(The surprising victory of hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami in the presidential elections of May 1997 opened a new chapter in the history of Islamic Republic, as the Islamic revolution of 1979 did with Islam, hence it's name.

(As a result, and pushed by both religious and civilian reformist thinkers and philosophers, most of them in jail, many taboos were thrown in the dustbin, giving way to an explosion of thoughts, urging much needed reforms in Islam itself.

(This is what many correspondents who went to Iran to cover the sixth Majles (parliament) elections have found out, among them Mr. Claude Lorieux, a noted journalist with the centrist French daily "Le Figaro".

(Due to the importance the subject presents for the Muslim world, Iran Press Service has translated his article as published in the 22 February 2000 issue of the newspaper.)

By Claude Lorieux, a Special Correspondent of Le Figaro

The wind of change that turns everything upside down in Iran, accelerating conversions towards reforms and sheds doubts in some Khomeinists does not spare the holly city of Qom.

The rohanis, the turbanned clerics who perorate in streets' corners, the talabehs, the secular theologians refractory to the wearing of mollah's dresses starts, timidly though, 20 years after the Islamic Republic, to ask themselves the very first fundamental questions.

Not all of them of course. The Shi'ite seminaries inculcate more submission than critical thoughts. Nevertheless, some interrogate themselves not much on Islam that solidly make the layer of their existence, but on the interpretation, resolutely both political and revolutionary presented by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an interpretation that from the outset shocked many grand ayatollahs.

Mehdi - not his real name - is a young angry theologian. A graduate of the Howzeh, the university that incorporates hundreds of theological schools in Qom -, this fan of good movies is all but a dissident. He believes in Islam and in its renaissance.

Teaching in the university, he even holds important positions in this Holly City, not preventing though certain suspicious callers - members of the services? - ringing aggressively several times during out meeting that lasted for three and half an hour. That explains why he asked for anonymity and the canceling of our scheduled lunch.

Generally speaking, he is not relaxed today in this Howzeh where ayatollah (Mohammad Taqi) Mesbah-Yazdi, a hawkish, imposes the "dominating thought". "Young intellectuals respects President (Mohammad) Khatami's ideas. Don't forget that in the presidential elections of 1997 he got more than 70 per cent of the votes here in Qom. But the Howzeh's system is so locked that they hardly can make their voices heard", he regretted.

"These divergences are deeper than the conflict of generations. They include the very conception of God, of the world, of politics, of Europe", Mehdi continued, reminding that French orientalists such as Louis Massignon and Henri Corbin are translated and read in Qom.

"Many religious intellectuals advises the clergy to go back to their functions of before the Islamic revolution. Clerics should get less involved in politics and more with their mosques and morals, for politic and religion are of different universes. A politicians would admit that his adversary to cartoon him. Not with a religious. Therefore, one must not mixes the two, or neither the government nor Islam could accomplish correctly their respective missions", Mehdi explains.

Does not our "intellectual in anger" poses, and frontally, the very problem of democracy in Islam. "That's exactly", he answers. "What's Koran? What's Islam? Several readings are possible. According to one, Islam has a programme for every domain of activity: politic, economic, society. According to other, its main competence is of spiritual order. But the dominant ideology does not accept but one reading of Koran. What is happening today in Iran is similar of what you had in Europe on the eve of the Protestantism reforms. Islam, this last of the revealed religions, can save the humanity but on condition that those who are in charge stop imposing their personal and individual conceptions. To me, Islam is on the eve of its renaissance", he added.

But one has to start with destroying many Bastilles! Mehdi, who has burned his youth in the war against Iraq, is, alongside other religious intellectuals, waging an "interior war much more painful that an external one". "In Iran, he continues, we do not fight ordinary men, but people who consider themselves as God's representatives on earth. Against us, they use Koran, Islam and imams as if they were trenches or stronghold. Poorly informed, people do not always understands the stakes involved in the battle".

Great beneficiary of the 1997 revolution against the Shah, could the clergy have the perspicacity and the will to evolve as president Khatami is urging them to do? To Mehdi, the "evolution of the regime started with the presidential elections" (of 23 May 1997). "In case the Islamic Republic would not have changed then, it would have to accept another but much more fundamental latter. The regime must be thankful of this president of the young and to his team of reformers.

Explaining why a faction of the clergy hangs on the past, Mehdi, who had received this correspondent of "Le Figaro" days before the Legislative elections and the reformists new breakthrough say: "The clergy see the world in black and white. As it sees himself in white, all the rest is black. In such conditions, choice is very limited. It's either the Islam of the origins or the State imagined by Mustafa Kemal in Turkey and Reza Shah, the father of the last Emperor, in Iran. And of course, the clergy does not want to go back".

In the opinion of Mehdi, the presidential elections of 1997 and the present Legislative race are but steps in the evolution of the system conceived by ayatollah Khomeini. "Khatami is not different from other reformers. There are many of them who think that time has arrived to change the Constitution. But Khatami can not consent. As President of the Islamic Republic, he must keep good working relationship with the leader of the revolution, ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i", considered as the flag bearer of the conservatives.

Mehdi was almost 20 when the revolution started. War followed. "We did not had youth. Suddenly, we were old. Hope is the only thing we have, not much for ourselves than for our country. One generation had to be sacrificed and this was ours. Let's hope that the future generation's destiny is not sacrificed". ENDS ELECTIONS RENAISSANCE 22200