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Iran, Beacon of Liberty?

(New York Times) Reuel Marc Gerecht - Iran's militarized theocracy will survive or perish depending on the strength of the Revolutionary Guards, the praetorian branch of the military that has become a self-sustaining fundamentalist conglomerate. Yet many guardsmen and their children, like the children of the clerical elite, are graduates of Iran's best universities. And if there is one factor that has inclined Iranians toward the opposition, it has been higher education. We will likely know in the coming months if the opposition can draw into the streets larger numbers of the mostazafan, "the oppressed poor," who have been the popular bedrock of the regime since the 1979 revolution. The economic "reforms" that President Ahmadinejad has planned will probably worsen Iran's already debilitating inflation and unemployment. An opposition combining the young mullahs, college-educated bureaucrats within Iran's bloated civil service and a significant slice of the urban poor could be too diverse for the guards, a partly conscripted force, to suppress. Iranian journalists are reporting that former guardsmen who've joined the opposition are signaling their one-time brothers that they could have a soft landing in a new order. However much the regime has worked to brainwash its security force, if more Iranians are killed, rank-and-file guardsmen may suspend their belief and choose not to shoot. A democratic revolution in Tehran could well prove the most momentous Mideastern event since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. A politically freer Iran would bring front and center the great Islamic debate of our times: How can one be both a good Muslim and a democrat? How does one pay homage to Islamic law but give ultimate authority to the people's elected representatives? How can a Muslim import the best of the West without suffering debilitating guilt? Especially for religious dissidents, democracy is now seen as a keystone of a more moral order, where the faith can no longer be used to countenance dictatorship. Whereas secularizing Westernized autocracies like the shah's prompted upwellings of religious radicalism, Iran's religious dictatorship has produced a softening secularization that is likely to last, since both nonreligious and faithful Iranians increasingly see representative government as indispensable to their values. The writer, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former Middle Eastern specialist in the CIA's clandestine service.
2010-02-12 07:52:28
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