WITH THE CARTOON OF CROCODILE YAZDI ANOTHER TABOO IS DOWN
TEHRAN 5TH Feb. (IPS) As demonstrations, petitions, protests and sit in, organised by the conservatives denouncing the publication of a cartoon showing a hard line ayatollah as an enormous crocodile continued in Qom, in Tehran and some other cities continued unabated, what interested analysts was that a very old religious tradition enshrined in a sacred taboo had been broken.
In fact, it was an unwritten rule for the press to never cartoon the clerics, junior or senior, under any pretext. Mr. Kiumars Saberi, the Editor of the satiric weekly "Gol Aqa" known for it's political cartoons admitted that he would never caricaturise a religious man in cartoon.
But the Islamic revolution of 1979 that brought the Iranian clergy into the power made it difficult for the cartoonists, mostly foreigners, not to tickle the ruling ayatollahs: Thus appeared the first cartoons showing the founder of the Islamic Republic as a man with his beard made of skulls, his hands covered with blood.
More than ten years ago, A young Iranian cartoonist was sentenced to ten years of jail just because a footballist of his cartoon missing a shot looked too much like the grand ayatollah Khomeini.
And now, for the first time, a prominent orthodox ayatollah who, regardless of his harsh tongue, his divagations, his hard attacks against the reformist press and his calls for civil disobedience, is much respected and supported by the leader, has been portrayed as a crocodile crushing a journalist under his fat belly while crying, with the caption reading "crocodile's tears".
The cartoon was that of ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a close friend and supporter of the ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i who in a recent statement had "disclosed" that a Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had come to Tehran disguised as tourist but with a suit case "loaded with money" he distributed among the reformist press and publishers.
His astonishing "revelations" created uproar among the moderate, independent reformist press and publishers.
In letters to both the Intelligence Ministry and the Judiciary, Mr. Ata'ollah Mohajerani, the Guidance Minister urged them to got Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi to identify the journalists and the publishers who received money from the CIA.
Hours after the daily "Azad" hit the newspaper stands on Wednesday, with the cartoon published in it's front page, students of ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi whom the Iranians have nicknamed as "Temsah-Yazdi', meaning "Crocodile-Yazdi", walked out from the classroom after the cleric exploded in anger by seeing himself portrayed as a crocodile.
Demonstrating in this ugly and arid religious city situated 150 kilometres south of the capital Tehran, the demonstrations were quickly joined by others, calling for the immediate resignation of the Guidance Minister who is in charge of the press.
Mr. Mohajerani is regarded by many conservative and hard line ayatollahs as the "bete noire" to be shot.
The cartoon started off a heated debate opposing the reformist press and intellectuals to the hard line newspapers and conservative religious circles that insist the independent press is becoming more and more liberal, westernised, manipulated by foreigners and insulting against religious traditions.
Some papers asked why the conservatives did not express shock and outrage when the evening daily "Keyhan", the mouthpiece of the Intelligence Ministry, cartooned hojatoleslam Abdollah Nouri, the well known publisher of the reformist newspaper Khordad. "Why is that the seminarists did not came out in protest into the streets after radical press jolted and insulted a prominent cleric who not only served at various sensitive government jobs but was also much trusted by grand ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini?
Far from backing off, and despite excuses presented by Mr. Mohammad Reza Yazdanpanah, the publisher of "Azad", Mr. Nikahang Kausar, the cartoonist said adamantly that he would continue his work regardless of the outcry, hoping only he would not have affairs with those who met (Mohammad Ja'far) Pouyandeh and (Mohammad) Mokhtari, a reference to the Intelligence Ministry senior agents and officials who in November 1998 assassinated five prominent intellectuals and politicians.
In a statement released after he was arrested upon his arrival to the Press Tribunal where he was summoned, Mr. Kausar, 30, accused the religious hard liner of having deliberately linked his crocodile cartoon to the personage of ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi in order to justify more pressure on independent press and the reformist that are supposed to win the coming parliamentary elections.
The cartoon of Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi reminds one of the "Mauj" affair, from a satirical play printed months ago in a student bulletin in which a young orthodox student was challenging Mehdi, the 12th imam of the Shi'ite Muslims who, some 800 years ago, went into hiding at the age of 8 in order to resurrect when the world would be full of sin and injustice.
The play, named "Reappartition at the Time of Examinations", wrote by three students and published in Mauj, a bulletin with very limited circulation, nevertheless angered the ayatollahs who saw in it the crumbling of a secret taboo concerning Mehdi and his myth.
"People do no more accept taboos. They want to discuss everything in order to better understand them. Why should a corrupt ayatollah be respected, treated differently? Why should the leader stand above laws? Why should the myth of Mehdi, or any other of the 12 imams, be a taboo and its credibility not discussed in public? Why should women have half the rights given by Islam to men? Why has Islam has ruled that girls of 8 are marriable to men of 80? Those and everything in Iran has become subject of discussion, debate and disputes", observed one Iranian sociologist. ENDS TEMSAH-YAZDI 5200