidental that can be washed away by a meaningless platitude-ridden write up.