The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Islamic Government

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Good evening. One million Iranians marched through the streets of Tehran today, shouting support for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and an Islamic government. They were joined by hundreds of uniformed soldiers, the largest contingent yet seen in an anti-government demonstration. Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar accused the Ayatollah of depending on the mob rather than democracy, and vowed not to step down. However, the momentum behind Khomeini`s revolution continues to build. Tonight, a look at the Islamic government that Khomeini wants for Iran. Robert MacNeil is off and Jim Lehrer has been detained out of town.

The outlines of the new Islamic state have already begun to emerge in some key areas in Iran. Reports out of Isfahan, Iran`s second largest city, indicate that Khomeini supporters are already beginning to collect taxes, clean streets, collect garbage and administer their own form of justice. They are also reported to be in almost complete control of Shiraz and the Ayatollah`s home town of Qom. In Tehran itself food cooperatives and neighborhood councils have been set up, and in Mashhad, close to the Soviet border, a religious court sentenced three men, accused of stealing a car, to twenty-five lashes. Justice was reportedly swift.

Now for a closer and more detailed look at what Khomeini`s concept of an Islamic government entails. Hamid Algar, a professor of Islamic studies at Berkeley, is currently writing a book which explains the development of Khomeini`s concept. Professor Algar, a convert to Islam, has written widely on Islamic history and political theory. He was with the Ayatollah in Paris last December and, in a personal interview, learned the details of the Ayatollah`s plans.

Mr. Algar, aside from the incidents I`ve just mentioned, how else and where else is the apparatus of the Islamic state functioning?

HAMID ALGAR: Well, in point of fact, the Islamic state has already begun to function for some time in Iran now; even such a key area as the Iranian oil industry has been under the effective control of the nominees of Ayatollah Khomeini since late December, and in a large number of other smaller cities as well as those which you have named the representatives or the partisans of Ayatollah Khomeini and the provisional Islamic government have taken power. In a number of ministries also this process has begun: in the Ministry of Justice, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the majority of the civil servants have already declared their loyalty to Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic republic. Also, we find that the armed forces, the last bastion of the Shah`s regime, and its vestige, namely the government of Mr. Bakhtiar, this also is beginning to come increasingly on the side of the people and the Islamic revolution. There are a number of reports today coming from Iran; it is reported, for example, that the Iranian navy , at its base in Bandar` Abbas, has given a declaration in favor of the Islamic government. A large number of air force officers have warned once again the army against attempting any form of coup d`etat against the Islamic republic.

The judiciary today sent a delegation to see Ayatollah Khomeini, pledging its loyalty to the new Islamic government and asking for instructions on future operations. So there are, then, at all levels in the provinces, in the capital, is the armed forces, in the civil service, an overwhelming, number of movements now towards loyalty and collaboration with the Islamic government.

HUNTER-GAULT: Let me ask you this: what impact does Prime Minister Bakhtiar`s statement today about the mob rule and his continuing refusal to step down have on these processes?

ALGAR: I think very little. The opinions of Mr. Bakhtiar are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The fact that he designates the vast outpouring of the Iranian people in a revolution totally without precedent in this century as an exercise in mob rule shows once again how totally alienated he is from the realities of the Iranian scene, how little in tune he is with the feeling of the people.

HUNTER-GAULT: Could you just tell us from what source the Ayatollah does derive his power? For example, his decision to appoint Prime Minister Bazargan?

ALGAR: Well, in a broad sense, of course, Ayatollah Khomeini derives his authority from the persistent identification of the overwhelming mass of the Iranian people with Islam, with Islam not simply as their religious affiliation but Islam also as the refuge of their culture, of their sense of nationhood, of their freedom, their dignity, their independence. This is the profound source, not only of the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini but also of the entire revolution in Iran this year. In a narrower sense, Ayatollah Khomeini has derived his authority from a certain technical process within the Shi`i school of thought in Islam which lays upon the believers the duty of choosing a certain scholar of proven learning and piety, and then following his directives in all matters, not merely those that are religious in the narrow sense but also political and social matters. And in the course of the past two decades it can be said that the overwhelming majority of Iranians have come to look to Ayatollah Khomeini as the scholar, the religious scholar whose guidance they follow in this respect.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you...

ALGAR: I can add one further element of legitimacy, namely that which has been given to him by the repeated outpourings of the Iranian people in this past year of revolution in all major cities of the country.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, thank you; we`ll come back.

ALGAR: Thank you.

HUNTER-GAULT: Let`s get another view of Ayatollah Khomeini`s plans for an Islamic government. Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland D. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Studies. Professor Lewis has published a number of books on Islam in the Arab world, including The Arabs in History, The Middle East and the West, and The Emergence of Modern Turkey. Professor Lewis, is Islam a political or a religious movement?

BERNARD LEWIS: Well, Islam as such is obviously a religion. But I think when one uses the word "religion" one has to distinguish; religion doesn`t mean the same thing to all peoples., And Islam from its, very inception has been much more closely involved with the conduct of government` than has Christianity or Judaism or the religions of further Asia. Khomeini himself makes this point with some emphasis in his writings. He points out that Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, was a head of state. He commanded armies, he levied taxes, he dispensed justice. So that from the very beginnings of Islam, the formative years of the Islamic religion, there has been an intimate association between religion and government, the exercise of power, which is lacking in the other religions with which we are familiar. But that doesn`t mean to say it`s not a religion.

HUNTER-GAULT: Right. How similar or different from a democracy is this Islamic state that the Ayatollah envisions?

LEWIS: The word "democracy" has many meanings. I think there`s hardly a state in the world at the present time which doesn`t call itself a democracy, though others might not agree. If by democracy you mean the kind of political system which exists in the Western world, then it is likely to be very different from that.

HUNTER-GAULT: In what way?

LEWIS: Well, for one thing, one of our basic principles is the separation of church and state. This is explicitly rejected, since church and state are one and the same. There aren`t two separate institutions which could be separated. In the history of Christendom there are always the two -- sometimes in alliance, sometimes in conflict, sometimes one dominating, sometimes the other dominating -- but always two, representing the secular power and religious authority. In ideal Islam, and in a good deal of Islamic history, they are one and the same. So the question of a separation between them doesn`t arise.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about such democratic notions as freedom of expression?

LEWIS: Freedom of expression is to be limited. Khomeini, in several places in his writings, protests against the excessive freedom allowed by the Shah`s government in Iran, for attacks on the Koran, on Islam, on the sacred laws and sacred values of Islam. This is one of his frequently made accusations against the previous regime, and he makes it quite clear that any criticism of Islam or anything which he would regard as an attack on Islam would not be permitted. Also, on the question of voting, a recent statement by one his main followers has said that they are in favor of the people expressing their will, but not by what he calls the kilogram method of weighing blocks of suffrages like eggs or cucumbers. And there is a quite different perception of the popular will and its expression, which is very different from ours.

One other point, if I may. That is, in Khomeini`s conception of Islam, which is again foursquare in the major tradition, there is no legislative power. There is no legislative function, since the law is divine, it is promulgated by God through revelation and is complete and final. The only function of human powers, religious or other, would be to interpret and implement the law. And since there is no legislative power there is obviously no need for a legislative assembly.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right; we`ll come back. Now for the perspective of an Iranian professor. Mansour Farhang arrived in Tehran on the day the Shah left the country and has just returned in order to resume his teaching at the State University at Sacramento. Professor Farhang`s article on American press coverage of the revolution in Iran which first appeared under a pseudonym in the Columbia Journalism Review has been widely reprinted. Professor Farhang, let me just ask you: you were just in Iran. What manifestations of an Islamic state did you see?

MANSOUR FARHANG: The most interesting manifestation of the future society I saw in Iran was the spirit of cooperation among the people and the ability to relate to one another in such a way which is unprecedented in Iranian history. Unlike what Professor Lewis explained, what is going to happen in Iran doesn`t have anything to do with what has been done in the name of Islam during the past 400 years; in fact, the theory of the Islamic republic in Iran comes from the tradition oœ resistance to those who have oppressed and exploited the masses of Muslims in the name of Islam. In the present situation in Iran the theoreticians of this revolution as well as Imam Khomeini himself have placed equal emphasis on the significance of freedom and the importance and necessity of socioeconomic justice.

In other words, what is different in the Islamic republic from the West is that in the West the emphasis from the very beginning in the Revolution of the United States and in the French Revolution was on freedom at the expense of ignoring socioeconomic justice. For example, in the United States the Revolution began with "All men are created equal," but the institution of slavery was tolerated. As a result, even freedom, which was respected on paper, ended up being a very alienating experience for many people. In the Eastern world, the revolutions of China and the Soviet Union have placed emphasis on socioeconomic justice at the expense of ignoring human dignity and freedom. That`s why in those societies we see anti-people policies as well as alienating socioeconomic love situations. In Iran the purpose is to place equal emphasis on freedom and socioeconomic justice so the society will be based on a moral dimension which is separate and beyond the material dimension we see in both East and West at the present time.

HUNTER-GAULT:I see. Is the middle class, which has been the group most drawn to middle-class values and ideals in the past, participating in the formulation of this new state?

FARHANG: Very much so. We have to understand the nature of the middle class in Iran. Economic development in Iran during the past ten years which created the middle class was a completely induced economic development; it was not organic. Therefore the culture and the social values of this economic development were imposed on the middle class people in Iran, and also in terms of producing economic justice it was one of the most abominable and monstrous economic developments that we`ve seen in the world, in the sense that less than one percent of the people owned, up to the present time, more than eighty percent of the resources. As a result, even the middle class people, who had gained some in terms of their borrowing power, were very alienated in the society and they were suffering as much from the existential nausea in the oppressive regime of the Shah as the intellectuals. Therefore, their joining of the revolutionaries and the masses in Iran -this is particularly manifested in the case of the women -- is a rejection of cultural imperialism and the superimposed values of the West, which had been brought to Iran by an elite who had no connection and no sense of identity with the Iranian people. This is one dimension of it, rejection of superimposed cultural values which were very alien to our tradition; and also opposition to the tyranny. This is a revolution, a classic revolution against tyranny; but opposition to tyranny does not only come from economic exploitation or economic inequality, it also comes from a sense of moral outrage at existential social nausea.

HUNTER-GAULT: So you feel that the middle class, however unified they may have been in primarily getting rid of the Shah, will also continue to be more or less rededicated to the principles of Islam?

FARHANG: The principles of Islam are very liberal principles. They tolerate differences of opinions and differences of views, and without any question the principles of Islam are committed to the notion of popular sovereignty, political equality and majority rule. These are in the spirit of Islam, in the letter of Islam if one is dedicated to the spirit and letter of Islam to interpret. these principles in the proper fashion. Those who have been ruling in the name of Islam have in fact ignored the principles of Islam in the past.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, thank you; we`ll come back. Let me just go back to you for a moment, Dr. Lewis, on this question of freedoms. Professor Farhand seems to disagree with you somewhat. Do you feel that the inclusion of social justice and economic justice is going to ensure the kinds of freedoms that he feels will continue?

LEWIS: Freedom means different things to different people. I would agree with Dr. Farhang on this point, that as he says, in the Western political tradition the main objective sought by those opposing the government has been freedom, and we have tended to see it in terms of an opposition between freedom and oppression. And in the Islamic political tradition the ideal has been justice rather than freedom, and there are indeed some who equate the two. Then what does one mean by justice? This again has different meanings. In the Islamic tradition, justice has usually meant the observance of the law of Islam; the law of Islam, being divine and perfect, must be obeyed. Justice is a society in which the law of Islam is maintained; injustice means a violation of that law.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Let me ask you, Professor Algar, on that point. In terms of women, the Ayatollah has ensured that women will be as free as men, and yet Islamic activists have burned down Tehran`s red light district and have torched places where women of so-called "ill repute" have resided.

ALGAR: Well, it`s very interesting that you implicitly regard red-light districts` existence as a form of women`s liberty. I would have thought that women`s liberty had some higher manifestation than brothels. Apart from that, it`s in doubt who was responsible for the burning down of this district. It may have been agents provocateurs of Savak, of the government, of the army. I`m really surprised to have to say, quite frankly, that this whole question of women`s rights is being raised yet again after a whole year of revolution in Iran when it has become abundantly plain that the whole essence of the issue is, as Professor Farhang has said so eloquently, the establishment of justice, an expression of the desire for popular sovereignty, taking on a form appropriate to the Islamic context of Iran.

HUNTER-GAULT: Just to pursue that point on the women, though, some who have refused, for example, to wear the chador have been stoned.

ALGAR: Well, where is the evidence for this and where is the evidence for the identity of the perpetrators, if it has taken place?

HUNTER-GAULT: How do you explain it?

ALGAR: Well, in 1963 such incidents happened during the previous uprising of the Iranian people under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, and on that occasion it was without doubt the work of provocateurs of the regime, who sought to present the Islamic movement as being opposed to the liberty of women. Doubtlessly, Islam lays down certain criteria for women`s dress, but Ayatollah Khomeini, in this as in other respects, does not intend to impose a narrow obedience to every dictate of Islamic law by means of the coercive power of the state. On the contrary, he assured me that gradualness is necessary, not as a form of concession or compromise but in the very nature of things, because an Islamic state, as a state resting on ideology and belief, must have an Islamic citizenry.

HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just ask you, Professor Farhang, in terms of minorities, what`s your view on how minorities will fare in this new Islamic state?

FARHANG: I would also, after answering your question, like to make a comment on the burning of the red district and the question of women, because I was there. In regard to the question of minority, we have to say that the Iranian people, by all worldwide comparative standards, have a very decent record of respect and tolerance toward religious and national minorities. It is utterly preposterous to look for a phrase or a sentence in an oral expression ten years ago or five years ago in order to discredit a revolution which is interested in human dignity and economic justice, and minorities in Iran, to the extent that they have suffered from this oppression, they will definitely benefit from the revolution.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about the Baha`is?

FARRANG: The Baha`is; that`s an excellent question. I did an extensive investigation of that question. The Baha`is, unfortunately because in the past, in the nineteenth century, they were oppressed in very limited parts of Iran, they developed an antipathy, an attitude of hostility toward the Iranians, and this attitude became part of the socialization. Fifteen years ago, when it was abundantly clear that torture was going to be used as a continuing instrument of getting information from political prisoners and the revolutionaries, they searched for those people in Iran who were psychologically capable of brutalizing and torturing the revolutionaries; and unfortunately they ended up with hiring a large number of Baha`is and even the chief of Savak, General Nassiri, was a Baha`i himself, and today most of those Baha`is who were torturing the Iranian political prisoners have fled the country and they have gone to Israel, where they had originally received their training.

In regard to the question of women, it is necessary to know that for the first time, not only in the Islamic world but in the entire third world, women of all classes are pouring into the streets in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, shouting anti-oppression slogans and fighting for human dignity and equality. Do you think this experience will have a negative impact on the attitude of men toward women? Do you think this experience is going to advance or hinder the liberation of women in the Iranian society? The significant thing is that for the first time Iranian women are en masse politicized and active in defense of human dignity and social justice. This is the significant question, not why they were wearing the chador. The vast majority .of Iranian women wear the chador because it`s a form of dress, because they probably have one and definitely no more than two dresses to change. So it`s a form of dress. And the upper-middle-class people, in order to show their solidarity, in order to show their sense of identity with the sisters who come from lower classes and also as a symbol of rejecting superimposed Westernized values, they`re wearing the chador. And that`s a very personal question. That`s not important; the important thing is the revolutionary action in the streets.

HUNTER-GAULT: Thank you. Let me just ask you, Professor Lewis, do you know of any centers of opposition that exist now, toward the Islamic state, or do you expect any to arise?

LEWIS: In Iran at this moment?

HUNTER-GAULT: Yes.

LEWIS: Oh, it`s impossible to say; the situation is much too fluid and at this distance, with things changing rapidly from day to day, I wouldn`t venture to comment on that. I would like to say a word or two on two questions that you raised on women and religious minorities. Now, these are both questions of law, and I think it`s important to remember that Ayatollah Khomeini is basically a lawyer, a jurist. And the ... men of religion in Islam -- I don`t like to use the words "clergy" or "priesthood" because these are Christian terms not applicable to Islamic religion -- the men of religion in Islam are concerned with two major areas, theology and law. Because since the law is the holy law, is a religious law, it is part of the training of men of religion. And his writings in the past have been mainly legal writings. He has lectured on law, he has written on law; and he often writes as a lawyer. When he writes on Islamic government -- and he has devoted a book to this, as well as passages in other writings -- he is not propounding a philosophy or an ideology or a program, he is speaking as a lawyer and stating what is the law. Because since the law, from his point of view, is divine and eternal, there is no argument about this. And the law has certain quite definite things to say about the position of women and the position of minorities. The Jews and the Christians have been assured that they will have that place which is assigned to them in the Muslim law. The Baha`is have been significantly excluded even from this, and I find Dr. Farhang`s anticipatory rationalization of what might happen to them distinctly alarming.

HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just get a reaction from Professor Algar on that.

ALGAR: On the question of the minorities? Well, first of all, one is bound to say that this interest in the fate of the minorities is very remarkable considering the total indifference of Western public opinion to the fate of the Muslim majority of Iran for a quarter century of intense repression and massacre by the Shah`s regime. The question is nonetheless legitimate. Of course Professor Lewis is right in saying that Ayatollah Khomeini is among other things a lawyer; I would dispute the fact that he is, as he has put it, primarily a scholar of the law. Ayatollah Khomeini is in fact a manifestation of the whole spectrum of traditional thought and learning in Islam. He also has a very important number of books on Islamic mysticism, and it is plain from his whole mode of life that he is more than a narrow scholar of the law; he is a man of extremely profound vision and a possessor of a very great moral and ascetic quality. But when you speak of the application of the law in ;ran. with respect to the religious minorities, you must take into account the realities of the situation as they exist now, which will to some extent determine the particular manner of the application of law. When I was in Paris Ayatollah Khomeini was visited by a delegation of the Iranian Jews, who came with some anxieties about their future. He informed them that not merely should they not leave the country to go to Israel, but those Iranian Jews that have been misguided enough to leave Iran and migrate to Israel in previous years should return to Iran, which is the common homeland of all Iranians, where they could count upon a treatment and a standard of social and economic justice superior to that to which they have been exposed in Israel...

HUNTER-GAULT: Professor A1gar, I`m sorry, I`m going to have to interrupt you there. We`ll continue this, I`m sure, at another time. Good night and thank you. Professor Farhang in California, thank you very much, and thank you, Dr. Lewis. I`m Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Good night.