Kudos…

By Joe Klein | @JoeKleinTIME | March 4, 2007 | +

to my colleague Scott McLeod for apparently shaming the U.S. State Department into granting a visa to Abdulkarim Soroush, one of the most revered reform interpreters of the Qu’ran in the Islamic world.

I met Soroush several years ago, and he is truly a saintly fellow, who has suffered mightily at the hands of religious thugs in Iran. He is a hero, especially, to young people. In 2001, I saw a crowd of students at Tehran University browbeat then-President Mohammed Khatami about the treatment of Soroush: “What about Soroush?” They chanted. “What about Soroush?”

It’s astonishing that the State Department didn’t treat this case with more dispatch and sensitivity. I’m glad he’ll soon be here again and, I hope, safe.

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supermasonic

Mr. Kline,

Before you get swept off your feet by admiration for Mr. Soroush some fact checking may be in order. Are you aware that he who “suffered mightily at the hands of religious thugs in Iran” was part of the Khomeini thugs and a mastermind of Islamic Cultural Revolution in Iran in early 80′s himself? I will let you read about this devastating revolution but some of the results of this effort:
- Purging of the top ranking professors based on ideological grounds that set back the Iranian academics for years.
- Complete closure of Iranian higher learning institutes for several years.
- Purging of students and the expulsion of those that were not strict followers of the fanatical Islam in vogue in Iran at the time even by some intellectuals. Any student who applied for admission into universities had to undergo “clearance” investigations for “moral” qualification, any girl who did not obey the strictest dress code was disqualified. Many unqualified students were admitted because they were family members of the ruling class or were associated with Revolutionary Guards or the paramilitary Basij.
- Introduction into the curriculum of lots of indoctrinating Islamic studies at the expense of Persian and Western studies.
- Introduction of strict dress code for both men and women and separation of classrooms for men and women (by putting a divider in the lecture halls and classrooms).

Lots of students were persecuted (and killed) purely based on their beliefs or leftist leanings and I won’t go as far as accusing Soroush of having caused all these crimes but he was a main proponent of this cultural revolution and there may be some connections there. Please investigate it.

I am not suggesting that the administration should not have issued a visa or that Mr. Soroush is not sincere right now, however, he was a major cause of suffering for thousands of young Iranian men and women during early 80′s and he must have some explanation for this. I checked his website which does not seem to refer to this subject and contains a lots of deep philosophical essays but this guy is not exactly a Voltaire, he was part of a brutal Islamic dictatorship. Have all “saints” caused people so much pain?

Let’s just remember that the Mullah’s in Iran were exactly the same as the Talibans in Afghanistan, the only reason they were not able to establish even a worse Islamic dictatorship that they managed was the higher level of both cultural and economic development in Iran relative to Afghanistan,. In brief Iranian people did not let them and with the help of intellectuals like Soroush made their Islam palatable for the more educated people.

More sources:
http://shirin.mit.edu/blog/?p=974
Iranian Cultural Revolution of 1980-1987 (WikiPedia)