Full Text of the Statement of Faryad Iran Association
Date: 11/09/2009
Drafted and Written by: (A. Irani)
“Published in the Azadliq Newspaper of the Republic of Azerbaijan – Baku”
The uprising of the people of Iran against the Islamic Republic is a national, popular, and civil movement in which individuals have participated in their capacity as “citizens.” The clear objective of this uprising is to obtain and restore the legal and civil freedoms that, over the course of several decades of the rule of apparently Islamic but oppressive tyrants, have been comprehensively violated and taken away from the people in all areas of private and public life, across all political, cultural, and social spheres, by the clerics and ayatollahs. Freedom, democracy, secularism, and the rights and values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights constitute the clear and ultimate goal and demand of the people of Iran.
The uprising of the people of Iran bears no sign, color, or form of any religion, sect, ideology, ethnicity, or tribe, and it is a profoundly secular and modern movement—an uprising that, more than anything else, expresses its protest, disgust, and revulsion toward the religious and reactionary slogans and rituals manufactured by the Islamic Republic regime, a regime that has put on display a horrifying ideology of backwardness and obscurantism.
The deception of the people and the diversion of the symbolic and emblematic direction of the uprising of the Iranian nation toward satanic absurdities and nonsense is the deceitful effort of Islamist reformists and so-called religious nationalists who suffer from the chronic and malignant disease of ideology and backwardness. Their ignorant fanaticism, instrumental use of religion and religious beliefs, and resistance to accepting new ideas and the changes sought by the people of Iran represent a mode of thinking detached from rationality, one that insists upon its own views as absolute truths and remains indifferent to the needs of the age and the achievements of humanity, remaining backward and stagnant in all intellectual respects.
Unfortunately, the same illusion that in the Revolution of ’57 caused some of the so-called intellectuals to imagine that they would build a bridge out of Khomeini and his followers, cross over it, bring down the monarchy, and then seize power themselves, has once again led some to believe that by aligning themselves with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Karroubi, or other reformists, or with seemingly modern and popular leftists, or with other clerics, and by submitting to and echoing their religious slogans and symbols, they will likewise pass beyond them and move toward society and a social order, and in particular will somehow pass through this crisis.
Whereas, if from this very day we do not clearly and decisively separate ourselves from everything that carries the color and scent of backwardness, and do not openly distance ourselves from ideological symbolic carriers, then in the end the backward, ideological, and medieval reactionaries will once again, by distorting the uprising of the Iranian nation, impose upon Iranian society and the Iranian people a new type of light or liberal Islam, acceptable to colonial interests and manufactured in the think tanks of countries that are not friends, thereby deceiving the nation and stealing the pure revolution of the people.
The three colors green, white, and red, together, which have become the emblem of the civil and overthrow-oriented movement of the Iranian people, in themselves have no inherent difference from, for example, blue, crimson, purple, or yellow. However, if we allow it, the fascist and backward, outwardly religious republic will appropriate them for its own benefit and portray and assign them to Shiism and Shiite religious symbolism. This would be a grave and unforgivable mistake.
The color green can represent the month of Khordad and the season of spring, whose grandeur and beauty symbolize fertility, birth, and renewal. White symbolizes peace, friendship, and calm. Red ultimately signifies grandeur, strength, and capability. These meanings harmonize with and reflect the uprising of the Iranian nation at the beginning of spring and the rebirth of nature.
On the other hand, the uprising of the Iranian people against the rule of the ayatollahs is a movement and a rising whose clear objectives are defined within a non-religious and secular society, and it advances while fighting for the separation of religion from state and politics as one of its principal demands. Within the uprising of the Iranian nation, there is no place for the discussion of whether Allah is “Asghar” or “Akbar.” This movement has nothing to do with Hossein, Hassan, or any other religious slogans. Therefore, this cry of “Allahu Akbar,” which is placed in the mouths of the people by reformists, religious nationalists, other clerics, and deceitful sellers of Islam, is a deviation, a falsehood, and an obvious mistake that takes the Iranian nation’s uprising away from its real path.
The false cry of “Allahu Akbar” and the satanic manipulation of the religious beliefs of nations by profiteers and opportunistic devils is nothing but blowing into the trumpet of evil. Their “Allahu Akbar” is the slogan of grave-risen figures who lash the human body. Their cry is that of bloodthirsty pseudo-Muslim criminals who seek to bury a human being alive in a pit for the crime of love and then stone that person to death. Their cry is the howl of savage pseudo-Muslims of distorted thought who separate a human head from the body with swords, knives, daggers, and blades and cast it to the ground; who bury women in pits and stone them; who from childhood prepare human beings to kill and be killed as though they were human shields; who take women as slaves and for polygamy, and reduce men to captivity and servitude.
Blessed be the entry of Iranians into the age of knowledge, reason, humanism, secularism, modernity, and open resistance against ideologies and authoritarian systems.
Iran is my homeland, and light shall prevail over darkness.
Anjoman Faryad Iran
Date: Sunday, 24 Khordad 1388 / 11.09.2009
Republic of Azerbaijan / Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
A. Irani – Head of the Iranian and Afghan Refugee Community Center