Behind the Protests, Social Upheaval in Iran - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com
June 23, 2009, 9:07 pm
Behind the Protests, Social Upheaval in Iran
By The Editors
(Photo: Getty Images)
Demonstrations in Tehran in support of Mir Hossein Moussavi, the opposition presidential candidate.
The government crackdown in Iran is continuing, as hundreds of people, including moderates associated with the presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, have been detained. It was unclear how the millions of Iranians who had filled the streets to protest the election outcome would respond in the coming days, but the outpouring over the death of Neda Agha-Soltan has heightened the sense of social upheaval.
We asked three Iranian-American scholars, including two who are writing from Iran, to give their thoughts on what the uprising has revealed about the schisms in Iranian society.
* Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies
* Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, economics professor
* Babak Rahimi, Islamic studies professor
Looking for Their Martin Luther King Jr.
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of, among other books, “Iran: A People Interrupted.”
Though the violent events of the past week have jolted me, many aspects of the current crisis in Iran are not surprising at all. That the ruling apparatus of the Islamic Republic is out of touch with the ideals and aspirations of a new generation of Iranians has been evident at least since the presidential election of 1997 that brought the icon of the reformist movement Mohammad Khatami to power.
The student-led uprising in the summer of 1999 further showed a sea change in the demographics of the Islamic Republic, with upward of 70 percent of its population under the age of 30. The upsurge of youthful euphoria changed during the second presidential campaign of Mr. Khatami in 2001 when he had obviously failed to deliver on his prior campaign promises.
If you were to follow youth culture in Iran at the turn of the century — from the rise of a fascinating underground music (particularly rap) to a globally celebrated cinema, an astonishing panorama of contemporary art, video installations, photography, etc. — you would have noted the oscillation of this generation between apathy and anger, frustration and hope, disillusion and euphoria. In their minds and souls, as in their blogs and chat rooms, they were wired to the globalized world, and yet in their growing bodies and narrowing social restrictions trapped inside an Islamic version of Calvinist Geneva.
To me this was a post-ideological generation, evidently cured of the most traumatic memories of its parental generation, from the C.I.A.-sponsored coup of 1953 to the Islamic revolution of 1979. The dominant political parameters of third world socialism, anticolonial nationalism, and militant Islamism that divided my generation of Iranians seem to me to have lost all validity in this generation. I see the moment we are witnessing as a civil rights movement rather than a push to topple the regime. If Rosa Park was the American “mother of the civil rights movement,” the young woman who was killed point blank in the course of a demonstration, Neda Agha-Soltan, might very well emerge as its Iranian granddaughter.
If I am correct in this reading, we should not expect an imminent collapse of the regime. These young Iranians are not out in the streets seeking to topple the regime for they lack any military wherewithal to do so, and they are alien to any militant ideology that may push them in that direction.
It seems to me that these brave young men and women have picked up their hand-held cameras to shoot those shaky shots, looking in their streets and alleys for their Martin Luther King. They are well aware of Mir Hossein Moussavi’s flaws, past and present. But like the color of green, the very figure of Moussavi has become, it seems to me, a collective construction of their desires for a peaceful, nonviolent attainment of civil and women’s rights. They are facing an army of firearms and fanaticism with chanting poetry and waving their green bandannas. I thought my generation had courage to take up arms against tyranny. Now I tremble with shame in the face of their bravery.
Economic Fears and Discontents
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani is a professor of economics at Virginia Tech and a guest scholar at the Wolfensohn Center at the Brookings Institution. He is writing from Iran.
A friend in Tehran has stopped going to work this week because of the crisis in the streets. He is staying at home not to protest the killing of demonstrators but to make sure his youngsters do not join them. He is part of 1.3 million families throughout Iran who are biting their nails waiting for this week’s national entrance exams to universities, the concour, to be over. (Many more have children taking exams in grade schools and universities.) These families had planned for a quiet week of no TV or socializing to keep their young contestants undisturbed.
Iran’s entire education system is centered around the concour. It is the reason why students work hard in school as well as the source of disappointment for the vast majority who fail to get into a good public university. About 80 percent of Iranians finish high school and take part in the “Big Test,” but few of whom are rewarded later with a good job and the chance to set up a family.
Nearly a quarter of people in their 20s are unemployed and half live with their parents. One would think that the strong restrictions against pre-marital relations would make them want to marry earlier, but lack of employment has forced the marriage age above that in other countries.
The sudden surge of support for Mr. Moussavi, the reformist candidate who has come to lead the protest movement, owes a lot to the desperate search of Iran’s youth for meaning in their lives. This new generation is highly educated and has ambitions for a middle class life that neither the economic nor the social system is able to fulfill.
This election was seen by youth and their families as a chance for change within the rules of the Islamic Republic. Despite the vetting of candidates by the Guardian Council, recent presidential elections have offered real choices, so voters’ optimism reflected by high turnout was not entirely misplaced.
However, this election brought a more polarized electorate to the polls than any in the past. On one side is the middle class, which has doubled in size since the reformist victory in the 1997 election of President Mohammad Khatami. Rapidly expanding health and educational opportunities since the revolution have transformed the Iranian family from traditional to modern, turning women from mothers and housewives into spouses, the Persian word for which — hamsar — literally means equal.
With the decline of patriarchy at home, demands for equal rights for women in society and greater social freedoms in general have grown. This is why Mr. Moussavi’s call to remove the morality police from the streets resonated so strongly with youth and the larger middle class even though he had little to say about jobs, housing and youth problems. The more productive members of this class also saw a Moussavi government as good for the economy because he promised to promote the rule of law and greater equality of opportunity for private business, which is now in unequal competition with the large public and semi-public sector.
On the other side is the country’s poor whose numbers have been shrinking, but whose demands for more economic justice have been increasing, thanks in no small part to the oil boom of the last few years. Post-revolution Iranian politics have been characterized much more by demands for redistribution than for more effective government and rule of law. The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 tightened the populist grip just as the oil boom was reaching full force and demands for redistribution were growing. As it did in the 1970s, this oil boom increased inequality because it trickled from government coffers down an unequal power structure.
This trickling has further polarized society because of its strong urban bias. All money is first spent in Tehran and larger cities before reaching small towns and rural areas. Mr. Ahmadinejad promised to change this system, and tried to deliver on this promise through trips to provincial areas and handing out benefits. These populist policies came under attack from his opponents for having hurt economic growth, but may have convinced many among the poor and others in small towns and rural areas that he was at least trying.
Even in a country with a well functioning political system, the democratic process would fall short in reconciling such divergent demands. Iran’s deteriorating political atmosphere leaves little chance of going back to the business of daily life any time soon. A sizable minority — if not a majority — believes that the election was rigged, but has been banned from voicing its outrage. In the short run, given its overwhelming force, the government is likely to succeed in winning the street battle.
But its problems are much deeper than calming the streets. It must go beyond redistribution in order to grow the economy and create jobs. For this it needs the confidence of young people and the larger middle class, who are essential for building Iran’s future, but who feel snubbed by the stern sermon that Ayatollah Khamenei delivered last Friday and by the heavy hand of the security forces in restoring order. This week’s events are anything but encouraging.
New Martyrs
Babak Rahimi is assistant professor of Iranian and Islamic studies in the department of literature at University of California, San Diego. He is writing from Iran.
Driving through the Vali Asr Square, Tehran, I encounter hundreds of men dressed in plain-clothes, making their presence felt with their heavy black helmets and AK-47s. These armed men belong to the Basij, the state paramilitary organization in charge of suppressing civil unrest and mass demonstrations. They are the most feared agents of Iran’s theocratic state, a political system now undergoing a major crisis of legitimacy over allegations of a fraudulent presidential election.
Thirty years ago, during the heydays of the 1979 revolution, the Basij was established by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to represent a citizen militia, a people’s army ready to defend the newly established Islamic Republic against its enemies. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the Basij militants were the first to fight at the front lines, marching into the minefields armed with the belief that their self-sacrifice would guarantee them a place in paradise.
In many ways, these militia men, some of whom only teenagers, believe themselves to be the true soldiers of Imam Hussain, a Shia Islamic saint who was slain at the battlefield of Karbala, Iraq, by the mighty Ummayad army in the late seventh century. In cities and villages, the faces of martyred Basij militants appear on the walls and public spaces. These images remind every Iranian that the Islamic revolution lives through the memory of such noble men, whose blood continues to provide eternal life to a Shia nation awaiting the return of Mahdi, whose eventual return is believed to bring salvation to humanity at the end of time.
The brutal death of Neda Agha-Soltan, allegedly at the hands of a Basij militiaman at a recent anti-government demonstration, however, has generated a counter-discourse on the practice of martyrdom in a country known for its long tradition of reverence for martyrs and heroes. As a young woman and a student, Neda has emerged to signify a new symbol of martyrdom that is less about the story of a fallen martyr and more about an all-inclusive experience of self-sacrifice.
“I wish I was Neda,” a young Iranian man utters in remorse. This statement reveals how death at the face of tyranny is ultimately gender-free. In Neda, both men and women can realize the ultimate act of sacrifice for a noble cause. Neda has also come to represent the sorrows of so many young Iranian women, who suffer under the crushing legal apparatus of a regime that has denied their basic civil rights.
“She [Neda] is now me; she is us; all of the Iranian women who have been living this death-like existence in this country,” an older woman describes. In many ways, she argues, we [Iranian women] are all martyrs like her, in spite the fact that we continue to live our ordinary lives under this system.
Neda has rapidly become the rallying cry for many anti-government protesters, who battle the Basij forces in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. According to Shia Islamic tradition, the 40th day after the death of a loved one marks a significant day of grief, and yet a moment to reflect on the inevitability of death.
During the 1979 revolution, the mourning commemoration for the fallen protesters during the anti-Shah rallies led to other massive demonstrations and more deaths. With Mir Hossein Moussavi, the defeated reformist candidate, declaring his readiness for martyrdom and his supporters preparing for future battles, one should anticipate more bloody days of defiance, with Neda as a central iconic figure for the anti-government movement.
In essence, the more Nedas the Basij silence the more difficult it will be for them to maintain their monopoly over the symbolism of martyrdom. At this critical juncture of history, I am reminded of my own father, executed at the notorious Evin prison in 1982. Regarded by many as a martyr, I wonder how he would have reacted to the fallen men and women, who gave up their lives for what he also sacrificed his life for: freedom from tyranny.
