The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution

by Amir Taheri

  19 najafabadi calls on fellow Shiiites to tone down some of their most excessive beliefs as a step towards reconciliation with the majority of Muslims.

  Chapter 5: Democracy as Enemy

  1 Webster’s New World Dictionary.

  2 M. Moin, Persian Dictionary, vol. 1 (Tehran, 1971).

  3 Ibid.

  4 The slogan was: “Independence, Freedom, Islamic Rule” (in Persian: Esteqlal, Azadi, Hokumat Islami).

  5 The text was translated by Hassan Ibrahim Habibi, a French-educated Islamist who, supposedly “heartbroken” by the failure of the revolution, decided to withdraw from public life in 1997, having served as first assistant to the president of the Islamic Republic for almost two decades.

  6 Montazeri in a meeting with the editorial board of the monthly Nameh (“The Letter”) in his house in Qom. Quoted on the Peiknet website, April 16, 2008.

  7 In 1981, Khomeini used that power to dismiss Abol-Hassan Banisadr. who had been elected the first president of the Islamic Republic the previous year. The dismissal came in the form of a nine-word decree dictated by Khomeini and scribbled by his son Ahmad on a piece of paper torn from a notepad in a hospital where the ayatollah was undergoing medical tests. Banisadr had to flee to exile in France, disguised as a hijab-covered woman, aboard a jetliner hijacked by his future son-in-law Massoud Rajavi.

  8 Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, quoted in M. Biazar Shirazi, Yadha va Yadegarha [Memoirs and Memories] (Tehran, 1988), p. 143.

  9 The seven animals who go to paradise are: Buraq, the horse with a woman’s face that Muhammad rode during his nocturnal visits to God (Shiites add Dhul-Jinah, Imam Hussein’s steed during the Battle of Karbala in 680); Hout, the whale in whose belly the Prophet Yunes (Jonas) hid; Ezar, the donkey that Jesus rode to Jerusalem; Hoopoe, the bird that carried messages from Solomon to Belqees, Queen of Sheba; naqeh, the young camel of the Prophet Saleh, which saved his life in the desert; Qitmir, the dog of the People of the Cave that watched over the Seven Sleepers for 309 years; Dik, the rooster that was the first animal to convert to Islam and became the muezzin of the animals, calling them to prayer every dawn; and, finally, Hureirah, the kitten that Muhammad loved to play with.

  10 The categories are: wajeb (obligatory), mostahab (recommended), halal (permitted), makruh (permitted but best avoided), and haram (forbidden).

  11 Mehdi Bazargan, Enqelab-e Iran dar Dow Harekat [Iran’s Revolution in Two Moves] (Tehran, 1984), p. 87.

  12 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Walayat Faqih [Custodianship of the Theologian], pp. 58-62.

  13 Ibid., p. 504.

  Chapter 6: Iran and Anti-Iran

  1 Paul Balta in interview with the author in Paris, 1986. There is also an account of this in the memoirs of the BBC reporter John Simpson, who witnessed the scene, and the Iranian journalist Mansur Taraji, who translated for Balta. Cf: Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1985).

  2 He also suggested that the Persian name of the Caspian Sea, which is the Sea of Mazandaran, after an Iranian province on its littoral, be changed to please Russia and other neighbors. He unleashed a tsunami of protests, indicating that Iranians remained attached to their Iranian-ness.

  3 The Iranian new Year starts precisely on the spring equinox. It is celebrated for thirteen days with rites that predate Islam. In Iranian mythology it marks the coronation of Jamshid, the first king of the mythical Pishdadi dynasty. A truly national and secular occasion, it brings together Iranians from all creeds and ethnic backgrounds. now-Ruz is also the new Year for Afghans, Tajiks, Kurds, and many other ethnic groups in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Pakistan, and the Persian Gulf.

  4 Quoted in Shojaeddin Shafa, Jenayat va Mokafat [Crime and Punishment], vol. 2 (Intercollegiate Press, USA, 1988), p. 1148.

  5 Ibid., p. 1150.

  6 The meeting took place at Khomeini’s residence in Jamaran, north of Tehran, on February 10, 1983, launching the so-called Ten Days of Dawn ceremonies dedicated to his cult of personality.

  7 Having numerous wives and concubines was regarded as one of the many signs of the special powers of the imams. For example, Hassan bin Ali, the second imam of Shiism, is reported to have had over two hundred wives and concubines.

  8 During his revolutionary career, the ayatollah kept the fact that he had composed poetry a secret, possibly because he thought this would undermine his reputation as a ruthless ruler. Two volumes of his doggerel, however, have been published posthumously. The poems are syrupy and sentimental and ridden with grammatical errors and misspellings.

  9 This is separate from sahm e Imam (the imam’s share), which amounts to a flat 20 percent income tax, the proceeds of which go to an ayatollah of one’s choice.

  10 He was nureddin Kianuri. Having collaborated with the mullahs, especially in hunting and destroying elements of the anti-Soviet left, the Tudeh in turn fell victim to Khomeinist repression from 1984 onwards. Hundreds of Tudeh cadres were executed or imprisoned without trial. Many more fled to Afghanistan, then ruled by fellow Communists.

  11 Such as Abdul-Hussein (Slave of Imam Hussein) or even Kalb Ali (Dog of Imam Ali). Most Muslims regard such names as anti-Islamic because in Islam the believer is a slave only to Allah, best denoted in the name Abdallah.

  12 They are Abol-Hassan Banisadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic; Muhammad-Ali Rajai, the second president; Ali Khamenehi, the third; and Muhammad Khatami, the fifth. Three of the six have been mullahs. Only the fourth president, Rafsanjani, a mullah, does not claim to be a sayyed, although he used the nom de guerre Hashemi instead of his own family name, Bahremani, to claim some spiritual connection with the Prophet’s clan.

  13 Khomeini, meeting the family of Imam Musa Sadr, the Iranian leader of Lebanese Shiites, in Jamaran.

  14 Khomeini, message to the Freedom Congress, Tehran, August 1980.

  15 Khomeini at an audience with air force cadets in Jamaran, September 1980.

  16 Khamenehi, address at the First Congress of Islamic Poets and Writers, Tehran, 26 Azar 1363 (December 17, 1984).

  17 Ayatollah Khoiniha, interview with the daily Kayhan, Tehran, 13 Mordad 1361 (August 4, 1982).

  18 Two Centuries of Silence (in Persian: Do Qarn Sokut) is the title of a book by Abdul-Hussein Zarrinkub, first published in 1960. After Khomeini seized power, the book became a bestseller, before being banned by the Islamic regime.

  19 Persian has five letters more than the Arabic alphabet—letters that native Arabic speakers cannot easily pronounce. In exchange, Arabic has six letters that native Persian speakers cannot pronounce. Iranians also reformed the Arabic script by a process known as A’ajamm (literally: Persianization). This consists of adding dots to individual letters to distinguish them from one another. The technique made a proper reading of written Arabic, initially an oral language, possible for the first time, and helped stabilize the meaning of the Koran.

  20 Persian in its current version is estimated to have a vocabulary twice as large as that of Arabic. The reason is that most Arabic words have been used in some Persian text at one point or another. It is possible to write Persian that is 85 percent Arabic. However, it is also possible to write a pure Persian with no Arabic words at all. The average Persian dictionary of over 100,000 words contains 12,500 Arabic words. Other languages from which Persian has borrowed include French (3,800 words), Turkish (1,500 words), Mongolian (700 words), Greek (500 words), and English (400 words).

  21 The epic poem in 60,000 lines contains only 5 percent Arabic loan words.

  22 The terrorist in question is Khalid Showqi al-Islambouli. The street named after him is where the Egyptian embassy is located in Tehran.

  23 The exception is Sayyed Ali Hussein Khamenehi, the third president of the Islamic Republic and, since 1989, the Supreme Guide of the Khomeinist regime. He is fluent in spoken Arabic but unable to write in that language.

  Chapter 7: Unwelcome Faith

  1 Sura al-Towbah (Repentance), verse 29. Cf, Sura Baqa
rah (The Cow), verses 193 and 216, and Sura Muhammad, verse 4.

  2 Abu Hanifa Ahmad ibn Dawood Dinwari, Akhbar ut Tawal [news of Old Times], p. 146.

  3 Piruz married a Chinese princess, became a Chinese general, and led Chinese armies into conquests in Central Asia. However, he did not succeed in persuading the Chinese emperor to help him recover Iran, his own lost homeland.

  4 The Islamic rule was revived in Iran under Khomeini. In 1979, the ayatollah ordered the execution of Habib Elqanian, a leader of the Iranian Jewish community. One of the charges brought against him was that he had built Iran’s first high-rise block of offices in Tehran. The twenty-storey building was seen as an affront to Islam: a symbol of a Jew’s attempt at “looking down on True Believers.”

  5 Tarikh al-Tawarikh [History of Histories], vol. 2 (Tehran, n.d.), p. 41. Also quoted in Javad Fazel, Maasoum Chahrom [The Fourth Infallible One] (Tehran, 1957), p. 88.

  6 At an audience granted to students of theology in Qom. Reported by Mehr news Agency and quoted on the Peiknet website on April 2, 2008.

  7 Sayyed Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, interview with Iran Times, Washington, D.C., March 18, 1983.

  Chapter 8: A Strange Beast

  1 Also attending the conversation was the late Iranian diplomat and scholar Fereydoun Hoveyda, a lifelong friend of Rodinson’s.

  2 The marja taqlid or “source of imitation” is the mullah that the faithful choose to solve their religious problems. Traditionally, this is a voluntary matter, in which government does not intervene. Since 1979, however, the Khomeinist regime has tried to impose a handful of mullahs of its choice.

  3 Literally “Claimant” and “Head,” titles assumed by Arab dictators in modern times.

  4 Ali Shariati in Imam and Imamate (Tehran, 1993), p. 592.

  5 Khomeini in Walayat Faqih (Tehran, 2003), pp. 75-78.

  6 One of the actors who played the role was Ali Mahzoon, a star of Iranian cinema in the 1950s. He revealed the deception in which he had played a part in a series of letters written to friends in 1984.

  7 Tehran Radio broadcast, February 11, 1988. At the time, Khamenehi was president of the Islamic Republic.

  8 Khamenehi in Kayhan Havai, 9 Ordibehesht 1366 (April 29, 1987), p. 8.

  9 Hussein Tabatabai, Ravabet Ejetemai dar Islam [Social Relations in Islam] (Tehran, 2002), pp. 46-47.

  10 Morteza Motahari, Pyramoon Enqelab Eslami [On Islamic Revolution] (Tehran, n.d.), pp. 103-4.

  11 Tehran Radio broadcast, February 11, 1988.

  12 Khomeini address on the anniversary of Prophet Muhammad’s birth, 30 Azar 1363 (november 21, 1984).

  13 At the University of California at Berkeley, for instance.

  14 Mehdi Bazargan, Enqelab-e Iran dar Dow Harekat [Iran’s Revolution in Two Moves] (Tehran, 1984), p. 84.

  15 Daryush Shayegan, Qu’est-ce qu’une revolution religieuse? [What Is a Religious Revolution?] (Paris, 1985).

  16 Bazargan, Enqelab-e Iran dar Dow Harekat (see n. 14).

  17 Ibid.

  Chapter 9: The Feeble Ones

  1 Other reforms, approved in a popular referendum, included the distribution of land among landless peasants, a scheme for workers’ participation in the capital of the companies that employed them, and the creation of a Literacy Corps in which young graduates would spend eighteen months teaching illiterate people to read and write. The package was branded the “White Revolution,” later to be renamed the “Revolution of the Shah and the People.”

  2 She was Mrs. Mehrangiz Manuchehrian, a senior judge who had also served as a member of the senate for years.

  3 She was Mrs. Farrokhru Parsa, a veteran educationalist and one of the longest-serving ministers of education in contemporary Iran. In 1980, she was put to death on Khomeini’s order—to symbolize the death of the Shah’s pro-woman reforms.

  4 Since the Persian language does not use gender, the constitution is vague on the gender of those who could seek the high offices. It uses the term rejal, a loan word that means “men” in Arabic but could mean “persons” both male and female, in Persian. So far, however, the mullahs have used the original Arabic meaning to bar women from becoming candidates for the presidency.

  5 Freshteh Hashemi, in the weekly magazine Zan Ruz [Today’s Woman], Tehran, 29 Dey 1358 (January 19, 1980).

  6 At the Seminar on Islam and Women, Tehran, 16 Farvardin 1362 (April 5, 1983).

  7 Some of these policies were later modified as the new regime created all-female police and military units. To impose the dress code, for example, female militants in uniform would deal with recalcitrant women.

  8 Zahra Rahnavardi, wife of Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mussavi, addressing a group of Arab women visiting Tehran, Weekly Kayhan, 18 Mordad 1362 (August 9, 1983).

  9 Jumhuri Islami [Islamic Republic], november 20, 2004.

  10 Christians have identified the forbidden fruit as an apple. In Islam, however, the identity of the forbidden fruit remains obscure. There were no apple trees in Arabia and Muhammad is unlikely to have seen one. Most Islamic scholars believe the forbidden fruit of the Koran was a kind of wheat or barley.

  11 Khomeini, Tahrir al-Wassilah [Release of the Means], vol. 2, p. 290.

  12 Ebtekar, now in her fifties, became known to American television audiences as “Mary,” a nineteen-year-old firebrand who nightly threatened the U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran with execution. Having grown up in the United States, she was chosen by the terrorists as spokesperson to address the citizens of the “Great Satan” in their own language and accent.

  Chapter 10: The Prophet and Women

  1 The Barmakids, a crypto-Zoroastrian family of Persian aristocrats, served as viziers and other high officials for Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad until their destruction under Caliph Haroun al-Rashid in the eighth century.

  2 Under Muhammad’s law, adultery is proven only if four male or eight female witnesses testify under oath that they actually witnessed the act of penetration take place between the accused couple. Since it is unlikely that anyone would perform an adulterous sexual act in public, the charge cannot be, and in fact never has been, proven in accordance with the strict rules of evidence fixed by the Prophet.

  Chapter 11: The Eternal Conspirator

  1 The claim is found in many books by Sunni scholars. The most direct one is Mokhtasar al-Tuhfat al-Ithna-Ashariyah [A Short Guide to Twelver Shiism] by Mahmoud Shukri al-Alloosi, an Iraqi scholar of the last century.

  2 Muhsin al-Mulk, Ayat al-Bayyanat [Clear Signs], p. 88. Khomeini quotes the passage in his Kashf al-Asrar [Revelation of Secrets].

  3 Among the visitors were Khalil Maleki, leader of the Titoist Third Force (niruy e Sevvom) Party; the Islamist novelist Jalal al-Ahmad; the socialist novelist nasser Khodayar; the sociologist Ihsna naraqi, who became an advisor to President Hashemi Rafsanjani; and Abol-Hassan Banisadr, who became the first president of the Islamic Republic after Khomeini’s seizure of power in 1979.

  4 In 1970, Bakhtiar was assassinated in Baghdad by a SAVAK hit squad sent from Tehran.

  5 The Khomeinists like the forged tract. In 1984, the newspaper Imam (“Faith”), published by the Islamic Republic embassy in London, serialized excerpts. In 1985,, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture in Tehran published a new edition in several hundred thousand copies. The periodical Islami later serialized the Protocols under the title: “Odor of Blood and Jewish Conspiracies.”

  6 Jerusalem had been part of various Persian Empires for some six centuries and was known as Hokhtgang Dezh (Fortress of Prophets). In the sixth century B.C., Cyrus the Great ordered and financed the rebuilding of the destroyed Jewish temple there.

  7 Quoted in Shojaeddin Shafa, Jenayat va Mokafat [Crime and Punishment], vol. 2, (Intercollegiate Press, USA, 1988), p. 433.

  8 Reported by the state-owned Entekhab news Agency, 19 Ordibehesht 1387 (May 8, 2008).

  9 As Ahmadinejad’s comments raised a storm of indignation all over the world, including in Iran itself, some “useful idiots” who
have always acted as apologists for the Khomeinist regime tried to claim that he had not meant what he said. The phrase he used in Persian was clear, however: Bayad az safheh ruzegar mahv garadad. (“Must disappear from the pages of time.”) The full texts of Ahmadinejad’s various calls for Israel to be destroyed are available on his website.

  10 Islamic Republic news Agency (IRNA), november 22, 2005.

  11 IRNA, november 16, 2006.

  12 IRNA, October 28, 2005.

  13 Details of Ramin’s background from the official Aftab news, 15 Bahman 1384 (February 4, 2006).

  14 The Persian phrase he used was falsafeh vojudi, which, translated literally, means “the philosophy of existence.”