Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
Iran's burgeoning democracy movement against the power of the fundamentalist establishment is led by students in blue jeans who like American music.
Jul 23, 1999 | When students were allowed to demonstrate in Tehran for six days before a government crackdown last week, it was dramatic evidence of just how profoundly the moderate policies of President Mohammed Khatami have reshaped Iran since he swept into office two years ago.
It also may prove to be a defining political moment for the children of the revolution -- a generation made up of the 65 percent of Iran's population that has been born since the 1979 fundamentalist overthrow of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This younger group exhibits Western tastes, eschewing veils and traditional Muslim garb for jeans, pirated American videocassettes and pop music. Fittingly, at the close of the Levi's century, Koran-toting, blue-jean wearing youth are fueling reform in the Islamic nation.
Their demonstrations began as a peaceful protest against new curbs on press laws and the shutdown of a popular reformist newspaper that published classified information linking intelligence officials to recent killings of intellectuals. The protests became confrontational only after cleric-aligned security forces and vigilantes bullied their way into the Tehran University dormitories, killing several students, injuring 20 and arresting 125 others.
In the days following this incident, there were daily protests against the hard-line clerics. At the peak of the protests, more than 25,000 showed open scorn for the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Death to despotism, death to dictators," students, workers and even mothers chanted. Religious leader Khamenei maintains control over Iran's military, police, security forces, courts, intelligence agencies and media and he often sees Khatami's reformist policies as a threat to his own hard-line rule.
After six days of protests, the hard-line leadership successfully reclaimed the streets by summoning its own rally of 100,000 supporters -- many of whom were ordered by their employers or the government to attend -- and threatening the anti-clerical protestors with Draconian punishment.
Salon News spoke with Iranian emigri Shaul Bakhash -- a professor of Middle East history at George Mason University, author of several books on modern Islamic political thought and a former journalist for the Tehran-based Kayhan Newspapers, about the significance of the recent upheaval.
Has there been open protest against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at any other time since the 1979 revolution?
Not since 1982, when there was a serious challenge to the regime from opposition groups, has the Islamic Republic faced this kind of crisis. This is more serious because it comes from the children of the revolution, from university students, from a generation that's been subjected for 20 years to the Islamic Republic's propaganda, which they haven't found very persuasive. It was also serious because of the demands the students made. They called for changes in the institutions and the power distribution in the state. There was also direct criticism of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and calls for him to cede some of his extensive powers. He is not only the most powerful man in the country, but also a man who wields enormous authority.
Who was the target of the students' protest? Was it the clerics for curbing press freedoms, security forces for raiding a student dormitory or the hard-line rule of Ayatollah Khamenei?
The immediate trigger for the student demonstrations was the attack by the security forces and gangs of club-wielding bullies known as the Ansar-e Hezbollah [Helpers of the Party of God], which are basically the conservative clergy's shock troops. They've been deployed in the past to break up meetings and lectures, to attack newspaper offices and bookstores, and were instrumental in attacking Tehran University student dormitories after very minor student protests. But the students were also protesting the closure of a very popular reformist newspaper, Salam, over a very restrictive press law now before Parliament.
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