Autopsy of an ideological drift (48)

Since then, Maryam (Rajavi) would be the focus of all the spotlights, worshiped as the Madonna of the martyrs... ‘Co-leader’ of the organisation in 1985, she became, four years later, its Secretary General.

The Terrorist Madonna

Marianne investigated this phenomenon:

“This woman, with her emerald eyes and so sweet a smile, is a pathological ‘case’. Withdrawn, secretive, unburdened by too low an opinion of herself, Maryam Rajavi, the Mistress and Muse of the People’s Mojahedin, is a surprise for the rare visitors she deigns to receive in Auvers-sur-Seine. With her hair always hidden under her Islamic scarf, the person whom the militants call the ‘Sun of the Revolution’ is a consummate user of political slogans and jargon. She presents her organisation as a democratic model along Western lines preaching moderate Islam, which includes women’s rights. Of course, this position is at the opposite extreme from the Islamist-Marxism, in Red and Green, which never wavered throughout their years of struggle.

Her hagiographers add that Maryam Azdanlou, trained as an engineer, was heroic in her opposition to the Shah. She lost her first sister in the Savak’s prisons — and then rose up against the Islamic Republic. She was then the wife of one of Massoud’s lieutenants, with whom she had a daughter who is now 21. Her official biography says nothing about this union. Rather it emphasises Maryam’s ‘sense of organisation’ which rocketed her in only a few years to the head of the movement, after her exile in France in 1982. It was, however, only in 1986 that she became a living legend, when her second marriage, this time with Massoud Rajavi, the Mojahedin’s Chief, took place. It was a question of silencing the more puritanical militants. The matter was presented as ‘one of the most important revolutionary and ideological decisions ever taken by the Mojahedin’. Thus, Allah was great!

Since then, Maryam would be the focus of all the spotlights, worshiped as the Madonna of the martyrs... ‘Co-leader’ of the organisation in 1985, she became, four years later, its Secretary General. She was also nominated to the position of ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of the National Liberation Army, a force estimated at 10,000 troops.

These functions, which she gave up to become ‘the future President of Iran’ in 1993, were voted by the National Council, the People’s Mojahedin’s political front.

At the same time, she joined her husband in his Iraqi sanctuary. She led military parades a few kilometers from the Iranian border”.

But for her husband, Massoud Rajavi, this was not his first marriage. The heart has its purposes that reason does not know, goes the popular saying: “His wife, Ashraf, remained in Teheran in 1982 where she would be killed by the Revolutionary Guardians. Their child was kidnapped. Rajavi quickly married Bani Sadr’s eighteen year old daughter. Two years later, the men did not see eye to eye anymore. Divorce was inevitable.

Rajavi fell in love again. He fell for Maryam Azdanlou, the wife of one of his lieutenants. This kind of moral turpitude is not tolerated in a party that mixes Islam and Marxism. The movement preached self-sacrifice and Puritanism, it was not acceptable for a man to shake hands with a woman. Thus, it was important to present the lovers’ marriage as a revolutionary act. As stated, it was ‘one of the most important revolutionary and ideological decisions ever taken by the Mojahedin’. Even the betrayed former husband accepted this and congratulated the newly weds.

The spiral into a sect went on. The cult of personality exploded”.

 

Autopsy of an ideological drift (47)