Liberal martyrdom in Iran: an academic takes on the ayatollahs - Columns - Hashem Aghajari

Reason, Feb, 2003 by Charles Paul Freund

IT'S A PITY that so much of the attention given to the Islamic world is lavished on its thugs and psychopaths, because its men and women of courage are largely overlooked.

The case of the Iranian academic Hashem Aghajari is an impressive example. In June, Aghajari, a popular history professor who belongs to a left-wing opposition group, gave a public lecture calling for political reform and "religious renewal." Each generation, he argued, has the right to interpret Islam anew; no one should "blindly follow religious leaders" of the past. The result was that he was charged in Iran's religious courts with apostasy; on November 6 he was found guilty in a closed-door trial. He was sentenced to be hanged.

Iran's restrictive and brutal Islamist government has lost the support of much of the populace, and the Aghajari verdict immediately threw the country into turmoil. Outraged pro-reform members of the national parliament exchanged bitter accusations with the conservative clerical judiciary (the parliamentary speaker described his reaction as one of "hatred" and "disgust"), and students in Tehran and elsewhere staged daily street demonstrations in support of Aghajari. Iran's political stability, shaky in any event, quickly became an issue.

Within a week of the verdict, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared on national television threatening to use the hard-line popular militias to impose order. "The day the three branches are unable or unwilling to settle major problems;' he told the country, "the leadership will, if it thinks it necessary, use the popular forces to intervene."

Aghajari had the right to appeal his verdict, which presumably would have allowed a deal to be worked out to defuse the crisis. (Other controversial death sentences have been reduced on appeal.) But in a dramatic turn of events, Aghajari refused to appeal. According to his lawyer, Aghajari said that "those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the judiciary has to handle it." In other words, he had determined to risk his life so as to force Iran's judicial establishment to confront its own barbarity.

In the meantime, Aghajari's family reported that he was suffering in prison. According to Amnesty International, his right leg, amputated at the knee as a result of the Iran-Iraq war, had become infected. He was unable to stand or walk, even to the prison bathrooms. Nevertheless, he was prepared to sacrifice himself in the name of liberal principle, an act of potential martyrdom that contrasted dramatically with the acts of the unspeakable but celebrated ghoul "martyrs" who detonate themselves to kill children in strollers.

One of the most striking elements of the turmoil surrounding Aghajari involved Tehran's students, who continued their demonstrations for two weeks. The New York Times reported that they engaged in such chants as, "The execution of Aghajari is the execution of the university!" Students gathered at the end of their demonstrations to sing a popular nationalist song called "Ey Iran," thus invoking an Iran that transcends clerical rule. These protests gradually widened in their focus, becoming the biggest student disturbance in several years.

Some students reportedly called for the resignation of the nation's reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, out of frustration with the slow pace of reform in the face of entrenched conservative rule. Students even publicly criticized Ayatollah Khamenei, a dangerous tactic that had not occurred during any previous anti-clerical student uprisings.

Support for Aghajari was in notable contrast to what has been happening in recent years on campuses elsewhere in the Islamic world. Prominent academics, such as Egypt's Nasr Abu Zeid, have been driven from their jobs and even from their countries by Islamist judicial and intellectual bullies who have been terrorizing scholarly life. (In Abu Zeid's case, Islamist jurists even intervened in his marriage, declaring it null.) Iran's students, on the other hand, appeared anxious to be rid of their failed revolution entirely and return to liberal values. As one prominent student told a student press agency, "We must reach a stage in our destiny that we have lawful rights and freedoms."

After a week of upheaval, Khamenei ordered that Aghajari's case be reviewed, a signal that the death sentence probably would be reduced. (Aghajari had also been sentenced by the same secret court to 74 lashes and a long period of internal exile.)

Students, however, responded with yet more demonstrations. As one of them told foreign reporters (there was no coverage in the local press), "Our problem is not only the revision of the death sentence on Hashem Aghajari, but freedom of speech and freedom in general."

Khamenei then let loose the hard-line militias. Hundreds of armed thugs invaded campuses to disrupt demonstrations and beat students, injuring some of them severely. Militia members taunted the students as "enemies of the revolution"; students taunted them in turn, calling for "Death to the Taliban in Kabul and Tehran."