From: bavafa@netcom.com (Hooshyar Naraghi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: A very burning question
Date: 21 Dec 92 01:27:14 GMT
Organization: Freedom to Choose

In article <a2Dk02952f4o01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> bxm50@pars.amdahl.com
(Ben Mahjoor) writes:

salAm ghAsem!  Your post was an interesting one in that it touched a
part of my heart although its main focus was "waste of young lives."
I only respond to your 'sooznAk' question, because I also lost few
friends who happened to be MKO supporters, and hence were killed.

My understanding of these people (from 75-78) was that they were not anti
anything, but anti-Shah.  The notions of ani-west and so forth were only
meaningful as long as you would use them as frond-ends to explain their
dissatisfaction with the dictator of the time as they had come to describe
the ex-Shah.

I never - be careful I only said _I_ - understood them as believing that 
they were going to reject the US or the West if they ever got to any
measureable political power in Iran.  But that was back in my late high
school and later AMUT student periods.

=======================  To my Baha'i readers only  ========================
I am not getting into politics.  I became Baha'i in 1978 and before that I
was exposed to many idealogies in Iran.  So these are reflections of those
exciting years that I am sharing with the net, if you are wondering.
============================================================================

Per his political agenda, it seemed like Shah was directly contributing to
the popularity of any anti-Shah groups because he himself enjoyed much
'khit kardan' [(c) Amoojoon, 92] of these people.  He killed the spirit
of any free political thinking by establishing a one-party system back in
1975 (or 76).  Under an ex-Soviet-like system of thinking, there was no
doubt that underground groups' idealogies would simply become alternative
channels of thinking amongst the masses.  The situation was not much
different either amidst the religious underground activities.

I vividly remember in a trip to shahsavAr accompanying a religious football
friend to visit his relatives, we started the dinner only after his relative
paid his tribute to the picture of the late Ayatollah Khomeini which was
hanging on the wall.  The year was 1977.  This man had just returned from a
big 'rastAkhiz' party convention (for our new generation netters, we did
have conventions just like the ex-Russian Communist Party in which all
representatives would stand up and clap for the leader).  He was summoned
to attend because he was a landlord and many peasants were his supporters.

Believe it or not we were going to collapse with or without MKO.  Shah and
his immature 'moosh-o-gorbeh bAzi' had put us on an auto-pilot course to
crash.  He enjoyed challenging all these 'joojeh komonisthA' [(c) Shah, 1356]
during his press interviews with the Iranian press.  The point I am trying
to establish is that those youngesters for whom you are burning had not
become 'shifteh' of any leadership speeches or directives, but that they
were already in touch with ex-Shah.  Accordingly, I offer the conclusion
that the young among your and my friends had already gotten every kind of
'zamineh ghabli' to welcome an opposition idealogy.

People arose against the ex-Shah not because he was pro-western, but because
they were fed up with him.  The paradox here is that he himself paved the
way to popularize opposition groups by his continuous attacks on them.  We
know very well when you suppress an idea repeatedly, it will eventually
find its place amongst peoples' hearts, specially if the very same people
are already dissatisfied with the current environment.  He destroyed any
logical and reasonable alternative for Iran.  It seems he KNEW that the
day would never come when a non-Kingdom system of government would rule
Iran.  Poor chap he could not see beyond his 'saltanati' palace.  There
was no fallback position, no backup, no alternative, no "other" ideas to
guide a nation just in case!  'cho tan-e man mabAd, irAn mabAd.'

He couldn't be a good system admin.  :-)

>I have lost three friends that I grew up with in Iran. They were killed
>as MKO sympathisers in this wave of maddness. The burning question for me,
>along with the relatives and families of all those young men and women,
>is this:

I am sorry and share your agony too.  We used to play football and have all
the fun in the world together.  But, my dear friend, let us remember them
for their FREEDOM TO CHOOSE.  It was their choice.  How many times I told
Ali that he didn't have all the facts.  He had a choice; I had a choice.
That's what life is all about.  I say it is our choice to be and become who
we want to become.  There is no doubt that we humans make decisions based
on the amount of information we have.  A lot of brave and idealistic MKO
youngesters sacrificed their lives based on whatever information they had
to make a CHOICE.  You and I made other choices in our lives based on some
other kinds of information we had, or we could still have made a totally
different choice even if we had the same information that they had.  People 
are just different.

My burning question is WHAT IF our ex-shah had let all these idealogies
come to surface so that people would have made their own decisions?  WHAT IF
there was a real political system in Iran?  How would your friend and my
friend react to MKO or an Islamic model of government had they been exposed
to these alternatives in a FREE environment?  WHAT IF the book 'boof-e
koor' were not to be illegal because some stupid person thought it was
going to turn the young into a "revolutionary?"  WHAT IF Ayatollah Khomeini's
articles and opinions were going to be out in the public for people to read
and draw their own conclusions and judgements?

I don't know the answers to above what if's, but I do know that we lost
a precious time to educate and expose ourselves to "other" ideas in a FREE
environment because our 'shAhanshAh AriyAmehr' felt it was not right.  He
KNEW what was good and what was bad for his children as much as our sci
celebrities knew that hejAb was good for women.  The ruler had 30 something
years to initiate the process of letting people think for themselves.  What
a miss!

Happy Freedom to Choose.

Regards,
Hooshyar F. Naraghi
bavafa@netcom.com
(415) 322-8056
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian