Vahdat, Farzin; Religious Modernity in Iran: Dilemmas of Islamic Democracy in the Discourse of Mohammad Khatami, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Duke University Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2005, p.652.
During the first few years after the election of Mohammad Khatami to the presidency of the Islamic Republic in 1997, pro-democracy groups and individuals experienced an episode of euphoria and enthusiasm that soon turned into despair and apathy. As early as the first term of his tenure, Khatami’s promises of freedom, civil society, and the rule of law were frustrated and blocked from being implemented by the conservative groups within Iran’s ruling establishment. Khatami himself proved not willing to take necessary risks to implement his project of civil society and his inactions and capitulations resulted in further frustration of many, but not all, of his promises. This essay attempts to analyze the failures, achievements, and some of the possible political ramifications of the presidency of Mohammad Khatami by focusing on his discourse in the context of the intellectual trajectory of Islamic thought from the revolutionary period to the postrevolutionary reformist phase. …