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:
We continue the program with talking to our special guest Dr Masha Ajoudani who in his recent interview with my colleague Ali Limondai had said that the Iranian people are partly to be blamed for the continuation of the Iranian regime by tolerating its crimes against themselves.
I ask him why does he think so? Is it the power of religion? Fear? Or compromise?
Dr Masha Ajoudani:
The answer to this problem is very difficult. We need to find out why our people have tolerated this semi-fascist regime forforty years. I do not have the answer myself.
The fact of the matter is that Iranian people have been living under one of the worst regimes on the planet earth and have somehow tolerated it. Now they are coming to the streets and protest against it because they have nothing to lose.
My argument is that these protests must have happened years ago. The independence of our nation has been taken away fromthem and they have been humiliated in the international community and have lost all their human and basic rights, but yet they have tolerated the regime for forty years.
Under the Pahlavi regime we had every civil right, expect political rights. We have lost all those civil and social rights in search of finding political rights, but have not achieved that either.
My argument is that for the last two centuries we have tried to modernize through political solutions but have not achieved freedom and human rights because we have not built the cultural values for achieving these objectives.
Our intellectuals, both religious and secular, have been trying to achieve democracy and human rights through political means but they have lacked the basic democratic values and thinking and have failed in their attempts.
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