Melampaui Atheisme

"Christianity, and nothing else [is] the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter." (Habermas, Time of Transitions)

Estatika

Estatika, kebaikan saja takkan mampu menumpaskannya. Kesabaran, belum tahu.

ISIS 2010

Tradisi & Modeniti

"The tradition of modernity is the critique of tradition for the sake of tradition." (Eduardo Mendieta, Perspectives on Habermas, pg 128)

Fakta dan Kesahihan

Fakta (Faktizität) dan Kesahihan (Geltung), adalah antara hal yang menarik untuk ditelaah. Fakta, merujuk kepada “apa yang ada”. Dan, Kesahihan, merujuk kepada “apa yang disahkan”. Demikian, awal dari cita-cita Habermas dalam Faktizität und Geltung-nya, yang merincikan teori wacana (Diskurstheorie)—sebuah projek untuk melanjutkan teori tindakan komunikatif-nya ke dalam teori politik.

Lantas, mari saja kita mendaras persoalannya yang menarik ini: mengapa fakta dan kesahihan mesti benar-benar diperhatikan dalam teori politik?

Memang, persoalan ini jadi penting jika kita maseh mahu hidup dalam konteks bernegara yang ragam-kelompok (atau ragam-etnik). Untuk itu, kita harus memerhatikannya. Sebab, dalam tak-sedar kita tetap mengalaminya dan memerlukannya sebuah fakta dan kesahihan-nya. Ini sebagai usaha untuk menata kembali kehendak individu yang beragam (bahkan, bertentangan pun) yang akhirnya berragam kehendak tersebut terarah kepada sebuah kebersamaan (Solidarität) kolektif.

Mudahnya, pesoalan Habermas bermula dari: “apakah sebuah kebersamaan secara politik maseh mungkin dalam sebuah masharakat (majmuk) dewasa ini?” Persoalan inilah yang digeluti Habermas. Justeru, buatnya, tanpa fakta dan kesahihan, sesebuah negara tak pernah berdiri dari-dirinya-sendiri. Mengapa tak pernah bermula? Sebab, kita hanya khayal pada yang tiada, dan yang tak-sahih.

Selain itu juga, sesuatu yang bersifat metafizik ternyata sulit membentuk muafakat di kalangan masharakat yang majmuk. Mithalnya, sebuah andaian ada etnik yang adikuasa berbanding etnik yang lain, itu sama sekali tak dapat bertahan dengan tingkat nalar (rational) manusia. Memang, secara individu, hal-hal metafizik tak menimbulkan masalah. Tapi, bagaimana jika hal tersebut dibawa ke ranah masharakat? Ini pasti akan membangkitkan pertentangan, pertarungan, juga tindakan dominasi dari “yang satu” ke atas “yang semua”. Inilah sebenarnya bibit-bibit awal pada totalitarianisme.

Walau bagaimanapun, mengapa tiba-tiba ada kata metafizik di sini? Kata metafizik dibangkitkan lantaran itu merupakan ‘saingan’ pada penampakkan serta pengesahan, iaitu pada fakta dan kesahihan tersebut. Demikian lagi, “yang satu” dalam metafizik adalah berbeza dengan “yang satu” dalam politik. Mithalnya, “tuhan” (yang dalam satu metafizik) takkan mungkin dapat disamakan dengan “Fuhrer” (yang satu dalam politik).

Untuk lebih jelas, pengalaman politik Hitler, wajar untuk kita belajar. Kita belajar darinya bagaimana “yang satu” akhirnya berdiri mewakili “yang banyak”, bahkan mewakili pula secara mutlak.

Kita himbau kembali, bagaimana program-program yang awalnya adalah idea dari Hitler itu sendiri, kemudian dimajukannya sebagai agenda parti, lalu diangkatnya pula jadi wawasan negara. Maka, dari itu kita bertanya: apakah sebagai “yang satu” memang diberi hak seluas-luas itu? Maksudnya: diberi hak untuk merealisasikan idea peribadinya, dan langsung diterap sebagai sebuah program negara? Kini, dalam konteks kesedaran politik yang kian matang, tindakan semacam ini adalah tak mungkin lagi diterima secara rasional.

Mungkin ada yang tak enak pada kata rasional. Lalu bertanya, “mengapa rasional sulit untuk menerimanya?” Sulit lantaran, hal-hal metafizik hanya mampu untuk memaut kebersamaan dalam kelompok (tunggal), atau hanya dalam individu semata, bukan dalam masharakat yang kompleks. Lantas, kerasionalan (Rationalität) harus dibangun, harus dipupuk, dan harus melewati proses keyakinan yang berterusan. Rasional inilah wahana bagi sebuah kebersamaan, yang digunakan secara awam (öffentliche Raisonnement). Sebaleknya, jika kita mati pada hanya satu idea individu yang kebal-kritik semata, masharakat itu jelas sekali gagal memulakan pencerahan.

Tentu, sepertinya nampak angkuh bila kita secara sendirian cuba untuk menentukan makna pencerahan tersebut. Seolah, kita awal-awal, dan tanpa segan-segan ingin berkata, “kita telah meraih pencerahan, lalu yang lain maseh dalam kegelapan.” Tapi, ada makna pencerahan yang menerusi rasional (suatu ranah yang mampu dimiliki semua individu) yang dapat kita disepakati. Kita pinjam saja dari Kant dalam “Apa itu Pencerahan” (Was ist Aufklärung?), sosok yang sering dikaitkan dengan makna dari kata tersebut. Pencarahan buat Kant sebagai: “membebaskan diri dari ketidakmatangan (unmündigkeit) yang ditempanya sendiri.”

Tapi, nanti dulu, sebab Habermas tak seperti Kant secara seluruhnya. Bila Kant hanya terbatas realisasi makna tersebut pada tataran inidvidu, lalu Habermas telah merasionalisasikannya Pencerahan pada tataran kemasharakatan. Maka, makna pencerahan dari Habermas jadi lain: “kesadaran bahawa kemampuan kita untuk berkomunikasi secara rasional.”

Bertitik-tolak dari takrif ini, kita yang dianugerahkan nalar tentu tak sulit menerimanya. Melainkan saja, kita berdalih bahawa wahyu (~metafizik) adalah segala-galanya dan sudah jadi penyelesai semuanya. Jika ini jadi dalihnya, itu akan jadi wacana lain lagi. Ini kerana, yang kita mahu bicarakan di sini adalah dalam konteks politik. Sehubungan dengan itu, sesuatu yang bersifat politik, iaitu yang mahu mengurus kemajmukan dalam masharakat, itu mestilah kembali kepada sebuah wahana yang dapat diakses semua. Jawabnya: rasional, atau kerasionalan.

Setelah kita menerima takrif ini, ternyata pencerahan sebenarnya adalah sebuah dorongan kesedaran yang sentiasa berterusan. Tidak sekadar baku pada sebuah tataran tertentu saja sepertimana Kant telah terperangkap. Dari takrif begini juga, kita boleh berkata bahawa, hanya masharakat yang ‘tercemar’ kesedarannya, atau yang ‘tak-sedar’ saja, adalah masharakat yang rela untuk menyerahkan hak-haknya (hak untuk berfikir, hak untuk terlibat, malah hak untuk hidup, dll) kepada “yang satu”.

Natijahnya, tampillah totalitarianisme seperti yang mudah dilakukan Hitler tersebut. Apatah lagi, atas nama demokrasi juga, Fuhrer ini naik memerintah seterusnya mahu berkuasa-mutlak dan abadi.

Maka, di sinilah, di satu sudut, adalah beban dari demokrasi tersebut, sekaligus amaran untuk kita. Beban, kerana demokrasi yang sedetik bukanlah jalan pintas untuk kita membolot yang selamanya. Amaran, kerana sekiranya demokrasi deliberatif tak dipertahankan kesinambungan prosesnya, maka yang muncul adalah totalitarianisme. Jadi, seandainya kita tak menyedari beban dan ancaman ini, maka kita juga tak menyedari apa yang realiti tersebut, atau “apa yang ada”.

Namun, kita hanya asyik pada satu titik lalu, iaitu titik di mana kita sebagai individu (atau parti) telah diangkat sebagai “yang satu”, itu juga tak dapat mewakili realiti yang sama buat selama-lamanya. Sebab, titik tersebut sentiasa berubah berdasarkan denyut nadi mereka yang sudi memberi mandat tersebut. Inilah bahana dari demokrasi bila difahami secara cetek.

Kendatipun, kita tak perlu sakan kecewa dengan demokrasi. Hal yang baik-baik dari demokrasi wajar saja untuk kita kembangkan lagi, atau dalam perspektif lazim dari Harakah Islamiyyah, wajar saja untuk diambil kesempatan. Terlepas dari agenda tersembunyi seperti ini, kita sebagai masharakat hanya ingin menuntut hal yang yang jadi warisan seterusnya dari pada “apa yang ada.”

Lalu, kita memerlukan kesahihan, sebagai lanjutan dari “apa yang ada.” Maka, perlunya “apa yang disahkan.” Sebelum itu, kita perlu setuju bahawa masharakat perlu (menuju) sebuah kesusilaan (Sittlichkeit) yang sukarela. Dan, untuk mengesahkannya, kita juga perlu bersepakat. Sebab, sesuatu yang tak-sahih, adalah sesuatu yang takkan dapat membentuk kebersamaan dalam sesebuah masharakat.

Pesoalannya, apakah penting memelihara kebersamaan ini? Apakah bukan sebuah projek khalayan untuk membangun kebersamaan dalam arus pasca-moden yang berpencar-pencar ini? Apakah –seperti kritik liberalisme– kebersamaan itu tak boleh dibangun dengan hanya menjaga hak-hak individu? Konon, bagi kalangan ini lagi, tidakkah dengan hak individualistik ini dijamin, maka itu secara langsungnya turut menjamin hak-hak masharakat seluruhnya? Tidak juga.

Tidak juga, sebab, “yang satu” dalam sistem politik memerlukan restu dari “yang banyak” dalam Lebenswelt (dunia-kehidupan, atau masharakat yang terdapat ragam kelompok). Dan ternyata, hak individu ini perlu diakui secara bersama, supaya hak itu peroleh nilainya. Hak individu takkan bernilai, sekiranya hak tersebut tak diakui secara kolektif. Setidaknya, tak bernilai secara praktis politik. Jika tidak, hak individu itu hanya sah dalam batas individu tersebut. Namun, tak sah dalam batas masharakat. Justeru, kebersamaan ini terus merupakan harapan penting untuk membangun kesahihan tersebut.

Kebersamaan juga adalah tabii yang tak terelak. Dalam masharakat yang kompleks, kebersamaan merupakan tuntutan untuk menjernehkan konflik kepentingan dari kelompok-kelompok, atau individu-individu. Tanpa berakhir pada kebersamaan, maka yang tersisa hanyalah sebuah masharakat yang dalam monad-monad, dan tak mengenal sisi seni dari manusia itu sendiri. Walhal, dari kebersamaan, banyak hal jadi langgeng.

Tentu, ada kritik hadhir dari pasca-moden, yang mungkin lelah dengan ‘dongeng’ cerita-cerita besar (metanarratives) ini. Kalangan ini, tidak seperti kalangan liberalisme yang monad, lelah dengan perbezaan-perbezaan yang menurutnya mustahil dirangkumkan dalam “yang satu” lagi. “Meta-naratif berakhir,” kata kalangan ini. Pun begitu, bukankah pasca-modenisme ini dapat dimengertikan juga sebagai sebuah pelarian dari pesimisme, atau juga kegagalan untuk memahami ruh pencerahan?

Arakian, Habermas maseh optimis dengan pencerahan, sebagai buah-nya dari modeniti. Kerana itu, sekiranya ditanya mengapa sewaktu modeniti pun, maseh lahir lagi fasisisme, maseh ada lagi nazisme, maseh wujud lagi pembantaian? Dan, jawapannya sederhana: kerana modeniti adalah sebuah projek yang belum selesai. Kini, tema dari fakta dan kesahihan menjadi harapan baru dalam demokrasi, khususnya dalam demokrasi deliberatif. Ini sumbangan bermakna dari penyelamat kehampaan generasi Mazhab Frankfurt yang awal.

Walhasil, bingkas memandang realiti tanahair kita: apakah kuasa politik yang ada hari ini benar-benar merupakan realiti dari apa yang telah disahkan? Tentu, akan ada –sama ada kalangan pemerintah mahupun pembangkang– yang lekas menanggapinya: memang! Tapi, ada pesoalan lain lagi: bagaimana mereka tahu bahawa sistem politik yang mereka wadahi itu adalah sesuai dengan hasrat rakyat?

Mithalnya, bagaimana mereka yakin bahawa pilihanraya itu adalah cerminan dari kehendak-kehendak rakyat? Dan, pilihanraya yang bagaimana yang mereka maksudkan? Dan, adakah hanya dengan sebuah pilihanraya, itu menjadi sebuah kesahihan untuk sepenggal (selama lima tahun)? Dan, bukankah dalam sepenggal itu, rakyat itu tak hanya bergelut dengan satu hal saja? Sebaleknya, beragam hal yang terus saja bergulir dalam masharakat selama satu hal, dan apakah berragam hal itu hanya diputuskan dari “yang satu” saja? Inilah yang juga dikritik oleh Alain Badiou, filsuf yang hasilkan Being and Event, yang melihat kelompongan representasi antara masharakat dan negara.

Jadi, mahu atau tidak mahu, kita harus berani berkata, bahawa realiti dari “yang satu,” atau dari “yang sedetik,” itu sebenarnya belum tentu menjamin “yang banyak” dan “yang selamanya.” Yang kita mahukan adalah detik-detik yang sentiasa memangkin kita untuk menuju langit-langit kesejahteraan, meskipun kita takkan mungkin mencapainya secara sempurna.

Justeru, jelas, dari Habermas terutamanya, kemajmukan bukanlah hambatan. Kemajmukan tetap pada akhirnya mampu membangun sebuah kesepaduan (integrasi) sosial dalam masharakat tersebut.

Kesepaduan sosial inilah negara yang sesungguhnya ditawarkan dari fakta dan kesahihan: sebuah negara (sistem politik) yang bersandar bersandar pada realiti, dan realiti itu mendapat mandat-nya. Sebuah negara di mana hukum menjadi sebuah kerelaan untuk melaksanakannya. Mengapa? Kerana hukum itu dibangun menerusi muafakat dasar (Grundkonsens) dari yang terlibat (rakyat). Mengapa lagi? Kerana hukum itu bukanlah sebuah pendasaran-akhir (Letzbegründung) untuk moral, tapi sebuah evolusi hasil dari wacana yang terlibat. Lalu, terbangunlah harapan dari Sittlichkiet tersebut.

Jika tidak, negara (juga sekali lagi, rakyat) akan terus meleset ke titik nadir. Bukannya melesat ke titik normatif. Nauzubillah hi minzalik.

Religion in the public sphere: Religion as a catalyst of rationalization

The centrality of religion to social theory in general and philosophy in particular explains why Jürgen Habermas has dealt with it, in both substantive and creative ways, in all of his work. Indeed, religion can be used as a lens through which to glimpse both the coherence and the transformation of his distinctive theories of social development and his rethinking of the philosophy of reason as a theory of social rationalization.

For Habermas, religion has been a continuous concern precisely because it is related to both the emergence of reason and the development of a public space of reason-giving. Religious ideas, according to Habermas, are never mere irrational speculation. Rather, they possess a form, a grammar or syntax, that unleashes rational insights, even arguments; they contain, not just specific semantic contents about God, but also a particular structure that catalyzes rational argumentation.

We could say that in his earliest, anthropological-philosophical stage, Habermas approaches religion from a predominantly philosophical perspective. But as he undertakes the task of “transforming historical materialism” that will culminate in his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action, there is a shift from philosophy to sociology and, more generally, social theory. With this shift, religion is treated, not as a germinal for philosophical concepts, but instead as the source of the social order. This approach is of course shaped by the work of the classics of sociology: Weber, Durkheim, and even Freud. What is noteworthy about this juncture in Habermas’s writings is that secularization is explained as “pressure for rationalization” from “above,” which meets the force of rationalization from below, from the realm of technical and practical action oriented to instrumentalization. Additionally, secularization here is not simply the process of the profanation of the world—that is, the withdrawal of religious perspectives as worldviews and the privatization of belief—but, perhaps most importantly, religion itself becomes the means for the translation and appropriation of the rational impetus released by its secularization. Here, religion becomes its own secular catalyst, or, rather, secularization itself is the result of religion. This approach will mature in the most elaborate formulation of what Habermas calls the “linguistification of the sacred,” in volume two of The Theory of Communicative Action. There, basing himself on Durkheim and Mead, Habermas shows how ritual practices and religious worldviews release rational imperatives through the establishment of a communicative grammar that conditions how believers can and should interact with each other, and how they relate to the idea of a supreme being. Habermas writes:

worldviews function as a kind of drive belt that transforms the basic religious consensus into the energy of social solidarity and passes it on to social institutions, thus giving them a moral authority.
[. . .] Whereas ritual actions take place at a pregrammatical level, religious worldviews are connected with full-fledged communicative actions.

The thrust of Habermas’s argumentation in this section of The Theory of Communicative Action is to show that religion is the source of the normative binding power of ethical and moral commandments. Yet there is an ambiguity here. While the contents of worldviews may be sublimated into the normative, binding of social systems, it is not entirely clear that the structure, or the grammar, of religious worldviews is itself exhausted. Indeed, in “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality,” Habermas resolves this ambiguity by claiming that the horizontal relationship among believers and the vertical relationship between each believer and God shape the structure of our moral relationship to our neighbour, but now under two corresponding aspects: that of solidarity and that of justice. Here, the grammar of one’s religious relationship to God and the corresponding community of believers are like the exoskeleton of a magnificent species, which, once the religious worldviews contained in them have desiccated under the impact of the forces of secularization, leave behind a casing to be used as a structuring shape for other contents.

In the “postmetaphysical” stage of Habermas’s intellectual itinerary, he turns his attention away from sociology and towards philosophy once again, in particular, political and moral philosophy. Metaphysical thinking, which for Habermas has become untenable by the very logic of philosophical development, is characterized by three aspects: identity thinking, or the philosophy of origins that postulates the correspondence between being and thought; the doctrine of ideas, which becomes the foundation for idealism, which in turn postulates a tension between what is perceived and what can be conceptualized; and a concomitant strong concept of theory, where the bios theoretikos takes on a quasi-sacred character, and where philosophy becomes the path to salvation through dedication to a life of contemplation. By “postmetaphysical” Habermas means the new self-understanding of reason that we are able to obtain after the collapse of the Hegelian idealist system—the historicization of reason, or the de-substantivation that turns it into a procedural rationality, and, above all, its humbling. It is noteworthy that one of the main aspects of the new postmetaphysical constellation is that in the wake of the collapse of metaphysics, philosophy is forced to recognize that it must co-exist with religious practices and language:

Philosophy, even in its postmetaphysical form, will be able neither to replace nor to repress religion as long as religious language is the bearer of semantic content that is inspiring and even indispensable, for this content eludes (for the time being?) the explanatory force of philosophical language and continues to resist translation into reasoning discourses.

In contrast to metaphysical thinking, with its overvaluation of philosophy’s power, and thus its belief that philosophy is itself the voice of the truth of being, postmetaphysical thinking would neither dismiss religion as mere myth, and thus as the other of reason, nor assimilate itself to religion, usurping religious language and contents (as with mystical philosophies, such as that of the later Heidegger, with his call for a God who would save us). In other words, metaphysical thinking either surrendered philosophy to religion or sought to eliminate religion altogether. In contrast, postmetaphysical thinking recognizes that philosophy can neither replace nor dismissively reject religion, for religion continues to articulate a language whose syntax and content elude philosophy, but from which philosophy continues to derive insights into the universal dimensions of human existence.

Since 2001, when he was awarded the Peace Prize by the German Booksellers Association, Habermas has been engaging religion even more directly, deliberately, and consistently. In the speech he gave on the occasion of this prize, for instance, Habermas claims that even moral discourse cannot translate religious language without something being lost: “Secular languages which only eliminate the substance once intended leave irritations. When sin was converted to culpability, and the breaking of divine commands to an offence against human laws, something was lost.” Still, Habermas’s concern with religion is no longer solely philosophical, nor merely socio-theoretical, but has taken on political urgency. Indeed, he now asks whether modern rule of law and constitutional democracies can generate the motivational resources that nourish them and make them durable. In a series of essays, now gathered in Between Naturalism and Religion, as well as in his Europe: The Faltering Project, Habermas argues that as we have become members of a world society (Weltgesellschaft), we have also been forced to adopt a societal “post-secular self-consciousness.” By this term Habermas does not mean that secularization has come to an end, and even less that it has to be reversed. Instead, he now clarifies that secularization refers very specifically to the secularization of state power and to the general dissolution of metaphysical, overarching worldviews (among which religious views are to be counted). Additionally, as members of a world society that has, if not a fully operational, at least an incipient global public sphere, we have been forced to witness the endurance and vitality of religion. As members of this emergent global public sphere, we are also forced to recognize the plurality of forms of secularization. Secularization did not occur in one form, but in a variety of forms and according to different chronologies.

With respect to his preoccupation that “the liberal state depends in the long run on mentalities that it cannot produce from its own resources,” through a critical reading of Rawls, Habermas has begun to translate the postmetaphysical orientation of modern philosophy into a postsecular self-understanding of modern rule of law societies in such a way that religious citizens as well as secular citizens can co-exist, not just by force of a modus vivendi, but out of a sincere mutual respect. “Mutual recognition implies, among other things, that religious and secular citizens are willing to listen and to learn from each other in public debates. The political virtue of treating each other civilly is an expression of distinctive cognitive attitudes.” The cognitive attitudes Habermas is referring to here are the very cognitive competencies that are distinctive of modern, postconventional social agents. Habermas’s recent work on religion, then, is primarily concerned with rescuing for the modern liberal state those motivational and moral resources that it cannot generate or provide itself. At the same time, his recent work is concerned with foregrounding the kind of ethical and moral concerns, preoccupations, and values that can guide us between the Scylla of a society administered from above by the system imperatives of a global economy and political power and the Charybdis of a technological frenzy that places us on the slippery slope of a liberally sanctioned eugenics.

This post is adapted from a longer essay by Eduardo Mendieta, entitled “Rationalization, modernity and secularization,” which will appear in Jürgen Habermas: Key Concepts, Barbara Fultner, ed. (Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, forthcoming). Mendieta is co-editor of two forthcoming SSRC volumes featuring work by Habermas: Habermas and Religion and The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere.—ed.

>>> http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/03/religion-rationalization/

Habermas dan Iran

Bila kita bercakap tentang Iran dan Jürgen Habermas, kita harus memanggil beberapa sejarah. Sejarah pertama, tradisi intelektual moden Iran. Dalam sejarahnya, Iran tak seperti nengara muslim yang lain, mereka telah mengalami benturan intelektual yang sekian lama, dan lebih hangat. Ini dapat dilihat dari sosok seperti Jamaluddin al-Afghani, Jalal al-e Ahmad, Sadegh Hedayat, Ahmad Khasravi, Mehdi Bazargan, dll. Dari mereka ini, wacana antara tradisi dan modeniti, antara konservatif dan liberal, telah berantaian demikian lamanya.

Sejarah kedua, tradisi agamawan Iran. Dalam sejarahnya, Iran tak seperti negara sunni yang lain. Negara Persia ini tak pernah putus wacana teologi dan falsafah. Setelah al-Ghazzali, wacana falsafah Islam di Iran berkembang menerusi Suhrawardi, Sadra, Mir Damad, dll. Justeru, mutu intelektual agama mereka lebih ketat dan lebih tajam. Hujungnya, mereka melahirkan ramai agamawan yang terbilang, seperti Taba’taba’ee, Motahhari, Baheshti, Taleqani, Khomeini, dll. Kesemua nama ini bukan saja menunjukkan bakat dalam hal teologi, tapi juga dalam hal politik.

Sejarah ketiga, Iran pernah melalui era komunisme, sekurang-kurangnya era pengaruhnya yang cukup kuat. Ini dapat dilihat menerusi Parti Tudeh, yang cuba menguasai pentas masyarakat Iran, terutamanya sebelum revolusi 1979. Parti Tudeh dan Fedayin, yang juga dimusuhi oleh Shah Iran, berusaha memanjangkan suara Soviet Union di Iran, dan dampaknya dirasakan begitu meluas sekali. Dari pengaruh komunisme ini juga melahirkan MKO, dll. Namun, setelah revolusi, gerakan komunisme di Iran mengalami tekanan, dan tenggelam di bawah bendera revolusi Islam. Lantas, MKO sampai sekarang sekalipun telah mengambil jalan keras, serta melancarkan serangan terhadap agamawan dan politikus Iran. Sementara yang lain, wacana marxisme yang ortodoks pula digugat dengan kehadhiran wacana neo-marxisme yang lebih dinamik.

Dan, sejarah keempat, Iran dewasa ini sedang berhadapan antara idea negara demokrasi dengan status quo velayatul-faqeh. Ketepikan dulu soal benar atau salah. Tapi, pertembungan mereka ini—agamawan dan intelektual—telah menimbulkan debat yang tak pernah surut. Tak pernah kehabisan hujah. Kubu intelektual Iran bertambah, manakala kubu agamawan juga kian menebal. Ini dapat dilihat dari sosok utama mereka, seperti antara Abdol Karim Soroush dan Mohammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi. Juga melalui Ramin Jahanbegloo, dkk.

Nah, dari keempat sejarah ini, di mana Habermas? Di sini Habermas terlibat dalam semua sudut di atas.

Pertama, wacana Habermas menjadi penting untuk membendung kegentingan antara agamawan dan intelektual. Ini dapat dijernihkan menerusi idea rasionalisasi komunikasi-nya. Pada Habermas, rasionalisasi komunikasi ini dapat menghapuskan jurang antara minda atas-bawah, atau dalam bahasa Hegel, minda “tuan-hamba.” Minda subjek-objek ini agak tebal di Iran, terutamanya menerusi pengaruh agamawan terhadap rakyatnya. Ini barangkali sumbangan intelektual paling menarik Habermas di Iran. Mithalnya, Habibullah Peyman pernah memakai rasionalisasi komunikatif Habermas ini untuk memaparkan hubungan manusia dengan tuhan berupa sebuah dialog—tanpa perantara agamawan. Sebab itu, kegiatannya menerusi pergerakan Jonbesh-e Mosalmanan-e Mobarez (Pergerakan Muslim Garis-Keras), menerima cabaran bukan kepalang.

Kedua, wacana Habermas adalah kelanjutan dari tradisi intelektual Iran. Hubungan intelektual Iran yang panjang dengan falsafah barat memang umum sudah maklum. Karya-karya Kant, telah sekian lama diterjemahkan dan tersebar merata di Iran, sampai masuk ke celah-celah Hawzah Ilmiyyah-nya. Pernah pada tahun 2004, Iran mengajurkan peringatan 200 tahun kematian Kant. Begitu juga karya-karya Camus, Fromm, Bergson, Sartre, dll, yang berselerakan diterjemah dalam Farsi. Bahkan, lihat saja kritik Motahhari terhadap etika Kant dan Russell, yang ternyata tidak kurang bobotnya. Ini bukan omongan, kerana Motahhari dibantu paradigma Sadrian dapat menangkis falsafah barat tersebut. Tak lupa kritik Shariati terhadap Sartre, terhadap Fromm, dll. Ini adalah satu kekuatan bitara Iran—ekoran tak lekangnya tradisi mereka dari ranah falsafah. Maka, Habermas mekar di Iran sebagai pembaharu dari wacana falsafah barat, yang dikritik tersebut. Habermas, yang memberi bentuk yang lebih terbuka berbanding filsuf sebelumnya. Selain Habermas, Rotry juga tak kurang terkenalnya di Iran. Pernah kehadhirannya pada 2004, disambut begitu meluas di kalangan masyarakat akademik Iran. Maka, mahu atau tidak, Habermas, juga pemikir-pemikir terkini barat mesti di baca di Iran, kerana itulah kelanjutan wacana intelektual Iran-barat yang sekian lama. Ini ditambah lagi ketika Iran di bawah Hashemi Rafsanjani, mereka mula membuka pintu kapitalisme. Justeru, suasana ini mengetuk kritik-kritik atas-modeniti. Hossein Bashiriyeh contohnya, pernah menyentuh hal ini dalam Maktab-e Frankfort: Negaresh-e Enteqadi, Naghd-e Aiyn-e Esbati va Jam‘e-ye Nou (Sekolah Frankfurt: Teori Kritik, Kritisme pada Positivisme dan Masyarakat Moden).

Ketiga, Habermas datang dari Sekolah Frankfurt. Seperti kita maklum, Sekolah Frankfurt adalah sarang-nya neo-marxisme, yang melihat kapitalisme sebagai alat ekonomi yang mahu menelan intelektual. Selain Sekolah Frankfurt, ada juga kalangan strukturalisme dari Perancis yang tak senang dengan kekuasaan minda kapitalisme penuh ini. Tapi, dua sekolah ini belum cukup kuat. Malah, kapitalisme tetap saja hidup, dan dapat menggunakan bau-bau sosialis untuk kelestariannya. Pada “titik penting” inilah, Habermas muncul dengan kritik-kritik atas marxisme, dan memberi wacana yang lebih semasa. Letaknya Iran di sini adalah latar komunisme yang tebal, dan kegagalan politik komunisme Iran itu sendiri. Maka, idea-idea Habermas—yang menilai ulang idea marxisme—memberi nafas baru pada kelompok intelektual kiri di Iran. Hossein Adibi dan ‘Abdul-M’abood Ansari antara yang mengupas Habermas dan kritik-kritiknya pada marxisme ortodoks dalam buku mereka, Nazariye ha-ye Jam’ee-e Shena-si (Teori-teori Sosiologi).

Dan, keempat, wacana terbaru Habermas adalah mengenai hubungan antara agama dengan negara. Di sini, turut menyebabkan Habermas ditarik—kerana ketegangan di Iran antara konsep negara teologi yang bertarung dengan konsep negara sekular. Habermas, walaupun mendukung sebuah negara sekular, namun pernah menyatakan dalam pertemuannya dengan Pope Benedict bahawa perlunya sebuah negara sekular yang mesra agama. Maka, idea “ruang awam dan ruang peribadi” tajaan Habermas mendapat tempat dalam wacana kenegaraan di Iran. Usaha ini gigih dilakukan Yusuf Abazari yang memandang Habermasian sebagai alternatif dalam kemelut demokrasi di Iran. Abazari, dalam Kherad-e Jam‘e Shenasi (Nalar Sosiologi) menyorot betapa pentingnya Habermasian di Iran dalam debat intelektual terkini—terutamanya persoalan yang berkait dengan wacana ruang awam/peribadi serta projek kerasionalan.

Jadi, ringkasnya, di mana letaknya oeuvre Habermas di Iran? Ya, pada pertembungan agamawan-intelektual, pada wacana tradisi-modeniti, pada debat kiri-kanan, pada persaingan Islam-barat tersebut.

Lantas, idea masyarakat sivil yang dimajukan dari kalangan intelektual, yang dipinjam dari Habermas, cuba untuk memecahkan minda “tuan” menjadi minda yang setara rasionalisasinya dengan “hamba,” dan begitulah sebaleknya. Jadi, idea masyarakat sivil, itu dimunculkan menerusi dukungan rasionalisasi komunikatif tawaran Habermas. Begitu pun, bukan kata “masyarakat sivil” yang penting, yang dahulu hadhir. Tapi kata “rasionalisasi komunikasi”-nya, yang mengusung etika wacana, prinsip etika universal, dan pemahaman lebenswelt itu. Iran dewasa ini dalam proses pembentukan negara yang lebih matang. Lebenswelt (dunia-kehidupan) mereka sudah beberapa kali beranjak dan digugat. Maka, pergelutan bangsa-bukan Asia ini—kalau masing-masing siap dengan persetujuan kaedah Habermas tersebut—akan mendorong sebuah kekayaan idea yang sekali lagi memalukan serta meninggalkan jauh negara-negara muslim lain.

Memang, bukan hanya deretan intelektual yang disebut di atas saja yang memantik Habermas di Iran. Bahkan, terdapat beberapa lagi seperti Hadi Khaniki, Saeed Hajjarian, Hossein Ali Nazori, Morad Saqafi, dll yang masing-masing meminjam Habermasian dalam konteks tersendiri, pro-kontra. Lantas tak hairan, Habermas di Iran bukannya diterima bulat-bulat. Pernah Abdol Karim Soroush—yang terlatih dalam Popperian—menerusi bukunya, Danesh va Arzesh (Pengetahuan dan Nilai), mengkritik habis-habisan perpektif Habermasian. Ini kerana, Soroush melihat pendekatan sains Habermas yang terlalu instrumentalistik dan punya kesamaran dalam gagasan hermeneutika-nya.

Demikian Habermas dan Iran, dan pertautannya. Apapun, apa kata kita lupakan Iran sekejap. Mari kita kembali pada Malaysia, yang identik dengan keislaman. Konon juga, sebagai sebuah Negara Islam terbilang. Nah, di mana hubungan Malaysia dengan Habermas? Usah hairan, barangkali paling-paling jauh kita hanya boleh pergi pada hubungan Fathi Aris Omar dengan Habermas saja!

Khosro Golsorkhi

Sama ada kita muslim, kufr, sosialis, bahkan liberal sekalipun, belum tentu sejarah begini dapat dituruti. Khosro Golsorkhi, dengan tradisi sastera tinggi Persia, membacakan kata-kata puisinya saat berdepan hukuman mati, yang ketika itu dalam tribunal tentera Shah Iran. Homaan Majd dalam The Ayatollah Begs to Differ menyebutnya sebagai, "Che Guevara-like figure for young Iranians in 1974." Tentunya, Golsorkhi itu seorang komunis, tapi akhirnya shahid sebagai seorang revolusioner sejati. Memang, ia telah 'bangkit bersaksi,' 1944-1974.

Philosophy Day Raises Questions Before It Begins

By D.D. GUTTENPLAN, The New York Times

LONDON -- The idea was simple: each year, on the third Thursday in November, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization would hold an international gathering of philosophers for a day of rational discussion and free debate.

But this year, the celebration of World Philosophy Day has been overshadowed by a boycott organized by academics from around the world who say that by holding the event in Tehran, Unesco risks turning its "school of freedom" into a propaganda exercise for a brutal regime.

The first World Philosophy Day, in 2002, was a relatively quiet affair held at Unesco's headquarters in Paris. Moufida Goucha, head of the organization's Human Security, Democracy, and Philosophy Section, told delegates that the goal would be to ensure "debates in which each and every person should feel free to participate according to his or her convictions." Three years later the event had become sufficiently important on the intellectual calendar to be moved out of Paris, first to Chile and then to Morocco, Turkey, Italy and Russia.

Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian philosopher who now teaches at the University of Toronto, still remembers the excitement of debating the question "What is secularism?" at the Istanbul celebrations in 2007, an event he attended a few months after his release from jail in Iran, where he had been arrested because of "his contacts with foreigners."

"I was arrested in Tehran in April 2006 and taken to Evin Prison," he said in a recent interview. Istanbul also saw the publication of "Philosophy: A School of Freedom," a 300-page document by Unesco on the "defense of the teaching of philosophy -- a fertile guarantor of liberty and autonomy."

Accused by the Iranian press of having links to the Central Intelligence Agency and to the Israeli security agency Mossad, Dr. Jahanbegloo had also been charged with bringing Western philosophers including Jürgen Habermas and the late Richard Rorty to Iran in a bid to foment a "velvet revolution." He was released only after an international campaign and Dr. Jahanbegloo, the author of "Reading Gandhi in Tehran," said he said in a recent interview that he considers himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

So when he learned that Unesco had decided to hold this year's World Philosophy Day celebration in Iran, he wrote to the organization's director general, Irina Bokova, urging her to reconsider.

"It is certain that under current conditions a World Philosophy Day could not be held in normal conditions in Iran and that many philosophers would not be able to attend freely," he said.

This spring, after Unesco announced that the meeting would go ahead as planned, Dr. Jahanbegloo and two colleagues from the Italian journal Reset began to organize a boycott.

The politics of boycotts are never simple -- especially when intellectuals are involved. Even the cultural boycott of South Africa, widely cited as helping to bring about the end of apartheid, remains controversial. In recent years the British Association of University Teachers passed -- and then rescinded -- a proposal for an academic boycott of Israel in protest of that country's policies toward the Palestinians. Just last spring a proposal by the Student Senate at the University of California at Berkeley to divest from certain companies that supply the Israeli military divided that campus. And the response to the call to boycott Tehran next month has been far from unanimous.

"Since 2002 Iran has always participated in World Philosophy Day events," said Sue Williams, a spokeswoman for Unesco. "So when Tehran offered to host an event this year, Unesco accepted."

Dr. Jahanbegloo responded: "This is a government which has jailed scores of scholars and writers in the past five years, and where you have a total ban on independent thought and critical thinking." He also pointed to President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's removal of Gholamreza Aavani as director of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy and his replacement by Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a hardline politician whose daughter is married to the son of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"It's as if they decided to hold a philosophy conference in Berlin in 1938 -- with Goebbels as head of the conference!" Dr. Jahanbegloo said.

Brian Klug, who teaches philosophy at Oxford and is the author of "Being Jewish and Doing Justice," said "As I see it, the reasons that have been given for not going are more like reasons for going: going and giving solidarity to those Iranian intellectuals who are opposed to their government's infringements of human rights. Let the government of Iran be the one that does the boycotting," he said, by "withdrawing invitations or forbidding would-be participants from participating."

"Down the line, this might lay a basis for a public call to boycott the event. But that's down the line."

In July, the German philosopher Otfried Höffe, who had agreed to give the keynote speech in Tehran, announced that he would not be going to Iran. "Such a step requires not just a good, but a very good reason," he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, pointing to the installation of Mr. Haddad Adel as conference president and "the risk that World Philosophy Day" would be used by Mr. Ahmedinejad "as a propaganda platform. I shouldn't be helping him do that."

But Binesh Hass, an Iranian-Canadian doctoral student at Oxford, wrote on the Guardian Web site that isolating his country further "will only augment the impunity the government feels in the treatment of its people."

Avishai Margalit, a philosophy professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who also opposes the boycott, told The Wall Street Journal it was unlikely that Iran would allow Israelis to attend. However Unesco insists that all affiliates of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, including Israel, have been invited to participate. "It is my understanding that nobody has been refused a visa," Ms. Williams of Unesco said.

Even some supporters of the boycott have found the decision a difficult one. "I have a very special personal relationship with Iran," Dr. Höffe said by telephone from his office in Tübingen. "Not only because I have supervised a number of Iranian students, but because I am the only foreign member of the Tehran Academy of Philosophy. In general I try to take part in intercultural discussions. But I wouldn't go to North Korea. And I'd find it profoundly difficult to go to Cuba. With Iran however, as with Israel or China, I think you need to consider each case on its merits."

Dr. Höffe's objection to the official character of the Tehran conference, and the Iranian regime's close control over it, has been echoed by Dr. Habermas, perhaps Germany's most prominent public intellectual. In a e-mail message, Mr. Habermas said he "strongly" opposed "official contacts with representatives of the present government in Iran," but warned "we should not make attempts to intervene in the domestic politics in Iran either."

He said that when the former president Mohammad Khatami was still in office, "I had the opportunity to meet and have discussions with many of my colleagues in Tehran. These encounters filled me with great respect for the sophistication and scholarship of the academic elite of the country."

On Sept. 27, opponents of the Tehran event gathered at the New School for Social Research in New York to plan an Alternative World Philosophy Day conference, to be held online. Meanwhile, there are signs that Unesco is beginning to waver. Ms. Williams, the Unesco spokeswoman, said that the organization had planned an additional special observance of World Philosophy Day this year, to take place at its Paris headquarters on Nov. 18. And while the Tehran conference will go ahead, there will also be events in cities around the world including Mexico City, Tunis and Dakar.

Ms. Williams denied that the apparent downgrading of Tehran had anything to do with the boycott campaign. But Giancarlo Bosetti, editor of Reset and an organizer of the protest, said that it was the New York meeting that had pushed Unesco to act. "They did what they could -- and that was quite a lot," he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times on October 24, 2010

Leadership and Leitkultur

By JÜRGEN HABERMAS

SINCE the end of August Germany has been roiled by waves of political turmoil over integration, multiculturalism and the role of the “Leitkultur,” or guiding national culture. This discourse is in turn reinforcing trends toward increasing xenophobia among the broader population.

These trends have been apparent for many years in studies and survey data that show a quiet but growing hostility to immigrants. Yet it is as though they have only now found a voice: the usual stereotypes are being flushed out of the bars and onto the talk shows, and they are echoed by mainstream politicians who want to capture potential voters who are otherwise drifting off toward the right. Two events have given rise to a mixture of emotions that are no longer easy to locate on the scale from left to right — a book by a board member of Germany’s central bank and a recent speech by the German president.

It all began with the advance release of provocative excerpts from “Germany Does Away With Itself,” a book that argues that the future of Germany is threatened by the wrong kind of immigrants, especially from Muslim countries. In the book, Thilo Sarrazin, a politician from the Social Democratic Party who sat on the Bundesbank board, develops proposals for demographic policies aimed at the Muslim population in Germany. He fuels discrimination against this minority with intelligence research from which he draws false biological conclusions that have gained unusually wide publicity.

In sharp contrast to the initial spontaneous objections from major politicians, these theses have gained popular support. One poll found that more than a third of Germans agreed with Mr. Sarrazin’s prognosis that Germany was becoming “naturally more stupid on average” as a result of immigration from Muslim countries.

After half-hearted responses in the press by a handful of psychologists who left the impression that there might be something to these claims after all, there was a certain shift in mood in the news media and among politicians toward Mr. Sarrazin. It took several weeks for Armin Nassehi, a respected sociologist, to take the pseudoscientific interpretation of the relevant statistics apart in a newspaper article. He demonstrated that Mr. Sarrazin adopted the kind of “naturalizing” interpretation of measured differences in intelligence that had already been scientifically discredited in the United States decades ago.

But this de-emotionalizing introduction of objectivity into the discussion came too late. The poison that Mr. Sarrazin had released by reinforcing cultural hostility to immigrants with genetic arguments seemed to have taken root in popular prejudices. When Mr. Nassehi and Mr. Sarrazin appeared at the House of Literature in Munich, a mob atmosphere developed, with an educated middle-class audience refusing even to listen to objections to Mr. Sarrazin’s arguments.

Amid the controversy, Mr. Sarrazin was forced to resign from the Bundesbank board. But his ouster, combined with the campaign against political correctness started by the right, only helped to strip his controversial arguments of their odious character. Criticism against him was perceived as an overreaction. Hadn’t the outraged chancellor, Angela Merkel, denounced the book without having read it? Wasn’t she now doing an about-face, by telling young members of her Christian Democratic Union party that multiculturalism was dead in Germany? And hadn’t the chairman of the Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, the only prominent politician to counter the substance of Mr. Sarrazin’s claims with astute arguments, met with resistance from within his own party when he proposed expelling the unloved comrade?

The second disturbing media event in recent weeks was the reaction to a speech by the newly elected German president, Christian Wulff. As the premier of Lower Saxony, Mr. Wulff had been the first to appoint a German woman of Turkish origin as a member of his cabinet.

In his speech earlier this month on the anniversary of German unification, he took the liberty of reaffirming the commonplace notion, which former presidents had already affirmed, that not only Christianity and Judaism but “Islam also belongs in Germany.”

After the speech the president received a standing ovation in the Bundestag from the assembled political notables. But the next day the conservative press homed in on his assertion about Islam’s place in Germany. The issue has since prompted a split within his own party, the Christian Democratic Union. It is true that, although the social integration of Turkish guest workers and their descendants has generally been a success in Germany, in some economically depressed areas there continue to be problematic immigrant neighborhoods that seal themselves off from mainstream society. But these problems have been acknowledged and addressed by the German government. The real cause for concern is that, as the Sarrazin and Wulff incidents show, cool-headed politicians are discovering that they can divert the social anxieties of their voters into ethnic aggression against still weaker social groups.

The best example is Bavaria’s premier, Horst Seehofer, who has declared “immigrants from other cultures” to be detrimental and has called for a halt to immigration “from Turkey and Arab countries.” Although statistics show a net outflow of people of Turkish origin, Mr. Seehofer invokes the phobic image of unregulated masses of social parasites crowding into our welfare state networks as a way of building support for his own political aims.

To be sure, the bad habit of stirring up political prejudices is a phenomenon reaching far beyond Germany. In Germany, at least, our government doesn’t, as in the Netherlands, have to rely on the support of a right-wing populist like Geert Wilders. Unlike Switzerland, we don’t have a ban on building minarets. And thecomparative European survey data on hostility toward immigrants do not show extreme numbers for Germany.

But social and political developments in Germany, given its ghastly history, do not necessarily have the same significance as in other countries. So, are there grounds for concern that the “old” mindsets could undergo a revival?

It depends on what we mean by “old.” What we are seeing is not a revival of the mentalities of the 1930s. Instead, it is a rekindling of controversies of the early 1990s, when thousands of refugees arrived from the former Yugoslavia, setting off a debate on asylum seekers. The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, then endorsed the position that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” At that time hostels for refugees went up in flames and even the Social Democrats gave ground, agreeing in Parliament to a shabby compromise on asylum law.

That dispute was already stimulated by the feeling of an endangered national culture, which had to assert itself as the leitkultur that all newcomers must follow. Yet the controversy of the 1990s was also driven by the fact that Germany had recently reunited and had reached the final stage in an arduous path toward a mentality that provides the necessary underpinning of a liberal understanding of the Constitution.

To the present day, the idea of the leitkultur depends on the misconception that the liberal state should demand more of its immigrants than learning the language of the country and accepting the principles of the Constitution. We had, and apparently still have, to overcome the view that immigrants are supposed to assimilate the “values” of the majority culture and to adopt its “customs.”

That we are experiencing a relapse into this ethnic understanding of our liberal constitution is bad enough. It doesn’t make things any better that today leitkultur is defined not by “German culture” but by religion. With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism — and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany — the apologists of the leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from the foreigners.

Nevertheless I do not have the impression that the appeals to the leitkultur signal anything more than a rearguard action or that the lapse of an author into the snares of the controversy over nature versus nurture has given enduring and widespread impetus to the more noxious mixture of xenophobia, racist feelings of superiority and social Darwinism. The problems of today have set off the reactions of yesterday — but not those of the day before.

I don’t underestimate the scale of the accumulated nationalistic sentiment, a phenomenon not confined to Germany. But in the light of current events, another trend is of greater concern: the growing preference for unpolitical figures on the political scene, which recalls a dubious trait of German political culture, the rejection of political parties and party politics.

During the parliamentary election of the federal president last summer, Joachim Gauck, the politically inexperienced and non-party-affiliated civil rights campaigner, stood as the opposing candidate to Mr. Wulff, the career politician. Against the majority in the electoral college, Mr. Gauck, a Protestant minister with a history of opposition to the old East German regime, won the hearts of the broader population, and almost won the election.

The same yearning for charismatic figures who stand above the political infighting can be seen in the puzzling popularity of the aristocratic defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who, with not much more than his family background, polished manners and a judicious wardrobe, has managed to overshadow Ms. Merkel’s reputation.

Of even greater concern is the sort of street protests we are now witnessing in Stuttgart, where tens of thousands of people have come out against the federal railway corporation’s plan to demolish the old central train station. The protests that have been continuing for months are reminiscent of the spontaneity of the extraparliamentary opposition of the 1960s. Unlike then, though, today people from all age groups and sectors of the population are taking to the streets. The immediate aim is a conservative one: preserving a familiar world in which politics intervenes as the executive arm of supposed economic progress.

In the background, however, there is a deeper conflict brewing over our country’s understanding of democracy. The state government of Baden-Württemberg, where Stuttgart is located, sees the protests narrowly, as simply a question of whether government is legally permitted to plan such long-term megaprojects. In the midst of the turmoil the president of the Federal Constitutional Court rushed to the project’s defense by arguing that the public had already voted to approve it 15 years ago, and thus had no more say in its execution.

But it has since emerged that the authorities did not, in fact, provide sufficient information at the time, and thus citizens did not have an opportunity to develop an informed opinion on which they could have based their votes. To insist that they should have no further say in the development is to rely on a formalistic understanding of democracy. The question is this: Does participation in democratic procedures have only the functional meaning of silencing a defeated minority, or does it have the deliberative meaning of including the arguments of citizens in the democratic process of opinion- and will-formation?

The motivations underlying each of the three phenomena — the fear of immigrants, attraction to charismatic nonpoliticians and the grass-roots rebellion in Stuttgart — are different. But they meet in the cumulative effect of a growing uneasiness when faced with a self-enclosed and ever more helpless political system. The more the scope for action by national governments shrinks and the more meekly politics submits to what appear to be inevitable economic imperatives, the more people’s trust in a resigned political class diminishes.

The United States has a president with a clear-headed political vision, even if he is embattled and now meets with mixed feelings. What is needed in Europe is a revitalized political class that overcomes its own defeatism with a bit more perspective, resoluteness and cooperative spirit. Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future. [The New York Times, 28th Oct 2010]

Jürgen Habermas, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt, is the author, most recently, of “Europe: The Faltering Project.” This essay was translated by Ciaran Cronin from the German.

>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29Habermas.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Hojatieh Society: 57 Years in the Shadow

By Ardalan Sayami

Advocate of Separation of State and Religion or Ally of Ahmadinejad?

Talking about the Hojatieh Society today and its role in Iran is both easy and difficult. On one hand it is possible to draw parallels between what the government and the Hojatieh are doing, and conclude that the current administration is in fact a "neo-Hojatieh" outfit.

On the other hand however, the idea of separation of state and religion is prominent in the group. Its leaders believe in a "personal religion" and deem the establishment of an Islamic government to be the prerogative of the twelfth Imam. But these views are in contradiction with the political philosophy of the leaders of the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, there is a battle raging between three movements which puts the Hojatieh in a more precarious corner.

The issue started with Hossein Shariatmadari's interview with Hamshahri newspaper, when he said, "Hojatieh's battle with Bahaism during the Shah's time was a mistake and the group stopped its activities on orders of imam Khomeini."

In response to this, Mehdi Khazali whose father was once the representative of ayatollah Khomeini in the Hojatieh Society defended the group on September 19, 2010 on his website, which read, "There is no evidence of ayatollah Khomeini confronting the Society and in fact the Society was in line with the imam; and the evidence is that it gave many martyrs in the war to the revolution."

Following this position, Rahe Tudeh publication published a response to Khazali's position by publishing an interview by Ahmadi Taherzadeh that was published in Cheshmandaz magazine. The interview traced the history of Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi from the days prior to the nationalization of the oil industry and the establishment of the Society. Rahe Tudeh concluded that confrontation with the Hojatieh was in line with ayatollah Khomeini.

This resulted in a response by Khazali to both claims, in which he wrote, "The response given by Rahe Tudeh to me strengthens the existence of a conspiracy theory against the Society. It is important to note that, first, they had written that, 'the Imam had given orders for the Society to be set aside!' But where is this order? In fact, many officials of the regime have a history of belonging to the Society. General Salimi, Dr Ali Akbar Velayati, Parvaresh and tens of other wise and intelligent authorities. Second, they refer to the writings of Emadedin Baghi, while he had apologized to Ghaedin Zaman party for his book and while confessing to his mistake had asked for forgiveness from the Society.

The fact of the matter is that he had later realized the inaccuracy of his information and that he had been deceived by the Tudeh Party. Third, Rahe Tudeh has written that Taher Ahmadzadeh had told Imam in a letter that 'the Society was affiliated to the Freemasons and the British Intelligence service1'. This is a beautiful confession because everybody knows that Taherzadeh bent towards leftist and Marxist groups in the beginning of the 1979 revolution. I believe Taherzadeh, Emadedin Baghi, Saeed Imami etc had all been too harsh on the Society while all of them received their due suffering from God. Shariatmadari too should await the same."

Secular Left and Religious Left

The Hojatieh Society is a movement that has attacked by in the rivalries of the leftists in the 1980s and the revolutionaries and clerics. But it has returned to the scene with a new image and definition. During the 80s, they represented American Islam, during 90s they represented reactionary Islam and during the 2000 they were close to Mesbah Yazdi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mohtashamipour is the critic of the Society during the 90s and 2000s, which is the period when the group was not officially active.

Emadedin Baghi is the critic of the Society in the 80s when the organization was official. Years later, he told ISNA student news agency that, "I think was taken by the post-revolutionary atmosphere of the time and was awestruck by the revolutionary to the point that I defended it in absolute terms and rejected any thought or movement against the revolution without any fair play or ethical standards in writing the book "Dar Shenakhte Hezbe Ghaedin, which also reflected by youthfulness and impressionistic attitude."

Twenty years after the publication of the book "Dar Shenakhte Hezbe Ghaedin" Emaddedin Baghi wrote a self criticism over the book and wrote, "Today, after the period of pressure and crackdown on the Islamic Revolution the views of this group have become clear. These views say that whenever religion entered the realm of politics, faith was hurt, and it caused hurt on others as well."

The history of the Hojatieh has been the history of religious advocacy which during the Shah's time was more concerned with maintaining the traditional religious views and, as it has confessed itself to this. The Hojatieh group viewed itself as the victim of the leftists and its infiltration in religious viewed in the 60s.

So any discussion of the Hojatieh in Iran is not without controversy. On one hand the groups has no license to issue, formally operate while on the other it footprint is everywhere. This is true particularly since Ahmadinejad became president, who has been highlighting the idea of the "return" of the twelfth Imam. Although this group lacks any official status but who does not know of the influence of its believers and supporters behind the scenes and its role in directing major events.

The Society Born out of the Coup

The history of the Society began on the day that the 1953 coup d'etat succeeded and Mahmoud Halabi, who was a supporter of the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, began thinking of doing organizational work among believers in response to the shock caused by one of his associates who had turned to Bahaism, and so Halabi decided to create an anti Bahai society which got the name Hojatieh Society after the 1979 revolution. Seyed Abbas Alavi's turn to Bahaism had had such a strong impact on Halabi that he came to hold Bahaism responsible for every deviation and problem in society and politics.

Halabi's first task was to prepare religious students for fulfilling this task. But his plan was not supported by the clerics of the time, particularly ayatollah Borujerdi. According to the banned Shahrvand journal, Sheikh Mohammad Halabi did not retreat because of this set back and by moving to Tehran formed the first cell of his organization among the Muslim bazaar merchants. In 1956 he created a society called the Anjomane Kheirieh Hojatieh Mahdavie (Hojatieh Charity Organization). Earlier in 1953 Sheikh Mahmoud had claimed that the missing Imam had asked that a group be formed to fight Bahaism, and so this was the response.

Prominent Iranian intellectual Saeed Hajjarian has written, "For two years, the Shah tolerated the Society and Mahmoud Halabi and his associates and even gave Mr. Falsafi the opportunity to propagate against Bahaism on the national sate run radio. But following the destruction of the Hazireh-alGhods mosque by members of the Society in 1955, the Shah stopped them which forced them towards cultural activities and made them focus on influencing schools and the educational system where they built a base for themselves and from where they gradually expanded their activities."

The managing members of the founding board and board of directors of the Hojatieh Society in Mashhad and Tehran were, sheikh Mahmoud Halabi, Mohammad Salehi Azari, seyed Hossein Sajadi, Mohammad Hossein Sajadi, Mohammad Hossein Attar, Gholam-Hossein Haj Mohammad Taghi Bagher, seyed Reza Al Rasool, engineer Hooshmand, Dokhanchi, Hashemi, Dr Abd Khodai (parliament member from Mashhad) and Dr Mohammad Mehdi Poorgol. These individuals held meetings in their houses or those of the supporters of the Society" (Archives of the Center for the Islamic Revolution Documents, code 5327, 60/11/29 number 13.59).

According to the same document, "The organization that Halabi had created constantly grew among the middle religious class so that by the middle of 70s it had grown across Iran and even neighboring countries such as Pakistan and India. By creating the most import religious schools such as Alavi and Nikan, laid the foundation for educating a generation that later became the senior leaders of the Islamic Republic.

Alavi school was managed under the supervision of sheikh Ali-Asqar Karbaschian, popularly known as Alameh. This school was established in 1956 and because of sheikh Ali Asqar Alameh's style of management and the religious content of the school, most conservative families and those affiliated to the religious circles in Tehran tried to send their children this educational center. Many prominent names that emerged after the revolution came from here: Kamal Kharazi, Mahmoud Ghandi, Abdol-Karim Soroosh, Mohammad Nahavandian, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, Nejad Hosseinian, Mohammad taghi Banki, Kolahdooz, Javad Vahabi, Mehdi Abrishamchi, Alireza Tashdid, Khamooshi, are the examples."

An interesting point about Hojatieh Society is that despite its religious nature, there were very few clerics. Sheikh Jaafar Shajooni who is among the best known supporters of Ahmadinejad and was then a member of the Hojatieh has said, "Mr. Halabi did not want clerics to enter the Society" (Archives for the Islamic Revolution Documents Center, Mohammad Taghi Falsafi's dossier, index number 1051, pages 2 and 3).

Hojatieh and Other Islamic Organizations

One leadership member of the Hojatieh who does not want his name revealed has told Rooz, "The rapid growth of the organization which was in no way proportionate to the level of threat posed by Bahaism resulted in a response to the society by some senior clerics who desired to create Islamic organizations for the purpose of dominating Islamic organizations in other countries and thus revive the grandeur of the monopoly of ayatollah Borujerdi's days."

By the end of the 1960s, the second generation of graduates of the Hojatieh entered the universities and embarked on activities to modernize and standardize the activities of the Society. So the decade of the 1970s was the period when the Society reformed itself which resulted in more professionalism and a division of work inside it.

After the death of ayatollah Hakim, Hojatieh members moved towards the leadership of ayatollah Khoi. At the same time, revolutionaries gathered around ayatollah Khomeini. This caused a problem for the Society after the 1979 revolution. This member of the Hojatieh Society continues, "Ayatollah Khomeini who was unhappy about the growth of the Hojatieh Society and its prominence in traditional religious circles ended the financial support of the Society.

It is noteworthy that the second article of the charter of the Hojatieh Society specifically bans the group from engaging in political activity and says that it will not accept the responsibility of any of its members' political interference.

Hojatieh and the Period of the Revolution

After the events of September 8, 1978, the Hojatiehs apparently changed their stand on political activism and Halabi announced the very next day that members of the Society had to participate in the national demonstrations across the country.

Mohammad Reza Hakimi has quoted one leadership member of the Society as saying, "The day after September 8th, Mr. Halabi came to our house and in the presence of the managers of the Society said, 'My position has changed and I am now certain that the leftists are not involved and therefore we too must participate in this movement.'"

In explaining the conditions of the early 1980s, this Hojatieh leader says, "Upon his return to Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini had no choice but to stay at the school belonging to the Hojatieh Society. But when he heard the Hojatieh supporters chanting for the speedy return of the missing Imam Mahdi, he ordered the complete closure of the Hojatieh Society despite the opposing view of the senior clerics so that its supporters would then chant, "Oh God, Keep Khomeini till Mahdi's revolution."

But according to Shahrvand, there is also a different narrative on this, which goes like this, "IN the beginning of the (1979) revolution, the supporters of the Hojatieh Society chanted "Mahdi come, Mahdi come," while supporters of ayatollah Khomeini chanted 'Oh God keep Khomeini till the revolution of Mahdi.' What was important is that after the revolution the focus of the Hojatieh switched from Bahais to Marxists.

The social background of the Hojatieh members prior to the revolution which comprised of the middle religious and bazari class, normally opposed the leftists, regardless of whether this was Mir Hossein Mousavi, Kianouri or Tabari. But when the slogan of 'battling world imperialism' enjoyed the upper hand in society and the policies of the country propagated leftist ideas, this focus on the left created a problem for the Society and all the pre-revolutionary differences were gathered under the slogan of 'American Islam.' The Hojatieh Society became the representative of American Islam and thus the supporters of Mr. Khomeini rejected the Society members on this view. Eventually, in a speech on July 12, 1983 ayatollah Khomeini said, 'There is another group whose thesis is that we should let conditions become worse so that Imam Mahdi arrives sooner. But for what reason would the Imam come? He will come to alleviate the conditions. So why should we make things worse? Remove these deviations.'"

Many politicians in those days interpreted this to be against the Hojatieh. The group itself issued a statement and offered an explanation. "Following these statements, it is rumored that what his eminence meant was this Society. While we have not found any such evidence, ... his eminence has in fact approved of the religious and cultural services of the Society. But on direct contact, ... it became clear that indeed this Society was the subject of the remarks. Therefore, the issue was communicated to the founder Mr. Halabi, who said there is no religious necessity to continue the activities and all meetings and programs should be ended" (Kayhan).

After this, the activities of the Hojatieh became legendary. Inside and outside the government a movement was born to purge all those suspecting of membership or supporting the Hojatieh, which also included the universities, educational organization, etc. In addition to the leftists, the Tudeh party associated anybody who it believed was moving against it to the Hojatieh. So anytime a view that was different was presented even at the highest clerical levels, it was immediately labeled to be stemming from the Hojatieh. The masses too had this view of the Hojatieh: "Through the Hojatieh and other secret counter-revolutionary groups which operate under the guise of 'fanatic Islam' there is a strong anti communist and anti Soviet movement, which is openly battling dissident parties and organization, including the Tudeh Party .. " (Nooredin Kianouri, Tudeh Party Publication, February 1982, page 24).

And while the Hojatieh no longer had any formal organization, but they responded to their opponents in an organized fashion and worked against them. They called Tudeh Party members to be Soviet agents, who in return said that the Hojatieh were British agents.

The Philosophy of Government from Hojatieh's Perspective

The Hojatieh Society believes in the creation of an Islamic government only in the presence of Mahdi, the twelfth Shite Imam while at the same time rejecting the notion of an absolute theologian ruler (velayate motlaghe faghih) believing that such a rule belongs to the twelfth Imam. Because of this, many difference developed between the members of this Society and those believed in the rule of the supreme theologian. Members of the Hojatieh at the same time say that they do believe in the rule of the theologian (velayate faghih) and obey religious sources of emulation (marjae taghlid). The difference is over the scope of authority of the theologian and not the theologian himself.

This effective Hojatieh member told Rooz, "the theologian that the Society has in mind is for secondary judgments, not primary ones. Therefore, the establishment of a government is among primary orders and includes only those acts that must be carried out by the missing Imam."

He continues, "Contrary to disseminated propaganda and the speech of Mr. Khomeini in 1981 against Hojatieh Society, they do not believe at all that sin, suffering, pain etc must reach their height to create the conditions for the return of the Imam. Instead, they believe in that the way out of the issue of absence of the Imam is the will of God and His wish, and so is possible only through requests and prayers for this possibility. Therefore, according to their view, noting the sanctity of the living imam equates to doing good and refraining from bad, i.e., encouraging people to pray for the return of the Imam."

"Philosophy is a kind of heresy and the intrusion of Greek philosophy in Islam was a plan that Abbassid caliphs launched for the purpose of confronting the school/followers of Esmat and the efforts against pure Shite thought," he continued.

It is noteworthy that these views of the Hojatieh Society (on philosophy) is pursued today by Mohammad-Reza Hakimi and his disciples who are mostly members of the former Hojatieh Society and are known as the "Separation School."

Hojatieh and the Separation School

One of the activities of the Hojatieh Society, whether during the life of Mahmoud Halabi (until 1997) or after that, has been dealing with the separation school. In the book titled Talayedar Aftab (Vanguards of the Sun), students and friends of Halabi and members of this Society point to the absence of the right conditions, the presence of social crises, preoccupation with battling Bahaism, etc are among the key reasons for the absence of publications on the Separation School and say, "At the first relative available opportunities and the presence of willing minds, the opportunity for publishing those lessons came about and it was possible for the master (i.e., Mohammad-Reza Hakimi) to gradually express the new ideas that he had kept in his heart for years and seldom spoke about. These were the values of the followers of the pure as opposed to the judgments and views of humanity."

This member of Hojatieh continues, "Halabi preferred to use the term moarefe alahie rather than the sensitive separation school."

The Hojatieh After Khomeini

It is said that after the death of ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and the rise of ayatollah Khamenei to the leadership of the Islamic Republic who had a longer knowledge of members of the Hojatieh, who were from his own hometown, the activities of this group re-emerged again. During his presidency (in 1981), seyed Ali Khamenei also talked about the Hojatieh in a speech and said, "I believe among those who are members of the Hojatieh one can find individuals who are revolutionary, pious, honest, dedicated to the revolution, faithful to the imam and velayat faghih and subservient to the state and the Islamic Republic, just as there are also individuals who are negative, pessimistic, mean, without conviction and naggers. So the Society is comprised of a wide political ideology and revolutionary movement, and therefore is not confined to a specific narrow faction."

In a private interview in 1991, Mohammad-Reza Hakimi had said, "Members of the Society believe that the lost reputation of the Society had to be restored by the supreme leader [i.e., Khamenei], and that those who had defecated the tombstone of Mr. Halabi had to apologize to his spirit."

Mehdi Khazali also believed that ayatollah Khamenei and the Society enjoyed good relations. This is what he wrote on his personal website, "The Hojatieh Society had been created by a divine cleric, and respected theologian ayatollah haj Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi who remains a spiritual Shiite treasure who deservedly awaits the return of the Imam. Mr. Khamenei had issued special personal favorable instructions for the burial ceremony of Mr. Halabi. After him, Mr. Sajadi has been warmly embraced by the leader recently and the number two person at the Society Mr. Madarshahi was a special advisor to ayatollah Khamenei during the latter's presidency. His services to Islam and the revolution are well known to everybody."

Abolghasem Khazali who for years remained the highest person accused of being associated with the Hojatieh while being part of the Islamic republic government had said in an interview years ago, "Those whom I know in the Society desire to be active against Bahaism and the minister of intelligence (Mr. Yunesi) has said that he was ready to accept them."

These efforts by Khazali finally resulted in that Mr. Akbar Mohtashamipour expressly said that Ghadeer Foundation under his management was a "center for activities against the imam and the spread of Hojatieh beliefs," something that Khazali has rejected and instead has always claimed that "despite invitations by Society members, he never became a member of the group."

In Line With Ahmadinejad's Administration?

During the last five years, Mohtashamipour has been advancing the idea of the association between Hojatieh Society and Ahmadinejad's administration claiming that the promises that the administration and particularly Mashai make about the imminent appearance of the missing Imam and Mahdaviat are in fact a "neo-Hojatieh" movement. In 2009, he even told Khabar Online, "I can expressly name the Hojatieh Society to be behind all the sedition activities. The followers of this belief are currently active in foundations and organizations under different names and have influence in many centers and through some individuals who were not allowed to operate by the imam (i.e., ayatollah Khomeini) and whose views are exactly the opposite of the imam's are now active."

Ahmadinejad himself rejected any association with the Society in the first year of his presidency. According to Advar News in 2005 he expressly said that "the label of being a Hojatieh did not stick to him." Furthermore, he even claimed that the group acted in opposition to him. He said that the reason for their opposition to him was because he began his talks with a sentence that they did not like as they did not with anyone to talk of the missing Imam, adding that their goal was to destroy the administration among the public.

A Belief Outside the Administration and Authority?

But a senior member of the Hojatieh Society tells a different story about Ahmadinejad and the group. "The beliefs of the Society have taken shape outside the circles of power while Ahmadinejad cannot survive without it." "The core belief of the Hojatieh Society is that religion is a personal issue and that it should not mingle with politics whereas the administration strives to make religion a government issue and control religion through government," he added.

He continues, "Since Ahmadinejad's administration has come to power, some believe that his extremist views regarding the twelfth Shiite imam have resulted in that his critics who are said to be in line with ayatollah Khomeini's beliefs strive to use Khomeini's opposition to Hojatieh as an excuse to battle the Hojatieh today."

A book published in 2005 and authored by Dr seyed Hossein Sajadi, soon after the ninth presidential elections, the idea that is advanced is that the administration has the same ideology as the Society. In the book, titled "The Decade of Reappearance" Sajadi predicts bloody events to take place in the region such as a coup d'etat in Syria under the command of Safiyani (pp106), his war with the Lebanese Shiite and then an invasion of Iraq (pp 101-102), and finally Syria's joining the American camp and a bloody suppression of the Hezbollah by the US and Israel, followed by the assassination of Saudi leader Malik Abdullah by al-Qaeda (pp131-132).

Following the publication of this book, another book was published in Lebanon titled, "Ahmadinejad and the Forthcoming World revolution" which follows a similar theme.

Abdullah Shahbazi, a prominent historian said this about the book, "When the Decade of Reappearance was published I read it and by looking at its place of publication, i.e., Mashhad, I thought that Sajadi is the same engineer Sajadi who had been a key operator of the Hojatieh Society. But later when I read the life of sheikh Mahmoud Halabi, the founder and leader of the Society on Wikipedia, this suspicion turned into a fact for me. The writer of the book described the most important students of Halabi in these words: 'among his students were seyed Hossein Sajadi, seyed Hassan Eftekharzadeh Sabzevari, Asghar Sadeghi and Javad Madarshahi.'"

Shahbazi believes that Dr seyed Hossein Sajadi, the author of the book is the same person as engineer Sajadi of the 1960s whom he had seen many times during public speeches. After Halabi died, Sajadi became the principal leader of the Hojatieh Society.

But the source that Rooz spoke with said that while Sajadi was the leader of the Society, he was not the author of the Decade of Reappearance. The author used to be inclined towards the Society before the 1979 revolution but after it he was attracted to the leftist religious groups is now a member of the Jamiate Isargaran group in Mashhad and has no links with the Hojatieh. He added that this whole idea of linking Ahmadinejad's administration to the Hojatieh is an effort to weaken the Society.

In Hajarian's view, members of the Hojatieh are mostly educated, middle class individuals and are different from the group that claims the imminent reappearance of the Mahdi who are fundamentalists and regressive.

On July 26, 2010 Resalat newspaper reported that Hojatieh Society had applied for a license to become active again, reformist newspapers had this heading: Application Request from a Friendly Administration. While no names were mentioned in Resalat's initial news, no license has yet been issued. Three names are mentioned as current leaders of the Society: Sajadi, Eftekharzadeh and seyed Hassan Abtahi, while Sajadi seems to enjoy the strongest support. The peripheral view of the group today remains the separation of politics from religion, and the dominance of religion. Perhaps it was no accident that in the first years after Mohammad Khatami came to office some IRGC commanders warned against the rise of secular Islam under the leadership of Nehzate Azadi (Freedom Movement) at the intellectual level and the Hojatieh Society from the religious perspective. This is the same view that is said to prevail today in the corridors of the ministry of intelligence and the office of the president. [Rooz Online]

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