It is more than plain that if people would not emancipate themselves from the myths, fictions, superstitions, as well as the rules and regulation of Islamic belief system, (shi'it branch) the clerical domination will continues for foreseeable future. What, however, makes such emancipation difficult is the fact that Islamic beliefs and values have put indelible mark in our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This does not only apply to those who are strong believers or think of themselves as observant Muslim going to mosque, praying five times a day and fast the whole month of the Ramadan but also to those who stay away from outward religious practices altogether. This is because we do not become Muslim but that we are born to this world as Muslim. Our ancestors transmit not only their physiological identity but also their religious beliefs to us. So that what we are born into we perceive as natural and normal.

Our culture, tradition, custom, habit, arts and artifacts are dominated by Islam. Our primogenitors have accepted Islam's total domination for centuries. In fact we have been conceived in the name of Allah just in the same way as our ancestors themselves have been conceived in order to be born as legitimate. We are nurtured as a Muslim. As we grow and develop from childhood to adolescent we get to be friend, coworkers, neighbor, hometown fellow and countrymen with Hassan, Hosain, Ali, Taghi, and Naghi(Islamic names). In their company we learn the ritual of the five times prayer a day and reading Quran in the school. In Ashora we participate in processions and would beat our breast with bare hand or chains. We listen and sing monody commemorating the martyrdom of the third Imam, the grand son of Prophet Mohammad.

Put it another way, when we step in this world, we arrive in a world in which everything (almost) is defined and determined for us by Islam. Not only does Islam defines the rules of morality, norms, values and worshipping Allah but also those concerning how to govern society as a whole. What distinguishes Islam from other socializing agencies is that, Islam wants totality of us. It seeks total domination over human life. There are no private or public, official or unofficial affaires that can begin without uttering the name of Allah. There would not be a book, a letter or a document that can be written without beginning with the name of Allah or for that matter no deal can be made or a contract would be consummated without being decorated with the name of Allah.

What is important here is that submission to Islam is planted in our character when we are unconscious child deprived and unable to choose. This means that our religious beliefs have nothing to do with nature. Like our language, religion is a social phenomenon. Conversing or speaking appears so normal and natural that we never think we are using a language that at one time belonged to the others. Islam too is important part of our social relationships. It provides order and meaning to our life. Thus we do not experience Islam as submission, and that is why we fail to feel submission in its negative terms. We feel at home with our religious belief system if not with the clerical rule. We tend to be oblivious to Islam's perpetual and controlling presence in our consciousness.

In Freudian language, Islam would play the role of superego representing the external authority in our mind. It would directly attack the" id"- where Freud believes our desires and wants are concentrated seeking gratification- to suppress and control its wild and destructive demands. Thus superego would marginalize the "ego" that according to Freud represents our rational part, the part that longs for self-preservation. If ego left free would be able to tame the self-destructive forces of id. But clerical rule by neutralizing ego it stifles its growth and autonomous development. The domination of ego is an introduction for the acceptance of one's own status as subject deprived of basic human rights: resistance to authority, self-defense and ability to say no.

To illustrate the pint made above, we can observe the interaction of superego and id supplanting ego in the canonic rules of ablution which is obligatory when praying to Allah. One is never allowed to pray to Allah without first going through rituals of ablution. Although Allah thinks of us as polluted and dirty that must go through ritual of cleansing, yet we do not think of ourselves as unclean and polluted indicating performance of a ritual without necessarily understanding its meaning and implication for development of a strong and autonomous ego. We can pray to Allah only when we submit to meaningless, minute details of ritual of ablution to remove pollution from ourselves. If the purpose of ablution is to encourage cleanliness issuance of instruction as how to achieve it must be based on assumption that human being lacks the necessary intellect to understand how to maintain the principle of cleanliness. The reality is that ablution has nothing to do with cleanliness. Ablution is an agent of superego which continually weakens the ego. It is one of many devices that Allah has created to suppress the free will of human being. Ablution has no need for examination or deliberation. Ablution is a ritual that can only be learned by imitation and conformity. Allah actually has made sure that his messenger would learn ablution and praying by imitation not by reason.

Tabari, an early historian quoting Mahemmad-bn Ishagh (an observer of Mohammed as messenger) as having said that Prophet himself learned ablution and praying to Allah by imitating Gabriel (Tabari, vol3, p. 954). The ritual of ablution has no other purpose but to deny free will to human being. Ablution is prelude to the total submission to Allah's will in five times a day praying before the down, noon time, afternoon, at the sunset and at night times. Mohammed Hosain Tabatabai, the author of the Tafsir-al- myzan (20 volumes interpretation of Quran), interoperating Quran's first Sorah, states that Allah denies freedom to man to praise him however way men wish using their own language. Allah himself has provided instruction for how men must praise him. Tabatabi argues that Allah's logic makes perfect sense for a finite can not describe what is infinite. According to Allah's instruction, we must begin with his name that is merciful and compassionate. Yet Allah orders us to call him "rab-el-allamain," or the master and the lord of worlds, this and the world beyond. Tough we obey the Allah's order and accept our position as subject without feeling reduced.

The fact is that submission is generalized in Islam and begins with a fundamental believe in oneness of Allah, that is, "nobody is but him." This is an absolute and final truth needs no examination or deliberation which tends to freeze any kind of flexibility in every fiber of our being as a believer. As a Muslim we would never entertain the thought that oneness of Allah may not be true, even though satin is as eternal as Allah. Believe in oneness of Allah requires faith in Mohammed as the messenger of Allah and his heirs. That is to say that we submit to myths and fiction and never question the way in which Allah has chosen his messenger and that Quran's content is actually divine revelation and that Gabriel was an intermediary between Allah and Mohammed. That is why we submit to the rules and regulation of sharia. We are diminished as human being while at the same time we feel happy and content. We embrace jihad (holly war) and shahadat (martyrdom) through rejection and the destruction of life here and now to gain the ultimate rewards that Allah would offer: eternal life in haven living with virgin angels. We impose hijob on women so that her exposed hair, face and the prominence of her body would not transform us from a rational being into a wild animal seeking, just like id, nothing but pleasure deviating from the way of Allah. We fast and suffer from hunger. We pay religious tax (khoms and zakot). We go to hajj (pilgrim to Kabah) and sacrifice sheep's to keep Allah happy and content. We commit much more superstitious action in the hope that it would alleviate the wrath and the violence that lies in the nature of Allah. We attributes miracles to Quran and expect it to respond to our needs and wants. As we hear the Quranic verses being sang with a kind of musical intensity, every fiber of our being would be impacted and would arise in us the feeling of hope and fear without understanding Allah's word whether he is bestowing mercy upon us or he is promising retribution and eternal damnation in the hell or whether he is talking about kindness and his generosity or warning the pagan and polytheist of being tortured and burned to the eternity "dozakh" or the hell. For Allah' language, Whimsical, mysterious, convoluted and disjointed language even difficult to understand by those whose mother language is Arabic . Historically we have accepted our inability to read or to understand the content of the holly book and have become dependent on clergy and their knowledge Quran. Thus we forget that as human being we are endowed with power to reason, think and choose for our own. At best we make use of our reason as an instrument to respond to our material needs and interest.

Furthermore, we are thought that oppression takes place when we refuse to submit to the will of Allah, that is to say, if we reject our own status as subject or doubt the oneness of Allah. Therefore, oppressor to a Muslim can not be the one that will draw the sword, like the first Imam, Ali decapitating nonbelievers by hundreds to please Allah and gain its blessing. For a Muslim violence become normal and the fact of life. No wonder that within the last 30 years under the clerical rule we have been witnessing in Iran the massacre of the political prisoners and of Kurdish people at different times, and increasing number of executions.

Nonetheless, thirty years of the rule of clergy has created an exceptional historical opportunity to force out the religion (Islam) from the realm unconsciousness to that of consciousness. Or in Freudian language, make the ego a hero by overcoming the forces of superego represented by clerical institution; to overthrow the divine rule, break the yoke of enslavement, and emancipate ourselves, if, we believe in and long for freedom and justice. We must remember that justice in enslavement is essentially an Islamic justice. Emancipation means empowering our human reason and discovering the truth about ourselves and our religion. No movement can hope to survive in future, no matter "green" or red, if it does not pave the way for social emancipation.

Therefore emancipation is only possible through acquiring consciousness not of what is unthinkable and unknown but of that which seems normal and natural, such as " nobody exist but him," referring to Allah's oneness, or "Allah is the greatest." This belief is as much part of natural order as the exchange of that which you do not need for what you need, in the capitalist market, a system which according to Adam Smith is compatible with human nature.

Perhaps, the time has come that the leftist revolutionaries, the followers of Marx and Lenin takes what Lewis Althusser has called "crude economism," seriously. The reality is that the superstructure would not always reflect the economic base and relations of production. In other words, our values, beliefs, culture, and religion have largely remained unchanged despite the development of the capitalist economic relationships. Islamic values and beliefs not only have not weakened due to the economic modernization, but in actuality have been strengthened reaching its pick in the 1978 Islamic revolution capturing the state power. There are those who attribute the defeat of the progressive forces to the opportunism of the leftist parties and organizations and the weakness of the liberal democrats, while ignoring the role of the Islam in shaping our values and goals, determining the essence of our character not only in the last thirty years but also throughout history. To put it differently, the political and social structure that we have created is a reflection of our way of life, customs, habits and what we believe in, not the result of economic transformation according to the laws of dialectical materialism.

In the end it may not be too cumbersome to repeat once again that the beliefs in oneness of Allah, prophethood, pontification and the sharia of Islam, would produce subject. The sharia enforces the system of slavery, and the rulers and the ruled which is being institutionalized and transmitted from one generation to the next. The political despotism will come to an end when we relegate the rule of clergy and the clerical institutions to the dustbin of the history. We can only expect to construct a free, prosperous, and secular Iran, when we get rid of the laws of sharia altogether and become aware of the myths and fiction of the oneness of Allah and prophethood. It is only then that we can say we have emancipated ourselves and step in the road to freedom.

Firoz nodjomi New york 07/06/2010