Mehdi Bāzargān

This article is about the Iranian politician, for other names see Basargan .

Mehdi Bāzargān

Mehdi Bāzargān 1974

Mehdi Bāzargān or Mehdi Basergan ( Persian مهدی بازرگان[ meɦˈdiː bɔːzærˈgɔːn ]; * September 1907 in Tehran , Persia ; †  January 20, 1995 in Zurich , Switzerland ) was an Iranian politician and liberal Islamic thinker. From April to November 1979 he was Prime Minister of the country, making it the first after the Islamic Revolution . In November 1979 he resigned to protest the hostage-taking at the US embassy.

Life

Bāzargān was born in 1907 into a commercial family. After completing school in Iran, he began studying engineering at the prestigious École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures as part of a state scholarship program in France . During the Second World War he volunteered in the French army and fought against Nazi Germany.

Back in Iran, he received a professorship at the University of Tehran . In the early 1950s he served as Deputy Prime Minister during Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh's tenure .

Bāzargān took part with Ayatollah Mahmud Taleghani , among others , in protests against the Shah's reform policies (see White Revolution ) in the early 1960s . In 1961 he founded the Iranian Freedom Movement with Taleghani and others . Bāzargān was also a co-founder of the National Front and the Iranian Society of Human Rights in 1977. For these activities he was briefly imprisoned several times in the 1960s and 1970s.

When Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini appointed Bāzargān on February 5, 1979 as prime minister of a transitional government. The ruling Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar was pushed out of office by militias and Bāzargān took over office for a few months. He resigned on November 5, 1979 following the hostage-taking of Tehran when he believed radical organizations were undermining his government.

His judgment is also devastating for himself:

“After the revolution, something completely unexpected happened - the clergy completely pushed us out and took control of the country. His rule began at the exact moment when the mullahs were supposed to be replaced by lay people. At this point in time, all parties with an Islamic orientation were asleep, as was the left, which never really became attractive to the masses and remained on the edge of reality. We civilians enabled the clergy to come to power through our inactivity. "

Bāzargān was a member of the Iranian parliament for several years . In 1985, the Guardian Council rejected his candidacy for the presidential election . Until his death he remained an opponent of the role of the clergy in politics, society and economy in Iran and was therefore exposed to hostility from its ranks.

literature

Translations of Bāzargān's works

• And Jesus is his prophet. The Koran and the Christians . Edited and with an introduction by Navid Kermani . Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54420-7 .
• Religion and Liberty. In: Charles Kurzman (ed.): Liberal Islam. A sourcebook. Oxford 1998, pp. 73–84 (translation of Dīn wa-Āzādī from Bāzyābī-ye ārzesch-hā , Tehran 1983).

Studies

• Forough Jahanbaksh: Islam, democracy and religious modernism in Iran, 1953-2000: from Bāzargān to Soroush. Leiden 2001, pp. 80-112.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heinz Nussbaumer: Khomeini. 1980, p. 189.