Volume 46, Number 20 · December 16, 1999
The Struggle for Iran
By Christopher de Bellaigue
Books discussed in this article:
Iran: Comment sortir d'une revolution religieuse
by Farhad Khosrokhavar, by Olivier Roy
Paris: Seuil, 288 pp., FF130
Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran
by Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Princeton University Press, 305 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah
by Baqer Moin
London: IB Tauris, 358 pp., £24.95
Being Modern in Iran
by Fariba Adelkhah, Translated from the French by Jonathan Derrick
Columbia University Press, 190 pp., $25.00
In Tehran at the end of September Mohammad Khatami rose to his feet to address some ten thousand students on the occasion of the one hundredth birthday of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution of 1979. Mr. Khatami captured Iran's presidency two and a half years ago with promises to extract democratic freedoms from the hardline clerical establishment that has dominated Iranian politics for the past two decades, and to improve ties with the West. The students who came to listen to him, drawn from Tehran's half-dozen universities, wanted to express their support for these goals, but in his speech Mr. Khatami often seemed to be reading from a different script altogether. His attack on the 'spineless imitators of the West' and his call for piety, for example, would not have been out of place in a tirade by one of Iran's hard-liners. Why, then, when the President had finished and sat cross-legged among the other dignitaries, was he loudly cheered, with female students holding up his photograph, their male counterparts bellowing his name?
Review, 6670 words
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