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We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
In tonight’s program we continue our discussion with Dr Kazem Kardavani about comparing the results of the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1905 and the Islamic revolution of 1979 for Iran and the Iranian people, and begin by asking him why we have gone backward in our contemporary history.
Dr Kazem Kardavani:
We must begin by asking why did we have to make another revolution in 1979, as not many countries of the world make two revolutions in a matter of a century.
I think the key element in the 1905 revolution was to achieve the rule of law and democracy where people can decide about their destiny.
That revolution cut off the hands of the clergy from many of the Iranian people’s social and cultural affairs. The intellectuals who directed the masses towards achieving these objectives led that revolution.
However, in the 1979 revolution the masses became the motor of the movement and our intellectual were left behind.
In the process the clerical establishment stamped its own leadership over the movement and took an historic revenge against the secular and intellectual forces that had ruled Iran since the 1905 revolution.
Even those intellectuals who were involved in the revolution, like Seyed Hassan Nasr and Ehsan Naraghi, had religious tendencies.
And when you have a religious society like this then the clerics could comfortably take over the movement against the Shah and we now see the result of it.
