phoenix80
Banned
By Michael Rubin
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 13, 2006
Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran’s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked “Sister Maryam.”[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House International Relations Committee’s Central Asia and Middle East Subcommittee said, “This group loves the United States. They're assisting us in the war on terrorism; they're pro-U.S. This group has not been fighting against the U.S. It's simply not true."[4] Ros-Lehtinen is wrong. Unfortunately, hers is a mistake common to some on the left and the right who care deeply about Iranian freedom but fail to understand the nature of a group which, in public, says the right things about freedom and democracy but, in reality is dedicated to the opposite. Maryam Rajavi and her husband Masud are adept at public relations and adroit at reinvention, but the organization over which they preside eschews democracy and embraces terrorism, autocracy, and Marxism.
Origins
The roots of the MKO lie in the early 1960s. For years, clerical and feudal interests had blocked real reform in Iran. Society was paralyzed. In 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Shah appointed as prime minister ‘Ali Amini, an Iranian aristocrat and former ambassador to the United States, whom Washington respected as a reformer. Amini began to challenge the traditional classes and interest groups who had long hampered reform. In January 1962, the Shah decreed Iran’s first real land reform. The Shah assumed the mantle of reforming crusader. He launched “the Shah-People Revolution,” better known as the “White Revolution.” Its six points were: land reform, nationalization of forests, sale of government-owned factories to finance land reform, women’s suffrage, a Literacy Corps in which conscripts could serve as an alternative to the army, and distribution to workers of part of factories’ profits. Such reform cut deep into the fabric of Iranian society, angering social conservatives, clerics, and xenophobic nationalists.
Against this backdrop and angered by both the growing secularization of Iranian politics and the influx of foreigners, engineer and Islamic activist Mehdi Bazargan formed the Liberation Movement of Iran. His goal was to combine Iranian nationalism with Islamism. “We refuse to divorce religion from politics… because Shi‘i Islam is an integral part of our popular culture,”[5] the group stated in its inaugural declaration. Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, a free-thinking and modernizing cleric introduced to Marxist thought while imprisoned in the 1930s, became a mentor to Bazargan who, in turn, would become provisional prime minister during the first days of the 1979 revolution.
In July 1962, Amini resigned in anger over both the Shah’s military spending and anger at what he considered the stinginess of other U.S. aid. Chaos reigned supreme. The ayatollahs seized the initiative. Islamic groups marched against social reforms and the new laws which restricted the clergy’s traditional privileges. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to prominence as the head of the clerical opposition.
By 1963, what little tolerance the Shah had for the opposition evaporated. On June 5, 1963, he ordered Khomeini’s arrest. Rioting erupted and ended only after the police killed several hundred students and demonstrators.
Ironically, even as the Shah’s crackdown sent oppositionists underground, his reforms catalyzed their growth. State scholarships enabled a far greater range of Iranians to receive higher education than at any previous time in history. University campuses became incubators of opposition. Young radicals looked abroad and drew inspiration from revolutionary movements in Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere.
Read more @
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20780
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 13, 2006
Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran’s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked “Sister Maryam.”[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House International Relations Committee’s Central Asia and Middle East Subcommittee said, “This group loves the United States. They're assisting us in the war on terrorism; they're pro-U.S. This group has not been fighting against the U.S. It's simply not true."[4] Ros-Lehtinen is wrong. Unfortunately, hers is a mistake common to some on the left and the right who care deeply about Iranian freedom but fail to understand the nature of a group which, in public, says the right things about freedom and democracy but, in reality is dedicated to the opposite. Maryam Rajavi and her husband Masud are adept at public relations and adroit at reinvention, but the organization over which they preside eschews democracy and embraces terrorism, autocracy, and Marxism.
Origins
The roots of the MKO lie in the early 1960s. For years, clerical and feudal interests had blocked real reform in Iran. Society was paralyzed. In 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Shah appointed as prime minister ‘Ali Amini, an Iranian aristocrat and former ambassador to the United States, whom Washington respected as a reformer. Amini began to challenge the traditional classes and interest groups who had long hampered reform. In January 1962, the Shah decreed Iran’s first real land reform. The Shah assumed the mantle of reforming crusader. He launched “the Shah-People Revolution,” better known as the “White Revolution.” Its six points were: land reform, nationalization of forests, sale of government-owned factories to finance land reform, women’s suffrage, a Literacy Corps in which conscripts could serve as an alternative to the army, and distribution to workers of part of factories’ profits. Such reform cut deep into the fabric of Iranian society, angering social conservatives, clerics, and xenophobic nationalists.
Against this backdrop and angered by both the growing secularization of Iranian politics and the influx of foreigners, engineer and Islamic activist Mehdi Bazargan formed the Liberation Movement of Iran. His goal was to combine Iranian nationalism with Islamism. “We refuse to divorce religion from politics… because Shi‘i Islam is an integral part of our popular culture,”[5] the group stated in its inaugural declaration. Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, a free-thinking and modernizing cleric introduced to Marxist thought while imprisoned in the 1930s, became a mentor to Bazargan who, in turn, would become provisional prime minister during the first days of the 1979 revolution.
In July 1962, Amini resigned in anger over both the Shah’s military spending and anger at what he considered the stinginess of other U.S. aid. Chaos reigned supreme. The ayatollahs seized the initiative. Islamic groups marched against social reforms and the new laws which restricted the clergy’s traditional privileges. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to prominence as the head of the clerical opposition.
By 1963, what little tolerance the Shah had for the opposition evaporated. On June 5, 1963, he ordered Khomeini’s arrest. Rioting erupted and ended only after the police killed several hundred students and demonstrators.
Ironically, even as the Shah’s crackdown sent oppositionists underground, his reforms catalyzed their growth. State scholarships enabled a far greater range of Iranians to receive higher education than at any previous time in history. University campuses became incubators of opposition. Young radicals looked abroad and drew inspiration from revolutionary movements in Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere.
Read more @
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20780
eace: :rock: 
