یادداشت ها و برداشت ها

خوش تر آن باشد که سر دلبران گفته آید در حدیث دیگران - بخش دو

2010-10-22T20:24:00.000+03:30

هنرور: تاکید ها و برجسته سازی ها از من است و در اصل موجود نیست

Human rights in Iran 1998

1998 Annual Report for Iran

AI REPORT 1998: IRAN

(This report covers the period January-December 1997)

Hundreds of political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, were held. Some were detained without charge or trial; others were serving long prison sentences imposed after unfair trials. Torture and ill-treatment continued to be reported. Judicial punishments of flogging were carried out. Several ''disappearances'' and possible extrajudicial executions were reported. At least 143 people were executed, including possible prisoners of conscience, and an unknown number remained under sentence of death, some after unfair trials.

In May Hojjatoleslam val Moslemin Sayed Mohammad Khatami was elected President. In his first press conference, he was reported to have said: ''We hope to gradually witness a more legal society… with more clearly defined rights and duties for citizens and the government''.

The government continued to face armed opposition from the Iraq-based People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (pmoi) and organizations such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (kdpi), Arab groups in Khuzestan, and Baluchi groups in Sistan-Baluchistan.

The un Special Representative on the Islamic Republic of Iran stated in his report to the un General Assembly in October that ''There are certainly many areas in which change is required in order to meet existing international norms and… to respect the freedom and dignity of the Iranian people''. He noted the apparent continuing sharp increase in the use of the death penalty and called on the government, ''as a matter of urgency'', to reverse this trend.

Incidents of civil unrest were reported in several parts of the country. In February scores of oil workers were arrested, following apparently non-violent protests in Tehran, the capital, over pay and conditions. Most were later released, but two oil workers died in custody and several dozen oil workers, and up to 50 workers from the food and textile industries who were arrested subsequently, were believed to remain in detention at the end of the year.

Prisoners of conscience held during the year included at least 12 members of the Baha'i religious minority, four of whom were under sentence of death. In January the Supreme Court confirmed the death sentences against Dhabihullah Mahrami and Musa Talibi. Reports suggested that although they had been charged with apostasy, they were convicted of espionage (seeAmnesty International Report 1997).

Faraj Sarkouhi, a magazine editor who ''disappeared'' for about seven weeks in 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997), was released from unacknowledged detention in December 1996 and rearrested at the end of January 1997. He was tried in camera in September by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran on charges of spreading ''propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran'', and was sentenced to one year's imprisonment. He was a prisoner of conscience.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was reportedly arrested in mid-November by the security forces, after making a speech which apparently criticized the leadership of Iran and which provoked widespread demonstrations against him in several cities. He was believed to have been held under house arrest in Qom for several years (see Amnesty International Report 1997). After his arrest, his son was reported to have been badly beaten and his offices ransacked, allegedly by the security forces. By the end of the year, there was no indication of his whereabouts nor any details of the charges against him.

Ebrahim Yazdi, leader of the Iran Freedom Movement, an opposition group, was reportedly called for questioning by revolutionary prosecutors, then arrested and taken to Evin prison. The day before his arrest, Ebrahim Yazdi had signed a petition in support of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. He was released on bail in late December. Akbar Ghanji, publisher of the literary magazine Rah-e Now (the New Way) and a member of the Iran Freedom Movement, was reportedly arrested in December. He remained held without charge at the end of the year.

Shi'a religious leaders opposed to government policies, and scores of their followers, continued to be detained. Most were possible prisoners of conscience. Some were held without trial; others were imprisoned following unfair trials. At least three Grand Ayatollahs were believed to remain under house arrest, including Grand Ayatollah Sayed Hassan Tabataba'i-Qomi, who was reportedly denied access to medical treatment for heart disease. Ayatollah Ya'sub al-Din Rastgari also reportedly remained under house arrest (seeAmnesty International Report 1997).

Several followers of Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammad Shirazi were detained during the year. In January Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori, a well-known religious figure and writer, his wife, and Sayed Hossein Fali were arrested in Qom. There were reports that they were beaten during arrest and tortured in detention. Sayed Hossein Fali was reported to have been released in June. Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori was said to have been sentenced in July to two and a half years' imprisonment by the Special Court for the Clergy, whose procedures fell far short of international standards. In October, five other followers of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, including Reza Sultani, were reported to have been arrested and they remained held incommunicado at the end of the year.

Seven students arrested in November 1995, apparently on account of their links with Grand Ayatollah Shirazi (see Amnesty International Reports 1996 and 1997), were released in June. However, two of them, Aman Allah Bushehri and Sheikh Mohammad Qahtani, were reportedly rearrested in July and August respectively.

Several followers of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi were released during the year, including Mohammad Fazel Mohammad al-Saffar and Mohammad Ghaffari, who were conditionally released in January.

Members of minorities continued to be arrested. For example, Dimitri Bellos, a church worker, was reportedly arrested in August in Isfahan, days before he was due to leave Iran, and held incommunicado until October when he was reportedly allowed one family visit. He was reported to have been conditionally released in December pending further inquiries.

Other political prisoners, arrested in previous years and held without charge or trial, included scores of people arrested following demonstrations in Tabriz (see Amnesty International Report 1997) and hundreds of others arrested on suspicion of offences such as espionage, ''propagating pan-Turkism'' or ''counter-revolution''.

Political prisoners continued to be unfairly tried (see previous Amnesty International Reports). Detainees were reportedly denied access either to any legal counsel or to a lawyer of their choice, despite legislation providing for the right to legal representation. Trials before special courts, such as the Special Court for the Clergy, fell far short of international standards.

Political prisoners serving long prison terms after unfair trials included supporters of the pmoi; at least 10 members of the Mohajerin movement (followers of Dr 'Ali Shari'ati); members of left-wing organizations such as the Tudeh Party, Peykar, and factions of the Organization of People's Fedaiyan of Iran; supporters of Kurdish groups such as Komala and the kdpi; and supporters of other groups representing ethnic minorities such as Baluchis and Arabs.

Former Deputy Prime Minister 'Abbas Amir Entezam, a possible prisoner of conscience, who had been held in a government-owned house in Tehran (see Amnesty International Reports 1996 and 1997), was reportedly told in May that he was free to leave the house.

Reports of torture and ill-treatment continued throughout the year. Most of the detained followers of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, including the five arrested since July, were reportedly tortured. Methods included beatings, severe burns, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, threatened executions and threats to relatives.

At least two people arrested following the protests by oil workers in February (see above) were reported to have died in custody as a result of torture. Hashem Kameli, who was said to suffer from a heart condition, reportedly died as a result of torture. Gholam Barzegar reportedly died after being beaten with rifle butts by Revolutionary Guards. No independent investigations were known to have been carried out into these deaths or into deaths in custody in previous years.

Judicial punishments amounting to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, including flogging and stoning, continued to be imposed. Sentences of flogging were reported for a wide range of offences, sometimes in conjunction with prison sentences or the death penalty (see below).

''Disappearances'' continued to be reported. Morteza Firouzi, the editor of Iran News, ''disappeared'' for over 10 weeks following his arrest in June. In November an Iranian newspaper reported that he had been arrested on espionage charges. The whereabouts of 'Ali Tavassoli, who went missing in Azerbaijan in 1995, remained unknown (see Amnesty International Reports 1996 and 1997).

Several people were killed in circumstances suggesting that they may have been extrajudicially executed. In February the body of Abraham Zalzadeh, a magazine editor,was found, reportedly with multiple stab wounds. His magazine, Me'yar, was said to have been forced to close after it published an article criticizing the government. Reports suggested that he may have been arrested and killed by members of the Iranian secret service. The authorities apparently failed to investigate his death.

Further evidence emerged that the Iranian authorities were responsible for the killings of Iranian dissidents, both inside Iran and abroad, in previous years. In April, four men were convicted by a German court of killing three leaders of the kdpi and an interpreter in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 1992. The court found that the killings had been ordered by Iran's political leadership through a ''Committee for Special Operations'', whose members were reported to include the Leader of the Islamic Republic, the President, the Minister of Information and Security and other security officials. The Iranian authorities continued to deny involvement in the killings.

The trial in Turkey continued of two men accused of killing a pmoi member in Turkey in 1992 on the orders of the Iranian authorities (see Amnesty International Reports 1993 and 1997).

The threat of extrajudicial execution continued to extend to many Iranian nationals abroad, as well as to non-Iranians. Prominent individuals and institutions in Iran, including the head of the 15 Khordad Foundation, Ayatollah Sheikh Hassan Sanei, continued to call for the death of British writer Salman Rushdie and to offer rewards for his killing (see previous Amnesty International Reports). The un Commission on Human Rights, in its resolution on the situation of human rights in Iran, called on the government inter alia to ''provide satisfactory written assurances that it does not support or incite threats to the life of Mr Rushdie''. The government failed to condemn, or put an end to, such threats.

The death penalty continued to be used extensively. As in previous years, it was imposed for a wide range of often vaguely worded offences – including political offences and those relating to freedom of belief – sometimes after unfair trials. Some executions were carried out in public. At least seven people, including five women, were sentenced to death by stoning; three men and three women were reportedly stoned to death in October in Khazar Abad. At least 143 executions were reported, although the real number was believed to be considerably higher.

Hedayatollah Zendehdel and Abolghasem Majd-Abkahi, who were sentenced to death in July 1996 after an unfair trial on mainly political charges, were reportedly hanged in January. There were unconfirmed reports that Sheyda Khoramzadeh Isfahani, the wife of Abolghasem Majd-Abkahi, was executed in September. Of the four others tried in the same case, one, 'Alireza Yazdanshenas, was executed and three were sentenced to long prison terms and to 110 to 200 lashes (seeAmnesty International Report 1997).

In August Zoleykhah Kadkhoda was reportedly arrested, charged with having sexual relations outside marriage, and sentenced to death by stoning. She was buried up to her waist in a ditch and stoned within 24 hours of her arrest. She was reportedly confirmed as dead by doctors, but revived in the morgue and was taken to hospital. There were reports that she could face execution if she recovered. The outcome of her appeal for clemency was not known at the end of the year.

Gholamreza Khoshrou Kouran Kordieh, who was convicted of multiple kidnap, rape and murder, was publicly hanged from a crane in Shahrak Rah-Ahan in August after receiving 214 lashes.

Also in August, Mohammad Assadi, a lawyer sentenced to death in March after an unfair political trial, was executed. The un Special Representative stated in his report to the un General Assembly (see above) that he deplored the failure of the government ''to respond to his request for full details of the charges brought against Mr Assadi and the conviction entered against him, and its refusal to grant clemency in a case that, according to the information available to the Special Representative, may have involved no serious criminal activity''.

Amnesty International repeatedly called for the unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience; for a review of legislation which allows for the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience; and for a review of the cases of political prisoners, so that those unfairly tried or held without trial could be promptly and fairly tried on recognizably criminal charges or released.

The organization called on the authorities to ensure impartial and thorough investigations into allegations of torture, ''disappearances'' and extrajudicial executions, and to bring those responsible to justice. It also appealed for cruel, inhuman or degrading judicial punishments and death sentences to be commuted. In an open letter, Amnesty International urged the President to give urgent consideration to the patterns of serious and widespread human rights violations.

Amnesty International continued to investigate reports that some opposition groups were holding detainees.

In May Amnesty International published Iran: Eight years of death threats – Salman Rushdie, and in June Iran: Human rights violations against Shi'a Religious leaders and their followers.

Amnesty International received some replies from the authorities on individual cases, but these failed to address the organization's serious concerns and its delegates continued to be denied access to the country.

اندر سر و سرّ دانشمندان دین و اندیشمندان نوین - 1

2010-10-20T22:46:00.000+03:30

هنرور: تحقیق زیر که از فرزین یزدانفر از وبسایت بوف کور نقل می شود، از محدودیت منابع رنج می برد، اما در عین حال متن انگلیسی به این سادگی و واضح و مختصری کمتر سراغ دارم و برای آشنایی با موضوع، متن مفیدی به نظرم می رسد:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE `ULAMA AND THE INTELLIGENTSIA IN IRAN:

An Historical Analysis
(From the Early 19th Century to the Early 1950s)

by
Farzin Yazdanfar

Sattar Khan & Fadaiyan in Tabriz

Nineteenth century Iran evidenced the advent of a new era of political re-thinking in the form of religious revolts. These religious revolts were, in fact, attempts to re-formulate aspects of the Shi'i dogma and, more importantly, to question both existing religious and temporal patterns of leadership. That these revolts were intended to challenge both the religious leadership of the `ulama and the secular leadership of the Qajars was due to the fact that the rise of the Qajar dynasty in the early nineteenth century coincided with a re-assertion of Shi'i theological technique, and this re-assertion had placed heavy emphasis on the functions and duties of the `ulama. As a result, the `ulama (as socio-religious leaders) had become as powerful and influential as the secular Qajar leaders.

Although the first Qajar monarch was busy fighting the external and internal enemies of Iran and, therefore, the condition of the country was still too unsettled to permit any widespread manifestation of clerical influence, the second Qajar monarch, Fath Ali Shah, created a relative calmness, and this relative order and security provided by Qajar administration established the environment in which the `ulama were to fulfill their role. The `ulama's influence grew as they took control over educational and judicial systems. While the `ulama imposed their religious policies and required strict adherence to the law, Shi'i intellectuals continually offered alternative doctrinal views to those of the `ulamas. However, they failed to curb the `ulama's influence as long as Fath Ali Shah was alive. With the rise of his son, Muhammad Shah, to power, the tension between clerical and secular authorities became more explicit due to the fact that Muhammad Shah made no attempt to secure any kind of working relationship with the `ulama. Muhammad Shah's inability to implement his father's policies to restrain the `ulama's hostility to the state provided the Shi'i intellectual dissidents with a golden opportunity to exploit the difference between the `ulama and the state. As a result, important religious movements and revolts began in these years.

One of these movements which was important for Iran from the mid-nineteenth century on was the messianic movement known as Babism. The Babi movement, which developed into open socio-religious messianic revolt, can, in part, be understood as one of several mass religio-political messianic movements that appeared under the initial impact of the industrialized West in the Third World. During the reign of Muhammad Shah, the strength of foreign powers grew and as a result Iran became subject to trade fluctuations; its agriculture was restructured to the detriment of some and its handicrafts were undermined. The Babi movement occurred possibly due to dislocations in Iranian life brought on by foreign encroachment because the ideological content of this movement supports the idea that it is not simply a traditional messianic revolt, but is, in addition, linked to new conditions brought by the Western presence.(1)

Babism was founded by Sayyid Ali Muhammad, later called the Bab (gate to the 12th Imam). He was a follower of a movement within Shi'ism named the Shaikhi movement. Shaikhi ideas included elements both more philosophical and more mystical than those of most orthodox Shi'is. However, what impressed Sayyid Ali Muhammad was the most important feature of Shaikhism which suggested that there was always a man in the world capable of interpreting the will of the Hidden Imam. Sayyid Ali Muhammad was so impressed by this idea that he proclaimed himself ‘Bab’ (the door to the Hidden Imam). Later on, after he was condemned by the `ulama as a heretic, he sometimes called himself the Hidden Imam himself, returned as was predicted to institute perfection on earth.

Although it is argued that "the contradiction between `ulama and state remained largely unchanged in spite of the rise of Babism and, in fact, Babism was ultimately no more than a side issue in the Qajar dynasty,"(2) the consequences of the rise of Babism should not be totally ignored. It is true that the Babis promised neither a new order nor an end to trade with foreign firms (although the movement was probably a reaction to growing foreign influence in Iran), however, the new doctrine fulfilled the desires and hopes of individuals who had traditionally shown dissatisfaction with prevailing institutionalized values and systems, whether religio-mystical or socio-political. Such late-nineteenth-century Iranian intellectuals as Mirza Agha Khan Kermani focused on what in the Babi teachings could be presumed to have some validity beyond the spiritual values of the religious movement. Even after Kermani's death, the next generation of advanced modernists, including free-thinking preacher Sayyid Jamal al-Din Isfahani and the editor of the leading newspaper, Mirza Jahangir Khan who played a dominant role in the Constitutional Revolution, championed the Babi Azali sect because it had still kept up the spirit of revolt against the established socio-religious and political order.(3)

***

As mentioned earlier, Babism never achieved its aims, however, it left an important legacy to the late-nineteenth-century Iranian thinkers: the idea that the relation of man to the conditions of his existence was complex and subject to change and development and, therefore, change was conceived as something not to be feared but to be welcomed. However, contrary to the Bab, these thinkers attempted to adopt Islam to the social change they thought necessary for late-nineteenth-century Iran and focused on those aspects of Shi'i Islam that could be adjusted to their new ideas. In order to avoid alienating the `ulama, they decided to put their heterodox religious ideas in the background and sought to accommodate their Western ideas to Islam.

With the exception of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani who attempted to restate the old concept of the Islamic community as a socio-political entity, this group of Iranian intellectuals spoke more of Iran as a nation than of Islam. Although they wished to see religious reform, their message was nationalist. They made use of Islam, which was actually identified with a nationalist movement of change and revolution. However, they did not believe in Islam. Some of them, like Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, even condemned Islam as the cause for national decadence and found in Islam a convenient scapegoat for the tarnished world image of their country. While condemning Islam, they sought to restore the pre-Islamic cultural legacy and attribute to it due credit for past grandeur. However, around 1890, these secular Westernized thinkers had to ally themselves with the `ulama, whom they had earlier regarded in writing as reactionaries and foes to progress. The reason for the tactic of alliance with the religious leaders and making use of the `ulama was due to the fact that they had lost hope in tentative attempts at reform undertaken by such top governmental men as Amir Kabir, Mirza Husayn Khan Sepahsalar and others. They were living in an age of mediocrity when there was cultural sterility and social stagnation, when Iran had been humiliated at the hands of foreign enemies. In order to change the situation and save Iran from further Western conquests, they had to ally themselves with the `ulama because they saw the religious nature of much of the mass reaction against foreign incursions which they opposed on other grounds, and hoped to make use of this reaction in order to halt the government's sale of natural resources to foreigners.

The `ulama's ability to mobilize both the resentments and the religious feelings of the masses impressed the late-nineteenth-century Iranian reformists so immensely that even the leading reformist intellectual of this era, Malkum Khan, began to appeal mostly in religious terminology to non-official religious personages. Malkum, whose Islam was surely nominal, used Islam as a vehicle for introducing European inspired reforms because he was convinced that the only way he could make these reforms acceptable to the masses was to present them in an Islamic guise.

Another intellectual of this era, who is far more important than Malkum Khan, is Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani who, like Malkum, wished to present the ideas of reform in an Islamic guise in accord with the growing Islamic reaction against Western incursions. Because of his belief that the West was an aggressive conqueror and oppressor and that Westernizers were bent on undermining the Muslim sense of identity by turning their conquered subjects away from their own proud traditions, he hoped that Islam would be reformed from above without splitting the community of Muslims and be used as a vehicle for strengthening the Islamic world and defeating imperialism. He wanted to reinforce pride in Islam and to use existing Islamic sentiment as an ideological weapon in fighting the Christian Western oppressors.

Although al-Afghani ignored the developing nationalism that ultimately made his Pan-Islamism abortive and although he never suggested a consistent and definitive reform program for creating an idealized picture of the age of the prophet and the first four caliphs, his tactic of allying with the `ulama was successful. By the late 1880s and the early 1890s, he had succeeded in winning most of the political and religious radicals over to his tactic of attacking the government's concession-granting policy, especially on religious grounds. The government's granting the British a monopoly concession on all dealings in tobacco in the early 1890s provided Afghani and his groups with an ideal occasion because a large number of Iranians could be aroused due to the fact that they were involved in the growing, sale, and the smoking of tobacco which was to be handled by infidels. It could be argued that such a monopoly was against Shi'i law and that the government was selling the abode of Islam to unbelievers. Therefore, the tobacco users could be asked not to use tobacco on religious grounds. They responded to the `ulama's call and refused to use tobacco. Also, the merchants whose profits and independence would be cut by such a monopoly were asked to participate in the movement. Their participation in the movement gave it rebellious proportions which finally led to the cancellation of the monopoly concession. Therefore, Afghani's tactic of allying with the religious radicals in the Tobacco movement was a success and this success impressed the political and intellectual radicals so immensely that, after the movement, they tried continually to join with the leading `ulama.

However, the `ulama's participation in the oppositional activity against the government was not just because of the non-religious and unorthodox political radicals' need for their help in mobilizing the resentments and religious feelings of the masses. The `ulama had their own motives for opposition to the tyrannical rule of the Qajar monarchs. There are, in fact, grounds for discerning a stance(4) of opposition to tyranny as one of the fundamental characteristics of the Twelver Shi'i Islam (Ithna 'Ashari Shi'i Islam). According to the political theory of the Twelver Shi'i Islam, which is part of its overall definition of the Imamate, Imams are the true leaders of the Muslim community and to them belongs all legitimate rule. According to this theory, the possibility of the legitimate exercise of power disappeared from the world when the Twelfth Imam, Al-Mahdi, went into major occultation in 874. Since this occultation still endures, all secular states are usurpatory and all secular rulers are usurpers. The Twelfth Imam's will is supposed to be interpreted by a leading religious authority (mujtahed) who is to guide the community. He, in his capacity as marja', is also liable to dispense guidance on political matters in a sense opposed to the will of the state and to become a leader of opposition.

The political theory of the Twelver Shi'i also reveals the revolutionary nature of this branch of Islam. According to this theory, Al-Mahdi is "the invisible ruler of the universe. Before the end of time, he will appear again on earth to bring equity and justice to fill it with peace after it has been torn by war and injustice."(5) Therefore, according to Twelver Shi'i Muslims, the return of the Twelfth Imam is to bring about the elevation of the oppressed and the aspiration for his return is, in fact, an aspiration for social justice and the relief of the downtrodden.

In addition to the ideological factor, there were other casual factors for the `ulama's inclination to ally themselves with the political radicals. The Western economic incursions of the late nineteenth century had put the merchants under pressure and since the `ulama had strong family and traditional ties to the craft guilds and other business groups which had felt the pinch of rising taxes and growing foreign competition, they were appealed to to voice these grievances because they were the only ones who could voice popular grievances with relative impunity. Furthermore, the increasing Western influence and governmental concession-granting to Westerners was seen by the `ulama as a threat both to Islam and to their prerogatives. These casual factors made the `ulama participate in the oppositional activities which resulted in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1906.

The `ulama had a dual target for their opposition: first of all, they were against foreign domination. Secondly, they were against domestic tyranny. They bequeathed this duality of concern to the Constitutionalists. The Constitutionalist Reformers, who had found allies from among clerical dissidents whom they had converted to their secular cause, had to present their plans of governmental change as sanctioned by Islam. In other words, they had to soften the bluntness of their secular and nationalist goals and speak the language of Islam. However, they wished to see Islam adapt itself to the reality of new social and cultural conditions. They wished to use Islam as a vehicle for change and thus attempted to accommodate foreign concepts to the traditional system. They put mashru`iyat equal to mashrutiyat. They wished to form a government according to the law of Islam, justice and equality, or according to science and civilization. However, some of the `ulama, including the most prominent mujtahed of Tehran (Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri) who had accepted this equation at the beginning of the Revolution, realized that the non-religious reformers had begun to speak more freely on the meaning of Western constitution and now had faced the idea of a committee of five mujtaheds for approving the proposed laws (in addition to Sharia), so they passed into active opposition. Therefore, it can be concluded that the essential differences between Sharia and the Constitution had been recognized by the `ulama long before the movement started, thus the `ulama’s participation in the movement was not the result simply of circumstantial pressure and confusion created by secularist's stratagems and, in fact, there was continuity between the `ulama's policies before and after the Revolution.(6)

The secularists, who knew that the defection of the `ulama would endanger their goals, continued to seek the `ulama's help and, even in their speeches, they continued to cite the Quran. However, many of the upper `ulama, who could see clearly where things were heading, withdrew their support for the secularists and defected from the movement.

Although the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 - dividing Iran into two spheres of influence - prolonged the fragile alliance between the religious and non-religious radicals, the defection of Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri concomitant with the revival of Russian power and the Anglo-Russian toppling of the Revolutionary Government in 1911 caused the Revolution to fail. However, the Revolution failed when the secularists and their allies, the clerical dissidents, had already called for religious reforms and had already transformed their calls into demands for the secularization of important social institutions controlled by the `ulama. In fact, many of the `ulama participated in the revolution without having perceived the nature of what was being demanded and its implications for themselves and Iran.(7) They agreed on the compatibility of Western concepts with Islam without having perceived that these Western concepts and modern social forces would achieve for official Shi'i Islam what the traditional leadership had continually frowned upon, that is, direct participation in temporal affairs. Therefore, although the Revolution failed mainly due to the fact that some of the leading `ulama had defected, the Constitutionalists gained more through secularizing important social institutions which were under the control of the `ulama.

The secularists' success was also caused by "the inability of the `ulama to provide any real answer to political, social, and economic problems facing Iran in the second half of the nineteenth century. In fact, the `ulama lacked an accurate comprehension of problems deriving from Western impact partly because of the scholastic nature of their learning that was the basis of their entire function, and partly because of the essential lack of hierarchic organization that would have been an obstacle to any active re-shaping of the political structure. Also, ideologically, the continued occultation of the Twelfth Imam which meant the absence of all legitimized authority from worldly affairs would have prevented the `ulama from re-shaping the norms of political life and the bases of the state.(8) Therefore, the attitude of the `ulama was only quietism or opposition while they could have used the genuine potentialities of ijtihad, much wanted by a few reformers, instead of using it in a strictly legalistic sense."(9)

***

As mentioned earlier, although the Constitution was attained, the rifts between some of the leading `ulama and the Constitutionalists appeared as the Revolution developed. It was also mentioned that these rifts, together with such other causes as the Anglo-Russian toppling of the Revolutionary Government in 1911, eventually led to the ultimate failure of the movement.(10) The failure of the Constitutional movement and the failure of all major socio-political forces to establish order and stability, as well as the impact of World War I on the political community, gave rise to the political decay of Iran. This situation set the stage for anti-revolutionary military revolts and the restoration of the strong central government. In 1921, through a coup d’état which was planned and stage-managed by British power, Reza Shah came to power. The emergence of Reza Shah was, in fact, a response to the internal situation and the course of domestic events after the Constitutional Revolution.

Although the attainment of the Constitution had reduced the power of the clerical classes, they still had some influence on politics and society. However, the rise of Reza Shah to power was detrimental to the religious strata. He confined the activities of the religious strata to religious affairs and prevented them from exercising any influence upon the political authority. Removal of general education from the control of the religious strata, the replacement of religious laws by Westernized codes, and the secularization of social life were all detrimental to these strata.

In this period, several attempts were made to introduce modernization and social reforms. These social reforms won the approval of some of the intellectuals, including Kasravi. Although Kasravi and his co-thinkers approved Reza Shah's anti-religious measures, especially the expulsion of the mullas from public life, they praised Islam, in its original form, as a genuine ideology (din) which was able to solidify tribes, towns, regions, and peoples into a broad Muslim empire with one omnipotent God. By din, or a genuine ideology, they meant something more than the usual meaning religion. By ‘din’ they meant an ideology that effectively integrated the individual into a nation, instilling in him social consciousness, cultural ethos, and values oriented toward the public good. As Kasravi himself put it, “My use of the term ‘din’ is different from those of others. I use it to describe an ideology that teaches people the true meaning of life and gives them a practical code of ethics . . . when groups and individuals have a code of ethics, they are able to live in harmony, and living in harmony, they are able to achieve the cooperation necessary to wage the all-important struggle for national progress.”(11) Therefore, according to his definition, the `ulama's Islam was no longer a true Muslim ideology because it had lost its internal cohesiveness and had been divided into numerous competing factions.

Kasravi, who had lived through the turmoil before and after the Constitutional Revolution and had faced the divisions splintering Iran, came to believe that factionalism and disunity among the masses was the chief reason for underdevelopment in Iran. He believed factionalism was caused by religious sectarianism and criticized all of the existing religious sects in Iran on theological and metaphysical grounds. Among these sects, he criticized Shi'ism the most and called it "a perversion whose origin lay neither in ethics nor in theological issues, but in a sordid struggle for dynastic power."(12) He exposed what he considered to be the fallacies in Shi'ite Islam. He criticized Shi'ism for fostering anti-state attitudes and for differentiating sharply between the government and the people. He called the political theory of Ithna `Ashari Shi'i Islam an anti-democratic political theory, claiming that sovereignty resided in the Imams not in the people. As he himself put it, “Shi'ism and democracy are two contradictory forces. According to the former, the authority to rule resides in the Imam and his `ulama. But according to the latter, it rests with the people and their representatives. Some Shi'i theologians, however, try to brush away this contradiction by arguing that democracy really means the rule of the majority and that the majority in Iran desire the guidance of the `ulama. But this line of argument has two main fallacies. First, it ignores a fundamental principle in democracy - that no group, such as mullas, can claim special privileges. Second, it confuses true democracy, which is representative government, with majority rule, forgetting that if democracy meant the rule of the majority, then Iran should have not obtained a constitution, since at the time of the Revolution the bulk of the population - especially the peasantry and the lower classes - wanted Royal Despotism.” (13)

Although Kasravi alienated the `ulama and antagonized the faithful with his militant anti-clericalism, his influence on the national intelligentsia was so strong that he attracted a number of disciples. The chief reason for the attractiveness of Kasravi's secularist ideas was Reza Shah's measures for the secularization of social life. However, after the abdication of Reza Shah, a certain freedom of expression and controversy sprang up, of which a segment of the `ulama made use. In order to curb the influence of the Tudeh Communist Party, an alliance was made between the government elite and the religious elite, at a time when the former was seeking the support of the latter. Therefore, the second half of the 1940s witnessed a re-awakening of the `ulama's interest in political activity.

By the early 1950s, the `ulama had become actively involved in politics. Mosaddeq's premiership provided the clerics with a golden opportunity. The majority of the `ulama and clerics who were connected with the Bazaar communities joined the nationalitarian movement under the leadership of Mosaddeq. The religious strata, who were attracted to the movement partly due to its anti-colonial, anti-communist, and anti-dictatorial orientations, supported Mosaddeq at the beginning of the movement. However, as soon as they saw the militant irreligiosity that had increasingly shown itself during the last days of Mossedeq's rule, they defected from the movement and, when the Royalist Coup d’état occurred in August 1953, they lent it their support. With this coup d’état, the political activity of the `ulama in this period ended and they passed into quietism.

Tekyeh Dawlat (c. 1894)

Notes:

1) Nineteenth-century Iran is not the only country where such a messianic movement occurred after the early impact of the industrialized West. The Taiping Rebellion in China, the Ahmadiya and other groups in India or Pakistan, the Mahdist movement in the Sudan and a variety of Christian or semi-Christian movements in Africa and Latin America are other examples.
2) Algar, H., Religion and State in Iran, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969, p. 151.
3) After the Bab's death, Babism was divided into two sects: the Azali sect kept up the spirit of revolt against the established socio-religious and political order in contrast to the Bahais, who adopted an apolitical and universalist religious tone.
4) It should be noted that this stance was not exclusively inspired by the defects of the Qajar rule, and Twelver Shiism has contained the ideological basis for hostility to secular authority since about A.D. 1500 when the Safavid dynasty was established.
5) Nasr, H., Ideals and Realities of Islam, Boston: Beacon Press, 1972, p. 166.
6) These policies were different in nature. For instance, Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri, who had assisted the progressive elements in the Revolution, became reactionary after the attainment of the Constitution.
7) Although, as mentioned earlier, they knew the differences between Sharia (the Islamic law) and the Constitution, they did not know the implications of the Constitution (especially for themselves).
8) These considerations may help to account for the absence (before the 1978-1979 Revolution) of any extensive movement in Iran calling for the establishment of an Islamic state, comparable to the Muslim Brethrens in the Arab World and the Jama`at-e Eslami in Pakistan. Since the 1978-1979 Revolution, an Islamic State has been established because Khomeini's treatise constitutes a radical departure from the accepted norms of Shi’i tradition of faith.
9) Algar, H., Religion and State in Iran, Berkeley, University of California Press, p. 251.
10) Although a new form of government was adopted, fundamental changes were not made in the political institutions of the society and the Shah still had arbitrary power which limited the effectiveness of the new form of government.
11) Kasravi, A Message to European and American Intellectuals, 3rd printing, Tehran, 1312/1934, pp. 19-21.
12) Kasravi, Shi`igari, later published under the name Bekhvanand va Davari Kunand (They Should Read and Judge), Tehran, 1323/1945, pp. 11 and 23.
13) Kasravi, Shi`igari, Tehran, 1323/1945, pp. 91-92 and 99. Also, Kasravi, Dadgah (Court of Justice), Tehran, 1336/1975, p. 10.

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2010-10-20T22:34:00.000+03:30

Amnesty International

Title	Human Rights Violations Against Shi'a Religious Leaders and their Followers
Publisher	Amnesty International
Country	Islamic Republic of Iran
Publication Date	1 June 1997
Citation / Document Symbol	MDE/13/18/97
Reference	Amnesty International is a worldwide voluntary movement that works to prevent some of the gravest violations by governments of people's fundamental human rights. The main focus of its campaigning is to: free all prisoners of conscience people detained an
Cite as	Amnesty International, Human Rights Violations Against Shi'a Religious Leaders and their Followers, 1 June 1997, MDE/13/18/97, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6a9b610.html [accessed 16 October 2010]
Comments	Serious and widespread human rights violations continue in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979 victims have included a broad range of political opposition from members of left-wing groups to monarchists, as well as ethnic and religious minorities. There has also been a pattern of restrictions placed on Shi'a religious leaders opposed to fundamental tenets of the Iranian political system such as velayat-e faqih or governmental policies, and the arrest and detention of their followers. This pattern has continued through the 1990s. For many years little was known outside Iranian religious circles about human rights violations against members of these groups. In recent years, however, divisions between certain Shi'a religious leaders and the state appear to have deepened, and information about human rights violations against them and their followers have reached a wider audience. Dozens, if not hundreds of followers of religious leaders, have reportedly been arrested in recent years, and more particularly since 1995, often apparently in an attempt to pressurize the leaders to change their views or stop their opposition. At least three senior religious figures have also reportedly been placed under house arrest. Some of those detained are said to have been subjected to numerous methods of torture or ill-treatment, including beatings, severe burns, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, confinement in very small spaces, threatened executions and threats to relatives. A few have been sentenced to prison terms, sometimes accompanied by flogging, after apparently unfair trials. Others are still detained without trial, and the fate of some is unknown. Many, if not all, may be prisoners of conscience. On numerous occasions, Amnesty International has sought clarification of the reasons for the arrest and detention of such people, and their legal status. The organization has called for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience; for prompt and fair trials of political prisoners; for impartial investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment; for the prosecution of anyone found to have been responsible for abuses; and for compensation to be given to victims of torture or ill-treatment. The Iranian Government has ignored these calls and human rights violations are continuing. These violations breach Iran's solemn obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.

Human Rights Violations Against Shi'a Religious Leaders and their Followers

Dozens, if not hundreds of followers of religious leaders, have reportedly been arrested in recent years, and more particularly since 1995, often apparently in an attempt to pressurize the leaders to change their views or stop their opposition. At least three senior religious figures have also reportedly been placed under house arrest. Some of those detained are said to have been subjected to numerous methods of torture or ill-treatment, including beatings, severe burns, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, confinement in very small spaces, threatened executions and threats to relatives. A few have been sentenced to prison terms, sometimes accompanied by flogging, after apparently unfair trials. Others are still detained without trial, and the fate of some is unknown. Many, if not all, may be prisoners of conscience.

On numerous occasions, Amnesty International has sought clarification of the reasons for the arrest and detention of such people, and their legal status. The organization has called for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience; for prompt and fair trials of political prisoners; for impartial investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment; for the prosecution of anyone found to have been responsible for abuses; and for compensation to be given to victims of torture or ill-treatment.

The Iranian Government has ignored these calls and human rights violations are continuing. These violations breach Iran’s solemn obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.

1. Introduction

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 serious human rights violations have continued. Victims have included a broad range of political opposition from members of left-wing groups to monarchists, as well as ethnic and religious minorities.[1] There has also been a pattern of restrictions placed on Shi’a religious leaders opposed to fundamental tenets of the Iranian political system such as velayat-e faqih[2] or governmental policies, and the arrest and detention of their followers.[3] This pattern has continued through the 1990s. For many years little was known outside Iranian religious circles about human rights violations against members of these groups. In recent years, however, divisions between certain Shi’a religious leaders and the state appear to have deepened, and information about human rights violations against them and their followers has reached a wider public. Dozens, if not hundreds of followers of religious leaders, have reportedly been arrested in recent years, and more particularly since 1995. At least three senior religious figures are also reportedly held under house arrest. Some of those detained are said to have been tortured or ill-treated. A few have been sentenced to prison terms, sometimes accompanied by flogging, after unfair trials before special courts which operate outside the normal judicial framework. Others are still detained without trial, and the fate of some is unknown. Many, if not all, may be prisoners of conscience.
On numerous occasions, Amnesty International has sought clarification from the Iranian Government of the reasons for the arrest and detention of such people, and their legal status. The organization has called for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience; for prompt and fair trials of others; for impartial investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment; for the prosecution of anyone found to have been responsible for abuses; and for compensation to be given to victims of torture or ill-treatment. The authorities have responded to a number of the cases which Amnesty International has brought to their attention, and their responses have been reflected in this report. However, the information provided is usually of a very general nature, and is insufficient to allay Amnesty International’s concerns.

2. Background

The official state religion in Iran is Twelver Ja’fari Shi’a Islam. Its adherents believe that following the death of the Prophet Muhammad, there were 12 Imams who were the rightful spiritual and political leaders of the community of Muslims. The twelfth Imam is believed to have grown up in hiding and to have gone into occultation some 300 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, but is expected to return one day to resume his leadership.
In the absence of the Twelfth Imam, political and religious authority became separated in practice. In Iran, there were a number of royal dynasties which wielded political power, while religious authority remained with the ulema (clergy) and in particular in the concept of the marja-ye taqlid, or source of emulation. A marja must be a very learned and holy man who has attained the level of mojtahed[4] in Islamic law. Following the death of a marja, a new one is elected from among his followers. Other Shi’a Muslims then begin to seek to emulate the new marja, and treat his fatwas (Islamic legal edicts) as binding upon themselves. At any one time, there are usually a number of maraji-ye taqlid based in Shi’a communities around the world.
Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, himself a marja-ye taqlid, developed in his writings the political concept of the absolute authority of velayat-e faqih, or the leadership of the learned man, whereby overall political authority lies with the Leader, who must be a holy and pious man, as well as an expert in Islamic law and a marja. The concept of velayat-e faqih was enshrined as part of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran adopted in 1979[5], and Grand Ayatollah Khomeini became the first vali-ye faqih or Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, thereby uniting absolute religious and political authority in Iran in one person for the first time for centuries. Shortly before his death in 1989, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini issued a directive to amend the Constitution to separate these two functions on the grounds that there was no-one suitable to succeed him who possessed the political qualities necessary to be the Leader as well as being a marja. Although this amendment had not been passed at the time of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s death, the then President, Sayed Ali Khamenei, who was only a Hojjatoleslam at the time, but who was swiftly elevated to the rank of Ayatollah, was elected to the position of Leader by the 80-strong Assembly of Experts. The amendment[6] was ratified later in July 1989 in a referendum which also confirmed Ayatollah Khamenei’s appointment as Leader.
Not all other senior religious figures necessarily agreed with the concept of velayat-e faqih or in the way it was implemented. Other government policies, including the eight-year war with Iraq and human rights violations by the authorities, have also met with opposition. This has led to divisions between certain sectors of the religious hierarchy in Iran. The appointment of Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei as Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor did nothing to heal these divisions. Although now the current Leader with supreme political authority, Ayatollah Khamenei did not meet with the approval of several more senior figures in the religious hierarchy who regarded him as lacking religious credentials at the time of his appointment. Since then he has on several occasions sought the endorsement of all other senior Iranian religious figures (and at times of Shi’a leaders outside Iran) as being the most senior religious figure in Iran or in Shi’a Islam, whose rulings would be binding on all others, including other marjas. Such support has not been forthcoming from all quarters. It is within this context that the human rights violations against religious leaders and their followers described below have occurred.

3. The Special Court for the Clergy

The Special Court for the Clergy (Dadgah-e vizhe-ye Rouhaniyat) was established on the basis of a letter from Grand Ayatollah Khomeini dated 25 Khordad 1366 (15 June 1987)[7] which appointed Ali Razini as Judge (Hakem-e Shar’) and Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian as the Prosecutor for the Special Court for the Clergy. The functions and scope of the new court were described by Hojjatoleslam Fallahian in a press interview published in several newspapers on 7 July 1987. He stated that the court would “investigate crimes such as counter-revolution, corruption, fornication, unlawful acts, accusations which are incompatible with the status of the clergy, and all crimes committed by ‘pseudo-clergy’, both in terms of the ugly acts they commit and the effect they have on the reputation of the clergy”. The courts were to be set up in Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz and Shiraz, and later in other cities as necessary.
Following the issuance of this letter, work began on drafting legislation relating to the new court. The Regulations governing the Prosecutors’ Offices and Special Courts for the Clergy [the Regulations] were published in the Official Gazette of 7 October 1990, accompanied by a note dated 6 August 1990 from the Secretariat of the Leader to Hojjatoleslam val-moslemin Mohammadi-Reyshahri, the then Prosecutor of the Special Court for the Clergy. The note stated:
“...A copy of the Law concerning the organization of the Prosecutors’ Offices and Special Court for the Clergy, together with the scope of their jurisdiction and procedural regulations - which has been sanctioned by the eminent Leader - is sent to you to take the necessary action. The eminent Leader prescribed the following at the bottom of the text of the laws:
‘In the name of the Almighty. The [procedures stipulated] for the Prosecutors’ Offices and Special Court for the Clergy are hereby approved. May the Almighty grant you success. 14 Mordad 1366 (5 August 1990)’”
When laws which have been considered in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles), Iran’s parliament, are published in the Official Gazette, the date of approval in the Majles is stated. It is clear from the above, therefore, that this law was never considered by the Majles, an indication of the power the Leader has to pass legislation. This court also operated from June 1987 until October 1990 before becoming established in law, in violation of international standards for fair trial.
Under Article 1 of the Regulations, the court is under the supreme supervision of the Leader, who also appoints the Chief Prosecutor (Article 3) and the Judge of the First Branch of the court (Hakem-e Shar’) (Article 10). Other judges are appointed with the consent of the Leader (Article 11). The competence of the Court is defined in Article 13 as:
a)all general offences committed by clerics
b)all acts which are incompatible with the status of the clergy
c)all local disputes which can undermine public security when one of the parties to the dispute is a cleric
d)all affairs which the eminent Leader has assigned the special courts to deal with.
The last clause means that, theoretically, the competence of the court is unlimited, as the Leader who has absolute authority, can choose to assign any case to the courts. Criminal and civil cases against clerics should usually be tried in criminal or civil courts, unless the Chief Prosecutor decides that the Special Court for the Clergy is more suitable (Article 14). Article 15 then states that other prosecutors’ offices are not allowed to investigate and prosecute cases relating to the clergy over which it has been decided they have no jurisdiction, without special permission. However, non-clergy may also be tried before the court, under Article 31 which allows the prosecution of partners, accomplices and associates of clerics also charged before the court.
Under Article 26, the Prosecutors’ Offices of the Special Court for the Clergy have, among other things, the responsibility for:
-prosecuting those accused
-issuing search and arrest warrants
-issuing charge sheets
-carrying out the rulings (ahkam) of the court.
According to Articles 21-23, the police are required to undertake the necessary law enforcement in relation to cases before the Special Court for the Clergy. However, Article 25 stipulates that the Prosecutors’ Office is authorized to take independent action to employ individuals to carry out investigation and execute the verdicts and sentences of the court. This may explain reports that the Special Court for the Clergy has its own prisons, usually in the courthouse, and its own security forces who carry out arrests and interrogate prisoners, who are responsible directly to the Leader outside the ordinary law enforcement framework.
Furthermore, Article 34 states that “[w]rits and warrants issued are final after receiving the approval of the prosecutor and shall be conveyed to the defendant immediately”. This would appear to imply that a detention warrant, which may be issued in circumstances defined in Article 35 (including broadly defined categories such as “counter-revolutionary crimes”[8] and “instances where the freedom of the accused may cause corruption, such as violation of the honour and integrity of the [political] system and the clergy”) could not be challenged by the defendant, or be subject to any kind of judicial review. This raises the prospect of possible long-term pre-trial detention or detention without trial of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, without allowing them recourse to safeguards such as habeas corpus or amparo, or similar mechanisms, in clear violation of the most basic international human rights standards. It also appears to be borne out in practice, as Amnesty International has received reports of detention without trial by the Special Court for the Clergy of periods of over 18 months of people who may be prisoners of conscience.
Offences which may be dealt with by the court are very broadly defined in Article 18 as “any act or failure to carry out an act which according to the law or the tenets of religious law is either punishable or otherwise necessitates corrective and reformative steps...”. A note appended clarifies this further, stating that: “For the members of the clerical community, acts which by norm and convention cause damage to the integrity of the clergy and the Islamic Revolution shall be considered as a crime.” The application of this article would appear to allow peaceful political opposition to the government by clerics being considered as a crime.
It is not clear to what extent verdicts and sentences from the Special Court for the Clergy may be appealed. Article 44 states that the verdicts are definite and binding unless:
-the judge in the case realizes he committed an error
-the Chief Prosecutor determines that the verdict is contrary to “laws (qavanin) and rulings (ahkam)”
-the presiding judge did not have the competence to deal with the case.
In at least the first and second instances, if a verdict is found to be wrong, the case may be sent to the First Branch of the court for a re-trial by a different judge. In the second instance, if the dispute continues, the decision of the Chief Judge shall be final and binding (unless, presumably, this judge realises that he committed an error). In common with other courts in Iran, this could, in some cases, lead to a defendant being tried an unspecified number of times for the same offence until a verdict is reached which is not challenged on account of one of the three possibilities above. Although in 1993 a new Law on Appeals was introduced, which allows appeal against sentences of death, corporal punishment, or imprisonment for longer than six months issued by General, Revolutionary or Military Courts, this Law does not mention the Special Court for the Clergy, nor does it designate an Appeal Court for the Special Court for the Clergy. Therefore, there appears to be an extremely limited scope for review of verdicts by this court, and the defendant appears to have no right to appeal to a higher tribunal for a review of his or her conviction and sentence, in violation of international standards for fair trial.
All the indications are that this court operates as a separate institution outside the normal judicial framework. Article 45 of the Regulations stipulate that “[a]ll costs and expenditures of the Prosecutor for the Special Court for the Clergy shall be foreseen and provided for as an independent organization (emphasis added), by a special budget”. Further illustration of the extraordinary nature of this court is given by a debate in the Majles on 1 January 1997 of a bill to regulate the employment of officials of the Special Court for the Clergy, so that they are covered by the State Employment Bill. The Deputy Minister of Justice in charge of legal and parliamentary affairs is quoted in the official minutes as saying:
“The Prosecutors’ Offices and Special Court for the Clergy, which were established on the orders of the late Imam... are still continuing their work. However, in view of the ambiguity surrounding the employment conditions of some of their personnel, the government has submitted to the esteemed Majles a bill in this connection. The personnel working for this part of the organization, which of course is not affiliated to the judiciary (emphasis added) but nonetheless constitutes an entity which has been established on the orders of the late Imam ... and still continues its work, do not enjoy a clear employment status...”
The extraordinary nature of this court violates international human rights standards which provide the right for people to be tried by ordinary courts using established judicial procedures.
Defendants before the Special Court for the Clergy are also limited to representation chosen from among “a number of competent clergymen” designated by the court. There also appears to be no requirement for the representative to be a legally qualified lawyer.[9] Furthermore, there are persistent reports that, despite legislation and constitutional guarantees stipulating that all defendants should have the right to a lawyer, in practice people tried before the Special Court for the Clergy are rarely, if ever, granted access to a lawyer of their choice, further violating human rights standards. The Special Court for the Clergy can, in common with other courts in Iran, sentence people to cruel punishments such as flogging, or death.

4. Violations against leaders and their followers

There have been persistent reports of human rights violations against religious leaders opposed to government policies and their followers, although for many years, detailed information about these violations was difficult to obtain. The scarcity of information was exacerbated by the secrecy surrounding many of the procedures in use, as well as the refusal of the Iranian authorities to allow independent human rights monitors unhindered access to the country. For example, Amnesty International has not been permitted to visit Iran for fact finding, trial observation, or government talks since 1979. The UN Special Representative on the Islamic Republic of Iran was denied access between 1991 and 1996 and currently does not have access.
Violations reported include the house arrest of senior religious leaders; detention without trial and unfair trials of their relatives and followers; and torture and ill-treatment (including cruel punishments such as flogging). There has also been a pattern of actions taken against institutions such as schools or charitable organizations run by these leaders, for example closure and confiscation. In some cases, newspapers which have printed articles perceived to support these leaders have been closed down, and on occasions their editors have been arrested and tried.

4.1 House arrest of Shi’a religious leaders

One of the first prominent Shi’a religious leaders believed to have been placed under house arrest in connection with his opposition to the government was Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taher Al Shubayr Khaghani, who died in the late 1980s. An ethnic Arab from Khuzestan province in Southwest Iran, he was viewed by many of the Arab population there as their religious leader. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, he supported certain political, economic and cultural rights for the Arab population of Iran. In July 1979, following clashes between his supporters and members of the Revolutionary Guards, and a series of bomb attacks, mostly against oil installations, by Arab opposition groups, which he strongly denounced, Grand Ayatollah Khaghani’s house in Khorramshahr was attacked by Revolutionary Guards. He was taken away and eventually arrived in Qom. Government officials are reported to have said that he was there for “talks with religious leaders”. According to other sources, he was placed under “unofficial house arrest”. For example, Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, in an interview published in January 1980, replying to a question as to whether Grand Ayatollah Khaghani was still in Qom said,
“Yes, he is here, and he is not allowed visitors. He is my friend. I tried to see him once, but was unsuccessful, but I will try to see him soon, because he is not going to be allowed out. He wants to keep quiet so they will not hurt him. But what will happen to him, God only knows”.[10]
Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari himself was also later placed under house arrest. With many followers among the Azeri population of northwest Iran, he had been an important figure in the religious opposition during the period under the former Shah. Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari had opposed Article 110 of the Iranian Constitution, passed in December 1979, which created the post of vali-ye faqih, apparently claiming that it contradicted the concept of the “national sovereignty of the people”, also expressed in the Constitution. He was also reported to have repeatedly stated that the clergy should not participate in the political running of the country .
In December 1979, unrest broke out in Tabriz after Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari’s house in Qom was attacked reportedly by supporters of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, apparently on account of his objections to the Constitution. At least two of his supporters were reportedly killed. The unrest continued until January 1980. It was at about this time that Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari was reported to have been placed under house arrest.[11] In 1982 he acknowledged on television (reportedly after the arrest of relatives including his pregnant daughter and two sons-in-law) of having been aware of a coup plot in which Sadeq Qotbzadeh, a former Foreign Minister, was implicated. Ahmad Abbasi, the Grand Ayatollah’s son-in-law, was also tried in the same case and sentenced to eight months’
imprisonment and ten years’ house arrest. Sadeq Qotbzadeh, and up to 70 army officers, were later executed.[12] Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari died in June 1986. His supporters were prevented from holding a public funeral and he was buried secretly in the middle of the night in a remote place.
These events led Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Golpaygani to write the following to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini:
“the true arbitration of [the quarrel] between Your Excellency and Ayatollah Shariatmadari ... is in the hands of Almighty God. I deem it necessary to express my intense regret over the events of the burial, which has occurred without the required ceremonies and paying of respects and the covert burial [of his body] in an unsuitable place. I expect now that you will personally provide recompense ... for the insults which have been directed at him and his position as marja-ye taqlid”.[13]
At least three other Grand Ayatollahs have reportedly been placed under “unofficial” house arrest. Grand Ayatollah Sayed Hassan Tabataba’i-Qomi is also reportedly critical of the concept of velayat-e faqih and in 1985 opposed the continuation of the war with Iraq which reportedly led to his house being invaded by angry hezbollahis[14]15. He is also said to have criticised the authorities’ behaviour over the burial of Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and is reported to have been held under house arrest in Mashhad for more than 13 years, where he remains. He is said to be denied access to medical treatment for heart disease.
Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Sadeq Rouhani has also been held under house arrest in Qom for more than 12 years. He is also opposed to the concept of velayat-e faqih and to certain government policies, about which he has written a number of open letters. For example in 1989 when the Constitution was about to be amended, he wrote a letter that advocated limiting the power of the Leader so that the position could not be abused; allowing the investigation of misconduct by the Leader; non-appointment of members of the Assembly of Experts to prevent their being manipulated by the Leader; and advocating that the people be given the right to criticise and protest. Most recently, he came under pressure from the authorities in mid-1995 after he wrote an open letter to President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in which he criticized restrictions on traditional religious rites during the mourning period of Ashura[15]; and human rights violations against those who participated in such rites, including arrests and imprisonment of large numbers of people; and the exile, beatings, and reported killings of some. He also complained that he had been held under house arrest for more than 10 years, and complained of insults which he said had been directed against high-ranking religious figures and which had been broadcast by the state-controlled media.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, at one time the declared successor to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, was openly critical of the mass executions of political prisoners which began in 1988. There are also reports that he did not support Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdi. Following this opposition, and his links to Mehdi Hashemi (see above) he was replaced as successor, and told by Grand Ayatollah Khomeini to clean his house of those who “pretend to be Muslims while they are not”. Since then there have been repeated reports that he has been held under “unofficial” house arrest, although it is not clear if he is currently so restricted.
In February 1993, Amnesty International wrote to the Iranian authorities following reports that Grand Ayatollah Montazeri and about five of his associates and relatives had been arrested in the wake of a critical statement Grand Ayatollah Montazeri made against Ayatollah Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Republic (see below) and that they remained detained or subject to house arrest or similar physical restrictions. Amnesty International sought clarification of the legal situation of all of those concerned and the precise reasons for any measures taken against them. It urged that they be immediately and unconditionally released if held solely for the non-violent expression of their conscientiously held beliefs. In response, the Iranian Embassy in London stated that “His Holiness [Grand Ayatollah Montazeri] and the [five] others ... like other Iranian citizens, are completely free and live under no restriction in the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
In August 1995, Amnesty International sought clarification from the Iranian authorities about Grand Ayatollah Rouhani’s statement that he had been held under house arrest for more than 10 years, and about other reports that Grand Ayatollah Tabataba’i Qomi and Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were also subject to similar restrictions.
Amnesty International has further expressed concern at reports that Grand Ayatollah Rouhani has been refused permission to see a doctor to provide treatment for a stomach ulcer. Amnesty International had received no response to any of these concerns at the time of writing in April 1997.

4.2 Arrests and torture of Ayatollah Mahdavi-Damaghani

Ayatollah Mahdavi-Damaghani is reported to have been arrested several times, apparently for opposition to the authorities. The first time was said to have been in the mid-1980s following the death of Grand Ayatollah Abdullah Shirazi in Mashhad. He is reported to have said following his release that when he was arrested, he was taken to a room by the security forces where he was punched and kicked by about 12 people before being released.
He was reportedly arrested again in the early 1990s, and held for some time, along with several other people, one of whom is reported to have been named Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Fasih.

4.3 Detention of Grand Ayatollah Ya’sub al-Din Rastgari

Grand Ayatollah Ya’sub al-Din Rastgari[16], in his 70s, was close to the late Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari. Grand Ayatollah Rastgari is said to have been critical of governmental interference with the religious institutions in Qom, and of the functions of the Special Court for the Clergy. Grand Ayatollah Ya’sub al-Din Rastgari has been arrested several times apparently in connection with activities related to his opposition to government policies. Amnesty International has been unable to obtain details of all his arrests. However, he was reportedly arrested after holding a mourning ceremony for the late Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari shortly after the latter’s death, and sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment, apparently on charges relating to support for Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and opposition to the government. He was also reportedly arrested in about 1994 and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, possibly on charges of having performed a public prayer without the requisite permission from the authorities. He is said to have denied this in an open letter written after his release.
Grand Ayatollah Rastgari was arrested again in late February 1996, when security forces came to his house in Qom. Some of his possessions were also said to have been seized at the time of his arrest. He was held in incommunicado detention reportedly mainly in Tawhid and Evin Prisons in Tehran until about July 1996, when he reportedly received a family visit for the first time. At about the same time, unconfirmed reports suggested that he was transferred to a hospital in Tehran, where he received treatment for ailments said to have resulted from, or to be exacerbated by, torture. Unconfirmed reports suggested that in about August 1996 he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment after a summary trial lasting only a few minutes, in which he had no access to a lawyer and was not allowed to defend himself.
In November 1996, some members of the Amnesty International Urgent Action Network, who had written to the Iranian authorities about Grand Ayatollah Rastgari, received a letter from the Iranian Embassy in Canada (see Appendix A) which stated that he had been “arrested for misinforming (sic) and activities against the security and public order of the country. First he was sentenced to ten years of supervised residence inside Iran and was pardoned and released later. Again he committed the same crimes and was convicted to five years’ supervised settlement in Yazd ... He escaped from his residence without authorization. Therefore he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and he will stay until the termination of his conviction term”. Other sources close to the Grand Ayatollah are reported to have denied that he had previously been sentenced to periods of supervised residence, or to internal exile.
Grand Ayatollah Rastgari was reportedly released early from prison on 21 December 1996, and was said to have immediately been placed under house arrest in Qom. The terms of his release are not known to Amnesty International.
The charges against Grand Ayatollah Rastgari referred to in the letter from the Iranian Embassy in Canada are very imprecise. Amnesty International believes that he is very likely to be a prisoner of conscience, held under house arrest solely on account of his non-violent activities or beliefs. If so, all restrictions on him should be lifted immediately and unconditionally. Otherwise, if his restriction relates to his prison sentence, his case should be reviewed with the aim of ensuring he receives a fair trial, if he is not to be released. In any event, he should be granted immediate and regular access to a doctor of his choice, in order to receive treatment for his ailments, which are reported to include diabetes and heart disease.
Amnesty International is further concerned at reports that Grand Ayatollah Rastgari has been tortured while in detention. These allegations should be immediately investigated in an independent investigation, the methods and findings of which should be made public. Anyone found responsible for abuses should be brought to justice and compensation provided.

4.4 Detention, torture, unfair trials and executions of followers of religious leaders

Relatives and followers of religious leaders have also been subjected to human rights violations often apparently in an attempt to put pressure on the leaders to support the government or at least to mute their opposition.

4.4.1. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri

From time to time, relatives and supporters of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri have been arrested. Some have reportedly been executed. For example, in late 1988, it was reported that at least 240 supporters of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had been arrested in the preceding months, at least 12 of whom were executed. The Special Court for the Clergy apparently confirmed that six members of the clergy were among nine people executed after conviction of “corruption”. Some officials claimed that all those arrested had been associated with Mehdi Hashemi (see footnote 8 above); other sources denied this, and said that the reason for the arrests had been support for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
In April 1989, following the dismissal of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri as successor to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, demonstrations reportedly broke out in various towns and cities. He was said to have urged his supporters not to demonstrate, as this was perceived as being “unIslamic”, but shortly afterwards, his son, daughter and her husband were reportedly arrested and held briefly.
In late 1991, Hojjatoleslam Hashemian, a deputy Speaker of the Majles, was reportedly summoned before the Special Court for the Clergy on suspicion of “conspiring against the instructions of the Iman”. Salam newspaper reportedly stated that this followed a meeting between Hojjatoleslam Hashemian and Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Another Majles deputy, Morteza Alviri, reportedly defended the former, and stated that the evidence available suggested that the sole reason for the summons related to the meeting with Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.[17]
In February 1993, five relatives and supporters of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were reportedly arrested in the wake of demonstrations against him in Qom. Initial reports had suggested that Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had also been arrested. He later denied this but his office reportedly acknowledged the arrest of the other five, although this was denied by the authorities (see above). The demonstrations were reportedly sparked off by a critical statement Grand Ayatollah Montazeri made against Ayatollah Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Republic. According to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, a statement by an official in Qom denied that Grand Ayatollah Montazeri or anyone linked to him had been arrested (see 4.1 above). It also reportedly observed that it was “possible that roadblocks previously erected by the local municipality on a city street leading to [Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s] residence and the consequent traffic congestion there had ... led to rumours to that effect”. In April 1993, according to Salam newspaper, the Special Court for the Clergy banned the magazine Rah-e Mojahed, said to support Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, after it published statements by his aides condemning the arrests in February.
In April 1993, an official of the Special Court for the Clergy said that the houses of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s son-in-law, Hadi Hashemi, and several others had been searched following the arrest of five or six alleged followers of Hadi Hashemi’s brother, Mehdi. The searches were said to have led to the seizure of five truckloads of leaflets “insulting the Imam [Khomeini]”. The official also implicated Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s office in some of the alleged activities. Amnesty International does not know whether any judicial proceedings took place in connection with these events although it did receive unconfirmed reports in September 1993 that Mahmoud Kheirollahi had been sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and 70 lashes by the Special Court for the Clergy in Isfahan after conviction of charges of supporting Mehdi Hashemi’s group. The prosecutor was said to have alleged that Mahmoud Kheirollahi had insulted officials and, after the removal of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri from the leadership succession, had distributed books and leaflets about Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Mahmoud Kheirollahi was also said to have been sentenced in 1992 to six months’ internal exile in Yazd on unknown charges which were apparently related to his support for Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.
In June 1993, there were reports that 150 supporters of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were arrested by Iranian security forces under the auspices of the Special Court for the Clergy, and that 70 others had been prevented from travelling to Mecca to perform the Hajj (pilgrimage).[18]
In August 1993, there were reports that Abbas Abdi, the editor of Salam, had been arrested, after publication of reports critical of the government, apparently including an article in the newspaper alleging governmental opposition to the hospitalization of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in Tehran, rather than Qom. Amnesty International sought clarification from the government of his situation, including any charges against him and also sought assurances that he had been granted access to a lawyer and to members of his family, expressing concern that he may be held as a prisoner of conscience. No response was received. Abbas Abdi was reportedly tried in December 1993 before an Islamic Revolutionary Court, apparently for offences “against national security” and was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and a suspended sentence of 40 lashes.[19]
In March 1994 there were unconfirmed reports of the arrest of several clerics said to be either supporters of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, or of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Rouhani, the elder brother of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Rouhani. Their names were reported as Sheikh Mohammad Reza Mamaghani, Sheikh Hassan Aram, Sheikh Safa Khatib, Sayed Abolghasem Mojtahed-zadeh and Ayatollah Misbah. There was speculation that the arrests were connected to opposition to an attempt by Ayatollah Khamenei to have himself recognized as a Grand Ayatollah by ordering that Ramadan should end for all Muslims on one particular day. At the time it was unclear as to who should be regarded as the most senior marja following the death of Grand Ayatollah Golpaygani in late 1993.[20] The fate of those reportedly arrested is unknown to Amnesty International.
At least nine followers of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri were said to have been arrested in October 1994 reportedly on charges of inciting unrest. They were said to have been distributing copies of an open letter written by Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, which reportedly contained criticisms of the authorities.[21] Their fate is unknown to Amnesty International.
While Amnesty International is aware that Mehdi Hashemi was convicted of extremely violent offences, and that it has been alleged that some of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s followers have supported Mehdi Hashemi, the organization notes that the accusations which appear to have been levelled against them (such as “insults to the Imam Khomeini”) in many cases do not in themselves appear to contain any use or advocacy of violence. It thus fears that some or all of these people may have been arrested and detained in connection with the non-violent expression of their political or religious beliefs. Any follower of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri who remains detained or imprisoned solely on account of his non-violent political or religious activities related to Grand Ayatollah Montazeri should be released immediately and unconditionally. Any others imprisoned after unfair trials should have their cases reviewed with the aim of ensuring that they receive a fair trial if they are not to be released. In addition, the organization opposes the death penalty and cruel punishments such as flogging in all cases. Anyone sentenced to death or to flogging should have their sentences commuted.

4.4.2. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammad Sadeq Rouhani

Following Grand Ayatollah Rouhani’s June 1995 open letter to President Hashemi Rafsanjani criticizing governmental actions (see above), security forces raided Grand Ayatollah Rouhani’s house in Qom, reportedly on 17 July 1995. They seized some papers and arrested his youngest son, Javad, then aged about 26, who had health problems relating to an earlier accident. Sayed Javad Rouhani was held in incommunicado detention until mid-September 1995, when he was allowed to meet a member of his family. He reportedly said that he had been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, later reduced to one year. According to the Iranian Embassy in Canada (see Appendix B), the charges included “misinformation, agitation and handing over information to strangers and terrorist groups.” However, it provides no information about the specific activities he was alleged to have carried out. This letter also states that he was tried and convicted on 16 July 1995, which is the day before Sayed Javad Rouhani was reportedly arrested. Sayed Javad Rouhani was also reported to have been denied his right to a defence lawyer. Amnesty International believes Sayed Javad Rouhani’s trial was unfair and that he may have been a prisoner of conscience, held solely on account of his father’s opposition to the government.
On 1 August 1995, at least 25 supporters of Grand Ayatollah Rouhani were also reportedly arrested when they gathered outside to protest against the measures taken against the Grand Ayatollah and his family. Despite repeatedly asking the Iranian authorities for clarification of their fate, Amnesty International has received no further news of them. If any followers of Grand Ayatollah Rouhani are still detained, information should be provided as to their precise legal status, including any charges against them. Anyone held solely for his non-violent support for Grand Ayatollah Rouhani should be released immediately and unconditionally.

4.4.3. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammad Shirazi

Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammad Shirazi, born in Najaf, Iraq, comes from a family of well-known marjas and religious scholars of Iranian origin. He left Iraq for Kuwait in 1971 to escape persecution by the Iraqi Government. He then moved to Qom in Iran in 1979 after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. With many followers outside Iran, Grand Ayatollah Shirazi has maintained a stance of non-involvement in Iranian political affairs. However, he reportedly refused to accept that Ayatollah Khamenei was a mojtahed when the latter became the current Leader and has since reportedly refused to recognize Ayatollah Khamenei as the most eminent marja-ye taqlid in Shi’a Islam or even as a Grand Ayatollah.
Over the years, reports indicate that hundreds, if not thousands, of his supporters and relatives have suffered harassment, and scores, if not hundreds, have been arrested, some on more than one occasion. Many have reportedly been tortured. Some were released without charge, whereas others were sentenced to prison terms after unfair trials, believed for the most part to have taken place before the Special Court for the Clergy. Some of these cases from recent years are outlined below.
Hojjatoleslam Sheikh Makki Akhound, married with three children, was arrested in the first half of 1994 in Isfahan, reportedly without an arrest warrant. He was said to have been tortured during his initial incommunicado detention which is believed to have lasted about six months. He was later tried before the Special Court for the Clergy, on charges which apparently related to having connections with, and supporting the views of, Grand Ayatollah Shirazi. He was reportedly sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and 75 lashes. He is said to have had no access to a lawyer since his arrest. In early 1996 he was moved from Saheli prison in Qom to a prison clinic in Khorramabad (said to hold psychologically disturbed patients), making it more difficult for his family to visit him and reportedly increasing his sense of isolation. Sheikh Makki Akhound reportedly suffers from various ailments, including ulcers, heart disease, high blood pressure and nervous problems and was apparently not granted access to a doctor of his choice during his detention. In December 1996 he was released early from prison. Amnesty International members around the world had sent mass appeals on his behalf to the Iranian authorities.[22]
Up to 13 others were also arrested at around the same time in 1994, reportedly including Sheikh Makki Akhound’s father, Abdolamir; his uncle Abdolrasoul (who is also his father-in-law); two of his brothers; seven cousins; his wife; and a sister-in-law. They were all held in solitary confinement for some time[23], before being released, apparently without charge.
Hojjatoleslam Sheikh Ja’far Ghani, an Iraqi national, was arrested on 30 September 1995, and was reportedly held in incommunicado detention until early 1996. After a trial before the Special Court for the Clergy, he was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, but was released early in mid-1996. According to a March 1996 response from the Iranian Embassy in London (see Appendix C), he was convicted of offences including “...travelling illegally and repeatedly to foreign countries such as Iraq;...forging ID cards with Afghan identity and also forging Afghan passports;...membership of the illegal organization of Sayed Morteza Shirazi[24];...[and]disseminating lies and rumours”. Sources close to the Grand Ayatollah have denied that he was involved in forgery, or that he went to Iraq illegally, arguing that as an Iraqi national, he was allowed to travel there.
His arrest was followed by that of Hojjatoleslam Muhammad Saleh Hedayati on 17 October 1995. He was later reportedly sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and banned from wearing the clothing of a cleric[25], apparently in connection with his association with Grand Ayatollah Shirazi. The scale of arrests increased on 11 November 1995, when ten men, all prominent religious figures or businessmen known to be close to Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, were arrested, reportedly without arrest warrants by members of the security forces, from their homes in Qom and Tehran. They were Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Mohammad Taqi Dhakeri; Hojjatoleslam ‘Abdolrahman Ha’eri; Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sayed ‘Abdolrasoul Musawi; Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Taleb Salehi; Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Mohammad Fazel Mohammad al-Saffar; Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Mohammad ‘Ali Ma’ash; Hojjatoleslam Fu’ad Fujian; Mohammad Ghaffari; Hadi Dhakeri and Iyad Fujian. Most of them, and some of their relatives were also reportedly beaten during the arrests, which took place at night. The wife of Sheikh Mohammad al-Saffar reportedly had her hand broken, and the young son of Sheikh Mohammad ‘Ali Ma’ash was said to have sustained an eye injury from a gun butt. Both reportedly received hospital treatment for their injuries.
On the following day, 12 November 1995, security forces reportedly raided the Martyr Ayatollah Sayed Hassan Shirazi religious school in Qom, arresting approximately 120 students. Most were released several hours later, but seven remained detained. Despite repeated requests to the Iranian Government for clarification, their fate is unknown to Amnesty International.
On 21 November, Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sayed Morteza Shirazi, the second son of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, was arrested in Qom. Arrests continued in December and January. Hojjatoleslam Sayed Abbas Musawi, who works in the office of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi was detained in Qom on 6 December 1995. He was later sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by the Special Court for the Clergy, also apparently on account of his association with Grand Ayatollah Shirazi. The brothers Ahmad and Jalal Akhound (relatives of Sheikh Makki Akhound, see above) were arrested in Tehran in early January 1996.
Arrests ceased for almost six months, but started again on 19 June 1996 with the arrest of Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mehdi Shirazi, the fourth son of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, while in a car between Qom and Tehran. On the same day Hojjatoleslam ‘Ali Rumaythi, a member of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi’s staff, was arrested in Qom. On 20 June, Hojjatoleslam Sheikh Hossein Dhakeri (the brother of Sheikh Mohammad Taqi Dhakeri and Hadi Akhound Dhakeri), another member of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi’s staff, was arrested, also in Qom. On 20 or 21 June, Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sheikh Azizollah Hassani (aged about 60) was arrested in Tehran. Also in June, the wife of Sayed Sadeq Fali, a follower of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi said to have been exiled to Iranshahr in 1995 by the Special Court for the Clergy, was reportedly arrested in Qom following an argument with security forces surrounding an Islamic centre linked to Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, who are said to have beaten her in public. She was released on bail after a couple of days to await trial before the Special Court for the Clergy. Other members of the Fali family, who also follow Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, are reported to have been arrested, tortured and some sentenced to prison terms in previous years.
In September 1996, Hojjatoleslam Sheikh Fazel Fazeli, a follower of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi and a poet, was arrested from his home in Qom. According to unconfirmed reports, he was released shortly afterwards. Several others were arrested on 14 and 15 January 1997. They included Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori, a well-known religious figure and writer on Islamic themes, and his wife, and Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sayed Hossein Fali who has reportedly been arrested several times before for association with Grand Ayatollah Shirazi. He is said to have been tortured during his previous detentions and to have undergone surgery as a result. Unconfirmed reports suggested that the latter three were all beaten during their arrests. Reports from detention have also indicated that they have been tortured during their detention.
Most of those listed above have been released at various times since July 1996. They include Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Abdolrahman Ha’eri; Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sayed Abdolrasoul Musawi; Hojjatoleslam Taleb Salehi; Hojjatoleslam Mohammad ‘Ali Ma’ash; Iyad Fujian; Hojjatoleslam Sayed Abbas Musawi; Ahmad and Jalal Akhound; Sheikh Hossein Dhakeri; ‘Ali Rumaythi; Hojjatoleslam Sheikh Azizollah Hassani; Mohammad Ghaffari; and Mohammad Fazel al-Saffar. Sayed Morteza Shirazi was released for almost 48 hours between 21 and 23 October, after which he was summoned back to prison. He was released again on 1 January 1997; his younger brother Sayed Mehdi had been released a few days earlier on 28 December 1996. Among those still held are Sheikh Mohammad Taqi Dhakeri; Hadi Dhakeri; Iyad Fujian; Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori; and Hojjatoleslam val moslemin Sayed Hossein Fali.
Most, if not all of those from Qom arrested in 1995 were transferred to Tehran for further interrogation. They were held in incommunicado detention, probably in Tawhid Prison in Tehran until early 1996, when most received at least one family visit.
During their detention, there have also been reports that most, if not all of the detainees referred to above, have been tortured. Methods are reported to include:
-beatings on different parts of the body, including prolonged beatings on the soles of the feet, after which the detainee is forced to walk on injured feet
-cigarette burns on the tips of the fingers and the soles of the feet
-burning with hot metal elements such as an iron, or hot liquids poured onto the body
-prolonged enforced standing (sometimes on one leg) including in the snow during winter
-detention in extremely confined spaces
-suspension by the hands, ankles or other body parts from the ceiling and occasionally from a ceiling fan which was rotated with beatings administered at the same time
-exposure to heat and cold for long periods
-the plucking of hair from the beard or the head (which causes severe humiliation to religious figures, as well as physical pain)
-shackling the arms in contorted and painful positions, such as the right arm behind the right ear and the left arm behind the back, and shackled at the wrist
-prolonged sleep deprivation, reportedly up to 16 days
-electric shocks, including in the mouth
-threatened execution by electrocution after telling the detainee to write his will and attaching electrodes to the body
-prolonged blindfolding for up to two months
-the playing of extremely loud music or screams of other people apparently being tortured
-stating that relatives of the detainee have been arrested and threatening to torture them.
At least one, Sheikh ‘Ali Ma’ash, is reported to have required medical treatment after his release as a result of torture, including for a toe on his right foot which was broken and left untreated. At least one of the detainees is reported to have severe burn marks on his arms and neck, which is said to look like “a creased piece of material”. There have also been reports that detainees were denied access to medical treatment and given inappropriate treatment in prison for illnesses such as diabetes.
Responses received by Amnesty International members or sections from Iranian Embassy officials concerning 11 of the detainees (see Appendix C) deny that they were “ill-treated”, but give no information as to whether any investigation has been carried out into the allegations of torture of these and other detainees.
The responses from Iranian officials also outlined the main charges against the 11 detainees referred to. Among other charges, Sayed Morteza Shirazi is accused of setting up an illegal organization to pursue unlawful objectives such as disturbing public order; forging documents; dissemination of lies and rumours; insulting the country’s officials and despatching unauthorized reports abroad. Other accusations included disturbance of public order and promotion of ghameh zani[26], and making contacts with wanted criminals resident in foreign countries. The others were accused of a variety of offences including membership of Sayed Morteza Shirazi’s organization; insults to the Leader of the Islamic Republic; forgery; helping people to leave the country illegally; dissemination of lies and rumours; possession of illegal material; and insulting officials.
Amnesty International recognizes that activities such as forgery are criminal offences and that governments have a right to bring people accused of such acts to justice. However, despite repeated requests for full details of the charges against all the detainees, and the evidence against them, the Iranian authorities have so far failed to provide such information. In addition, in the Embassy responses, many of the charges are extremely vaguely worded and would appear to allow the possibility that those so accused are being detained for what could be the non-violent expression of the internationally recognized rights to freedom of belief, expression and association. In the other cases, no information at all has been provided by the Iranian authorities about the nature of the charges against the detainees. In May 1996, newspaper reports suggested that Iranian officials were claiming behind the scenes that the reason for the arrest of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi’s followers was their involvement in anti-government unrest in Bahrain, including forgery of documents and passports.[27] However, no public statement to this effect has been made by Iranian officials, and although forgery is mentioned in the Iranian Embassy response of March 1996, the only two foreign countries mentioned among the various charges are Iraq and Afghanistan.
Amnesty International therefore believes that the main, if not the sole, reason for the arrests of the followers and relatives of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi and the continued detention of some of them, is their association with him, and that these measures are intended to pressurize the Grand Ayatollah to change his views. If this is the case, then these detainees are prisoners of conscience and should be released immediately and unconditionally. Otherwise they should be charged with a recognizably criminal offence and promptly tried in accordance with international standards for fair trial.

5. International Standards

5.1 House arrest

Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a state party, states that:
“Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law”.
Article 9(3) of the ICCPR states that:
“Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release...”
The use of house arrest against individuals for the non-violent expression of their internationally guaranteed rights constitutes arbitrary detention in violation of this article. If any of the Grand Ayatollahs mentioned above, or anyone else in Iran, is held under house arrest or is otherwise restricted because of the non-violent expression of his or her beliefs, then those restrictions should be lifted immediately. In addition, house arrest should not be used as a means of circumventing the judicial system. People restricted in this way who are not prisoners of conscience and are suspected of recognizably criminal offences should be charged and brought to trial promptly and fairly before ordinary courts using established judicial procedures (which excludes the Special Court for the Clergy), or have those restrictions lifted.

5.2 Torture

The reports of torture described above, if confirmed, constitute grave violations of Iran’s responsibilities as a state party to the ICCPR, Article 7 of which states that: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Under Article 9 of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, “[w]herever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture ... has been committed ...[states must] promptly proceed to an impartial investigation even if there has been no formal complaint.” The UN Human Rights Committee has also stated in relation to Article 7 of the ICCPR (cited above) that “[c]omplaints [about torture and ill-treatment] must be investigated promptly and impartially by competent authorities...”.[28] Amnesty International therefore calls for a prompt, thorough and independent investigation in accordance with these standards into all allegations of torture or ill-treatment, the methods and findings of which should be made public. Anyone found responsible for abuses should be brought to justice. Victims of torture and ill-treatment should be granted compensation.
Amnesty International also considers judicial corporal punishments such as flogging to constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, both prohibited internationally. In support of this view, the UN Human Rights Committee has stated that “...[T]he prohibition [of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in Article 7] must extend to corporal punishment, including excessive chastisement ordered as punishment for a crime...”.[29] Both Special Rapporteurs on torture have also taken this position. Peter Kooijmans, in his 1986 report stated that “Corporal punishments as ‘lawful sanctions’ under domestic laws may constitute ‘severe pain or suffering’ under international law. Consequently, this kind of chastisement should be revised in order to prevent torture, particularly amputations, caning or flogging.”[30] Nigel Rodley, the subsequent Special Rapporteur stated in 1993, “No State should be allowed to perform acts as a lawful sanction which in any other form are generally condemned as a serious human rights violation.”[31] He reiterated his position in 1997, saying he took the view that “corporal punishment is inconsistent with the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined, inter alia, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment...”[32] This view was endorsed by the UN Commission on Human Right’s Special Representative on the Islamic Republic of Iran, Maurice Copithorne, who said he agreed “with those who do not accept the argument that such [cruel and unusual] punishments can be deemed lawful simply because they may have been authorized in a procedurally legitimate manner”.[33]

5.3 Fair trial

Article 9(3) of the ICCPR (cited above) requires that anyone detained on criminal charges has the right to be tried within a reasonable time or be released. Article 9(4) requires that anyone deprived of liberty should have the right to a judicial review of the lawfulness of his or her detention.
Article 14 of the ICCPR lays out the minimum standards for a fair trial, including the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law; to be informed promptly of any charges; to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of one’s defence and to communicate with a lawyer of one’s own choosing; and in the case of conviction, to have the right to a review by a higher tribunal of the conviction and sentence. In addition, Principle 5 of the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary states: “Everyone shall have the right to be tried by ordinary courts or tribunals using established legal procedures. Tribunals that do not use the duly established procedures of the legal process shall not be created to displace the jurisdiction belonging to the ordinary courts or judicial tribunals.” Principle 3 states that the judiciary shall have the exclusive authority to decide whether an issue submitted for its decision is within its competence as defined by law. In many of the cases outlined above, some or all of these standards have been violated. Indeed, as shown above, the regulations governing the Special Court for the Clergy are such that the court is inherently incapable of meeting the minimum internationally recognised standards for fair trial.

6. Amnesty International’s Recommendations

Amnesty International is concerned by the pattern of human rights violations against senior Iranian religious figures opposed to government policies, and their followers. The Iranian Government should take immediate steps to end these violations by:
-releasing all prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally, including those held under house arrest solely for their non-violent activities or beliefs
-permitting immediate and regular access of all those detained to family members, lawyers of their choice and to independent doctors
-promptly bringing all political prisoners currently detained (including any held under house arrest) to trial, in accordance with international standards for fair trial including access to a lawyer of the defendant’s choice or otherwise releasing them or lifting the restrictions on them
-reviewing the convictions of anyone imprisoned after an unfair trial, including cases where defendants were not granted access to a lawyer, with a view to bringing them to a fair trial, or releasing them
-conducting immediate, thorough and independent investigations into all allegations of torture. The methods and findings of these investigations should be made public. Anyone found to be responsible for abuses should be brought to justice
-commuting all death sentences and cruel corporal punishments such as flogging
-clarifying the fate of all those detained whose fate is unclear, including any charges pending or of which they have been convicted
-reviewing the use of special courts such as the Special Court for the Clergy. Unless the court is reformed so as to bring law and practice into line with international standards for fair trial, it should be abolished as inherently incapable of providing the basic guarantees of due process which are any defendant’s fundamental right
-compensating anyone found to have been arbitrarily detained or to have been subjected to torture or ill-treatment.

[1] For details of the persecution of various religious minorities such as Christians, Sunnis and Baha’is, see Amnesty International documents such as Iran: Official Secrecy Hides Continuing Repression (AI Index: MDE 13/02/95) and Iran: Dhabihullah Mahrami: Prisoner of Conscience (AI Index: MDE 13/34/96) as well as the annual Amnesty International Report.
[2] Literally “Leadership of the learned man” - see section 2 below.
[3] Figures in the Shi’a religious establishment are not the only ones to have challenged the involvement of the religious establishment in the political system and to have suffered persecution as a result. At least 10 members of the Mohajerin group who are followers of Dr Ali Shariati, whose writings challenged the traditional Shi’a establishment are believed to have been in prison since the early 1990s despite official denials. Others have been executed (see for example Iran: Amnesty International concerned at continuing political executions AI Index: MDE 13/WU 08/92). More recently, Dr Abdolkarim Soroush, a university lecturer, has been subject to attacks by Hezbollah members during lectures, for his advocation of the running of government on the basis of rationality and not religious jurisprudence.
[4] A mojtahed is a student of Islamic Law who has attained the level of ijtihad ie the ability to derive Islamic Law from its sources.
[5] The original Constitution defined the necessary qualifications for the position of Leader as “a) The scholarship and piety required for giving rulings and acting as marja; b) Political and social vision, courage, and adequate capacity and administrative ability for Leadership.”
[6] In this amendment, while the requirement of being a marja was dropped, the political powers of the Leader were greatly enhanced. They include: defining the general policies of the state; supervision of the proper execution of policies; resolving differences between the three branches of the state and regulation of their relations; and resolving problems unresolvable by conventional means through the Assembly for Determination of Exigencies of the State (Majma-ye Tashkhis-e Maslahat-e Nezam).
[7] Some sources suggested at the time that, despite official denials, the Court was established in order to try Mehdi Hashemi, a cleric and the brother of a son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri (then the designated successor to Grand Ayatollah Khomeini). He was said to have been formerly connected with the World Liberation Movement, reportedly involved in “exporting the Islamic Revolution”. He was believed to have been involved in leaking news of Iranian-US contacts in 1986, (which became known as the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States), which was highly embarrassing to the Iranian leadership at the time. He was arrested and made a televised confession to a number of crimes including murder, kidnapping and “sabotaging foreign relations”. His trial, which took place in August 1987, was one of the first to take place before the new Special Court for the Clergy. He was accused of being “at enmity with God” and “corrupt on earth”, was sentenced to death, and executed.
[8] Although Article 35 specifically mentions “counter-revolutionary crimes” as one of the instances when a detention warrant may be issued, “counter-revolutionary crimes” are not defined as such in the Penal Code, which would appear to give a wide scope to the possible detention of suspects. Crimes which might be considered as “counter-revolutionary” appear to be covered by Articles 183 to 188 of the Penal Code which refer to the crime of moharebeh (being at enmity with God) and ifsad fil-Arz (corruption on earth) which includes attempts to overthrow the Government by force and use of arms to cause fear or disturb public security. It is frequently punished by execution. Articles 498 to 512 of the Penal Code deal with crimes against the internal and external security of the country. Several of these articles and eight others also in the section dealing with Ta’zirat punishments specify punishments of prison terms for crimes when the defendant “is not considered to be a mohareb”.
[9] For concerns about provisions for access to lawyers, including for defendants before the Special Court for the Clergy, see Iran: Unfair trials of political detainees, (AI Index: MDE 13/15/92).
[10] The Middle East, January 1980
[11] Keesings Contemporary Archives, 20 June 1980.
[12] See Amnesty International Report 1983
[13] Quoted by Shahrough Akhavi: Elite Factionalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran in The Middle East Journal Vol. 41, No.2, p 190.
[14] Members of a grass-roots organization known as Hezbollah, and its offshoot Ansar-e Hezbollah known to carry out attacks against people or institutions deemed as “unIslamic” or “against the line of the Imam [Khomeini]”. It receives support from Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a member of the Council of Guardians and Head of the Islamic Propagation Organization, who in August 1995 recommended in a Friday sermon that “officials not reprimand young Hezbollah members when ... they carry out their duty”. His comments followed the firebombing of a publishing house, which had published a book some deemed immoral. The authorities are not known to have taken any action against Hezbollah members believed to have carried out acts of violence.
[15] These rites include self-mutilation.
[16] He is reported to have attained the rank of Grand Ayatollah in recent years.
[17] Echo of Iran November 1991 p 13
[18] Al-Hayat, 6 June 1993
[19] See Amnesty International Report 1994
[20] Al-Hayat 16 March 1994
[21] In the letter, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri is said to have indirectly referred to a letter of protest signed by 53 people, saying that the current government had “recklessly squandered the capital of good will which the revolution had garnered since its inception”. He also warned against governmental interference in religious affairs.
[22] See Amnesty International News, June 1996
[23] Some of the men were reportedly held for up to one month
[24] The son of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi
[25] One of the punishments that may be imposed by the Special Court for the Clergy, which prevents the person from carrying out his duties as a cleric.
[26] Beating oneself on the head with a knife or sword to cause the blood to flow on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, a religious custom in Shi’a Islam which has been prohibited by Ayatollah Khamenei.
[27] The Guardian, 13 May 1996
[28] General Comment No. 20(44)(Article 7), UN Doc.CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.3, page 3, para.14
[29] General Comment 20(5), (Article 7)Forty-fourth session, 1992
[30] UN document: E/CN.4/1986/15. Para.48
[31] UN document: E/CN.4/1993/26, p. 131
[32] UN document E/CN.4/1997/7, p. 5
[33] UN document E/CN.4/1997/63, p. 12

Topics: Shiite, Human rights,

پیشنهادهای روزانه ی مطالعه - 12: رنج و تفاوت در ادبیات تبعید و حبس زنان ایرانی-بخش یک

2010-10-20T22:30:00.000+03:30

هنرور: امروز چند کتابی که معرفی می کنم همگی مصداق ادبیات زنانه ی ایرانی یا ادبیات ایرانی زنانند، می گویم ایرانی، چون نه لزوما نویسنده ها همه به فارسی نوشته اند و نه خواننده های متعارف، لزوما به عنوان آثاری از ادبیات فارسی یه این گونه کتاب ها می گروند و بدانها می نگرند، بلکه بیشتر با یک ژانر زنانه ی ادبی خود را مواجه می یابند که در ادبیات متعارف فارسی زبان کمتر از دیگر زبان ها و فرهنگ ها خودنمایی دارد، بلکه با کمی تسامح (چون آثار داخلی سال های اخیر را نخوانده ام متاسفانه) شاید بتوانم بگویم که اساسا ادبیات زنانه ی اصیلی که فی المثل در آثار ولف یا پلات یا حتی می زیاده در عرب ها سراغ داریم و کاملا حاکی و ناشی از ذهنیتی زنانه و متاثر از جسمی و حیاتی زنانه است، در فرهنگ عمومی و ذهنیت شخصی حاکم به عنوان منتالیته ی جمعی ما ایرانیان، مجال پرورش نیافته و کمتر نویسنده و شاعر زنی تا پیش از فروغ فرخزاد کمال ادبی را جز در نوشتن خوب به مانند مردان جست و جو می نمود، وانگهی که مخاطبانی همجنس با مسائلی منقطع از نبض جامعه به عنوان موضوع، در طول قرون، زبان زنانه را در امور زنانه فروکاسته اند و ناتوانش کرده اند و برداشت شخصیم این است - و البته باید مطالعه و بررسی شود و روی هوا حرف نزنم- که شاید خلأ زبان و بیان که حاصل این انقطاع و انفصال است، میراثی ناملموس است که بسیاری را در موارد تجربه ی این خلاء ناآگاهانه ناگزیر به انتخاب میان زبان پرخاش و زبان شکنندگی و احساس می کند، و مرادم مواردی است که ماهیتی زنانه دارند، و گرنه در امور مشترک و تجربه شده زبانی مشترک وجود دارد،....علی ای حال انگیزه و کنجکاوی من به کنار، احساس می کنم دو مجموعه ی ذیل از حیث زنانه بودن نوشتارها، ممتاز باشند، هرچند در میان نوشته های زنان شاید ارجی و جایی نداشته باشند، شاید هم داشته باشند. مجموعه ی نخست که حاوی خاطرات زنان ایرانی از زندان هایشان است، بالطبع از جامعه ی زبانی متفاوت و بالنسبة دیرپای دیگری نیز کسب بیان و زبان کرده، اما مجموعه ی دوم که در جامعه ی زبانی باز پرورش یافته در برابر زبان حاکم و بیان حاکم مقاومت کمی دارد، در عین حال مقایسه ی ویژه ها و مشترک های این دو مجموعه را که بدون صلاحیت و بر خلاف مصلحت در باب آنها فوقا افتاء بغیر علم کردم،کاری جالب و ثمربخش می دانم و البته به من دخلی ندارد...بهتر است من بعد در این زمینه ها اظهار نظر نکنم و فقط پیوند دهم. یعنی قصدم هم همین بود، ترسیدم سرسری بخوانند و بگذرند...و دو معرفی هم که پیدا کردم در اختیار می گذارم، اولی مقاله ی فمینیست ریویو" جالب است...و:

کتاب یکم

We lived to tell : political prison memoirs of Iranian women (Book, 2007) [WorldCat.org]

We lived to tell:

political prison memoirs of Iranian women

Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi

1 Rezension

McGilligan Books,

Feminist Review - we lived to tell: political prison memoirs of Iranian women

Feminist Review (2010) 95, e12–e15. doi:10.1057/fr.2010.9

we lived to tell: political prison memoirs of Iranian women

Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi and Shahrzad Mojab,
McGilligan Books, Toronto, Canada, 2007, 229 pp., ISBN 978-1894692199, $22.95 (Pbk)

Simone Weil Davis

In Iran, the period between June 1981 (when the newly formed Islamic regime began a vigorous crackdown) and the summer of 1988, bloodied by mass executions, was particularly bleak for civil liberties. These years stand out even though waves of protest and violent suppression of dissent continue to this day in Iran, and even though the human rights record of the Shah's secret police prior to the 1979 revolution was itself abominable. The rate at which people were rounded up and detained and the increasingly trifling reasons for incarceration, evermore-savage torture and maltreatment of detainees, and a horrific tide of state-sponsored killings mark 1981–1988 as a shameful era. At the notorious Evin Prison, just north of Tehran, women activists were key targets of this state rage, punished for their audacity as females acting in the public sphere. Three new books in English and one recent movie all focus on women's experience of prison in Iran: Manijeh Hekmat's feature film, Women's Prison (2002) explores the experience of Iranian women incarcerated for non-political reasons from the 1980s until today; Marina Nemat's Evin memoir, Prisoner of Tehran (2007) will be discussed briefly below; and Zarah Ghahramani's My Life as a Traitor (2008) describes her 30-day stint in Evin in 2001 – replete with harsh interrogations and torture – for her political activities as a college student. So, We Lived to Tell: Political Prison (2002) exploration of Iranian Women joins these other works in building a portrait of women's experiences of imprisonment, especially at one infamous facility. In key ways, it is the strongest of these offerings, and I would urge curious readers to begin here.

We Lived to Tell brings together three short narratives composed in English, all testimonies to their authors’ experiences as political prisoners in Evin during the 1980s. Their lyrical titles – ‘Years of Fire and Ash’ (Sousan Mehr), ‘As Long as There are Poppies’ (Azadeh Agah), and ‘The Five Seasons’ (Shadi Parsi) – exemplify the oddly persistent beauty in these depictions of a grim breach of justice.

Shahrzad Mojab's very useful introduction provides historical context for the lay reader and wards off the kind of aggressively Islamophobic dichotomizing that characterizes so much North American commentary on Iran. From her first words, Mojab places these memoirs in a broader setting of oppression and resistance, citing West Indian sugar plantations during slavery, and today's Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. She insists that the theocratic brutality of 1980s Iran cannot be understood without being placed in this wider frame; elsewhere, Mojab has redefined Bush's ‘axis of evil’ as ‘capitalism, religious fundamentalisms, and US imperialism’.¹ The women who tell their stories here were all relatively secular, enthusiastically left-wing activists committed to the revolution but then, in the aftermath of the Shah's overthrow, dismayed by what they experienced as a fundamentalist hijacking of the movement and of state power.

Sousan Mehr describes ‘[t]wo mothers, awaiting execution, saying farewell to their children under a sky framed in barbed wire…. I will write about this one day, I think to myself. This is not a myth or a legend; this is true, and one day I will record it all’ (p. 61). Perhaps this urgent call to witness is the motor that drives all three authors in this volume. Their sensibilities, though, and their age when detained, their educational and class background are all palpably distinct. At the time of arrest, Azadeh Agah was a mother (of one) and already a professor, Shadi Parsi was only eighteen, and Sousan Mehr well-travelled and in her twenties. Mehr begins and ends with dreams of a lost lover and the scent of cyclamens. Agah's essay, the longest, seems the most carefully comprehensive in its presentation of day-to-day life at Evin. Parsi's piece, perhaps the most lyrical, dedicates itself to portrayal of psychological experience.

Despite the markedly distinct voice, perspective and project of each author's contribution, the narratives share many features because they write from the same place and time, and Evin's strategies were forced on all of them: executions (counting gunshots); torture, especially flogging of the soles of feet; violent institutionalized misogyny; extreme overcrowding and underfeeding; blindfolds; camphor in the tea (to suppress sexual longings); babies and young children kept with and then removed from imprisoned mothers; a preponderance of prisoners in their late teens; ‘trials’ that defy any notion of justice – that would leave Kafka gasping; hours of enforced ‘educational programming’ each day that turn the jailhouse version of Islam into something unrecognizable, unwelcome to the devout and the secular alike.

For all this horror, solidarity predominates in all three narratives, taking many vital forms. We hear of enterprising, canny, communistic sharing of all available resources; tender comforting when despair grows too great; ingenious, gracious extensions of privacy or some semblance of it; a remarkably earthy, life-sustaining humour (the women even make light over backed-up sewage in one gruesomely mordant scene (p. 119)); and shared projects – like teaching one another French, embroidering or carving for one another using contraband or reappropriated materials (photos of the resultant artworks are included in the book). Also shared is poetry: whether embroidered on a piece of scavenged fabric for a friend, scratched on a wall, composed in a notebook or recited from memory, shared poetry sustained these three different women during their ordeal, and it makes up part of this book just as it became part of the fabric of survival woven by the thousands of women being ‘processed’ by the Evin machine.

This sustaining sisterliness unfolds in the face of a much more stressful parallel dynamic, to which much space is necessarily devoted in all three essays. Some – often half – of the women in a room, whether a small cell (five or six women living in a cell meant for one) or a large ward (housing as many as ninety women in one room), were tavvabs, ‘repentant sinners’ who (often as a consequence of torture) had renounced their beliefs and decided to live as informers and facilitators of the regime that was detaining them. All three authors treat these women with disdain, not just because they made day-to-day life immeasurably more difficult for their fellow inmates, but especially because, as Shadi Parsi suggests, like ‘dark sides’ made manifest and placed right in their midst, ‘they demonstrated to us how low each of us could potentially sink’ (p. 164).

In a recent review of two other memoirs from Evin Prison, Sarah Wildman remarks on what she calls a ‘weird sameness’ as the authors recount a chain of degradations that become, for the reader, ‘depressingly familiar’.² Of course Wildman is right, the dehumanizations of blindfoldings and solitary are purposefully rote: they are ‘weird[ly]’ the same because all these afflictions are routinized for mass application, and their first function is to strip away the dignity of individuality and uniform reiteration on the punisher’s part makes its stamp on the detention memoir. Two points need to be made, though. First, memoirs that present themselves as part of a ‘depressingly familiar’ oeuvre may prove controversial in their truth claims, as scandals of the last years have proven all too well.³ One of the texts reviewed by Wildman, Marina Nemat's 2007 Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir, has been greeted with angry scepticism by some of her fellow survivors of Evin for what they describe as self-serving distortions and inventions: these critics claim that much in her memoir was fabricated.⁴

Second, the commonalities among the three essays assembled in We Lived to Tell are not merely depressing. The Bildungsroman story of an individual spirit not broken may be what we expect as readers, but it is not the only note to be sounded by a resistance testimonial. Part of what we hear, as these three voices braid together, is the unmistakable and very moving aesthetics of the ‘we’, whereby the overweening obsession with individual experience that so dominates literary convention is overshadowed by the language of collectivity. Shadi Parsi describes prisoners pouring into the hallway to accompany several beloved fellows on the walk towards their executions, singing:When we finished singing the song, we moved on to Masouleh, and then another. We had come out of our room and were moving along the hallway. Other rooms were having their own farewells and stepping out, and in a short time, all the prisoners in the rooms were together, strong, marching towards the main exit of the ward, seeing off the departing friends. It looked and felt so much like a demonstration: everyone marching along with a common purpose and a feeling that united them. The atmosphere was emotionally charged, ready to erupt in fire. Other rooms joined in our singing. When we reached the main exit, we stopped. Those who were leaving turned back towards us with a long, meaningful glance at our crowd. For a split second, we stopped singing and breathing. Then suddenly someone in the crowd started to sing the Internationale. This was a different song: it wasn’t one to sing aloud in prison…. It began as a feeble, unnoticeable voice, and then got stronger and stronger. We all forgot where we were, and heedless of the consequences, felt solidarity wrap itself around us, a warm blanket…. As calm as a gentle breeze, each of the prisoners looked back at us…

And then they went to die. Many were interrogated and flogged in the wake of this action. But the submersion of each ‘I’ in that profound experience of solidarity invents a different protocol of telling, an aesthetics of collectivity that must reshape our expectations of the memoir genre, capable of conveying not just the depths of suffering and brutality, but ‘the power and the strength in the prison hallways when we were singing that song to our friends for the last time’ (Parsi, 2007: 184).

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Notes

¹ Shahrzad Mojab, ‘Ziba: A Memorial,’ Lecture Concordia University, 9 July 2004. Recorded at http://www.zibakazemi.org/shahrzadmojab.html, a memorial site for Ziba-Zahri Kazemi, a photojournalist murdered in front of Evin Prison in 2003.

² Wildman (2008).

³ Daniel Engber offers one depressing catalogue: ‘Worst Publishing Week Ever’ 4 March 2008, Slate.com, http://www.slate.com/id/2185746/.

⁴ http://www.utoronto.ca/prisonmemoirs/Protest.pdf A letter of complaint to Penguin Books, Canada.

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References

Wildman, S. (2008) ‘Caught in the Ayatollah's Web’ New York Times Book Review, 6 January, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Wildman-t.html.

2. Review: WE LIVED TO TELL: Political Prison Memoirs of Iranian Women

Nutzerbewertung - Esther - Goodreads -

i don't know where to begin or how to describe what a powerful book this is. reading this book renewed my faith in women and womanhood. اینجا بخوانید

کتاب دوم

In a voice of their own:

a collection of stories by Iranian women written since the Revolution of 1979

Franklin Lewis, Farzin Yazdanfar







Description
This collection provides a window on the concerns of Iranian women, writers in particular, since the Revolution of 1979 and the establishment of Islamic Republic in Iran. The collection includes eighteen stories written by more than a dozen women during the last twenty years, some of them well-known writers and others just establishing their careers. In these stories, most never before available in translation and rendered here into readable English that captures the style and flavor of the original Persian, Iranian women speak in their own voice to the western reader about marriage, sex, politics, exile and the place of women in Iranian society. GoodReads Reviews (1) Review from goodreads.com by ّfaraanak (GoodReads user published 2008-09-15 ) There's a wide variety of situations and emotions described in these fascinating stories, written between 1978 and 1995, and you might be surprised how little role religion plays in them, considering that the period was dominated by the establishment of an Islamic government during this period. As i... Read more... Read more GoodReads user reviews ›› Amazon Reviews (1) Worthwhile by Reader in Tokyo (Amazon user published 2009-12-04 ) This book was published in 1996 and contained 18 short stories by 13 writers who were women. The oldest authors in this anthology were the five who began their careers before the revolution: Goli Taraghi (1939-), Shokooh Mirzadegi (1944-), Mehri Yalfani (ca.1945-), Shahrnush Parsipur (1946-)... Read more... This book was published in 1996 and contained 18 short stories by 13 writers who were women. The oldest authors in this anthology were the five who began their careers before the revolution: Goli Taraghi (1939-), Shokooh Mirzadegi (1944-), Mehri Yalfani (ca.1945-), Shahrnush Parsipur (1946-) and Mihan Bahrami (1947-). The youngest were Tehereh Alavi (1959-), Soudabeh Ashrafi (1959-), Fariba Vafi (1962-) and Roya Shapurian (1966-). Others included Moniru Ravanipur (1954-) and Farkhondeh Aghai (1956-). Writers like Simin Daneshvar and Mahshid Amir-Shahi were omitted because several English-language collections of their work were already available, and the author Ghazaleh Alizadeh was omitted because the editors could find no short stories by her for the period. The stories in this anthology had been published originally in Persian-language journals in Iran, North America and Europe. All but three were from the 1990s: one story by Ravanipur was published in 1989, one by Parsipur came out two years before the 1979 revolution -- notwithstanding the title of this collection -- and one by Bahrami was first published in 1968. At the time their works in this collection first came out, the authors were living in Iran, except for Mirzadegi, Yalfani and Ashrafi, who'd left for England, Canada and the United States. It appears that most of the others still live in Iran, except for Taraghi, Parsipur and Ravanipur, who've gone abroad in the years since this anthology was published. Most of the stories focused on relationships within the family -- husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters - or without, between unrelated men and women. A few dealt deeply with women -- grandmothers, children, a girl, a prospective bride -- reflecting on their inner lives (Taraghi, Barami, Parsipur, Shapurian) or dealing with a crisis like a mother's death (Aghai); these impressed me the most. A few touched on other subjects like the exploitation of female workers (Ashrafi) and brutality in a women's prison (Fariba Vafi). Others dealt with the dislocation of exile (Mirzadegi, Makhameh Rahimzadeh). One appeared to describe a confrontation between leftists and religious marchers around the time of the 1979 revolution (Shahla Shafik). Most of the works were realistic, though one story by Parsipur moved into magical realism, with a woman entering the body and mind of her lover. Rare humor was provided in a story by Yalfani, in which two strong wives plotted to find a wife for their helpless, newly widowed brother. In addition to the stories, there was an introduction providing some background on writing in Iran, a list of prose works translated into English, a list of studies of women's writing in Iran and the Middle East. The introduction discussed briefly the origins of modern Persian literature in the late 1800s, through the publications of Zayn al-Abedin Maraghehi and Mirza Habib-e Esfahani, and from the 1920s to 40s through the work of writers like Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, Sadegh Hedayat, Bozorg Alavi, Beh-Azin, Sadegh Chubak and Jalal Al-e Ahmad. Milestones in writing by women were -- in nonfiction -- the publication in 1894 of The Vices of Men by Bibi Khanom Astarabadi, which called for greater understanding of the condition of women in the patriarchal society of the time, and the memoirs of Taj al-Saltaneh, the daughter of a former ruler, written ca. 1924 but not published in full until 1982. In prose fiction by women, the introduction cited works such as "Gowhar" (1945), a short story by Zahra Khanlari, described as the first fiction by an Iranian woman to appear in a major literary journal; the short-story collection by Simin Daneshvar, Fire Quenched (1947), published in 1947; and Daneshvar's novel Savushun (1969), called the first novel published in Iran by a woman. Also mentioned were poets from earlier centuries as well as poets from the 20th century such as Parvin Etesami (1907-41) and Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-67). Other relatively easy-to-find collections of writing by women are Stories by Iranian Women since the Revolution (1991), covering mainly the 1980s; A Walnut Sapling on Masih's Grave and Other Stories by Iranian Women (1993), which covered mainly the 1960s to 80s; and A Feast in the Mirror: Stories by Contemporary Iranian Women (2000), which covered the 1980s and 90s. Larger, more comprehensive collections include Stories from Iran: A Chicago Anthology 1921-1991 (1992) and Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (2005). Hide Read more Amazon.com user reviews ›› کتاب سوم A Walnut sapling on Masih's grave and other stories by Iranian women John Green, Farzin Yazdanfar 0 Rezensionen Heinemann, 1993 - 208 Seiten



ذیلا مستندات کتاب شناختی و نیز لینک های دسترسی به صورت آنلاین را برای این چند کتاب مشاهده می فرمایید

		646981254 Afsaneh : short stories by Iranian women by Kaveh Basmenji; eBook : Document : Fiction Language: English Publisher: London : Saqi, 2005. View all editions and formats
			622343799 A Walnut sapling on Masih's grave and other stories by Iranian women by John Green; Farzin Yazdanfar; eBook : Document : Fiction Language: English Publisher: Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, ©1993. View all editions and formats
			610267984 Stories by Iranian women since the revolution by Soraya Paknazar Sullivan; eBook : Document : Fiction Language: English Publisher: Austin, Tex. : Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, ©1991. View all editions and formats
			645852937 In a voice of their own : a collection of stories by Iranian women written since the Revolution of 1979 by Franklin Lewis; Farzin Yazdanfar; eBook : Document : Fiction Language: English Publisher: Costa Mesa, Calif. : Mazda Publishers, 1996. View all editions and formats

پژوهشي فقهي جزائي در تجسّس وتفتيش عقايد

2010-10-12T19:50:00.002+03:30

عنوان (انگلیسی): Retributional juratory research in detection and investigation about opinions

نشریه: مقالات و بررسيها

شماره: مقالات و بررسيها (دوره: 89 , شماره: 41)

نویسنده: غلام الواري ، حسين صابري

تاریخ: ‏۱۳۸۹/۰۴/۲۸

کلمات کلیدی :

تفتيش عقايد ، روايات ، قرآن ، تجسّس و تفتيش عقايد در آيات قرآن ، تجسّس

کلمات کلیدی (انگلیسی):

Islam. , detection of opinions , retributional juratory , permission of detection , security
چکیده:

بي شك تجّسس در حالات خصوصي مردم و تفتيش دربارة‌ اسرار نهاني آنها كاري مذموم و ناپسند است. در اسلام نوعي «امنيت» پيش بيني شده ‌كه ‌در هيچ قانوني از قوانين دنيا وجود ندارد، و آن امنيت حيثيت و آبروي افراد حتي در محيط افكار ديگران است و بديهي است سوءظن و تجسّس و تفتيش از عقايد اين سرمايه‌ گرانقدر را به ‌خطر مي‌افكند. قانون اساسي در دو اصل 23 و 25 بدين شرح كه ‌در اصل 23 مقرر مي‌دارد: «تفتيش عقايد ممنوع است و هيچ كس را نمي‌توان به ‌صرف داشتن عقيده‌اي مورد تعرض و مواخذه‌ قرار داد» و در اصل 25 آورده ‌است: «در بازرسي و فرستادن نامه‌ها، ضبط و فاش كردن مكالمات تلفني يا افشاي مخابرات تلگرافي و تلكسي، سانسور، عدم مخابره ‌و نرساندن آنها، استراق سمع و هر گونه ‌تجسّس ممنوع است مگر به‌ حكم قانون»، به اين امر تصريح كرده است. نگارنده ‌در اين جستار به ‌بررسي و تببين مباني شرعي و جزائي هر دو مسأله پرداخته ‌كه ‌اميد است براي دانش¬پژوهان علم حقوق مثمر ثمر و مفيد فايده‌ باشد.

چکیده (انگلیسی):

Undoubtedly it is an indecent and censurable thing to investigate about people's individual conditions and knowing about their secrets. A sort of security is anticipated in Islam that is not exclusive in the world. It is the security of respect, prestige and thoughts of individuals. Undoubtedly this precious thing will be in danger with suspicion and investigation. On the other hand, in both principles of 23 and 25 of the constitution especially in the principle of 23 we have: the investigation of opinions is forbidden and nobody can object about opinions. The principle of 25 says: recording and revealing of the conversation or telegraphs and telegram and their censor and overhearing is forbidden, unless the law permits. This article attempts to study and explain this problem.

فایل مقاله : [دریافت]

فقه حبس و بازداشت - بخش 1

2010-10-12T19:36:00.000+03:30

عنوان مقاله : تحقيقي در مباني فقهي حبس
نویسندگان مقاله : دكتر محسن جابري عربلو
مقالات و بررسيها دوره 54-53, شماره 0 - سامانه نشریات دانشگاه تهران

دریافت

چکیده :

مسأله « حبس » و كساني كه حبس آنها ، واجب يا جايز است در كتب فقه و حديث ضمن ابواب مختلف و متفرق ، ذكر شده و فصل مستقل و با ب عليحده براي آن گشوده نشده است. با توجه به اهميت مسأله و مطرح شدن آن در نظام اسلامي ، اينجانب مناسب ديدم تا آن را در يك مقاله مستقل ، مورد بحث قرار داده و مدارك مربوطه ارائه كنم و با بضاعت علمي و توان اندكي كه هست ، حتي الامكان ابعاد آن را توضيح دهم تا براي طالبان و علاقمندان ، مطالعه آن آسان شود. و راه براي تحقيق و تتبع بيشتر ، هموار گردد.

پیشنهادهای روزانه ی مطالعه - 11: ایران و اسلام معاصر به روایت نیکی کدی-بخش دو

2010-10-11T18:05:00.001+03:30

هنرور: در پاسخ دوستان در مورد کتاب ریشه های انقلاب عرض می کنم که نام کتاب در زبان اصای عبارت است از "ایران مدرن: ریشه ها و نتایج انقلاب اسلامی ایران" و ظاهرا در ایران دو شقه شده، یکی "ریشه های انقلاب" شده و دوم "نتایج انقلاب" شده. ضمن اینکه متن کاملش را اینجا می گذارم، همراه با مجموعه ای دیگر که فراموش کرده بودم در پست قبلی: یادداشت ها و برداشت ها: پیشنهادهای روزانه ی مطالعه - 10: ایران و اسلام معاصر به روایت نیکی کدی

نتایج انقلاب ایران
پدیدآورنده: نیکی کدی، مهدی حقیقت خواه (مترجم)
ناشر: ققنوس - 03 بهمن، 1388

قیمت: 32000 ریال

این کتاب از 2 فروشگاه قابل تهیه می باشد.

ایران دوران قاجار و برآمدن رضاخان (1175 - 1304)
پدیدآورنده: نیکی کدی، مهدی حقیقت خواه (مترجم)
ناشر: ققنوس - 22 آبان، 1387

قیمت: 28000 ریال

این کتاب از 2 فروشگاه قابل تهیه می باشد.

ریشه های انقلاب ایران
پدیدآورنده: عبدالرحیم گواهی، نیکی کدی
ناشر: دفتر نشر فرهنگ اسلامی - 1381

قیمت: 55000 ریال

چاپ این کتاب تمام شده است.

Modern Iran: roots and results of revolution

By Nikki R. Keddie, Yann Richard

دوعنوان آخوندی

2010-10-11T16:07:00.000+03:30

هنرور: ایران در دست آیت الله ها نام کتاب اول است وکتاب دوم که کتاب مهمی است، نوشته ی شاعر ایرانی الاصل آلمانی متخلص به سعید، یا همان سعید میرهادی، که زمانی رئیس انجمن قلم آلمان بود و از ادیبان سرشناس است، عنوانش به فارسی می شود: دست دراز ملایان، یادداشت هایی از تبعیدگاهم

دو منبع کلاسیک درباره ی مصدق

2010-10-11T15:51:00.001+03:30

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 coup in Iran.

Selected pages

Page 100

The Formative Years	3

First Political Posts	14

Minister and Governor	33

Parliamentary Positions	51

Iran after World War II	67

Parliamentary Opposition	74

The National Front	95

Oil and Foreign Policy	115

Nonoil Politics and Economics	147

The 28th Mordad Coup and its Aftermath	179

Mossadeghs	198

Mossadeghs Letter May 1955	212

Interviews	220

Copyright

پیشنهادهای روزانه ی مطالعه - 10: ایران و اسلام معاصر به روایت نیکی کدی

2010-10-11T12:13:00.000+03:30

هنرور: نیکی کدی پژوهشگری گمنام نیست که نیازی به معرفیش باشد، اما از آنجا که کارش آکادمیک است و مانند آثار دیگری که در باب انقلاب اسلامی می شناسیم، نه حالت ژورنالیستی، نه حالت رمان گ.ونه و روایی و نه حالت سیاسی-دفاعی نسبت به جریانی و جناحی خاص دارد، نسل ما عادتا و تا جایی که اطلاع دارم، اقبال کمتری به آثار وی کرده اند، شاید چون کمتر در معرض برخورد با آن قرار داشته اند، در این صورت معرفی و در اختیار نهادن برخی آثار وی به شکل متن کامل شاید کمکی به جبران این امر کند:

Nikki Keddie

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Nikki R. Keddie is an American professor of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She retired from the University of California, Los Angeles after 35 years of teaching. Keddie was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930.

Personal achievements

1994 Elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2001 Mentoring award of Middle East Studies Association, which also made her an honorary fellow in 2003.
2001 Award for scholarly distinction from the American Historical Association
2002 Persian History award from the Encyclopedia Iranica Foundation
2004 Balzan prize

Works by Nikki Keddie

Women in the Middle East: Past and Present, Princeton University Press, 2007.
Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, Yale University Press, 2003.
Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan. Mazda, Costa Mesa, CA, 1999.
Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution, Macmillan, London, and New York, New York University (NYU) Press, 1995
Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran, Yale University Press, 1981.
Iran: Religion, Politics and Society, Frank Cass, London, 1980
Sayyid Jamal al-Din "al-Afghani": A Political Biography, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972.
An Islamic Response to Imperialism, University of California Press, 1968.
Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891-92, Frank Cass, 1966.

External links

UCLA bio

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Keddie"

نیزبه زبان فارسی بنگرید:

نقد و بررسی نظریه نیکی آر. کدی در تحلیل انقلاب اسلامی ایران

ایران دوران قاجار و برآمدن رضاخان (1175 - 1304) - نیکی کدی، مهدی حقیقت خواه (مترجم)

نتایج انقلاب ایران - نیکی کدی، مهدی حقیقت خواه (مترجم)
ریشه های انقلاب ایران - عبدالرحیم گواهی، نیکی کدی
کتابخانه ایرانشناسی مجلس » نیکی_کدی،
زنان در سی سال حاکمیت جمهوری اسلامی
نيکی کدی و «نتايج انقلاب ايران»
پايگاه حوزه نت : معرفی و نقد کتاب؛ نتایج انقلاب ایران
شیعیان ، اقلیت مهجور عربستان سعودی | هامش

NIKKI KEDDIE

PROFESSOR EMERITUS

Office: 5385 Bunche Hall
Phone: (310)825-4601
Fax: 310-206-9630
E-mail: keddie@history.ucla.edu

Mailing Address:

UCLA Department of History
6265 Bunche Hall
Box 951473
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473

Curriculum Vitae

Class Websites

Field

Near East

Selected Publications

I. Books and Special Issue of Journals
Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution. London: MacMillan, 1995.

Ed. Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality. New York: N.Y.U. Press, 1995, authored introduction.

Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan: 1796-1925. Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1999.

Co-ed with Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi. “Women in Twentieth Century Religious Politics.” Special issue of Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 10, No. 4. (Winter 1999). Authored first article.

Co-ed with Rudi Matthee. Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, June 2002.

Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Women in the Middle East: Past and Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

II. Articles and Chapters (excluding short encyclopedia articles and journal book reviews)
"Secularism and the State: Towards Clarity and Global Comparison." New Left Review. Vol. 226 (November/December 1997): 21-40.

"The New Religious Politics: Where, When, and Why Do 'Fundamentalisms' Appear?" Comparative Studies in Society and History. Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct. 1998): 696-723.

"Iran: Understanding the Enigma,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 2:3 (Sept. 1998),http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/meria/meria98_keddie.html.

“The New Religious Politics and Women Worldwide: A Comparative Study.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1999): 11-34.

“Women and Religious Politics in the Contemporary World.” ISIM Newsletter. 3/99 (July 1999).

“Women in Iran since 1979.” Social Research. Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer, 2000); special issue: “Iran: Since the Revolution.” 405-438.

“The Study of Muslim Women in the Middle East: Achievements and Problems.” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review. Vol. 6 (2000-2001): 26-52.

Co-ed with Azita Karimkhany. “Women in Iran: An Online Discussion.” Middle East Policy. Vol. 8, No. 4 (December, 2001): 128-143.

“Shi’ism and Change: Secularism and Myth,” in Shi’ite Heritage: Essays on Classical and Modern Traditions, ed. L. Clarke (Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2001).

“Women in the Limelight: Some Recent Books on Middle Eastern Women’s History since 1800.”International Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. XXXIV, No. 3 (August, 2002).

"Secularism and its Discontents." Daedalus. (Summer 2003).

"L'Iran evolverà, ma da solo." Aspenia:. No. 22. America Black and White. Aspen Institute: Italia, Rome. (October 2003):185-192.
English version, "Iran: change will come from within." Aspenia International. No. 21/22. Economy & Security. Aspen Institute: Italia, Rome. (December 2003): 150-157.

"A Woman's Place: Democratization in the Middle East." Current History. Vol. 103, No. 669 (January 2004).

“Trajectories of Secularism in the West and the Middle East.” Global Dialogue. Vol. 6, No.1-2 (Winter-Spring 2004).

“Women in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam.” Women’s History in Global Perspective, Vol. 3, ed. Bonnie G. Smith. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005, 68-110.

“Revolutionary Iran: National Culture and Transnational Impact,” in Robert W. Hefner, ed., The New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 6, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.

Opinion Pieces and Newspaper Reviews
“Divine Inspiration.” New York Times. (December 16, 2001): Op-ed.

“Why Reward Iran’s Zealots?” Los Angeles Times. (Feb.17, 2002): Sunday Opinion, Section M.

“Don’t judge a woman by her cover: life is
not all bad in Iran,” The Times (London) (February 9. 2004),http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-994763,00.html.

“War without End Brings Endless Dangers.” History News Service syndication to several newspapers and online services. Published online by History News Network, (Feb. 2002), as “Endless Enemies,” and by the Gulf/2000 Project: http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/.

“Taking History on Faith,” Review of Reza Aslan, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” Washington Post, April 7, 2005, C2.

“On History in the Twentieth Century,” Daedalus, Summer 2006 (Letter to the Editor).

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS BEFORE 1995

"Labor," in The Economy of India; "Labor," in The Economy of Pakistan; "Labor," in The Economy of Nepal; "Labor Force," in A Survey of Nepal Social Life; "Agrarian Reform," in The Economy of Pakistan; Human Relations Area Files, new Haven, 1956.
"Labor Problems of Pakistan." Journal of Asian Studies (May 1957): 575-589. "Western Rule Versus Western Values: Suggestions for a Comparative Study of
Asian Intellectual History." Diogenes 26 (1959): 71-96. Also published in
French and Arabic versions of Diogenes.
Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh, "The Background of the Constitutional Movement in Azerbaijan." Translated with notes by Nikki Keddie. Middle East Journal XIV, no. 4 (1960): 456-465. Reprinted in Iran.
Historical Obstacles to Agrarian Change in Iran. Claremont, California, 1960. Parts reprinted in C. Issawi, Economic History of Iran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
"Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism." Comparative Studies in Society and History IV, no. 3 (April 1962): 265-295
"Symbol and Sincerity in Islam." Studia Islamica XIX (1963): 27-63.
With A. H. Zarrinkoub. "Fida'iyyan-i Islam." In Encyclopedia of Islam, 1964. "Afghani in Afghanistan." Middle Eastern Studies I, no. 4 (1965): 322-349.
"The Origins of the Religious-Radical Alliance in Iran." Past and Present 34 (July
1966): 70-80.
"The Pan-Islamic Appeal: Afghani and Abdulhamid II." Middle Eastern Studies II (October I966); 46-67.
"Sayyid Jamal ad-Din's First 27 years: The Darkest period." Middle East Journal XX, no. 4 (autumn 1966): 517-533.
"British Policy and the Iranian Opposition, 1901-1907." Journal of Modern History XXXIX, no. 3(1967): 266-282.
"Islamic Philosophy and Islamic Modernism." Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies VI (1968): 53-56.
"The Iranian Village before and after Land Reform." Journal of Contemporary History III, 3 (1968): 69-91. Reprinted in Development and Underdevelopment, edited by H. Bernstein. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1974.
"La rivoluzione constituzionale iraniana del 1905-1911." Rivista Storica Italiana LXX, I (1968): 61-70. English version in "The Iranian Constitutional

Revolution of 1905-1911: A Brief Assessment." Iran Society: Silver Jubilee Volume. Calcutta, 1970.
"Iranian Politics 1900-1905: Background to Revolution." Middle Eastern Studies, 5, no. I: 3-31; no. 2: 151-167; no. 3: 234-250 (1969).
"Pan-Islam as Proto-Nationalism." Journal of Modern History 41 (March 1969): 17-28.
"The Roots of the Ulama's Power in Modern Iran." Studia Islamica, XXIX (1969): 31-53. Reprinted in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis.
"Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani: A Case of Posthumous Charisma?" In Philosophers and Kings edited by D. Rustow, 148-179. New York: Braziller, 1970.
"Iran." in Der Islam Vol. II, edited by G. E. von Grunebaum, 160-217. Frankfurt:
Fisher Weltgeschichte, 1971. Also available in Italian and Spanish translations. "The Assassination of the Amin as-Sultan (Atabak-i A'zam)." In Iran and Islam
edited by C. E. Bosworth, 315-329. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1971.
"The Iranian Power Structure and Social Change 1800-1969: An Overview." International Journal of Middle East Studies IV (1973): 3-20.
"The Persian Land Reform 1962-1966 by A. K. S. Lambton." Middle Eastern Studies VII, no. 3 (1971): 373-378.
"Capitalism, Social Control, and Stratification in Iranian Villages before and after Land Reform." In Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East edited by R. Antoun and I. Harik, 364-431. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1972.
"The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 and its Political Impact." Iranian Studies VI, nos 2-3 (1972): 58-78.
"Intellectuals in the Middle East: A Brief Historical Consideration." Daedalus (summer 1972): 39-57.
"An Assessment of American, British, and French Works since 1940 on Modern Iranian History." Iranian Studies VI, nos 2-3 (1972): 255-271.
"Is There a Middle East?" International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies IV (1973): 255-271.
Four articles, with my photographs: "New Life for Old Monuments." "Preserving Persepolis." "The Masjed-e Jom'eh of Isfahan." "Delving under Old Paint." Kayhan International Tehran, 26-27 February; 4-5 March 1974.
Four articles, with my photographs: "Carpets as Handicrafts." "Making Carpets at Home." "The Crafts Renaissance." "The Handicrafts Future." Kayhan International, Tehran, 20 May; 22 May; 23 May; 28 May 1974.
"History and Economic Development." In The Social Sciences and Economic Development edited by K. Farmanfarmanian, 40-57. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
With J. Dhamija. "Namads." A Survey of Persian Handicraft, edited by J. and S. Gluck, 277-288. Tehran: Bank Melli, 1977.
"Culture Traits, Fantasy, and Reality in the Life of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani." Iranian Studies IX, nos 2-3 (1976): 89-120.
"Development in the Middle East - A Comparison between Turkey, Iran and Egypt." Communications and Development Tehran, I, nos 2-3, 1977. "Islam et Politique en Iran." Le Monde Diplomatique. Paris, August 1977.

"TThe Midas Touch: Black Gold, Economics, and Politics in Iran Today." Iranian Studies X, no. 4 (1977-de facto 1979): 243-266. German translation in Revolution in Iran and Afghanistan. Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1980.
"Iran, 1797-1941." In Commoners, Climbers, and Notables, edited by C. A. O. van Nieuwenhujze, 122-139. Leiden: Brill, 1977.
"Class Structure and Political Power in Iran since 1796." In State and Society in
Iran, edited by A. Banani, 305-330. Iranian Studies, Boston, 1979.
"Problems in the Study of Middle Eastern Women." International Journal off.'
Middle Eastern Studies X, no. 2 (1979): 225-240.
"Oil, Economic Policy, and Social Conflict in Iran." Race and Class XXI, 1 (1979): 13-29.
"Iran: The Roots of Revolution." Gazelle Review 6 (1979): 26-33.
"Iran: Is `Modernization' the Message?" Middle East Review XI, no. 3 (1979): 55-56.
"Islam and Politics: New Factors in the Equation." Los Angeles Times, Opinion lead, Dec. 2, 1979 (2 pages, 7 pages typescript). "Khomeini's Fundamentalism is as Revolutionary as His politics," Los Angeles Times, Opinion first page, Jan. 13, 1980 (2 pages, 7 pages typescript). (The newspaper articles' titles are not mine.)
"Socioeconomic Change in the Middle East since 1800: A Comparative Analysis." In The Islamic Middle East, 700-1900, edited by A. L. Udovitch. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1981.
"The History of the Muslim Middle East." In The Past Before Us: Contemporary:. Historical Writing in the United States, edited for the American Historical Association by Michael Kammen. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
"Pre-Capitalist Structures in the Middle East." Journal of Arab Affairs I, no. 2 (April 1982): 189-208. French version, "Structures precapitalistes dans le Moyen-Orient." In Structures et cultures precapitalistes, edited by Rene Gallissot. Paris, 1981.
"Iran: Change in Islam; Islam and Change." International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies l 1 (1980): 527-542. German translation in Religion and Politik im Iran, edited by K. Greussing. Frankfurt, 1981.
"Iran: Islam and Revolution." In Iran in der Krise. Bonn: under the auspices of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 1980. ,
"L'ayatollah est-il un integriste?" Le Monde 22 August 1980.
"Understanding the Iranian Revolution." The Center Magazine (May-June 1980): 38-46.
"The Iranian Revolution and U.S. Policy." SAIS Review (winter 1981-82): 13-26. With Lois Beck, The Qashqa'i People of /ran. Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of
Cultural History, 1981. Includes color and black and white photographs by
Nikki Keddie.
"Revolution of Terror." Los Angeles Times 17 January 1982. Reprinted in the International Herald Tribune and the London Guardian.
"Money and Ethics in Middle East Studies." Middle East Studies Association Bulletin XVI, 1 (July 1982): 1-8.
"Comments on Skocpol." Theory and Society 11 (1982): 285-292. [Commenting on Theda Skocpol, "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution," pages 265-283 of same issue, at request of editors.]

Co-signed with others, Obituaries of G. E. von Grunebaum in the American
Historical Review 1962. And University of California In Memoriurn. "Khomeini's Opponents See Success for Their Crusade." Los Angeles Times 4
October 1981.
"Will Iran's Bloody Factional Fighting Escalate Into Civil War?" Los Angeles Times 5 July 1981.
"Iran: Religious Orthodoxy and Heresy in Political Culture." In Religion and Society: Asia and the Middle East, edited by C. Caldarola. The Hague, 1982.
"Islamic Revival as Third Worldism." In Le Cuisinier et le Philosophe: Honunage a Maxime Rodinson, edited by J.-P. Digard, 275-28I. Paris: Masonneuve et Larose, 1982.
"The Minorities Question in Iran." The Iran-Iraq War: Old Weapons, New Conflicts, edited by Shaheen Ayubi and Shirin Tahir-Kheli, 85-108. New York: Praeger, 1983.
"Iran's Revolutionaries Flirt with Moderation." Los Angeles Times 13 February 1983.
"Iranian Revolutions in Comparative Perspective." American Historical Review 88, no. 3 (June 1983): 579-598.
"Afgani, Jamal-al Din." In Encyclopedia Iranica, edited by E. Yarshater, 481-486. "Must the Cold War Keep Growing Colder?" Los Angeles Times, 27 December 1983.
"Material Culture and Geography: Toward a Holistic History of the Middle East." Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (October 1984): 709-735. Reprinted and revised in Comparing Muslim Societies, edited by Juan R. I. Cole. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
"Islamic Revival in the Middle East: A Comparison of Iran and Egypt." In Arab
Society, edited by Samih K. Farsoun, 65-83. London: Croom Helm, 1985. "Islamic Revival in Comparative Perspective." In Iran Since Revolution, edited by
Barry Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
"Khomeini's Rule." London Review of Books 7, 4, 7, (March 1985): 7-8. "The Islamic Opposition." The Middle East (August 1985): 42-43.
"West Sumatra's Minangkabau." The World and I no. 7 (1986): 148-157. "Senegal: The Islam of Sufi Orders." The World and I no. 8 (1986): 182-187. "The Qashga'i of Southern Iran." The World and I no. 1 1 (1986): 474-497. "Ideologie et institutions dans les societes musulmanes post-coloniales." Politique
etrangere 51, no. 2 (summer 1986): 447-464.
"Religion, Ethnic Minorities, and the State in Iran." In The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, edited by Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner, 157-166. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986.
"Shi'ism and Revolution." In Religion, Rebellion, Revolution, edited by Bruce Lincoln, 157-182. London: Macmillan, 1985.
4
"Islam and Society in Minangkabau and in the Middle East: Comparative Reflections." Sojourn 2, no. 1 (1987): 1-23.
"The Islamist Movement in Tunisia." The Maghreb Review II, no. I (January-February 1986): 26-39.
"Ideology, Society and the State in Post-Colonial Muslim Societies." In State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan, edited by Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi, 9-30. London: Macmillan, 1988.

"Iranian Imbroglios: Who's Irrational?" World Policy Journal I (winter 1987-88): 29- 54.
"The Rights of Women in Contemporary Islam." In Human Rights and the World's Religions, edited by Leroy S. Rouner, 76-93. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
"The Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen): History and Society." In Sojourners and Settlers: The Yemeni Immigrant Experience, edited by Jonathan Friedlander. Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1988. With several photographs by the author from the related exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution and seven other museums.
"The Iranian Revolution in Comparative Perspective." In Islam, Politics and Social Movements, edited by Ira Lapidus and Edmund Burke III. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
"The Past and Present of Women in the Muslim World." Journal of World History I, no. 1 (1990): 77-108.
Wi" ' M. Amanat, "Iranian Politics 1852-1922." In Cambridge History of Iran, vol. VII, edited by Peter Avery and Gavin Hambly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
"The Revolt of Islam and its Roots." In Political Dynamics: Global Research Perceptives, edited by Dankwart Rustow and K. Erickson. New York: Harper, 1991.
"Reflections on the Influence of the Iranian Revolution." In Iran, the Middle East, and the Decade of the 1990s, 33-37. New Jersey: Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, 1991.
"Obstacles to Early Industrialization in the Middle East." In Between Development and Underdevelopment, edited by Jean Batou, 143-156. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1991.
"Can Revolutions be Predicted: Can Their Causes be Understood?" CONTENTION I, no. 2 (1992): 159-182. Two responses by author on this subject published in issues I, no. 3 (1992) and II, no. 2 (1993).
"Why Has Iran Been Revolutionary?" In Reconstruction and Regional Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf, edited by H. Amirahmadi and N. Entessar, 19-32. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
"The End of the Cold War and the Middle East." Diplomatic History 16, no. 1 (winter 1992): 95-103. Reprinted in The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications, edited by Michael J. Hogan. New York: Cambridge University press, 1992.
With Farah Monian, "Militancy and Religion in Contemporary Iran." In Fundamentalisms and the State, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
"The Fall of the Soviet Union and the Start of the New Middle East." Working Papers no. 22. Los Angeles: Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, 1992.
"The Shi'a of Pakistan: Reflections and Problems for Further Research." Working Papers no. 23. Los Angeles: Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, 1993.
"The French Revolution and the Middle East." In The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution, edited Joseph Klatis and Michael Haltzel. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994.

"The Revolt of Islam 1700-1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to
Imperialism." Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (1994). Several encyclopedia articles, in Colliers Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Iranica and
Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.
Many book reviews in Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, the American Historical Review, Middle Eastern Studies, Iranian Studies, The Journal of Economic History, Political Science Quarterly, Current History, Journal of Asian Studies, Far Eastern Quarterly, Journal of the American Oriental Society (review article from a con¬ference paper, "The Contributions of Vladimir Gordlevsky to the History of the Seljuk Turks"), The Historian, MERIP Reports, etc.

Awards

1994 elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

2001 mentoring award of Middle East Studies Association, which also made me an
honorary fellow in 2003.

2001 award for scholarly distinction from the American Historical Association

2002 Persian History award from the Encyclopedia Iranica Foundation

In 2004 I won the generous prize of the International Balzan Foundation, half of which is devoted to others' research and has enabled me to bring six post-doctoral fellows in women’s studies to UCLA in the course of four years.

The fellows for 2005-06 were Holly Shissler, who taught two courses in History, and Nayereh Tohidi, who taught in Women’s Studies. 2006-07 fellows were Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi in Geography and Sociology and Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi in History. The 2007-2008 fellow was Houri Berberian in History and the 2008-2009 fellow is Janet Afary in History.

I have had these major fellowships, in addition to several summer and
UCLA grants: AAUW (1954-55): Guggenheim (1963-64), SSRC (1959-60, 1966),
Rockefeller (1980, 1982; Bellagio, 1992); I was visiting scholar for
four months at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., in 1982,
and was associate professor, Harvard summer school, 1967 and visiting
professor, University of Rochester (1970), and University of Paris,
III (1976-78). I have spent a total of three years in Iran and have
done extensive research travel in Europe, the Middle East, East and
Southeast Asia, and Africa.