Interview With Azadeh Moaveni
Iranian-American journolist and author of 'Lipstick Jihad'
Interviewed By Michal Lumsden
March 9, 2005

[excerpt]

MJ.com: In the book, when you talk about Islamic politics, one of the expressions you use is “culture of lies.” You also say you think that only secularism can safeguard basic human rights. Is that an absolute?

AM: My experience in Afghanistan recently informed my thinking about this. Having a legal system that incorporates both secular law and religious law at the same time, I think, is a way to bridge those who might want to have Islam involved in governing society and those who value the western notion of rights—the rights of the individual. If there’s a way in which you can have secular approaches to different aspects of legal practices, I think it doesn’t have to be only secular.

MJ.com: You mentioned western-style rights. What do you have in mind?

AM: I think this young generation in Iran wants Western-style rights. It’s not “rights” in a very legalistic or human rightsy sense, but “rights” as in values—the right to individual choice in lifestyle, career choice, who you marry and who you don’t. Rights as a way of not being bound by tradition or having to live a certain way.

MJ.com: Iraq's constitution looks likely to be grounded, to some degree, in Islamic law. Do you think in that case it’ll be possible to retain the kinds of individual rights and freedoms you're talking about?

AM: In Iran, you have an elected government and the divine right by law and they’re both trying to operate. You can have an elected parliament that makes laws, but if the judiciary is appointed by the Supreme Leader—who is a representative of God—then you’re kind of at an impasse.

But Iraq won’t have that top-down structure to deal with. I think it’ll be a question of juries and due process and other elements of a secular legal system. You can have all of those in place with a system that’s inspired by Islamic law, and if the system is trying to be reasonable and accountable, there’s no reason why it has to be a disaster.


MJ.com: You say in the book that you didn’t grow up as a devout Muslim. After living in several Middle Eastern countries, has your relationship to Islam changed?

AM: Between my experiences in Iran and Iraq, I learned how to become a secular Shiite, which I never knew was possible before. This idea that you are culturally a Shiite, yet you don’t pray five times a day -- in the Middle East I found this established tradition of never doubting for a second that you have Muslim identity, but that you’re secular.

MJ.com: In Iran, too?

AM: Definitely in Iran. Iran is so secular. I’m so shocked by this. That you can have a secular middle class in an Islamic country, I think is just phenomenal. It’s so rare in the rest of the region.

MJ.com: Why is that rare?

AM: In many other Middle Eastern countries, the government has made such a point of keeping Islam at arm’s length. People have grown increasingly frustrated with their lives, with the economy and with the politics of the country. Islam becomes an appealing outlet. They’ve had a reason to become more religious, whereas in Iran, it was never taken away in the first place. In fact, it was imposed. So people are able to conclude whether they want to have a private relationship to their faith—which is actually what I mean when I say “secular” in Iran. It’s this idea that everyone decides for ourselves, and the government doesn’t decide for us, how much Islam there is in our lives.

MJ.com: Do you see Iran changing in our lifetime?

AM: Iranian young people want secular government. But they know this regime is around for a while, and the trick for them is to see how they can transform it from within. They are doing this in their everyday life, looking for small ways to press for more personal and political freedom.

I think Iran is the kind of place where it’s difficult to predict what’s going to trigger structural change. It’s hard to also predict the role that civil disobedience or mass protests could play. Iranian young people are so modern and so secular, so connected to the world. It’s hard to imagine that the culture won’t change and then start putting pressure on the government to change. The horizon is 10, 20, 30 years, but I think it will happen.

MJ.com: How do you balance your disagreement with parts of the politics and policies of both countries?

AM: It’s really tough, because in the U.S. you’re so easily branded an apologist for the Islamic Republic or an accommodationist if you’re not willing to say that everyone would welcome American tanks with flowers. But if you speak openly about what’s going on in Washington and tell Iranians, “Look, America’s really serious about your nuclear weapons,” you’re branded as being hawkish or you’re speaking for America, when really you’re just saying, “You gotta understand how the American government works.”

MJ.com: What is the American media not reporting about the current standoff?

AM: There needs to be more attention paid to the spectrum of Iranian public opinion. I think Iranians are very conflicted about the bomb and whether the government should have it. They’re very critical of the government’s motives for wanting one. They’re worried about the possibility of a Chernobyl. They’re worried about whether this government is efficient enough to even run a huge nuclear power plant.

The Iranian government says, “We have the full support of the entire Iranian nation for our nuclear program.” And then I see a lot of press coverage in the West that says, “Iranians back their regime over this.” It’s not terribly sexy to say, “Iranians are divided straight down the middle about something.” But I think Iranians’ ambivalence is going to be a huge factor.

MJ.com: Has the Iranian government cracked down on freedom of expression as the tension has mounted?

AM: The level of repressiveness has been semi-constant since Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, which completely changed political culture in Iran and the extent to which you could have debate in newspapers and on weblogs about where the country should be going. It became really stifling then, and I think that’s still the case.

MJ.com: Would you give some examples of how the government became more stifling? It almost seems like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy on Bush’s part: His calling Iran “evil” pushed the clerics to become more repressive.

AM: If it’s democracy you’re trying to promote in Iran, if you have a fledgling trend of liberality and you suddenly make that regime feel like it’s under attack, it’s a no-brainer that it’s going to crack down.

Before "axis of evil," you had reformist newspapers writing openly about Islam and punishment: does Islam justify stoning and lashings and these sorts of things? Afterwards, it had to go underground. Suddenly newspapers that had been extremely critical ran stories on runaway girls. You had to criticize obliquely through human-interest stories and pointing out how miserable people were in different walks of their life.

 http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/03/moaveni.html

 http://www.lipstickjihad.com/default.htm