Democracy In Iran

For years, we have been looking for an answer to the question of democracy in Iran. Some think that lack of democracy in Iran is due to a lack of historical awareness, and that people do not attempt to learn their historical past. Some blame it on our complacent character and over-hospitable culture. Many blame it on religions. International imperialism is a factor keeping democracy out of reach, as some claim. Our society, like any other struggling society, is consisted of ideologues who discuss such trends, self preserving group who only think of their own benefits, ruffians and villains who work for dictators, and uneducated who easily fall into any ideological traps. Nevertheless, there is always a small and dedicated group who spare their lives for the sake of freedom and democracy. In some historical moments, number of such people increases to a level that brings about an uprising against dictators, despots, and power mongers. To ensure that an uprising or revolution would not be misdirected and stolen from people again, as it was in 1978, and in order to clear the way for such dedicated nobles, it is essential to analyze each of the above views.

History discloses many facts, not all facts, as it depends on the historian who analyzes various data, records, and artifacts, and verifies authenticity of the events in comparison with other data and artifacts. However, the ultimate responsibility falls on our shoulders in studying history to decipher fact from fiction. One very old historical event is the ancient religion of Iran, that has been murky due to loss of evidence and documents that were destroyed when Islam attacked Iran. There have been many writings about zoroaster, his time and his teachings. Jalal-e-din Ashtiani in his book titled Mazdisana and Government claims that the only true teachings of Zoroaster remaining to date is his poems known as “Gatas”. He further claims that all other Zoroastrian books, such as “Avesta” were written many years later, and on his name. Zoroaster’s time is also estimated in a span of about ten centuries and at the time when the first Iranian tribe moved from Siberia to steppes of present Iran. This civilization has been filled with progress, inventions, technology, art, and ongoing improvements in the lives of the populace. On the other hand, pages of the Iranian history is filled with wars and destruction, enslaving, atrocity and brutality towards other humans, and raping and destroying other cultures and civilizations, in order to impose one’s own way of life. One wonders when reading about the degree of tolerance Cyrus showed towards other cultures and the progressive royal organization and rules that Darius maintained. On the other hand, one is ashamed of lack of humanity depicted in attacks of Mongols, and Teymur, and Arabs, and other nomad invaders. However, one thing is clear. If history repeats itself in various shapes and forms, one can study it and learn from it as a guideline for future endeavors, not to repeat mistakes already tried. For example, religious figures controlling the state and assuming political power is not something new in Iran. It has happened many times in the history of not only Iran, but other Eastern and European countries as well. Who can forget the Middle Ages and the power of the church and inquisition. The last Iranian government before Islam was a religious government that could not tolerate any other beliefs. It brutally crushed every new thought, notably “Mani” and “Mazdak”, and forced people into government established religious rites and rituals. Moslem invaders defeated them, and first Islamic dynasty ruling Iran and Arab nations was religious to the core. In spite of many Iranian uprisings against Arabs, every invader taking over a part or the whole country either was originally religious, or created a religious government, as it was much easier to control people with the aid of religious figures. Mashallah Ajoodani in his book Iranian Style Constitution tries a certain theory that even constitutional uprising of more than a century ago was not possible without the help of mullahs. He declares that intellectuals with no religious beliefs found the only way to establish the constitutions by forging that the Muslim holy book was nothing but the book of constitution! Ajoodani thinks that such tricks won the constitutional battle. He further explains that the theory of “supreme leadership” was not Khomeini’s creation, but such theory was developed long before him, by a mullah called Naraghi, and it had been discussed in religious circles since. The history is a continuum with repeating events.

Iranian hospitality is well known, and that is what some believe as the core of our problem in conforming to dictatorship. According to this class of thought, genuinely hospitable people, or those with the pretence of it, bend over and debase themselves before those in power. This tendency, as a culture, changes people’s self-respect into debility and impediment. In a book titled Modernity and Anti- Modernity, Abbas Milani reveals many historical examples of cultural and ideological antagonism and hostility against modernization in Iran. This is echoed in Houshang Mahrooyan’s book titled Modernity and our Crisis. These and other such writings disclose historical accounts of opposition of many groups, even some intellectuals, against modernization in Iran. Such writings evince many aspects of Iranian culture opposing modernity and in doing so, encompassing hostility towards democracy. It is important to pay attention to this fact that when the West was still in its pre-industrialized periods, Iran was an icon of modernity. This is testified by writings of those visiting Iran during the Safavid period in 17th century, such as Ronald Ferrier, V. Minorsky, and Sir Anthony Sherley who recorded accounts of his travels to Persia in his book published in 1613. The king very well received the three Sherley brothers, and in their return to England they brought back some aspects of the technology they found in Persia. Not accustomed to such hospitality, Europeans took advantage and found ways to conquer the nation from within. Invention of gun and other ammunitions, using gunpowder (originally taken from Chinese who used them for peaceful reasons) combined with European’s naval armarada in opening new frontiers, kept the East exposed to their loitering. At the time that same Europeans of post-industrialization period rid themselves of fortuity and fatalism, Iranian people where getting deeper into the religious and superstitious cobwebs. Penetration and infiltration of the West into Iran and their influence, and later, their authority became more and more evident all the way through the revolution of 1978. We can find ethnic ills of Iranian culture in a book titled An Intimate Sociology by Hassan Naraghi. In addition to hospitality, he mentions many other aspects of Iranian culture that have been preventing Iranians from achieving democracy. Accepting all these criticism, what seems to be missing from this equation is the historical role of western powers abusing and extenuating such cultural deficiencies in order to bring nations into their submission. There are those who believe that we debate too much on the past events and forget today’s problems. For instance, some say that it is fruitless to talk about Mossadegh era and American coup in Iran, as it is unrelated to what mullahs are doing today. It is empirical to understand the constant danger of great powers in an attack on Iran (beneficial for both the west and the regime in Iran). Those with such beliefs do not see how much westerners are involved in Iran in spite of (and because of) mullahs today (will be discussed later). As Morteza Mohit said, ordinary people during the revolution of 1978 were continuing what was left of the struggle during Mosaddegh time, and Khomeini and his cronies were continuation of those who assisted the coup.

Religion has always been the ideal tool for dictators to usurp their powers over their subjects. Whenever the unity of government and religion establishment are on even grounds, the best formula is prepared for stupefying and ruling. Nevertheless, as long as one keeps the religious beliefs to oneself as a private and meditating factor without any attempt to force his or her ideas on others (which is seldom due to religious dogmatism), it is benign and to some degrees even harmless. The basic problem with present Iranian establishment is imposing its doctrine and using outdated and barbaric religious canon as the laws of the land. Therefore, an examination of religions in general and Islam in specific is necessary. All the religions rely on their superhero, God. The function of God is similar in three Ibarahimic religions. God is so humble to resurrect a dead person through his son, nevertheless He is so immoral to make His own creation, Mary, pregnant (Bible). He is so humble to forgive all His creations when they pray and ask for forgiveness, and for turning against His messenger He will torture them and burn them for eternity in Hell (Quran). He is so considerate to send us 10 laws for living on earth, and at the same time so ridiculous to wrestle with Moses and send him to wrong destination when he is leading His flock (Torah). There are countless problems with these fairy tales, and that is why any rational mind laughs at any theory of God and religions. We can argue for years about the idea behind big bang and origin of species, versus God’s reasons for creation, without achieving any result. Our brains are made to react to different ideas and theories (with or without any foundation) differently. Therefore, any debate about such subjects is merely non-endless. However, atrocities of those considering themselves "agents of God" is countless and they should be exposed. Religions are established on two basic pillars: supernatural powers and ethical teachings. As scientific progress provides more answers to basic and vital human questions, supernatural and metaphysical assumptions lose color. Simply, any record of scientific claims, such as birth of sun and earth and heaves, in any religion has proven to be false. Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and the first sin, and other biblical stories, adopted by Islam and Christianity from Judaism are so basic and in some parts preposterous and absurd that only a child’s mind can accept it. Although some societies, Middle East, US, and almost all underdeveloped countries, are rapidly moving towards fanatic ideas and state sponsored superstition (in order to limit democracy) science will eventually send metaphysics to fantasyland for good. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion discusses an experiment by a group lead by Paul Bell, who decided to find the relationship between religious beliefs and intelligence. As a result of a statistical test, they concluded that there was a reverse relationship between the two. Is there any ethics in religions as priests, mullahs, rabies, and other spiritual leaders claim? When rationalistic ideas still had some breathing room in Moslem world, thanks to many Iranian thinkers such as kharazmi, zakaria Razi, Ibn Sina, and many others, Western world had been struggling to break the chain of church dominance for 10 centuries. During the dark ages, high priests of inquisition had unparalleled permission to snoop into every aspects of human lives, much severe than what we presently witness in Iran. It took many lives and struggles to ascend from the dungeons spiritual leaders forced people to. At the height of the church’s ultimate power, the division between various sectors of the establishment for sharing more power grew. As a result of sectarian views and infighting between various religious authorities, freedom from church became a reality. We are witnessing the beginning of the downfall of religious dictatorship in Iran, in the same manner and with the advent of the Green movement. As it was mentioned earlier about the importance of the knowledge of history, we can flip through the pages of the history to seek the possibility of finding a period and a place, when and where human lives improved with any religious establishment . We can easily find many instances of religious governments, all with no exception turned out into a despot, fatalistic, fanatic, and backward regime, seeking satisfaction through the most basic materialistic needs, and with no respect for humanity. The first Iranian religious government we have records of is Sasanian dynasty that took over the previous regime by the slogan of equality and brotherhood. It ended up to be one of the most vicious and bloody governments of its period. Two new religions that attracted many people in their circles, Mazdak and Mani, started their teachings at the time of this dynasty. The most famous king of Sasanian, Ardeshir Papkan, with the pretence of believing in one of the most democratic and favored religions of the time, invited all its leaders and strong supporters to dine in his garden, and by the morning every one of them had been slaughtered. The other popular religion was also rooted out the same way by the powerful kings of this dynasty. Interestingly, the reign of this dynasty was to end by religious nomads from Saudi Arabia, uprooting not only the civilization and culture and burning all the libraries that kept records of the history and science of the time, but forced conversion of religious beliefs of people into their religion, Islam. When Islam was forced to Iranians and became the ideology of the most powerful religious government, they could only be crushed by another religion/ sect with the same barbaric outlook. We can obtain the best information from the historical books written shortly after Mohammad’s idea grew into an empire. Tabari’s volumes recorded the accounts from beginning of religious time, including the time of prophet and his immediate successors. There is not a chapter on this volume that does not include murder, rape, thievery, or any kind of brutality on people. Bahram Moshiri in his book From Athens to Hiroshima explains that rationalism and rationalistic ideas were becoming commonplace by thinkers such as Farabi, Birooni, razi, ibn-Sina, Kendi, that were not beneficial to emperors and kings. They crushed these ideas through the aid of Imam Mohammad Ghazali who had such weapons as spirit and miracle and faith and a hope to go to heaven and fear of hell. The others had no weapons to defend themselves but the “torch of rationalism”, and they were destined to lose such unequal war. The responsibility of a scientist or a thinker of any sort is to improve people’s education by discovering how to live better and more conveniently in relation with the nature and society. The responsibility of a spiritual leader or a religious figure is to create and invent supernatural explanations for questions that the science has not yet found an answer for, or the answer is highly controversial, and invest on people’s fears and hope. Another aspect of the religion that is very much within the realm of ethics is the religious figures’ cooperation with the most corrupted elements in a society. It has been the case repeatedly for career politicians to seek religious hands in overpowering people. Historical instances are disclosed in detail in the books of Iraj Afshar and Fereidoon Adamiat, especially two of Adamiat’s books titled Amir Kabir and Iran and Reflections of Mirza Fathali Akhoondzadeh. Existence and continuation of one of the most corrupt regimes in recent history of Iran, Qajar dynasty, is discussed here. In the book mentioned earlier by Mashallah Ajoodani, he discusses certain fabrications made by some intellectuals that constintutional doctrine was copied from Quran! As a result of the rampant illiteracy and consequently overly religious public, the only way to make people interested in constitution was to include mullahs, and the gimmick worked. The conclusion may be made that the present regime is in fact taking back the power promised to mullahs in the constitution, alas they were deprived of. When the powerful figure changes hands from the king to the colonial power, religious figures’ cooperation changes gears as well. Robert Dreyfuss, in his book The Devil’s Game digs into the pages of history to find the roots of cooperation between Islam and the colonial powers, especially UK, and later US. It is clear that there is not much difference between the ideology of Bin Laden and George Bush, and the events of September 11 that consequently resulted destruction of two Middle Eastern countries (one religious and one secular). Documents related to the role of the US in post-revolution Iran in shaping the government in favor of the religious figures, and the role of Islamic government cooperating with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan are surfacing day by day.

Imperialism has always been a determining factor in instability and downgrade of smaller or less advanced countries. From the ancient times, smaller countries have been in danger of an attack by larger and more economical, industrial, and technological advanced countries. On the other hand, more civilized countries of the old time, had always been vulnerable to neighboring tribes and nomads’ attacks in their territories. Stephen Kinzer describes a full account of American hegemony from its conception, in his well-written book Overthrow. The same historical disclosure with the addition of American people’s struggle for democracy is also depicted in the famous book of Howard Zinn A People’s History of the US. Taking over other nations’ lands was the idea behind this grand nation (US) from the time of separation from colonies into a nation. It was further developed into new-colonizing systems, exploiting other nations’ resources and manpower by controlling the political systems of such nations. This policy started in mid 1940s, when America was becoming a world super power, thanks to the two world wars destructing almost every European nation. The first overthrow exercised by the US was in Iran in 1951, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mossadegh. It was successfully tried two years later in Guatemala, by toppling the people supported government of Jacobo Arbenz, who would not submit to American businesses monopolizing Guatemalan resources. Iran Between Two Revolutions by Ervan Abrahamian details the struggle of people in Iran for democracy from the constitutional revolution of 1907 through people’s revolution of 1978. Throughout this book, one witnesses the role of foreign governments in suppressing people’s struggle in every step. Intervention in foreign governments’ affair has always been either in support of the dictator (in the case of Russia and Britain aiding Qajar despots and replacing the whole dynasty with a new one by erecting Reza shah, or US keeping Mohammad Reza shah in power), or in redirecting other nations’ struggles (in the case of 1978 revolution when top CIA officials met with khomeini in France). The same period is investigated by Hamid Dabbashi in his book Iran- A People Interrupted that maintains the role of foreign powers in establishing their own style of government in Iran in order to exploit resources and manpower. US government uses variety of fear tactics to brainwash American public for foreign interventions. Andrew Bacevich goes back to the fall of Soviet Union, in his recent book Washington Rules, and reexamines the credibility of “communist dominance of the world” theory, and compares it with the scare tactics used today called “the threat of terrorism”. With today’s world wide economic meltdown, new policies are essential to improve people’s lives, reduce unemployment, and diminish the ever-increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. Instead, the government rushes to the aid of multi-national and mega-business to prevent them from collapsing, ignoring small businesses and workers. If the original philosophy of capitalism was based on competition between businesses, the government helps large business to unite, and in doing so, creates regulations (such as NAFTA) and pushes industries beyond the borders to create competition between workers. When multi-national businesses create people’s mistrust of the government, they make a weaker government, which creates more power for mega-business in return. When there is no oversight, and the government is watered down, private industries decide to have the final word, as it is the case with financial market and foreclosures. These were summary of Noam Chomsky’s remarks to “The Real News Network” with an emphasis on people’s need to get the government back. Chomsky explains that April 15 (tax filing day) should be a celebratory day (instead of the present grudging day of paying taxes) when people are proud of contributing to their represented government. However, with the amount of money spent by businesses for midterm election in 2010, people are well aware that only business representatives get elected. What has changed in American society is not just a few mishaps, but the government losing power it had on some satelites, such as some South American countries. However, US having the largest and the most advanced military arsenal in the world, especially its nuclear stockpile, should be closely observed by weaker nations for danger of an Armageddon. Needless to say, that every speech of Ahmadi Nejad is an invitation to the US to show green light to Israel, for an assault on Iran.

In order to find out the reason for a lack of democracy in Iran and find some remedy for it, every item discussed should be maintained, but in a reverse order of importance. Iranian society needs to be careful not to fall victim into the hands of powerful nations of the world as the first step. At that point, the nation can find a way to get rid of a religion doctrine as the government. History shows that religious governments can only be forced out by a foreign invader, or collapse from within. We do not need another intruder to topple the regime and make people prey to another hawk. Present crack in the system should be widened and those who are on the margin of the regime, such as the Green movement, should be supported. Finally, we need to reexamine our culture and improve its deficiencies, i.e., be hospitable only to those who are invited. Constitutional revolution of a century ago sought a powerful government, vote of the people, and freedom of expression. None of these were achieved since independence and democracy were not the main issues, in addition to the fact that the constitution was written for a Muslim nation of men among intellectuals, not for a people with variety of beliefs, educational level, genders, races, and tribes. Freedom of expression is indeed a result of democracy, but democratic thinking is what we need to learn.