Really, Doug! I followed the URL Yoshie provided <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3280>. How pathetic! michael
Some historical background on this group might be useful. The People's Mojahedin were one of the principal armed groups that resisted the Shah, unlike the clerics who generally had a free rein. The clerics were able to leap ahead of such armed groups because they used the Mosques as a safe base to promote their influence while the Savak was rounding up leftist guerrillas to be tortured. The Mojahedin were trying to carry out the same line that Yoshie carries out today except that they of course were putting their bodies on the line rather than playing 'epater le bourgeois' games on the Internet. Strongly influenced by the Islamo/Socialist Shariati, they tried to look to the Quran as an inspiration for a classless society. Needless to say, they would have been better off reading Lenin. Anyhow, after the Khomeini-ites declared that they intended to establish an Islamic Republic, the Mohajedin organized a peaceful opposition which was met by brutal attacks. Eventually they were driven underground. I can understand why Iranians might hate them for siding with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, but they certainly were no worse than the Shi'ite clerics who decided to foment a rebellion against Saddam Hussein. Ervand Abrahamian, "The Iranian Mojahedin": By late 1980, the Mojahedin was brazenly accusing Khomeini's entourage, especially the IRP, of "monopolizing power", "hijacking" the revolution, trampling over "democratic rights", and plotting to set up a "fascistic" one-party dictatorship. By early 1981, the authorities had closed down Mojahedin offices, outlawed their newspapers, banned their demonstrations, and issued arrest warrants for some of their leaders; in short they had forced the organization underground... In the economic sphere, they denounced the regime for having failed not only to raise the standard of living, but also to tackle the unemployment problem; to control the spiraling inflation, especially in rents and food prices; to diminish the dependence on the West, particularly in the vital arena of agriculture imports; to diversify the exports and lessen the reliance on the oil industry; to distribute land to the landless; to build homes for the homeless; to deal with the ever-increasing growth of urban slums; and, even more sensitive, to stamp out corruption in high places. These complaints read much like those previously leveled at the Pahlavi state. In raising the question of corruption, the Mojahedin published internal documents from the Mostazafin Foundation showing that it was subsidizing clerical newspapers, providing jobs for amiable functionaries, and at ridiculously low prices quietly selling off expropriated royalist properties to IRP friends in the bazaar. The Mostazafin Foundation, they charged, was as corrupt as its predecessor - the Pahlavi Foundation. In the social sphere, the Mojahedin argued that the regime had failed to solve any of the country's major problems: illiteracy, ill health, malnutrition, prostitution, gambling, drug addiction and, of course, inadequate educational facilities. Moreover, they argued that the "medieval-minded" regime had resorted to primitive remedies to deal with the problem of urban crime. The macabre Law of Retribution, they stressed, violated human rights, insulted true Islam, ignored the social causes of crime, unthinkingly revived the tribal customs of seventh-century Arabia and, being based on "feudal principles", institutionalized inequality - especially between rich and poor, between believers and non believers, and between men and women. Furthermore, they argued that the regime, being wedded to the traditional notion that the two sexes should have separate spheres, had drastically worsened the general condition of women. It had purged women from many professions, lowered the marriage age, closed down coeducational schools, eliminated safeguards against willful divorce and polygamy and, most detrimental of all, perpetuated the "medieval" myth that women were empty vessels created by God to bear children, obey their husbands, and carry out household chores. True Islam, the Mojahedin argued, viewed men and women as social, political and intellectual equals, and thus advocated absolute equality in all spheres of life: in the workplace, at home, and before the law... The concept of sexual equality, which had been implicit in their earlier works, was now explicit.
