Leaders hope to change negative image
March 4, 1996
Web posted at: 12:20 p.m EST (1720 GMT)
From Correspondent Christiane Amanpour
QOM, Iran (CNN) -- Tradition dominates the landscape in the holy city of Qom, where gold and blue domes dot the skyline.
But inside the city, the Old World meets the New World. Islamic religious scholars, or modern mullahs, are getting wired. They're on-line and surfing the 'Net.
Ayatollah Ali Korani heads the project at the main center of Islamic scholarship. He and his colleagues are publishing the encyclopedia of Islamic laws and other religious texts over the Internet.
Korani says on-line Islam will promote a two-way flow of information that will lead to an open and more moderate atmosphere in Iran. He says this comes at a time when some scholars are wondering whether if 17 years ago the world's first Islamic republic was right to let the clergy rule.
"The late Ayatollah Khomeni laid it out," Korani said. "He said, 'Our goal is not for the clergy to govern. Our goal is for Islamic values to prevail in government.' As long as that happens, there's no need for the government to be in the hands of the clergy."
Radical ideas at first glance, but the ruling-clergy image is at an all-time low. The new thinking, like Korani's beliefs, aims to extinguish the damage done to Islam.
In Iran, the highest ranking ayatollahs, the country's supreme spiritual leaders, have distanced themselves from the government. And even in the capital of Tehran, senior government officials admit that the past 17 years have been mostly trial and error; a fierce debate now rages over how best to face the future.
It's not a public debate, however, but one within the ruling circles.
The mayor of Tehran, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, is a close ally of the president who heads the more pragmatic wing.
"In our social, political and economic issues -- even in our foreign policy -- things may have been said or done that were not totally acceptable. They must quickly be corrected," Karbaschi said.
But dissenters want change, and they are daring to speak out against the ruling clergy.
"They have failed to fulfill the revolution's promise of freedom and democracy," said Iranian dissident Habibollah Peyman. "And the world now judges Islam in a negative way because of the way they have portrayed it.
Nonetheless, political freedom in Iran is tolerated. Dissident views are permitted on a limited scale. For example, a newspaper banned for exposing corruption in high places is on newsstands again, and a weekly satirical magazine regularly pokes fun at the ruling class.
Ibrahim Yazdi personifies Iranian political freedom. Yazdi, once the country's foreign minister, now heads an opposition group that's illegal but tolerated.
Yazdi says the current government must give way to another. (128K AIFF sound or 128K WAV sound)
Iran has long been a country where modern ways co-exist with traditional customs. Now the opposition says the challenge is to maintain the country's religious values and political independence and at the same time find a peaceful way to bring Islamic government into the 20th century.
Going on-line might just be that answer.
