The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge

by Hooman Majd

  “We can smoke in here?” I asked, when he hung up, mildly surprised. (Iran, much like the rest of the Western world, has strict laws forbidding smoking in public places, including restaurants and cafes and, naturally, hospitals.)

  “Here you can do anything!’ he replied with a smile, lighting another cigarette.

  “But…in a hospital?”

  “We’re not patients, are we!” he exclaimed. I lit a cigarette myself, and he picked up the ringing phone again.

  “How’s Mr. Khatami?” he asked me, when he hung up.

  “Very good,” I said, as the secretary walked in with a question for Moreh-Sedegh and a question for me. Did I prefer tea or coffee? “Tea,” I said to her obvious satisfaction. The phone rang again, and he apologized and took the call. It lasted over ten minutes, with Moreh-Sedegh pleading with and even begging the party on the other end to not start a fight with an unnamed third person. As he hung up he picked up a file in front of him that had been left by the secretary while he was on the phone.

  “Excuse me,” he said, as he looked it over. “Ms. Salehi!” he called out. “What is this?” His secretary returned to the office.

  “Doctor,” she said, “you had said 50/50 on this bill, but accounting says the hospital would lose too much money if they only pay 50 percent, and this was the third Caesarian for the patient.”

  “It’s no problem,” said Moreh-Sedegh. “How much did the doctor charge?”

  “Nothing,” said Ms. Salehi, “because of your recommendation.”

  “So how much is the bill?”

  “Just this amount. 320,000 tomans [about $350].”

  Moreh-Sedegh started to write something on the file. “The-amount-of-160,000-tomans-to-be-paid,” he said softly as he wrote the words, overruling accounting. He handed the file back to Ms. Salehi. Another doctor walked in, and Moreh-Sedegh introduced him to me.

  “Today, my meetings are a privilege,” he said with some measure of ta’arouf. “Some days it’s just lowlifes!” Moreh-Sedegh and the doctor talked shop for a number of minutes, calling Ms. Salehi in to resolve an issue involving a patient, and once again the phone interrupted the conversation.

  “Today is a day when our phone calls are all bullshit but our meetings are with gentlemen,” Moreh-Sedegh exclaimed when he hung up. “Ms. Salehi!” he shouted. Another doctor walked into the room, adding to the chaos. Moreh-Sedegh was animated, lighting cigarette after cigarette, arguing and discussing hospital business and surgery with the doctors and Ms. Salehi, and alternately handling Jewish Committee of Tehran business on the phone. I wasn’t sure if I should stay, but he was now smoking my cigarettes, having finished his own, and all I could think was that I was glad I had brought an extra pack. “Excuse me,” he said to me every now and then.

  “Don’t write this stuff down!” pleaded one of the doctors, knowing that I was a writer. Between discussing gynecology and the interrupting phone calls, Moreh-Sedegh started to tell ribald jokes. Everyone laughed as he answered the phone again, for the umpteenth time, and when he hung up, the other doctors left, and he sat down, promising me his undivided and uninterrupted attention. We spoke for a while about the failings of the Ahmadinejad government, and then moved on to the question of the Jewish community in Iran.

  “You seem an extremely busy man,” I said to Moreh-Sedegh. “Did you want to run for Parliament or were you asked or pressured?”

  “No. It’s an interesting story, my entering the Parliament. Mr. Motamed said to me that his wife would probably not want him to stand for the seat again, because it was affecting his personal life. He said to me: why don’t you register to run? If I can convince my wife, I’ll run myself, otherwise you will and we’ll have a good candidate either way.”

  “You were the hospital director, right?”

  “The hospital director and the director of the Jewish Committee. But it wasn’t for my own sake that I signed up, it was for the interests of the Jewish community.”

  “How do you manage to run the hospital and fulfill your duties as a parliamentarian?” I wondered, having witnessed the chaos of his workday.

  “I’m lucky,” he said, “that the hospital is close to Parliament. I get to the hospital at six in the morning, work until eight, and then get on a motorcycle and go to Parliament and work until noon, when the Majles breaks for lunch, at which time I come straight here.”

  “So how does the administration of Ahmadinejad, with his vitriolic statements against Israel, affect your work in government, now that you’ve had some experience?” I asked.

  “Look, a specific thing happened at the dawn of the revolution, and we owe the Imam (Khomeini) for that, in that there was a real distinction made between Judaism and Zionism. Fortunately, this has been really well understood in the culture of society. In other words, fortunately even the most radical anti-Israeli sentiment in this country has never translated into anti-Semitic sentiment. You see, Jews in other countries may identify themselves as Jews before any nationality, but that’s not true of Iranians. Our nationality is Iranian, and we own the politics of our country too. This is well understood by the population at large. I can say with authority that even under the administration of Ahmadinejad, there has been no anti-Semitism directed at the community.”

  “But Jews in other countries,” I said, “even if they have no love for Zionism, don’t feel any particular obligation to always state their stance vis-à-vis Israel.”

  “Neither do we!” exclaimed Moreh-Sedegh. “There’s never been any pressure by the government or otherwise in that matter. Iran has never really had a Zionist movement, though. And that may be because in Iran there has never really existed organized anti-Semitism. Zionism can thrive in a Jewish community if there’s a sense of anti-Semitism in the culture where they live.”

  “But there is anti-Semitism in Iran, even if it isn’t organized.”

  “Look,” said Moreh-Sedegh, hesitating for a moment. “There’s anti-Semitism everywhere. But the issue is really whether it is organized and whether it can penetrate the culture. Throughout Iranian history organized anti-Semitism has not existed. During the worst anti-Semitic times, such as during World War II, Iran was actually a refuge for Jews, even European Jews. If you go back further, Spanish Jews escaping the Inquisition came to Iran! Jews from Kashan are descendants of those Spanish Jews. Some Jews from Yazd are descendants of European Jews escaping pogroms. Look, throughout Iranian history, the greatest protectors of the Jews have been the Marja-e-taghlid [Grand Ayatollahs] of Shia Islam.”

  “But don’t things such as a Holocaust conference affect the culture, and perhaps negatively in terms of anti-Semitism, particularly among lesser-educated citizens?” I asked.

  “Look, anti-Semitism can only thrive if there are roots. And there simply are no roots in Iran,” he said emphatically, “and so we’re not in the least bit afraid of anti-Semitism in Iran.”

  “So what are the issues facing the Jewish community?” I asked. “I mean, Jews still cannot become ministers or judges, for example.”

  “The biggest legal issue is one of the inheritance law [Iranian law states that if one beneficiary in a religious-minority household converts to Islam, he or she will inherit everything and other non-converting members receive nothing]. But that’s a law that dates from the Reza Shah period and it’s not paid much attention to,” said Moreh-Sedegh. “Look, any minority living in a religious country faces certain restrictions. For example, gaining employment in a government office is harder for a Jew than a Muslim, but it isn’t impossible. I’m the perfect example, where I attained the highest university degrees and was hired by the government [in his previous job]…. There are even Jews who are pilots, for example, which is a sensitive and strategic job. You know, after thirty centuries of living in Iran, we Jews are culturally purely Iranian. We speak Farsi in our homes, not any other language, we eat the same food, and the only difference between us and Muslims is the language we pray in.”

  “And Muslims pr
ay in Arabic, also a foreign tongue,” I said. “But I’m curious how you view the future of this community of some twenty or twenty-five thousand Jews in Iran, and the future of religious freedom under an Islamic state. I mean, Jews and other minorities are just not equal with Shias, even if there is tolerance for different religions.”

  “Look,” said Moreh-Sedegh again, in his charming way of prefacing every sentence. “I can’t predict the future. But I can say that the situation for Jews in Iran has actually improved day by day. For example, with the help of the Supreme Leader, the issue of equal blood money has been resolved, with the fatwa Ayatollah Khamenei issued. This was the main legal issue for Jews, a question of equality, and other issues we’re hopeful will be resolved. Our opinion is that all religious minorities, including the Jews, are in an improving situation.”

  “But what if Israel were to be involved in a military attack on Iran? Wouldn’t that jeopardize the Jewish community?”

  “No, not even that would affect the Jewish community. We’ve seen analogous situations, such as during the Six-Day War when anti-Israeli sentiment was extremely high in Iran and yet no attacks on the Jewish community took place. Look, we’re part of the Iranian culture, and whomever is the enemy of Iran is our enemy too, whether they be Arab or Israeli. During the Imposed War [the government terminology for the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s], about thirteen Iranian Jews were martyred and many more wounded. Let me tell you something: if Iran were under attack, I’d be the first person to put my entire life and expertise at my nation’s disposal.”

  “With the nuclear issue,” I said, “do you feel as a minority that you are under pressure to tow the government line?”

  “No, no! But we are completely with the nation in the exercising of its rights and in what’s to the benefit of the country. You can see that we suffer from electricity shortages, from gasoline shortages—we need alternative sources of energy, such as nuclear. This is our right, and we Jews are no different from any other Iranian in defending and demanding those rights. Why would we be?”

  “So you don’t see any serious problems for the Jewish community in Iran?”

  “No, in fact I see better and better times ahead.”

  “And the najess issue? Unclean, in an Islamic nation?”

  “That’s no longer an issue. After Imam Khomeini issued his fatwa about the ‘people of the book,’ the issue of Jews being ‘unclean’ has disappeared from the culture.” Moreh-Sedegh’s phone rang again, and he seemed a little distracted. I knew that he had made an appointment with someone on the phone earlier to have lunch at a hotel, and I didn’t want to hold him up.

  “I want to thank you for your time,” I said, standing up. “I should let you get back to your work.”

  “No, not at all. I’m happy to answer any questions,” replied Moreh-Sedegh. “But I do have a favor to ask you. Foreigners like to write about all the problems the Jews of Iran face, exaggerate those problems, and this works against us. Anything that is against the interests of the nation we see as against our interests.”

  I left Moreh-Sedegh, thinking he was a suitable replacement for the perhaps more sophisticated Motamed, that he was someone who, fiercely proud of being Iranian, was also willing to be a crusader for Jewish rights. Although no Jew living in Iran would, despite his contention that there are no restrictions, voice a political opinion contrary to Iran’s stance on Israel, I believed him when he said that he would be among the first to defend his nation should Israel ever mount an attack. I think that most Muslims in Iran, even Moreh-Sedegh’s fellow parliamentarians, believe it too. And although Jews and other minorities didn’t face as much discrimination as in the past simply because they were considered “unclean,” as his own job as a surgeon, tending to less sophisticated sick Muslims from the poorer neighborhoods, testified, Moreh-Sedegh was a bit too generous in dismissing the issue entirely, for too many Iranian clerics, and many ordinary Muslims, still believe that a Jew or a Christian is unclean, and therefore untouchable and unequal, until he or she converts. That is one reason why there are two kitchens at the Dr. Sapir Hospital.

  I saw Moreh-Sedegh again in May 2009, only a couple of weeks before the presidential election. I had called him and asked if he would be willing to grant an interview to Ann Curry of NBC News, whom he didn’t know. “If you insist,” he said to me on the phone, “and how’s Khatami, by the way? What a pity he isn’t running!” He was gracious but cautious in his interview with NBC, his first with the American media, and not unexpectedly, he repeated what he said to me a few months earlier. “I don’t like to interview with the American press because they tend to make it look like we Jews have a terrible time in Iran.”

  Moreh-Sedegh remained a parliamentarian after the disputed election of 2009, although as a minority representative, he is not considered in any political camp, neither reform nor conservative. Ahmadinejad, however, perhaps in an effort to rehabilitate his image with both Iranian and American Jews, included him in his delegation when he traveled to attend the UN General Assembly less than three months after his questionable re-election. Inexplicably, the United States delayed in issuing Moreh-Sedegh a visa, perhaps in an effort to dissuade him from appearing by Ahmadinejad’s side, thus granting the president a minor propaganda victory, but the Jewish member of Parliament eventually joined the president’s delegation in New York, which included other parliamentarians. The election crisis continued to dominate headlines in the West, however, and Moreh-Sedegh—much to his relief, I imagine—seemed to be of no interest to the media, if it even knew he was on American soil.

  A FEW DAYS after my first meeting with Moreh-Sedegh in 2008, I decided to raise the question of anti-Semitism and religious freedom in Iran with a senior cleric who, after all, could be definitive about what an Islamic democracy would tolerate. I called on Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Bojnourdi, head of the Imam Khomeini Center for Islamic Studies and a cleric who had a close relationship with the founder of the Islamic Republic (originally Iraqi, he lived in Najaf for many years, as did Khomeini), I was aware that his extremely liberal views made him likely to be more favorably disposed to the Jewish community in Iran than some other, more fundamentalist Ayatollahs. He had, after all, happily sat with the chief rabbi of Tehran, Yousef Hamadani Cohen, and the Armenian bishop (as well as Maurice Motamed) at a farewell event for President Khatami held at the Ministry of Labor in 2005, which I attended. I was to meet Ayatollah Bojnourdi in his office on the campus of the theological institute, which was a short walk from where I stay in Tehran, and when he arrived a few minutes late for our appointment, he was sweating profusely from the hot Tehran sun. I waited until he settled in his office before I went in. His rotund figure was situated right in front of the air conditioner, which was blasting cold air on his face. I wondered if the Imam Khomeini Institute had its own generators, or if the government simply kept the institute on the grid, since a short while before, the electricity had gone out locally.

  “Besm’illah-o-rahman-o-rahim,” he began. He was well prepared, as the Ayatollahs always like to be, to talk, this time on the subject of minorities in Iran. “The three monotheistic religions,” he said, “Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, are, under the Constitution, protected in the Islamic Republic. They are completely free to practice their religion, their religious ceremonies, pursue their economic activities, but of course within the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They are completely under the protection of the Islamic Republic; and in fact the republic is obliged to protect them, to support them. As long as they don’t act against the laws of the state. If they do, they come out from under the protection. The laws we have now are applied to Muslim and non-Muslim alike. At any rate, the religion of Islam is a religion that respects all of the Abrahamic faiths, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, and they can all function within society, go to university, engage in commerce—there are no restrictions on them. As far as jobs go, there are certain posts where the requirement is Islam, where the laws of Isl
am state that the person must be a Muslim, but where there is no religious requirement, they can occupy those jobs.”

  “But given the current administration’s very harsh rhetoric toward Israel,” I said, “do you think that should Israel ever attack Iran, Iranian Jews might find themselves in a very uncomfortable position, particularly in danger of being attacked by some people?”

  “The people have enough wisdom,” said Bojnourdi. “What do the Jews have to do with Israel?” For a moment I thought that it might come as some relief to Jews worldwide that a senior Muslim cleric had just absolved them of any perceived sin with respect to Israel’s existence. “Even rabbis,” he continued, “denounce Israel. They say they are mortad [apostates]. Myself, when Israel was founded, I was a child, but I was in Najaf [Iraq]. All the rabbis there denounced the Israelis as apostates. Jews don’t occupy land; Jews don’t disturb the peace, or deny the rights of others! The Marja-e-taghlid [Grand Ayatollah] of Iraq at the time Israel was created, Ayatollah Esfahani, issued a fatwa forbidding anyone from attacking the life or property of any Jew. The Jews were different from Israelis. We have no issue with Jews. The Torah is a sacred book to us. We’re simply opposed to Israel.”

  “And just how do you see the future relations of Iran with the United States and Israel?” I asked.

  “There is no place for relations, friendly relations, with Israel,” he said coldly. “We consider them to have stolen land, to be occupying Muslim land, and they are committing genocide against Muslim people, the people of Palestine, the people of Lebanon, the people of Syria. They are an issue apart. As for America, if one day they stop threatening us, stop committing crimes against us, free our assets they have frozen, then we’ll have nothing against them.”