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02 June 2010
Mehrangiz Kar
The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council has ruled without legal authorization for a long time—this is not new. What is new is the infighting among the elite as they attack one another. The grievances are old and worn and if we choose the revolution as a marker of time, then the troubles with censorship, in their post-revolutionary format, date back to the revolution.
With the censorship crisis that occurred during the last book exhibition in Tehran in May 2010, some aspects of media and censorship were brought up for debate. This article is an overview of the destructive role of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council in the censorship of books and also regarding the role of hard line leaders in usurping the Council’s decrees and taking charge of the strategy to strangulate the publishing industry.
The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council is an institution that was not foreseen in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Constitution and was created by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Some members, such as the President, join because of their special rank in the regime, while others are appointed by the leadership. The Council does not have legislative power but in reality it does legislate. It was attributed a supervisory role in policy making decisions, but this role became a legislative one. The shift in its role is not recent. The political leanings of the Council under the reign of Mahmood Ahmadinejad’s government and his powerful allies, however, have taken a direction that is more consistent with the government. One such policy is to undermine the political influence of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani and his family via the destabilization of Azad University.
The most important work of the Council has focused on the areas of women’s rights, publishing, and artistic creation. In these realms, the Council has imposed constraints in the name of Islamic and Revolutionary culture. The rulings of the Council have centered on women’s employment, the veiling of women, and absolutist police control over carrying out the policies of modest attire rather than policies that deal with freedom in the work place and choice in attire. Moreover, the Council has imposed strict censorship and guidelines for publishing in post-revolutionary Iran. The Women’s Social and Economic Council, which is linked to this illegal institution, has created further limitations instead of providing more opportunities for women. Every time there has been a pretense to improve the conditions for women, it has been faced with such fervent insistence on veiling, modesty, and women’s roles in their households, that the rulings themselves have lost their impetus. In all its years of activity, and particularly since 1988, the Council has worked against a consultative role and instead has promoted the extremist views of anti-gender equality and limitation of expression with the support of hard liners within and outside the government, thereby turning all rulings into approved laws. Before officially beginning their political battles, government figures such as Ayatollah Rafsanjani (the head of the Expediency Council) and Ali Larijani (the current Speaker of parliament) never directly commented on this institution. The suppression of women, writers, publishers, and artists was a topic around which there was agreement.
An open environment in publishing began during the months prior to January 22, 1979 and continued until 1982. Afterwards, the reverse practice of censorship took over and, with the help of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, censorship was reinstated after the revolution. In 1982, when the regime was preoccupied with suppressing opposition groups and dealing with the Iraq war, it set out to confiscate books that reflected opinions that were in opposition to the Islamic Republic, which were published during the short period of open environment during the early revolutionary years. From then on, by exploiting the war-torn economy, publishers were offered two rates for paper. The less expensive government rate was offered to those publishers who published appropriate books that did not offend the official policies and political preferences of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council. The cost of paper in the open market was so high that those publishers who were banned from the government subsidized rate were forced to relinquish their task of publishing books. In this way, a form of economic censorship was imposed on publishing. In the publishing world, several of the cronies of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance became rich by buying paper at the government rate and reselling it on the open market at a much higher rate. This type of censorship, however, which was only possible during the war economy, had to come to an end with the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war. Moreover, because the revolutionary demands of the people to end censorship during the Shah’s regime remained strong, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance was unable to continue this practice without having to confront special laws. As a result, some books did get published, which infuriated the hard liners and led to such acts as burning down libraries, the confiscation of books from the market, and the imprisonment of writers. It was at this stage, at the end of the war and at the conclusion of the policy of limited paper distribution at appropriate rates, that the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council entered the scene in order to re-establish censorship.
Until 1988, there was no specific law on book censorship and it was not clear what books could be published and what books could not. It was due to this legal vacuum and hence the inability of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to take control of the situation that the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council stepped in. The Council was responsible for compiling and composing all cultural policies of the regime. The rulings of March 24, April 1, and April 9, 1988 turned censorship in the realm of publishing into an institution. These rulings were announced to publishers and to this day they validate the policy of censorship. However, depending on which political persuasion has more power in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, these rulings are modified. During Mohammad Khatami’s rule, from 1997, without any major changes to the procedures of book censorship, the act of censorship was in effect modified. Eventually, the book censor was able to eliminate portions of books based on personal preferences that were based upon the Council’s rulings, thereby marking up the text and ordering the publisher or author to “eliminate these portions.”
However, regardless of the preservation of the methods of censorship, reformist censors would apply executive veto power that allowed some banned books and those of uncertain fates to be published. It was as a result of this executive veto power of censors that the cultural environment of the country in the areas of publishing, cinema, and other arts experienced some improvement. It is this same improvement that caused the various reactions of hard liners. During the same period, hard line groups linked to radical centers of power, which were called pressure groups, would threaten the security of writers, publishers, book stores, and printing houses, and would eventually start the process of framing the more relaxed censors in order to eliminate them from their posts.
Ultimately, the deed was done and the hard liners were victorious under the banner of Ahmadinejad’s government. The rulings of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council enforce repression, and that which once tended towards moderation turned instead towards escalation, leaving no room for creativity and literary inventiveness or theoretical debates.
What is clear is that from a legal perspective, the existence of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council rulings, such as the implementation of the policy of banning books and censorship before or after publication, is illegal and in Iran no special law has been ratified by parliament regarding censorship or the banning of books. The rulings of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council have no legal authority, and essentially, the existence of an office specifically for books in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, to which the publisher and author are required to deliver a manuscript before publication or typesetting or page layout, is illegal. Because of the ascendancy of an administration that is not even accountable to its own laws and rulings, the crisis of censorship coincides with a time in Iran’s history when society increasingly demands free speech in a variety of fields such as domestic politics, foreign policy, women’s rights, rights of the accused, social detriment, and economic incompetence, and which will eventually lead to the collapse of the values that are so fervently preserved and protected by hard liners.
The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council has ruled without legal authorization for a long time—this is not new. What is new is the infighting among the elite as they attack one another. The grievances are old and worn and if we choose the revolution as a marker of time, then the troubles with censorship, in their post-revolutionary format, date back to the revolution.
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