The defected members of MKO are not the sole targets of the group’s sever propaganda and tongue lashing; the dissident outsiders and critics including international organizations, human rights bodies, civil foundations and individuals that for certain reasons are in contact with Mojahedin are also vulnerable to attacks. Habitually, the organisation calls all of its previous members, critics and who were showing some kind of opposition towards the group as the Iranian regime’s agents and members of secret police of Iran. Such allegations are made at a time when the organization is posturing as the most democratic Iranian opposition in exile. Mojahedin might be the first political current that in the course of its political and military life has never consented to negotiation and dialogue of any form. In fact, what Mojahedin claim in theory and what they do in practice are in complete contradiction. All theses totalitarian and monopolistic behaviours are rooted in Mojahedin’s ideology.
Portraying to be the most democratic opposition that respects the standards of liberalism, MKO in practice epitomizes its ideology. That is to say, Mojahedin have a fixed interpretation of the world, black and white, that works as the main criterion in the conduct of relations and dialogue. It is not a product of the group today’s political practice but is rooted in its ideological backgrounds from its very formation. In its new round of political activities after the 1979 revolution, Mojahedin delineated a red line between the political opponents; these two major poles demarcated Mojahedin and their allies with the dissidents, critics, the regime and the like. Weighing itself as the paragon at one of the poles, MKO expected all other political and social factions to regulate their activities according to the two opposite poles.
It is not too hard a task to prove that Mojahedin’s political demarcation is a product of its system of ideology and ontology. It is not a characteristic exclusively attributed to MKO and might be also applied to other ideological groups, but since MKO has transformed into a cult, it has turned into a more complicated issue. In other ideological groups, collective interests might work as a possibility of establishing joint actions and coexistence with other groups while in Mojahedin ideological circumscriptions work as strong restraints. In the organization’s main ideological handbook entitled Tabyin-e Jahan (Explaining the world), Rajavi disapproves moderation:
Moderation is some kind of polytheism. To the same extent that it distances from the truth and covers it, defends it not and keeps silent. (1)
Thus, any attempt to get to the truth is futile unless one switches to one of the two poles, of course to the one that MKO has monopolized. Contrary to the democratic principles that MKO avows to be advocating, it tolerates no criticism of any kind from the insiders and the outsiders; disobedience and opposition are beheld as taboos. Can the present modern world among which MKO live admit such undemocratic behaviours? MKO is so entwined by its destructively cult-like ideology that even the breath of democracy long whirling around it had not the least impact on it.
By dividing the world into black and white and reckoning whoever is not with MKO is its enemy, the organization offends the public senses of logic and political conscience and claims to be the main source for recognition of the truth and its criterion. For sure, no dissident and critics might escape the group’s slanders and libels until it strongly holds at its dogmatically Machiavellian ideology. A separated member of MKO giving reasons for her separation states:
Massoud Rajavi calls all those who condemn his Machiavellian conducts as the supporters of the clerical regime. He brands and stigmatizes all parties, organizations and political groups from the Communist Party to monarchists, liberals, Fidayan, Nationalists, and pro-Marxism as well as religious groups. (2)
In the past two decades and coinciding with its internal ideological revolution, MKO has remained obdurate in dogmatism. The ever-increasing separation of the NCRI members, confrontation of challenges by human right organizations, and the State Department’s report describing MKO and its alias as a cult of personality all indicate that MKO is an exclusively closed cult that conducts a completely different and dual demeanour in its internal and external relations.
Tabyin-e Jahan (Explaining the world),a handbook published by MKO.
Mahnaz Monirzadeh; the bitter Experience of Dictatorship, Nimrooz Magazine, May 1996.
Bahar Irani – Mojahedin.ws – August 20, 2007