Forced March Backward

On the treacherous road to an Islamic theocracy

"We will wipe them out! The nation voted for the Islamic republic and everyone should obey. If you do not obey, you will be annihilated."

So said the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini last week, fuming against secular opponents who might stand in his way. The blunt warning, delivered to a visiting delegation of air force officers at his headquarters in the holy city of Qum, erased any lingering doubts about where the Ayatullah is determined to carry the Iranian revolution. He has embarked on a forced march backward to fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.

Having already banned alcohol and pop music broadcasts, cracked down on prostitution and drugs, and closed or muzzled 40 publications in Iran, Khomeini showed no sign of letting up on his systematic campaign to cleanse the country of the "filth" of foreign influence. "There is no room for play in Islam. It is dead serious about everything." he declared earlier to a gathering of supporters at Qum's Madreseh Faizieh Islamic academy. "We want mujaheds [crusaders], not drunken revelers."

Khomeini's plans for the constitutional justification of his religious regime also continued apace. An elected 70-member Assembly of Experts has been slowly poring over a new draft constitution that would codify the religious transformation of Iranian life and bestow overwhelming power on the country's religious leaders. Though it has passed only 23 of 151 proposed articles so far, the Assembly approved the most pivotal provision: Article 5, which would lay the legal ground for the establishment of a Shi'ite Muslim theocracy Specifically, the article upholds the principle Velayat-e-faqih, the theologians' right to rule, and gives supreme political as well as spiritual authority to a "virtuous, brave, judicious and administratively skilled theologian who is abreast of the times and is accepted and recognized as leader by a majority of the people" No one had to ask who that theologian might be.

Other articles of the draft constitution which is virtually certain to be adopted by popular referendum after the Assembly of Experts is finished scrutinizing it are intended to Islamize all aspects of social life. Article 22, for example, would make Arabic, the language of the Koran, compulsory in all secondary schools.

All traces of secularism will be removed from the draft constitution," says a member of Khomeini's secretive Islamic Revolutionary Council. "We cannot do otherwise without violating our popular mandate."

Secular opposition to the new constitution has been feeble and ineffective. A small group of dissenting Experts, discreetly supported outside the Assembly by Seyed Kazem Sharietmadari--after Khomeini, the second most popular Ayatullah in Iran--gingerly tried to revise Article 5 on legal grounds in order to ensure the sovereignty of the electorate; the Assembly majority ignored the plea. In the country at large, however, Asian and Western diplomats believe they discern more significant pockets of brewing resistance.

For one thing, suspicion and distrust continue to grow between Khomeini's dominant Revolutionary Council and the upstaged government, which Premier Mehdi Bazargan complained had already been reduced to "a knife without a blade." For another, many trained technicians who are charged with managing the day-to-day affairs of the troubled country are becoming increasingly disaffected with the meddlesome clergy. "One of these days, when there is a nationwide power failure, we shall ask the mullahs to fix the grid," says one electrical engineer sarcastically.

More important still, some senior civil servants fear that with unemployment estimated at 20% and inflation reaching 60%, economic discontent could eventually provoke serious unrest in the highly politicized labor force of 11 million. "Despite their own strong religious attachment, the millions of low-income Iranians who gave the revolution most its martyrs expect a better life as well," one official observed. "There is bound to be trouble if it does not materialize."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.