Portland Observer November 16.1979 Page 3
‘ American portrait of the Iranian Revolution
Part I: Do the Moslem Mullahs really run Iran?
By T.D. Allman
(Editors note: The Iranian revolution
was one of the most im portant
political events of the decade. It not
only toppled the United States’
number one ally in the Middle East,
but has catapaulted America into an
energy crisis that will probably be
felt for the remainder of the century.
It has also unleashed a wave of
Islamic revival that could charge the
face of the geo-political globe.
T.D. Allman, a contributing
editor to Harpers magazine, who has
covered the Middle East and Asia
since the 1960s, travelled throughout
Iran, compiling what is probably the
most accurate and detailed portrait
of Iran that has been made available
to the American people. Writing
prior to the current take-over of the
American Embassy, Allmon saw
aspects of Iranian life now closed to
foreign journalists.)
QUM, IRAN (PNS)-Has one dic
tatorship replaced another in Iran?
Have the Ayatollah Khomeini and
his mullahs created a totalitarian
theocracy as absolute as the secular
police state once run by the Shah and
SAVAK?
The immense secular influence the
Ayatollah Khomeini exercises from
this small pilgrimage town 85 miles
south of Tehran recently was
illustrated in a very graphic way. In
order to confer with the Ayatollah,
the entire Iranian cabinet, including
Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan,
boarded a mini-bus in Tehran and
subjected itself to the hot and tedious
five-hour round trip from the capital
to Qum.
Khomeini could have spared the
cabinet this inconvenience with a 20-
minute helicopter flight to Tehran.
But Iran today, is a country where
the mountains all go to Mohammad.
In fact, hardly a week passes
without the Ayatollah and the
Revolutionary Council issuing some
sweeping order-ranging from
nationalization of the banks to a
dress code for the Caspian beach
resorts-w ithout consulting the
government in Tehran, or even in
forming it in advance.
Does this mean the real capital of
the country is Qum? To a large ex
tent, many Iranian officials com
plain, it means Iran has no national
government at all. Even what
Khomeini orders, the government
frequently lacks the power to im
plement. While many Iranians, after
30 years of harassment by an all-
powerful central government, savor
the widespread local autonomy that
results, others, including those ap
pointed to office by Khomeini him
self, find the situation intolerable,
and are doing what they can to com
bat it.
Both the danger of the Shah’s ab
solutism being replaced by a religious
one, and the checks working inside
Iran against it, are summed up by a
new word that has recently entered
the Iranian political vocabulary, the
world’s latest "ism ."
Called "A koundism ,” it is the
word Iranians use to refer to the
misuse of authority by Shi'ite
Moslem clerics--ranging from
Khomeini himself down to the village
mullah.
On the least harmful level,
Akoundism arises when the local
mullah simply gets too big for his
britches and starts interfering in his
neighbors’ lives too much. It takes a
more serious form when a prominent
cleric turns himself into an Islamic
Pharisee-flaunting his piety at the
mosque while using his power to
enrich his family and deny the rights
of others. At its worst, Akoundism
becomes what Iranians call “ coun
ter-revolutionary activity" actions
which not only violate clerical ethics,
but bring the Islamic religion itself
into disrepute.
How do Iranians deal with
Akoundism? At the lowest level the
weapon is ridicule, social ostracism
and, in some villages, running the
Akound out of town. More serious
offenders, especially those holding
powerful offices, are attacked at
public meetings and in the press, and
sometimes dismissed from office.
And in the worst cases, if the Gov
ernment does not issue an arrest
warrant, indivduals take matters into
their own hands. Since the triumph
of the Islamic revolution here, a
variety of clerics have been shot
dead—including several close to
Khomeini himself.
Perhaps Iran’s most controversial
Ayatollah-according to many, the
worst perpetrator of Akoundism—is
Ayatollah Khalkhali, former head of
the revolutionary courts. He has
been dismissed from his post because
of what even fervent Islamic
revolutionaries call flagrant in
justices. In his most criticized action
yet, Khalkhali offered a bounty to
anyone who would kill the Shah, and
then fabricated the story that he had
retained Carlos, the international
terrorist, to do it. High Iranian of
ficials were appalled, and quickly
denied the report. But Khalkhali’s
own reputation may have suffered as
much inside Iran as Iran's reputation
suffered abroad as a result of the in
cident.
Recently a variety of Iranians
around the country were asked it
they considered Akoundism a serious
danger. Some of their replies:
An umemployed youth in a
Tehran low-income area-"in a few
months things will improve, and we
will rid ourselves of these Akounds,
the way we got rid of those SAVAK
goons.”
The governor of a province—
"Tens of thousands of Iranians did
not sacrifice their lives for Akound
ism. It must be controlled because
if Islam fails it will be the com
munists who inherit Iran.”
A young, affluent, westernized in
tellectual—"T he Akounds are the
new SAVAK."
For most Iranians, of course,
Islam remains not a God that has
failed, but one that has succeeded
beyond their wildest expectations.
Thev renard the mullahs not as
threats to their freedom, but as a-
gents of God who helped bring it
about. But even Khomeini himself
has warned that Akoundism could
defeat the revolution.
For the moment, the primary
danger to Iran’s stability is that the
Akounds will wreck the Iranian
economy by driving out skilled
workers and managers with their
repression of secular life styles. They
could bankrupt Islam itself as a
positive force by their attacks on
progressive Islamic groups, and they
many even provoke civil war through
repression of the leftists and the
ethnic and religious minorities.
While that danger has been em
phasized, even over-rated, by many
observers, there also has been a ten
dency to under-rate the effectiveness
of opposition, both open and in
direct, to unbridled theocracy.
Khomeini himself, for one thing,
commands the unquestioning loyalty
of far less than the 95 percent of the
population many assume. More than
a third of Iran’s 35 million people are
either not members of his Shi’ite sect
or are not native speakers of Farsi,
the language in which he preaches, or
both. Typical are the Arabs of oil-
producing Khuzistan province. They
are Shi’ites, but they oppose
Khomeini because they regard him as
a Persian chauvinist. When op
position from his fellow Farsi
speaking Shi’ites—ranging from
communists to religious rivals more
orthodox than he-is counted in, the
proportion of his following drops
agains.
Perhaps two-thirds of all Iranians
do support the Ayatollah with per
sonal fervor, but as the symbol of
successful revolution, not as a
political leader with a specific
program. When controversial issues
come up, the majority becomes
much more tenuous.
He has banned liquor from
restaurants, music from the radio
and Iranian women—though not
Charlie's Angeles-from performing
on TV—while often leaving im
plementation of Koranic custom to
local committees, who disregard it as
they wish. And while constantly
quoting the Koran’s support for
private property, Khomeini has ap
proved measures to nationalize the
banks, insurance companies, heavy
industry and even undeveloped land
within city limits-which as a check
on real estate speculation is probably
the most revolutionary of all
measures for Iran’s urban poor.
Although the Koran stipulates that
those who do not work should not be
paid, the massive social security
system Khomeini’s revolutionary
council set up has already transferred
several billion dollars to workers left
jobless by cancellation of the Shah’s
building contracts.
Far from turning Iran into the
base camp for an Islamic holy war,
Khomeini has done away with the
draft and cut military expenditures in
half.
The prospects for a total victory
for Akoundism in Ir a n -if indeed
that is what Khomeini wants, and the
signs are very contradictory-are also
limited by the nature of Shi’ite Islam
itself. Congregations choose-and rid
themselves-of mullahs when and as
they wish. As for the Ayatollahs-the
numbers of which are expanding as
rapidly under Islam as courtiers once
proliferated under the Shah-no one
either hires or fires them. A man
becomes an Ayatollah simply by
being accepted as one. Indeed all that
differentiates the devout layman, the
robed mullah, the revered Ayatollah
and an exalted Imam-holder of the
highest spiritual dignity of all, and
the title by which Iranians refer to
Khomeini-is that each variously is
esteemed as such.
Khomeini—as Imam—enjoys no ex
plicit hierarchical authority over
another Ayatollah or even over the
lowliest village mullah. Only respect
for his piety can make them obey.
This is because, at the most basic
level, Khomeini-unlike the Pope or
the Imams of Sunni Moslem coun
tries-does not even control the purse
strings. Each mosque is spiritually,
financially and these days militarily
independent.
This independence explains why
the Shah—for all his money and
secret agents-was never able to stop
revolution bubbling upward from
the Shi’ite mosques. The Shah could
not cut off their money because they
raised their money themselves. For
every mullah the Shah arrested,
another took his place. And when
SAVAK did succeed in turning one
Ayatollah or another to the Shah's
cause, their spiritual authority
vanished and their following faded
away. Those same constraints con
tinue to prevent Shi’ism from being
used as the instrument of one man’s
autocracy today.
What happens to an ordinary
m u llah-or even an Im am -w hen
enough people decide his Akoundism
has gone too far?
It is significant that of the 12 great
Imams of the Shi'ite faith, cvey one
of them died a violent death. The
faithful remember these political-
religious leaders as saints, too good
for this world, who were martyred by
the
forces of
heresy and
unrighteousness. But to the secular
student of politics, it is inconceivable
that every one of these men should
have suffered the identical fate,
without having also alienated many
of their own followers.
Asked if he thought Akoundism
could undo the revolution, Mehdi
Adib Azad, the 32-year-old manager
of a Mashhad food processing plant,
replied: “ I don't see how. Either the
mullahs will continue to be basically
a constructive force, o r...” He stop
ped, having decided to answer with a
question.
"W e had one revolution,” Azad
said. "D on't you think we can have
another?”
(Copyright Pacific News Service
1979)
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