Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’

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http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387

Six Questions for Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’
BY Scott Horton
February 13, 2008



Reed College Professor Darius Rejali is one of the world’s leading thinkers and writers on the subject of torture and the consequences of its use for modern society. Princeton University Press has just published his magisterial study of torture and how it has developed as a social and moral issue with a focus on developments through the last century. Rejali tracks the question in many different settings and societies–from Athens in its golden age to the French colonial wars, totalitarian states in the mid-twentieth century, down to America in the Age of George W. Bush. I put six questions to Rejali about his book and its relevance to the current debate in the United States.

1. Your new book, ‘Torture and Democracy,’ reflects a lengthy engagement with the subject of torture as a phenomenon over a vast stretch of time and among many different societies. But in the preface, you start by relating something about your own background as an Iranian-American, trying to understand how torture was transforming Iran and complicating its evolution in modern times. Did developments in Iran lead you to this subject? In what ways do you think torture has affected the political culture of Iran and its extremely awkward relations with the rest of the world?

Most people think torture is a barbaric survivor and that it would disappear over time with progress. This is a mistake, and my experience growing up in Iran taught me that and led me to write Torture and Modernity: Self, State and Society in Iran (1994). I used Iran to show that while old ritualistic, public torture would disappear over time, other tortures would survive and new techniques would appear, let’s call these modern torture.

I remember one distinguished expert who reviewed my work said, basically, how can Rejali say torture is part of modernity? If that was true, America would torture too. It really was amazing, in retrospect, how willfully blind people wanted to be. I grew up in Iran at a time when the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, did not hesitate torturing Islamic and Marxist insurgents. No one thought torture was something incompatible with cars, fast food, washing machines and other parts of modern life. I remember talking to a high-ranking SAVAK officer years after the Shah was gone, and he certainly felt he played an important role in modernization. It wasn’t the last time I’ve heard torturers say how important they are in making their country safe for economic opportunity.

Another point: Everyone forgets that the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah’s brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the US so, all they have to do is ask what America’s role was in promoting torture in Iran. Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn’t.

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1. The state had to turn on and kill its torturers

In the 1970s, the Brazilian military had a similar system, and the state had to turn on and kill its torturers in order to preserve itself.





http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387