NCRI – The establishment of democracy in Iran is a prerequisite of success in the battle to defeat Islamic fundamentalism, Former French Senator Jean-Pierre Michel has said.
Senator Michel, a former member of France’s National Assembly and co-founder of the French Committee for a Democratic Iran (CFID), made the remarks in an op-ed in the Huffington Post.
The following is an English translation of the article which appeared originally in French:
Source: Le Huffington Post
Date: June 26, 2015
Democracy in Iran needed to defeat Islamic fundamentalism
By Jean-Pierre Michel
Former MP and senator (Socialist Party), honorary Member of Parliament, co-founder of the Union of Magistrates.
In 2007 I co-founded the French Committee for a Democratic Iran with personalities such as Alain Vivien and Francois Colcombet. I then encouraged other MPs to follow us to support the efforts of the Iranian people for democracy and human rights for their country. As elected representatives of the [French] Republic, we felt it was our duty to support people where there is a legitimate struggle against despotism and for progress.
In Iran, the face of this despotism was and is particularly odious. Under the guise of religion, the Islamists still maintain a particularly brutal reign of terror. Amputations, eye gouging, acid attacks and other punishments applied under criminal law are no less shocking than the extremism of Daesh [ISIS or ISIL].
At the time my approach was contested, particularly by the lobby of the Iranian regime. By supporting the National Council of Resistance of Iran and Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, I was accused of collaboration with terrorists. To justify their unfair campaign against the Iranian Resistance and their ally, the Iranian regime had to present itself as moderate. With each new day, a new so-called moderate emerged from under the mullahs’ turban, one day it was Rafsanjani, another day Khatami and today it is Rouhani …
But as time passes, less change was observed in the behavior of the mullahs towards their people and the peoples of the region. Iran continues to hold the rank of the highest number of executions per capita in the world. Women, minorities and intellectuals are cruelly repressed.
The mullahs continue to stir up trouble in the region by exporting Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. While Western governments turned a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, as it seeks to create an extremist axis and a caliphate of the Supreme Leader in the region, I never stopped warning about the dangers of such strategic blindness. And I constantly pressed the point that as long as the Islamists are in power, Iran is a source of instability in the region.
Indeed, it was in 1979 and with the arrival of the Islamists ruling Iran that the seeds of this fatal phenomenon of Islamism, which threatens us today in our cities in France and Europe, were sown.
For example, on February 14, 1989, a fatwa calling for the execution of Salman Rushdie was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the revolution in Iran, who proclaimed his book Satanic Verses to be “blasphemous” to Islam. On July 11, 1991, Rushdie’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death; his Italian translator was stabbed a few days earlier. And in 1993, in Oslo, the Norwegian publisher of Salman Rushdie miraculously survived several gunshots.
In 2013, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, added the name of Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb, publishing director of Charlie Hebdo since 2009, on a list of persons wanted for “crimes against Islam.”
Obviously, we cannot charge the latest events directly to the Iranian government, but I allow myself unashamedly to draw a parallel between the fatwa of February 14, 1989 and the terrorist attacks against freedom of expression and blasphemy. It always takes an action of a man to open a path; in this case the path is that of violence, hatred and danger.
Our governments too have long sought moderates within the regime. An illusion that cost us and made us lose a lot of time and opportunity. Today Western Asia is at a turning point that can definitely tip the world into a bottomless abyss; certain positions by Erdoğan in Turkey give credence to our fear. The whole area is ablaze with Islamist violence which, admittedly, has its historical roots and its source of inspiration in the Iran of the mullahs.
The solution to close this harmful way to conduct the world has to go through the final disappearance of Islamic fundamentalism. For my part, I have found the moderates among the Iranian Resistance and Mrs. Maryam Rajavi’s movement. I was convinced from the start of the seriousness of the situation in Iran and the need to help this great people to regain their freedom. The course of events proved me right.
With the French Committee for a Democratic Iran we were successful in having the main opposition movement, the People’s Mujahedeen (PMOI/MEK), removed from the list of terrorist organizations, where it had been wrongly registered due to the actions of the mullahs’ lobbies and appeasement by our governments.
And then we were able to agree on the need to awaken us to the game face of the Iranian regime in the region. Fortunately we find that French policy is now on track. Our diplomacy has finally recognized that Iran is not a factor of stability in the Middle East, but just the opposite. The firmness towards the mullahs’ nuclear program and the Iranian regime’s meddling in the region is the right policy to follow.
But we can do more. We must help the people of the region to stand before the Islamist scourge. The Iranian people were the first to undergo a religious dictatorship and fight bravely to get by. We saw during the 2009 uprisings when millions of Iranians took to the streets to reject the regime’s Supreme Leader.
Iran also has the advantage of having a democratic alternative and an organized opposition; an opposition with a pluralistic, secular program, represented by a woman. Women have a key role in this fight, and this is very significant.
If France really wants a solution to the crisis in the Middle East, it needs to promote democratic change in Iran, the epicenter of developments in the region. For this we must give due recognition to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and open a dialogue with Mrs. Rajavi movement.
I consider the freedom fighters against the Islamic Republic of Iran as the Shining Lights of our time; indeed they fight against obscurantism, and they fight for universal principles of human rights.