The National Review features an opinion piece by Iranian activist Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi and his wife Elio Bonazzi which compares Khomeini to the Renaissance's most famous enemy, Savonarola (viewed here -- perhaps ironically -- as a sort of prophet of the Protestant reformation):

Girolamo Savonarola, an influential preacher, managed to create a theocracy that bears similarities with Khomeini's Iran. Illustrious Renaissance figures, like the painter Botticelli, even bought into Savonarola's zeal; the former voluntarily burned many of his paintings in the belief that they were vain and pagan.

Savonarola, born in 1452, was a monk who hailed from an old family of Ferrara. In early 1482 he was sent by his superior to preach in Florence. His profound concern with the widespread depravity of the era established him as a powerful sermonizer at the peak of the Renaissance; he fervently lashed out at the immoral, pleasure-seeking life of the Florentines.

....The Basijis, the "morals police" of the Islamic republic of Iran, target women who do not observe the religious dictates of veil and dress — exactly as Savonarola's young brotherhood did in Florence.

The list of similarities between Savonarola's and Khomeini's theocracies goes on, but we will stop here for the sake of brevity.

In the more recent past, Western civilization was finally able to exorcise religious fundamentalism, and now looks back at its worst moments with shame and contrition. Secularism brought us the notion of separation between Church and State.

The fact that in the last few years European powers have helped perpetuate the Islamic republic of Iran, thereby bestowing an aura of international legitimacy on Tehran in exchange for cheap oil, gas, and copper, betrays once again the old-time colonialist policy of allowing "the natives" to do as they wish amongst themselves so long as they do not threaten the interests of the empire.

Religious fundamentalism wouldn't be tolerated in any of the European nations. Any nation attempting the fundamentalist "experiment" would immediately become a pariah, and would be economically blackballed by the other European nations. When Joerg Haider, the controversial, extreme right-wing Austrian politician, formed a coalition government where his party would have had a few ministers, the 14 member states of the EU immediately cut off all bilateral contracts with Austria, forcing Haider to resign as secretary of the party.

It is likely that the same treatment would be reserved for European nations attempting to implement religious fundamentalist policies. But Iranians are not Europeans; they are the "natives" of a distant world, one subjugated to the economic interests of a still-colonialist Europe. So, instead of applying economic, diplomatic, and political pressure to Iran in order to force secularism, EU nations have preferred to maintain the status quo, thereby exploiting the situation to their own economic advantage.

Via BLOG IRAN

At least in this country we've learned, and we have safeguards against neo-Vandals like Savonarola from committing acts of cultural destruction. I mean, why repeat history?

While Leon Kass has been compared to Savonarola, I think the argument can be made that Kass is worse, because he hides behind a veneer of apparent moderation. An aura of professorial modern sophistication conceals an agenda more medieval than classical, and which frankly smacks of the very totalitarianism it claims to be opposing.

While Savonarola attacked art, Kass's targets are science, technology, and medicine. While his critics tend to think of him as wanting sick people to die, and wanting the human lifespan to remain traditionally short, I want to address a menacing central premise recently enunciated by one of his fellow Council members. Writing in Tech Central Station, PCB staffer Yuval Levin (that's that harmful PCB, folks -- the President's Council on Bioethics) argues that it comes down to science versus political authority:

Today, in some limited but prominent libertarian circles, utopianism is back. The focus of its hopes and energies is not government, of course, but rather, once more, modern science -- in this case particularly biomedical science and biotechnology. Advances in biotechnology in recent decades, and the plausible promise of much more significant advances to come, has convinced some that the way to radical liberation leads through the laboratory. In its extreme form, the desire for this liberation has been expressed as a genuine wish to escape our human bonds -- in transhumanism and extropianism. In more moderate forms, it shows up as a profound enthusiasm for new biomedical possibilities beyond medicine, and an ardent committed desire to hold back all attempts at political regulation of biotechnological techniques.

..... American libertarians on the whole have a healthy (and at times maybe excessive) skepticism about human power when it is exercised by governments and polities. But somehow they have not applied the same skepticism to the potential for a far greater and more extreme exercise of the power of man over man, through science. They (or, to be precise, a subset among them) are the new utopians -- strident, rationalist, atheist, materialist proponents of a technical substitute for political authority. But they are also deeply committed to liberty, and this makes them different and better than most of the cold-blooded dreamers of old. We could certainly do worse.

It is the phony dichotomy between "unrestrained science" and "political authority" which I find the most chilling. Note carefully the phraseology: "potential for a far greater and more extreme exercise of the power of man over man, through science." What is the premise here? That science will control man? Or that men will want advantages that science might convey to those most interested in obtaining them (or most able to pay for them)? Marxists say precisely the same things about the free market -- which they see as allowing the exercise of the power of man over man. The answer in both cases is governmental authority.

The entire premise underlying the Kass Council is thus utopian, and, I believe, based on the constitutionally mistaken notion that the federal government has the right to control science. Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government such power.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin would say? Does anyone honestly believe that these scientists would have ever imagined that they were giving the federal government power to regulate science?

At least Savonarola didn't have to worry about trifles like a Constitution. Let's hope it still exists, because there is nothing in it allowing "government oversight" of medical research and treatments.

How Republicans can support such nonsense is beyond me.