WHEN MOHAMMAD KHATAMI emerged as president of Iran in 1997, many liberals swooned in delight at the appearance of a self-styled Islamic reformer and moderate. The New York Times announced that Khatami was “dedicated to relaxing or eliminating . . . political and religious repression.” Here was a reasonable man, it was argued, who sought to steer a course between “regressive” Islam and absorption by the secular West.
As the former Iranian president concludes his “dialogue” tour of the United States–he is the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit since the 1979 revolution–his cheerleaders should reflect on his book Islam, Liberty and Development. Released just after he came to power, this political tract illustrates why “reformers” in Iran should not be taken at face value.
At points in the book, Khatami talks like an Enlightenment don, emphasizing rationality and intellectual openness. In a chapter called “Reason and Religion,” he insists that the faith he advocates “exists alongside and parallel to reason, not in opposition to it.” He chides fellow believers who cling to “rigid” views of Islam that reject the accomplishments of the West. “Dogmatic attachment to archaic ideas,” he says, “poses a serious obstacle to our society.” Indeed, Khatami portrays himself as a kind of Islamic version of Reinhold Niebuhr: an intellectual severely critical of the excesses of modernity, yet able to appreciate its noblest achievements. Thus he urges Iranians to “shun the extremes of hating the West or being completely enchanted by it.”
The book includes Khatami’s presidential inaugural speech, which recalls the patriotic oratory of John Adams: “Protecting the freedom of individuals and the rights of the nation, which constitutes a fundamental obligation of the president . . . is an imperative emanating from the exalted worth and dignity of the human person enshrined in our Divine religion.” There’s also a nod to the institutions of civil society–Khatami did his PhD on Alexis de Tocqueville–and references to the rule of law and constitutional rights. “The legitimacy of the government stems from the people’s vote,” he intones. “State authority cannot be attained through coercion and dictatorship.”
ALONGSIDE ALL THIS, however, there’s another Khatami on display: the revolutionary Shia Muslim determined to fulfill “the utopian vision” of an Islamic kingdom “inside and outside Iran.” This Khatami sounds less like a Jeffersonian democrat and more like an al Qaeda operative. The West, he claims, has only one objective: to compel people everywhere “to surrender to its wishes” and to seize the world’s resources “to serve the imperialist power.” Khatami goes on to describe Iran’s struggle against Western values as “central to our survival.” Any compromise, he warns, would lead to “nothing but debasement and trampling on our pride.” Any attempt at reconciliation would be exploited by an opponent who would “stop at nothing” to subjugate all who stand in his way.
A careful reading of Khatami’s book reveals his rejection of the core political-religious creed of Western democracy: the inalienable, God-given rights of the individual against the coercive power of the state.
In his chapter “Religious Belief in Today’s World,” for example, there is not a hint of the modern concept of freedom of conscience. Khatami insists that true religious experience “flows from the depth of the soul”–but offers no assurance that he would leave the soul unmolested in his quest to construct an Islamic utopia. In his “Observations on the Information World,” Khatami regards access to communication technologies as essential to economic development–yet says nothing about freedom of speech, the cultural engine behind such advances.
THE REASON KHATAMI REJECTS these democratic ideals, it seems, is that he views their social results as overwhelmingly destructive: They produce the most immoral forms of individualism. When Khatami sizes up the West’s democratic man, he sees only the egoist, totally unrestrained by custom, morality, or religion. This is the great temptation–and the deepest threat–of the West. “A system like ours, based as it is on Islamic utopian ideology, is bound to restrict some individual liberties,” he says. “We want a system based on abstinence and high morality.” Muslim youth might be tempted to resent such a system, Khatami admits, but must be guided toward a better path than democratic hedonism.
It was Iranian youth, of course, who became utterly disenchanted with Mohammad Khatami and his reformist cant by the time he left office in 2005. His inspiring rhetoric about progress, freedom, and the restoration of an Islamic civilization fell flat as thousands of university students were arrested after the 1999 student protests. His alliance of faith and reason looked like a cynical pose as books were banned and dozens of newspapers and magazines shut down. Talk of authentic religious experience was betrayed by a regime that systematically harassed, imprisoned, and tortured religious minorities–including Jews, Christians, Baha’is and dissident Shia Muslims. In his place is another true believer who promises “peace and moderation” even as he pursues nuclear weapons and threatens to unleash suicide bombers against the United States for its numerous iniquities.
The West has its sins, and lots of hedonists who delight in them. Yet it also offers something that most Iranians probably seek: not libertinism, but liberty–the right to think, to speak, to worship without fear of reprisal. Unless Khatami and other “reformers” genuinely endorse these rights, their “dialogue” with the West will remain a monologue of the theocrats.
Joseph Loconte is a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. His latest book is The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm.
