A rchive Date
[ 03-07-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iran ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
Young - and restless
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
July 3, 2003
LONDON. Ont. -- Four years ago this month, and 20 years after the 1979 revolution toppled the shah of Iran's autocratic regime, student demonstrations erupted in the land where clerics rule. Those demonstrations in the summer of 1999 were crushed by the overwhelming power of the clerical state.
But the causes remained, simmering and building. And once again, in recent weeks, they ignited protests across Iran against a regime that survives by trading religion for totalitarian power. There is much irony in these protests by Iran's pro-democracy students, who were toddlers or not even born when the Islamic republic under the late Ayatollah Khomeini was founded in 1979. They have known nothing of politics since then but the puritanism and authoritarian control of a clergy zealously committed to protecting Iran from the West's seductive culture.
In the past 24 years, Iran has gone through the cycle of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence, a reign of terror, nearly a decade long war with Iraq, internal repression, some mild reformist openings, parliamentary and presidential elections, pro-democracy movements, more repression, and now another phase of student protests.
There was a brief moment of expectation within and beyond Iran - when the revolution was fresh and popular sentiments had forced the shah's departure - of witnessing the first innovative attempt in the Muslim world to construct a constitutional democratic government infused with the values of Islam. What emerged, on the contrary, was the concentration of judicial and executive powers in the office of the supreme religious leader.
Ayatollah Khomeini was acclaimed as that leader until his death in 1989, and since then the office has been occupied by his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei. Under its constitution, the Islamic Republic of Iran provides for an elected parliament - a Majles - and an elected president for a four-year term. President Khatami was first elected with a popular majority in 1997, and re-elected for a second term in 2001. But the parliament and president are subordinate in power to the supreme religious leader.
Khamenei, as did Khomeini before him, has the final say in all crucial areas of governing, in maintaining the supremacy of Islam - as understood by him and his council of clerical advisors - and in all public and private affairs of the nation, as well as determining Iran's national security interests. The result of this clerical rule has been contrary to the expectations of the anti-shah revolution of 1979.
Students, as the barometer of national frustrations over the denial of free and open discussion in a culture known for its rich intellectual tradition, have been the vanguard of the movement demanding democracy and jettisoning the clerical dictatorship. While Iranian clergy insist their supreme religious leader is God's representative on Earth, voices of dissent on this matter have grown louder.
A recent letter addressed to Khamenei and signed by 127 deputies of the Majles expressed the growing public discontent, and demanded the country be returned to "the rule of the people, republicanism and Islamic principles." A public statement by dissidents published in an Iranian newspaper was more radical in questioning religious authority.
It read: "Considering individuals to be in the position of a divinity and absolute power ... is open polytheism (in contradiction to) almighty God, and blatant oppression of the dignity of (the) human being. People (and their elected lawmakers) have the right to fully supervise their rulers, criticize them and remove them from power if they are not satisfied."
Four years ago Iran, however, was still hemmed in on its flanks by the mad rule of Afghanistan's Taliban and the genocidal tyranny of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. There is now a new tide of freedom and democracy rising in a region where religion had once been, long ago, the inner voice of liberation of individuals from superstitions, bigotry and the corrupt, despotic rule of pretentious men.
The young and the bold in Iran once again are moved by this rising tide of freedom around them. And there is, for them, and the world beyond, a great stake in the outcome of these pro-democracy demonstrations on the streets of Iranian cities.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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