The Role of the Intellectuals

Abstract

Two decades after Iran’s Islamic revolution, the majority of the Iranian people manifested their despair and frustration with the outcome of the revolution by voting for democratic reform in the 2000 parliamentary elections. The revolution had failed to fulfill its promise of establishing a state in which people with all kinds of political views could participate in the affairs of the country. In 1997, Mohammed Khatami rose out of the revolutionary establishment to win the presidency, vowing to reform the system and affirming that reform was indeed possible on the basis of Islamic principles. Despite all the obstacles he encountered, Khatami’s new political discourse emphasizing dialogue and tolerance won him the support of the outside world and ended Iran’s 20 years of isolation. Signaling that Iran is ready to reenter the international community, Khatami even took a big step toward mending relations with the United States. The key question, however, is whether Khatami will be able to succeed in creating a democratic state within an Islamic system. The answer remains unclear. There is no question that working within the Islamic system is the best way to initiate reforms in Iran, a country that witnessed two revolutions in the past century and has been plunged into deeper problems by the most recent one. These problems can be mended only by nonviolent democratic reforms. Yet since such reforms will begin to Ramin Jahanbegloo, who was born in Tehran, received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Sorbonne. In 1993 he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. He has been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, and is currently an adjunct professor in political philosophy at the University of Toronto. His books include Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (1991), Gandhi: aux sources de la non-violence (1998), and Iran and Modernity (2000), and he is the author of many articles in both Iranian and Western journals.