In Response to Mr. Kashi, Peace Be Upon Him and His Family

The learned Allameh, His Eminence Kashi, endorsed the contents of my letter and sought forgiveness for certain of his past misdeeds; may God forgive him.

In this particular age, which like all other ages sees the catapult of the heavens raining the stones of strife, it is good that such men act with great manliness, placing the honor of horsemanship and chivalry in the pledge of truthfulness and humility. I swear by Him in whose hand my soul rests (and, to be honest with you, I do not know exactly who that is), ethics is higher than belief; it is better that we tie the virtues of faith to the train of ethics, and not the other way around, as has been the custom. It seems Abraham the Friend intended, in order to test the degree of his faith’s hardness, to offer his son’s throat to the blade (ethics subordinate to belief); God Almighty, astonished by such obstinacy, took pity and said: even on the impossible supposition that We had commanded such a perpetration, the hearer ought not to be so rational! So Abraham, guided by the angels, lifted the dagger from the throat and placed a kiss in its stead, and thus the fire became a rose garden for him. His Excellency Kashi, too, gave precedence to ethics over faith; may God keep him ever more in the company of the good and far from the wicked.

In the contemporary history of Iranian intellectuals, out of that host of wrongdoers, some saw themselves as needing neither apology nor justification. They simply fell silent and, following the martial manner and strategy of “Who was it, who was it? It wasn’t me,” acted as if they had played no part in aiding the occurrence of such a volume of scandals. Like the innocent silent ones, they turned their faces to the sky, hoping that unprotected memories would forget how much they fanned the flames in which we now burn. It suffices to recall the slogan “Liberalism, the road-paver for imperialism,” and how much it aided the cause of despotism.

Nor were there few of those gentlemen who, with sleight of hand between text and context, pulled white rabbits and doves out of the black hat of historical analysis—how grandly! And they did not consider that with this indiscriminate method, who and what deed could possibly be considered bad anymore? If contextual and temporal exigencies are the sky-and-string with which well-meaning but ill-doing intellectuals can be saved from the predicament of criticism, why cannot and should not the same be done for politicians? And thus the seed of evil sprouts, for henceforth everyone is not the child of their own traits but the offspring and progeny born of the mischief and sweet tricks of Father Time and Mother Context. Alas, away with abasement! His Eminence Kashi is among the saved who neither dodged down Ali’s alley nor, in justifying their own unjustifiable aspects, resorted to such helpless remedies. He spoke, and spoke well: Go, Kashi, and burn your cloak / O Lord, from whom had he learned this knowledge of hearts?

In any case, as we also mentioned in the brief treatise “Al-Mukhtasar fi Sharh al-Aqaid al-Muhtadhar,” His Excellency’s turning his back on Hurufi and discursive groups was not equivalent to or concomitant with a turn towards liberalism, and His Eminence’s heart still beats with longing for a society that is (if not classless and entirely flat, at least) of few classes. He, as clarified in the noble treatise “What We Did Was Wrong, and Forgive Us,” stated that the reason for this wrongness was not the pursuit of revolutionary leftism, in somewhat less ill-favored forms, but rather that that “non-acting” sect was, by definition, the enemy of action, neglected the counsels of the Germanic Prophet in the holy book of the Manifesto, and did not heed the compassionate advice of the master of speech that “As long as your hand can reach, do a deed / Before the time comes when no deed can proceed.”

In any case, one of the important points of his claims was that in this accursed abode of non-action and inaction, the liberals have been the vanguard of the back-moderns, and indeed the hatred that His Eminence has lavished upon the latter sect stems from the fact that they too, despite all the ink they have worn out in refuting that other group, have themselves, like them, drawn the mark of idleness on the ledger of action and, following the liberals and the nonchalant, have fixed a gaze of denial upon conflict and struggle for the people, leaving the capitalists and politicians free to do whatever they wish with peace of mind, and have propagated the eloquent message that “What has the world-burning rogue to do with expediency? / The affairs of the kingdom are those requiring prudence and deliberation” (preferably listen to it with Master Shajarian’s special rendition in “Bidad” so that its questioning tone may shed light on the obviousness of the answer).

Likewise, in the continuation of the above paragraph (in Persian, also in the sequel of the preceding clause), they have added that the entrenchment of liberal and postmodern beliefs has been extraordinarily effective in creating a weak, powerless, disconnected, and horizonless populace. Mr. Kashi, through this claim, has made a strenuous effort to lay the blame for the people's retreat in the face of inhumanity upon the prevalence of the liberal school in recent years. He has also stated that the

They say when two oxen plow a hard field, sometimes one gores the other, meaning by this behavior: why aren't you pulling your weight, why are you putting all the burden on my shoulders? The gored ox stares at its yoke-mate, which means: the ground is hard, why are you goring me! To find the cause for the lack of progress of protests, let us not point the finger of blame at the propagators of individuality, pleasure, and freedom. Contrary to classical leftist teachings, unfortunately, as long as the will and efficient means of repression are in place, in the short term, it is unlikely that opposition will lead to fundamental changes. Yoke-mate! Don't gore me, I too have exerted my strength, the ground is hard.

Moreover, this is also a question: why have people become distrustful of calls for social revolutionary action? Because for them, it has been the boy who cried wolf. They might believe in the necessity of political change, which is itself a gift of liberalism, but promises like "henceforth we shall cast light upon the horizons from our own hearts / for we have reached the sun and dust is no more" are only good for poetic recitations of the armchair variety.

But regarding the fact that figures like Agamben, Badiou, and others are also great scholars and, like Popper and Berlin, much can be learned from them, I must step slightly outside the bounds of courtesy. There is no denying the genius of some of these individuals, but they have spent it more on shell-game trickery than on knowledge and virtue. This term 'shell-game trickery' (which some mistakenly pronounce differently) apparently refers to a conjuring game where the trickster turns over several small cups, places a marble under one of them, and then proceeds to rapidly shuffle the cups together; such that when they come to rest, the viewer is certain they know which cup the marble is under; but they are usually mistaken. Because the shell-game trickster has the ability to deceive the viewer. If there is genius, it lies here.

What this lot does is go for broke; that is, after losing all their gold coins, they gamble the last remaining silver coin in their purse, hoping to win. This last silver is the last remnant of their shame and fairness. This is the most important thing they teach us, and blessed are those who do not learn it. How can this compare to the abundance of points indicative of wisdom and virtue in the works of liberal scholars and philosophers? Where does "The Bitter Nature of Man," "The Open Society," "The Road to Serfdom" stand, and where do "Specters of Marx," "Means Without End," and "Being and Event" from these pseudo-scholarly geniuses stand! Liberals have never made such and such promises. Someone who says, let us put our minds and experiences together to perhaps find a patch for some breaches, is not disgraced. The crooked timber of humanity can only be straightened a little, no more, and not much. Exhausting effort is required, and little promise. Liberals, more than knowing what must be done and what will happen, know what must not be done. Feigning compassion for the weak and enmity towards oppressors as a pretext for demagoguery and problem-unsolving clamor, and recruiting allies through shell-game trickery, whether of the neo-socialist or postmodern variety, is among the chief of these.

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In Response to Mr. Kashi, Peace Be Upon Him and His Family

Morteza Mardiha

April 9, 2017

Source: Morteza Mardiha's Facebook

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