Looking history in the face in Iran

By Terry Lacey

(June 23, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not feeling quite as supreme as he did. (Jakarta Post 20.06.09). President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks off balance. He won the election with a big majority. But his opponents seem stronger.

Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty confirmed in the Washington Post (15.06.09) that Ahmadinejad led in opinion polls by a 2 to 1 margin, even among Azeris, the group Hossein Mousavi comes from. There were irregularities. But Ahmadinejad clearly won.

Telephone opinion polls (organized by Ballen and Doherty) show that 80 percent of Iranians believe the Supreme Leader should be elected, 77 percent favor normal relations with the US and 70 percent back giving up nuclear weapons in return for access to outside aid and inward investment. Most Iranians support free elections and a free press and economic reforms. Ahmadinejad supporters do not want an authoritarian system.

What is hard to follow about Iran this week is that it doesn’t add up. The sum of its parts seems far greater than the parts that make it up. There is more to say about the role of the West in Iran but this is not the major factor. This is home grown, but exploited by burgeoning exiled groups. This sounds like history beginning to repeat itself.

Abbas Barzegar writing in the UK Guardian helps explain that this is an identity crisis about where the Islamic revolution is going, and who is going with it.

This did not start as an insurrection, but as a bid for a new balance. This massively popular protest is backed by senior clerics like Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and political figures like former President Mohammed Khatami, and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose daughter is reportedly detained (Reuters. Jakarta Post 22.06.09). Violent repression is damaging the regime and could damage it more. A political response is needed.

Barzegar explains that unlike Egypt and Turkey where military-backed secular social groups have mostly benefited from national development, the Iranian Islamic revolution has been more socially inclusive, benefiting larger numbers of poorer and younger people from traditional Muslim backgrounds. Mostly Ahmadinejad supporters, they also want faster economic and social change.

Despite Western prejudices, the Iranian Islamic revolution has delivered Muslim modernization benefiting the poor, better than many Muslim countries which have not. But this has left the country and Tehran increasingly polarized between two different social and economic groups.

In the southern suburbs of the city the poorer Ahmadinejad supporters wave Hezbollah and Palestinian flags and condemn exiled groups and supporters of foreign intervention.

In the northern suburbs the new industrial middle class, replacing the upper class exiles now in Los Angeles, are tired of a poorly run economy, the party line, the political exploitation of Islam and an overly strict enforcement of Islamic dress and behavior, compared to many Muslim countries. They have been ignored by the state and demand a voice. They want to have a drink and let their hair down. They do not accept conservative clerics telling them what to do.

They are still Muslims, but they are modern and liberal and regard state-backed Muslim conservatism as oppressive. They think religious conservatism should be a social option, not a state decision.

This polarization is dangerous. National progress is built on the inclusive diversity of a nation, not the exclusive confines of a social and ideological ghetto. There has been too much preaching to the converted In Iran, while support was eroded by change. These divisions could destroy Iranian political stability before the leadership has time to bring in the reforms most Iranians want.

Iran is growing up. These are growing pains. With poor economic and political management these divisions have widened and are not yet bridged by a new and more modern national consensus.

This mass mobilization has forced the clerics and conservatives to look in the face of history, and to their consternation, they see the shadow of themselves, thirty years ago.

The Iranian Islamic revolution was unique along with the blend of theocracy and democracy it created, embedded in Shiite traditions, and the long history of Iran as a powerful non-Arab player in a predominantly Arab Middle East.

But there also seem to be patterns in history. That revolution leads to counter revolution. That any group that takes unto itself too much power, ultimately loses it.

In the Christian reformation the time came when ordinary people no longer accepted that the Pope was always right. Islam, facing modernization and reformation, must not slip into making the same mistakes that were made in the Christian reformation.

Muslim clerics need to know more about this history, and what has happened to religion in other parts of the world.

Any theocracy which tries to place unelected supreme religious leaders above political leaders, takes predictable historical risks which eventually become unsustainable.

This does not mean the Iranian Islamic revolution is finished, but it does mean that it must change to survive, or accept the fate offered by history.

Sunni conservatives should not take comfort from the discomfort now suffered by the Iranian revolution, but take a wider look at its implications. Dissent based on the waves of history in a democratic internet age is much more infectious than the Islamic revolution itself. The leaders of Iran miscalculated and failed to see history creeping up on them.

We need cool heads and some wise navigation in the Muslim world and not to let the West run the show. The Muslim world should help Iran and the Iranian people to find their way through these problems and not gloat or seek short term advantage. We all need to learn from this.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian