|
Panos Alexopoulos
(Hellas /Greece)
Hashem Aghajari ,
an Iranian professor at the Teachers Training University in
Tehran was sentenced to death for apostasy in November by an
Iranian court after being convicted of insulting Islam and
questioning the hard-line clergy's
rule(1). The
Iranian outspoken academic is a war veteran who
lost his leg in the 1980-88 war with
Iraq(2).The sentence not only sparked a wave of
reformist protests in Iran(3), but also
has resulted in a widespread international criticism on it(4). A large
number of official Western institutions(4), as well as activist
movements have demonstrated their total opposition to the decision of
the Iranian court and in support of the individual right of freedom
of speech in Iran.
The Iranian
Islamic regime stands amid Western democracies accused of eroding
the individual right of freedom of speech. Perhaps
such a way of approaching the above mentioned issues is not the
way forward. The great majority of non-Western societies has not
been structured along the individual right code, constituting the
central system of values of Western societies.
Individual rights
are part of the Western political culture which emerged through
the ruins of the French and American Revolution(5).
Such ideas do not belong to the political tradition of Asian, African or
Latin American societies, based on different codes of values
and rules which have successfully supported the harmonious
co-existence of the social powers in these parts of the world for a very
long period of time! Therefore I contend that non- Western
communities should not be criticized by Western world on the basis that
their ways of life, their traditional values, their Ethos or
their laws are not in accordance with Western
beliefs! Western societies ought to respect the right
of the above mentioned communities to struggle in
order to maintain the social impact of their
heritage on their own way of life.
This is clearly
illustrated by professor Aghajari's quotation: "Twenty years
ago, when I was on the front... during the Iran-Iraq war, I was already
ready to be a martyr...". He has chosen to speak in the clear, loud
voice of the social heritage of his nation...
Democracies of
Western world have to be on the guard to defend human life and
freedom, as these are values of great significance for all cultures
across the globe. All in all,
international organizations, as well as the states of the West have
to march not only towards eradicating violence in Asian, African or
Latin American world, but even more towards defending life in
these regions of the globe and not sparking a new wave of cultural
imperialism...
(1)Ali Akbar
Dareini, Associated Press Writer, 02/12/02, Associated Press,
www.ap.org
(2)Jim Muir, BBC
Correspondent in Tehran, 7/11/02, http://news.bbc.co.uk
(3)BBC NEWS world
edition, 02/12/02, http://news.bbc.co.uk
(4)BBC NEWS world
edition, 13/11/02, http://news.bbc.co.uk
(5)Christos
Yiannaras, "The inhumanity of the individual right based
societies",
Athens 1998, Domos
publications
|
