Michael Prest reports on an alarming threat to intellectuals. Imagine turning on the television and finding your work under attack. Academics in Iran do not have to imagine. Between early spring and August a weekly programme called Hoviyat ("Identity") singled out many of Iran's intellectuals.
It accused them of being "West-intoxicated Iranians who have lost or betrayed their cultural identity". They were alleged to be allied with Zionists and Freemasons, denying the ideals of the Islamic revolution and betraying their country.
Those attacked have been liberal critics of the fundamentalist clerical regime. They include translator Darius Ashuri, novelist Houshang Golshiri, Elsan Yarshater, a top scholar and editor of the Encyclopedia Iranica and Abdolkarim Sorush, research fellow of the Institute for Research in Humanities and philosophy lecturer at Tehran University.
One of the programme's most alarming aspects is that it incites extremists to harass the individuals portrayed. Even worse, according to Mehranguiz Kar, a Tehran lawyer, it veers close to enunciating a doctrine under Islamic law called Mahdun-al-Damn, which means "those whose blood can be shed". People pronounced liable to this may be killed with virtual impunity.
Nobody has yet been murdered, but many have been harassed, particularly Sorush. In an open letter to President Rafsanjani published in the Tehran daily newspaper, Sorush said his lectures have been broken up by militants, his family threatened, his work disrupted and his students intimidated. "At times," he wrote, "I have no option but to enter the college secretly and try to teach my course faced with distressed and frightened students, leaving my lecture half-finished and beating a hasty retreat. At other times I have not even managed to do this much and students are left high and dry."
It is not surprising that Sorush should be unpopular among Islamic militants. One of the themes of his writing is that no religion, including Islam, has much to say about the daily practicalities of life. Islamic jurisprudence may be fine for settling disputes, but life is not mainly about disputes. It is concerned with matters of medicine, economics or business management. "The observance of the law or religious jurisprudence does not necessarily guarantee a society or organisation is successful."
Such a view would not be appreciated by the mullahs, or Islamic clergy. The mullahs' legitimacy rests largely on their claim to interpret a body of Islamic law applicable to society as a whole. Many believe Islamic law has universal relevance.
Members of Britain's Iranian community say the latest attacks are symptomatic of a power struggle within the clerical regime. They point out that all the publications attacked are legal, having been approved by the censors. The intellectuals singled out by Hoviyat have espoused their views for years and have usually been unhindered.
The most common theory is that the hard-line mullahs fear losing ground to less militant tendencies. One instance is that the Islamic Student Societies, once the revolution's shock troops, are turning more liberal and have invited speakers such as Sorush to address them. The hardliners are thought to be behind Hoviyat.