Khatami's slogans for reforms and establishing an "Islamic civil society" convinced the majority of Iranians, -- and the Western world, including the United States, not knowing exactly what it means -- still suffering from the aftermath of the war with Iraq and agonised by the imposed doctrine of "self-sufficiency", which meant total economic and political isolation.

The victory of the reformists in the municipal elections of February 1999 and in the parliamentary contest of February 2000 raised further hopes for establishing a genuine civil society in Iran.

Dozens of newspapers appeared, most of them supporting reforms, attracting the masses by their critical approach to the regime’s social and political deficiencies and fuelling the debate on indispensable reforms.

Nevertheless reformists’ efforts for establishing rule of law, one major promise made by the new President, did not prevent a series of political murders in November and December 1998. Parvaneh and Dariush Foruhar, the aged leaders of a small oppositional secular party were brutally slain in their home, shortly followed by the abduction and assassination of the intellectuals Majid Sharif, Mohammad Ja’far Pooyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari.

More than 80 newspapers and journals have been shut down since, including the influential newspaper "Salam", which sparked widespread student's protests in July 1999, with some killed during violent street clashes between protesters and security forces and plain clothes men, and hundreds still imprisoned.

The most recent manifestations of this Islamic civil society are the ban of the Nationalist-religious groups and Iran Freedom Movement and the condemnation of Dr. Naser Zarafshan, the lawyer of the families of the victims of the "Chain murders", to five years of prison and fifty lashes.

In a word, Mr. Khatami and the reformist camp’s efforts to create an Islamic civil society have reached deadlock, leading to even more suppression and hardship. Actually more than a dozen influential journalists, reformer islamist clergymen, intellectual and political dissidents are in jail.

The obvious question would be: why this project has failed. An obvious question, because it relies on a misleading equation of Western with an Islamic concepts of civil society.

The proper answer to this failure should rather be sought in the ideology behind the concept of Islamic civil society or Madinat al-Nabi (the Prophet's City), as labeled by the conservative faction.

Mr. Baqer Mo’meni, a Paris-based intellectual, scrupulously examined the foundations of this concept in an article published in 2000*. Based on verses from the Muslim’s holly book Koran and undisputed sources on the history of Islam, including Tabari's (*1) famous "History" and Ibn Hisham's (**2) "Seyrat" (Life and deeds of the Prophet), Mo’meni evaluates the factual manifestations of Islamic civil society during its initial era.

Opponents, who dared to criticise the Prophet were thus declared as „vajeb ol-qatl" (whose killing is religiously required) and clandestinely assassinated by his fervent supporters. As an example, Tabari cites six men and four women to be killed by order of the Prophet after the sack of Mecca in 630. ** Typically enough, most of them were poets and singers!

Even before, the life of critical poets was not spared: Ozma, daughter of Mervan Ibn Hakam (3), and the famous Ka'b Ibn Ashraf (4) were both treacherously murdered for their lamentations on the victims of the battle of Badr (624). ***

Oppositional factions had no better fate. According to Ibn Hisham all 700 men of the defeated Jewish tribe of Bani Qoraize (5), who refused to fight against another Jewish tribe in the battle of Badr, were beheaded and buried in a large ditch in Medina in 627. Their wives and children were sold on the slave market. ****

Baqer Mo’meni concludes: "A reformist, humane and tolerant Muslim, who propagates nonviolence against members of other confessions or Non-Muslims, can only refer to the primary revelations of Mohammad in Mecca. He would have to ignore those parts of the Koran, revealed in Medina, which regulates the government and administration of the Islamic society, and would have to abandon the idea of establishing an Islamic civil society. Otherwise he would be forced to accept and defend the political murders of the Islamic Republic, i.e. the Chain murders as well as the mass executions (of prisoners) in 1986, as corresponding to the prophet's tradition of "Medinat al-Nabi" and to Allah's irrefutable commandments, written down as holy verses in the Koran."

With regards to the growing discontentment in the Iranian society, Mohammad Khatami and the reformist movement would be well advised to abandon this illusory concept and give way to a referendum in order to establish a genuine civil society. ENDS IRALIC CIVIL SOCIETY 20802

Editor’s note:

Abu Ja’far Mohammad Ibn Jarrir Tabari Muslim scholar and historian;

Abu Mohammad In Hisham, Historian;

Mervan Ibn Hakam, Founder of the short lived Al Mervan dynasty;

A Jewish poet;

Bani Qoraize was a Jewish tribe;

* Baqer Moumeni's article "The first political assassinations and mass-murders in the Islamic civil society" is published on the website www.kaafar.com.

** Tabari, History, (Persian translation), Tehran 1984, pp. 1187-1189.

*** Mohammed Tabatabai Ardakani, Analytical History of Islam, Tehran 1989, p. 135.

**** Ibn Hisham, Seyrat (Persian translation), Tehran 1985, vol. 2, p. 178.