The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran: Antithesis of Clerical Exploitation of Religion

Only an alternative rooted in broad social support, political capacity, and a resilient organizational structure can withstand the regime. Crucially, it must be able and prepared to bear the costs of struggle while presenting a religious, intellectual, and cultural antithesis.

The PMOI/MEK, as a member organization of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has been engaged in struggle against two dictatorships for more than six decades. This organized movement, which also organizes popular uprisings, and which believes in an authentic, tolerant, and democratic understanding of Islam, presents an intellectual and cultural antithesis to the doctrine of absolute clerical rule.

The late Dr. Manouchehr Hezarkhani, an Iranian thinker and member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, used to say: “The secret of the PMOI’s progress lies in their having swept the dust from the face of religion.” He also said: “The Mojahedin pulled Iranian society’s mindset out of the Middle Ages and brought it into the modern era.” He further stated: “Massoud placed his interpretation of Islam against Khomeini’s interpretation, and this was a profoundly important act. Enduring the hardships and consequences was not easy; yet it transformed the resistance movement into an idealistic movement that politically knows what it wants and what it must do.”

Yes, this is indeed the truth: the antithesis presented by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran over the past 47 years has been decisive in defeating the mullahs’ exploitation of religion. It has deprived the regime of its most important ideological instruments. It has opened the path for the people’s liberation struggle against the regime. It has succeeded in granting legitimacy to public protest, anger, and resistance against the so-called sacred institutions of this shameful regime.

In the day after the regime’s overthrow, this same antithesis and alternative, by virtue of its intellectual and ideological capacity, can serve as a unifying force for the ranks of the popular front. Moreover, despite the divisions sown by Khomeini and Khamenei between Shiites and Sunnis, this movement advocates friendship and solidarity between them in order to build a democratic society.

https://www.maryam-rajavi.com/en/ramadan-the-uprising-and-the-herald-of-freedom/