NEDA
A spectre is haunting Iran, that of genuine democracy.
The protests at the allegedly rigged recent elections highlight a new spirit of freedom that rejects the old ways of pseudo-elections supervised by the ruling Guardian Council of Islamic clergy. And the spirit of freedom has a face: an attractive young woman named Neda, a 26 year old philosophy student shot dead by militia during the recent protests.
Neda represents the new Iran – young, educated, Westernised, technically savvy, sick and tired of having every aspect of their lives run by a committee of conservative clergy and religious police. Even more traditional Iranians are disillusioned with the ruling establishment which has over the decades made their lives difficult through war with Iraq and with broken promises of social and economic upliftment. The youth, a majority of the population, have now had enough.
The Guardian Council set up by the Ayatollah Khomeini as the supreme authority after the 1979 Islamist revolution, represents nobody but themselves and the minority who have benefitted from the system. The idea of clergy rule has never been part of mainstream Shi’a Islam. It was an innovation of Khomeini to maintain religious control over the limited democracy he created after deposing the Shah.
It’s likely that if this popular rebellion succeeds the days of the Guardian Council will be numbered. The rigid Islamist mentality will probably be replaced by a modern ‘secular Islam’ that will cut the umbilical cord still tying Iranian democracy to fundamentalist religion. If this happens in Iran, it may have a positive knock-on effect elsewhere in the Muslim world. This may renew a faith that once was a model of piety, reason and tolerance. This will ease tensions between the great world religions – and may even inspire other great faiths to greater religious tolerance.
Nothing is certain at this stage. It’s an uneven battle on the streets of Tehran. The government and Guardian Council have police, military and Islamist militia at their disposal. Against guns the pro-democracy protesters have only their bodies and the new technologies they use to publicise their situation – cellphone cameras, Twitter, Face Book, and many online blogs in which they reveal what state media won’t allow the rest of us to see.
Of course, and ironically, in 1979 a similarly mostly unarmed crowd – who passed around Khomeini’s revolutionary sermons and speeches on privately-copied audio cassettes [remember them?] – brought down one of the best-armed dictatorships in the world. We who believe in freedom and human rights can only hope that history indeed repeats itself!
But what, you might ask, has this to do with us Christians here in South Africa? Irenaeus of Lyon, an early church father and great theologian, once said that the glory of God is a human being fully alive. Freedom and human rights, including the right to have leaders who are truly accountable to us, is an important aspect of being fully alive. The worldwide Synod of Bishops in 1971 reminded us that action for democracy and human rights is a constitutive [i.e. non-negotiable] part of living and proclaiming the Gospel. Indeed, the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed is not something for Christians alone but for all, for the whole world – including all the Nedas of Iran.
ANTHONY EGAN SJ.
