A HISTORY OF MODERN IRAN - Stoa

186 A History of Modern Iran
Khatemi’s main asset was his liberal reputation. The fact that he was a
sayyed also helped. As minister of culture under Rafsanjani, he had tried to
loosen censorship and had been accused by Ettela’at and Kayhan of disseminating
“corrupt and immoral films and books.” Complaining that overly
stringent censorship had produced a “stagnant and retrograde climate,” he
resigned quietly from his ministerial post in 1992 and took up the directorship
of the National Library. He also taught Western political thought at
Tehran University. His demeanor was more like that of a university
professor than a revolutionary cleric. He ran his campaign for the presidency
on the themes of nourishing “civil society,” curing the “sick economy,” and
replacing the “clash of civilizations” with a “dialogue of civilizations.” He
hammered away on the importance of having an open society with individual
liberties, free expression, women’s rights, political pluralism, and,
most important of all, rule of law. He visited supermarkets, used city buses,
and traveled in a small private car with his wife in the driver’s seat. His
campaign managers went out of their way to stress that he knew German,
having supervised the Iranian mosque in Hamburg before the revolution.
They also stressed that the philosophical books he had written had much
praise for such Western thinkers as Hume, Kant, Descartes, Locke,
Voltaire, and Montesquieu. “The essence of Iranian history,” he declared,
“is the struggle for democracy.” 60
He won hands-down with 70 percent of the vote in a campaign in which
80 percent of the electorate participated. In the previous presidential
campaign, only 50 percent had voted. His support cut across regions and
class lines – even Revolutionary Guards and Qom seminarians voted for
him. But his core support came from the modern middle class, college
students, women, and urban workers. The reformers immediately launched
the newspaper Khordad (May), named after the month when they had won
the presidential election. They soon became known as the Khordad
Movement. Khatemi’s brother, a medical doctor, founded the paper
Moshakerat (Participation) and the Islamic Iran Participation Party.
Khordad and Moshakerat soon outsold the long-established Kayhan and
Ettela’at.
These reform newspapers, together with others that followed, changed
the whole tenor of public discussion. In previous decades, the key terms in
public discourse had been emperialism, mostazafen, jehad, mojahed, shahed
(martyrdom), khish (roots), enqelab (revolution), and gharbzadegi (Western
intoxication). Now the key terms were demokrasi, pluralism, moderniyat,
azadi (liberty), barabari (equality), jam’eh-e madani (civil society), hoquq-e
beshar (human rights), mosakerat-e siyasi (political participation), goft-e gou