Iran

Abbas Millani gives an intellectual history of the Green Wave.

What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism--a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century.

Shiism, like most religions, is no stranger to heated schisms. Shia and Sunnis split over the question of whether Muhammad had designated his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor (Shia believed he had). Some Shia, called Alawites, believe the only divinely designated successor was Ali, while another group, Zaydis, believe there were four imams. A large, intellectually vibrant third group is known as the Ismailis because it believes the line of imams ended with the seventh, Ismail. And the largest Shia sect is called the Ithna Ashari--or the Twelvers. Dominant in Iran, they believe in twelve imams and posit that the last imam went into hiding some 1,100 years ago. His return, bloody and vengeful, will mark the redemptive dawn of the age of justice.

It is within this branch that a further split took place beginning in the late nineteenth century--the moment when the Iranian elite began to confront the challenge of modernity. Ideas like rationalism, individualism, constitutionalism, rule of law, equality, democracy, secularism, privacy, and separation of powers began to find currency in Iran's political discourse. By 1905, these ideas, prevalent primarily among the intelligentsia, led to the Constitutional Revolution--the first of its kind in the Muslim world. The Shia clergy were faced with a historic challenge not unlike what the Catholic Church experienced with the advent of the Renaissance. How two rival ayatollahs reacted to that challenge would divide Iranian Shiism--and lay the groundwork for what is taking place today.



Over the years, many scholars, both in Iran and the West, have argued over the years that Shiism shares less with Islam than with pre-Islamic Persian ideas. They point to the fact that, while Iran became Muslim in the seventh century, it refused to accept Arabic as its language. Islam won the battle, these historians argue, but pre-Islamic ways and values won the war by surviving in a Shia veneer. As an example, they cite the Zoroastrian belief in messianic eschatology. The messianic role of the twelfth imam, they say, is essentially a Muslim version of the same Zoroastrian idea. Shiism, according to this view, is really a thinly disguised form of Iranian nationalism. And this helps explain why so much of Iran's political debate has over the years played out in the realm of theology.

Informed Comment on Iran

Juan Cole has a lot of current updated information on the situation in Iran.

Another Day of Rallies Planned;
Press, Internet Crackdowns Announced

Mir-Hosain Mousavi, leader of the reform faction in Iran who maintains that last Friday's elections was stolen, has rejected as inadequate the government's offer of a limited recount of ballots. Note that the head of the Guardianship Council, to which this task has been assigned, is Aytatollah Ahmad Jannati, a notorious hard liner and partisan supporter of Mahmound Ahmadinejad. The reformists want a whole new presidential campaign, saying that last Friday's process was a charade. The state authorities have rejected this demand.

The reform faction was planning further street protests on Wednesday despite the government's crackdown. Arrests of figures close to former president Mohammad Khatami are being reported. He had led the reform movement 1997-2005.

Foreign media is now being forbidden to cover the protests by the Iranian authorities, which means we will more and more be dependent on Iranian eyewitnesses (see the two postings below for events of the past two days). Many foreign journalists have been told to leave Iran. The Revolutionary Guards are also threatening an internet crackdown. LOL they don't know about P2P

Global Post challenges the allegation that the trouble is only in Tehran, the capital, with reports of crowds setting fire in metal trash bins in downtown Ahvaz.

CSM has an eyewitness account of a Basij civil militiaman firing into the crowd on Monday.

Alexander von Rosenbach makes some interesting observations here

Despite their stand that polling suggests an Ahmadinejad victory was plausible, Ballen and Doherty now also admit that reformist ideas were held by the vast majority of their respondents, including Ahmadinejad supporters. This finding puts paid to the stupid assertion by Richard Perle and David Frum that Iranian elections are between fanatical fundamentalists and extremely fanatical fundamentalists. (Why can Neoconservatives not see that they are themselves fanatical fundamentalists?)

Pictures of Tuesday's march for Mousavi are here.

Russia Today has video on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's offer of a limited recount of some ballots in last Friday's contested presidential election

Looking for literature in Tehran

AZADEH MOAVENI writes in the NYT book review about reading in Tehran. Most of the books are self help books dealing with Indian spirituality and feng Shui. After reading Lolita in Tehran, i imagined there to be a big reading culture existing there.

When I moved to Iran in 2000 to work as a journalist, I aspired to belong to a literary circle not unlike that of the engaged women of Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” who found relief from their authoritarian society in the imaginative world of novels. That bookstores did not exist as such — there were only bookstore/stationery stores, or bookstore/toy stores — was the first sign my plan might not work. I initially mistook Tehran’s most popular bookstore, with its windows full of weathered copper pots and other bric-a-brac, for an antique shop. Inside, the floor space dedicated to books was roughly a quarter of that taken up by kilims, cactuses and Lego sets. “I’m embarrassed to call myself a bookseller,” one store owner told me recently, gazing at the wall of Hello Kitty accessories that dominated his shop. In the hour we spent talking, customers came in to buy watch batteries, a condolence card, wrapping paper and a compass. Not a single person bought a book.