I came across a written debate between the excellent Jalal Tavakollian and the late Mohammad Bastenegar about 'Taleqani' and his political life. Tavakollian first wrote an essay in Andishe Pooya, criticizing Taleqani’s political judgement and especially his flirtation with terrorist revolutionary organizations such as MEK and Fadayian-e-Eslam which, Tavakollian argues, were consequential in his inability in the years after the revolution. In the following issues of the magazine, a series of rebuttals followed between Bastenegar, an old Nehzat-e-Azadi member and the son in law of Taleqani- and Tavakollian. You can find the collection in the magnificent
Naqd-e-Hal Telegram channel.
Tavakollian, as always, is accurate, succinct, and ruthless to the subject of his study. He demystifies Taleqani and points out that the renowned Ayatollah was supportive of terrorist organizations, while Ayatollah Khomeini was smart enough not to endorse any armed movement against the Shah regime. Additionally, Tavakkolian rejects the popular belief that Taleqani was a proponent of individual freedom. "About hijab, there will be no enforcement" is the famous
Ettelaat headline quoting Taleqani, which has made many people to believe he was a proponent of women’s freedom, at least the freedom of choosing how to dress. Not so fast, Tavakollian warns us. He pins down the complete quote: "We want to preserve our ladies' dignity nevertheless" and "It's not a big deal if women put a scarf on their head anyways" are other quotes from the same interview. Tavakkolian shows that Taleqani was not serious about women's freedom of choice, he was just blubbering with a series of sentences about freedom and hijab and Eslam, in which every sentence contradicts the previous one. Clearly, his style was not that different from that of his fellow mullahs when they want to keep face of civility while following the not so civil sharia agenda: The ready template of "While we are not against this, and actually Eslam endorses this, but we do not allow that" in which "this" and "that" are open to the clergy's interpretation and the direction of political winds.
Bastenegar’s style of debate, on the other hand, is typical of the 1979 revolutionaries: a mixture of personal memory, unrelated details, and semi-bogus interpretations of events. Extraordinarily, he defends the terrorist acts as the “only possible choice” before revolution and proposes that Taleqani’s admiration for Fadayian-e-Eslam was a balancing act to give credit both to Mossadegh and to the Fadayian. (As if it is settled that a credit was due for Fadayian). Bastenegar’s thinking, reflected in his writing, is the typical yet implausible practice of logical gymnastics to justify the use of terrorism and violence during the 57 revolution days. This line of defense appears too much in the writings of the reformists these days: ironically the very same people who criticized the non-violent protests of Dey 96, defend the act of terror back in the 50s.
In another absolutely Irooni technique, Bastenegar keeps mentioning that there is too much to say and if only there was enough time to discuss: About Taleqani and individual freedom: “the issue of personal freedom is not something to be debated in a paragraph.” And on judging Taleqani: “Judging the appropriateness of Taleqani’s actions needs another place and another time”. Seriously, if a rebuttal written in response to an essay criticizing Taleqani is not the place of debating the rights and wrongs of Taleqani, then where is the correct place? Mohammad Ghaed, in an excellent
piece about Iranian Erfoon-bazi, notes that the so-called Hafez Experts always start their speech by saying that there is no time to talk about the greatness of Hafez and the can only talk a drop out of an ocean. There is simply no ocean nor is there a better place to discuss Taleqani.
Tavakollian is simply too good for Bastenegar, and I cannot imagine any reader be convinced by Bastenegar’s weak line of arguments.
But what really caught my eye from this debate, was the low standards of Iranian journalism, which undoubtedly fails to fact-check or edit the received texts and just publishes whatever essay or review that comes along.
In his first essay, Tavakollian had made a citation to the page 190 of the book “Shahadat and Azadi” in which Taleqani admires Fadayian-e-Eslam. Bastenegar disputed the validity of the citation and asserted that “this quote is not on page 190 of the book, nor anywhere else through the whole book”. In response, Tavakollian emphasized that the quote was indeed on page 190. What a dreadful level of discussion, which could have been easily avoided if only Iranian journalists knew what their job is. This is unquestionably a failure of the editors of Andishe-Pooya, who could and should have checked Tavakollian’s citation in the first place, or at least later when Bastenegar disputed the record. In absence of fierce editing and fact-checking, the newspapers are no different than twitter battles, in which the parties say whatever they want to say. At least on twitter the readers have the chance to check the replies.
