Twenty years ago, the newspaper I worked for was blown up by terrorists for demanding that American bookstores show enough courage to carry The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, had issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers. Khomeini's hand-picked Prime Minister - a man who publicly upheld the death sentence against the brilliant author - was none other than Mir Hussein Moussavi, darling of western bloggers and media types who have somehow confused his faction's struggle for power in the totalitarian theocracy with a grand moral movement for democracy and social change.
Call me a cynic, but I'm not buying.
But then again, I walked through the ashes of The Riverdale Press offices and felt the fear of my colleagues and their families - all because we had defended Rushdie's right under the First Amendment to sell books in the United States.
From what I can see, campaign promises aside, Moussavi is just a slightly more palatable version of the current political frontman the governing religious council supports as President. While his campaign - and the disputed results - may encourage the liberal minority of students, his administration would be as beholden to the Iranian theocracy as his predecessor's is. Sure, the unrest might lead to real societal upheaval in Iran, but it might not. And that change certainly won't be captained by Moussavi.
A highlight reel from recent reporting is worth reviewing. Here's CNN's bio:
In 1988, author Salman Rushdie released his fourth novel, 'The Satanic Verses,' which Iran said insulted Islam. The country's supreme leader called for the death of Rushdie. And Moussavi, in a radio broadcast, said the order would be carried out.
Moussavi told the Financial Times in April that he would not halt Iran's uranium enrichment program if he were president. "No one in Iran would accept suspension," he said.
More from Time.com:
Iranians seeking an alternative to Ahmadinejad's truculence have latched onto Mousavi with little concern, it seems, over the fact that in the 1980s, the gray-bearded 67-year-old was at the heart of a regime that executed dissidents, took U.S. hostages and launched a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie.
And some reporting from Foreign Policy:
His liberal detractors emphasize that the Mousavi government oversaw the mass execution of political opponents in 1988, and say he has been largely silent on human rights violations since. They also point to his support for Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British author of The Satanic Verses. Mousavi's mindset is often characterized as a throwback to the early years of the revolution, when Islamic economics, shared sacrifice, and self-reliance were the political norm.
Yet this is the leader so many in the wired west have rallied behind. Here's more lyrical praise from Andrew Sullivan, who really ought to know better:
The next generation is desperately trying to prevent the Islamist monsters from genocidal war, economic immiseration and the hideous abuse of a great faith. I keep associating it with the Obama movement - the art, the youth, the desire for change, the innovative use of inormatio technology, the yearning to avoid a clash of religion if we can avoid it.
Please.
from Amazon.
