The Trial in Iran
the World should Watch
An
Islamic Reformation: The Most Promising Trend
Thomas L. Friedman
What's
going on in Iran today is, without question, the most promising
trend in the Muslim world. It is a combination of Martin Luther
and Tiananmen Square a drive for an Islamic reformation combined
with a spontaneous student-led democracy movement.
This movement faces a formidable opponent in Iran's conservative
clerical leadership. It can't provide a quick fix to what ails
relations between Islam and the West today. There is none. But
it is still hugely important, because it reflects a deepening
understanding by many Iranian Muslims that to thrive in the modern
era they, and other Muslims, need an Islam different from the
lifeless, anti- modern, anti-Western fundamentalism being imposed
in Iran and propagated by the Saudi Wahhabi clerics. This understanding
is the necessary condition for preventing the brewing crisis between
Islam and the West which was triggered by 9/11 from turning into
a war of civilizations.
To put it another way, what's going on in Iran today is precisely
the war of ideas within Islam that is the most important war of
all. We can kill Osama bin Laden and all his acolytes, but others
will spring up in their place. The only ones who can delegitimize
and root out
these forces in any sustained way are Muslim societies themselves.
And that will happen only when more Muslim societies undergo,
from within, their own struggle for democracy and religious reform.
Only
the disenchanted citizens of the Soviet bloc could kill Marx;
only Muslims fed up that their faith is being dominated by anti-modernists
can kill bin Ladenism and its offshoots. This struggle in Iran
is symbolized by one man, whose name you should know: Hashem Aghajari,
a former Islamic revolutionary and now a college professor, who
was arrested Nov. 6 and sentenced to
death by the Iranian hard-liners triggering a student uprising
after giving a speech on the need to rejuvenate Islam with an
"Islamic Protestantism."
Mr. Aghajari's speech was delivered on the 25th anniversary of
the death of Ali Shariati, one of the Iranian revolution's most
progressive thinkers. In the speech translated by the invaluable
MEMRI service he often cited Mr. Shariati as his inspiration.
He began by noting that just as "the Protestant movement
wanted to rescue Christianity from the clergy and the church hierarchy,"
so Muslims must do something similar today. The Muslim clergymen
who have come to dominate their faith, he said, were never meant
to have a monopoly on religious thinking or be allowed to ban
any new interpretations in light of modernity.
"Just as people at the dawn of Islam conversed with the Prophet,
we have the right to do this today," he said. "Just
as they interpreted what was conveyed [to them] at historical
junctures, we must do the same. We cannot say: `Because this is
the past we must accept it without question.' . . . This is not
logical. For years, young people were afraid to open a Koran.
They said, `We must go ask the mullahs what the Koran says.' Then
came Shariati, and he told the
young people that those ideas were bankrupt. [He said] you could
understand the Koran using your own methods. . . . The religious
leaders taught that if you understand the Koran on your own, you
have committed a crime. They feared that their racket would cease
to exist if young people learned [the Koran] on their own."
He continued: "We need a religion that respects the rights
of all a progressive religion, rather than a traditional religion
that tramples the people. . . . One must be a good person, a pure
person. We must not say that if you are not with us we can do
whatever we want to you. By behaving as we do, we are trampling
our own religious principles."
Mr. Aghajari concluded: "Today, more than ever, we need the
`Islamic humanism' and `Islamic Protestantism' that Shariati advocated.
While [Iran's clerical leaders] apparently do not recognize human
rights, this principle has been recognized by our Constitution.
. . . The [Iranian regime] divides people into insiders and outsiders.
They
can do whatever they want to the outsiders. They can go to their
homes, steal their property, slander them, terrorize them and
kill them because they were outsiders. Is this Islamic logic?
When there is no respect for human beings?"
Mr. Aghajari refused to appeal his death sentence, saying his
whole conviction was a farce. But his lawyer appealed on his own.
Mr. Aghajari's fate now hangs in the balance. Watch this story.
It's the most important trial in the world today.
