> seriously, though, it gives a decent overview of how Iran's democratic
> procedures came to be, a history of the protests tha have been going on
> for a decade, at least, as well as a brief history of the
> government-sponsored assasinations and covers up that, when the story
> was revealed, halped contribute to rising political protest among the
> "lost generation" (those born after the '79 revolution)
>
> In short, it shows how it is that these recent protests erupted and they
> are part of a wider struggle for civil rights:
===============
Writing/speaking of Habermas in Iran...
<http://www.pubtheo.com/page.asp?pid=1073>
[snip]
While in Iran you also met prominent intellectual reformists associated with President Khatami. Do you believe that the reformers are prepared, where necessary, to overcome the conflict emanating from the Iranian Constitution between democracy and theocracy in favor of democracy?
Mohsen Kadivar is a younger mullah who went to jail after publishing a Shiite critique of the legal foundations of Khomeini's regime in 1998. Through him I met the group that you are referring to: both Shabestari and Said Hasjarian, whose body still bears the marks of an assassination attempt from almost two years ago. As a group, we discussed this issue. How far should the reforms go? How serious are the reformers about withdrawing religious theory and the religious community from its fusion with state authority? Ultimately, however, I never got more than a pragmatic answer: The objective is to progress step by step and in doing so learn from the process. Even during this, by far the most important discussion, I was unable to see how the reformers envisage the "third way" of a synthesis of East and West.
Other discussions did give me a minor insight into the political mentality of these disappointed figures from the birth of the revolution. Under the Pahlavi regime -- perceived as corrupt, technocratic and completely estranged from the population -- religious tradition had by 1978 already become the only remaining morally sound force. Marxism, too, was still bound to the mentality and culture of the West. Young people back then wanted a liberating alternative, and what they got was religious despotism in the form of an undemocratic dual-system regime. The association of the initial feeling of emancipation with the name Khomeini may sound obscene to us, but for the former revolutionaries it is probably a defining biographical moment.
My impression is that the reformers do not want to become renegades. Many of them are simultaneously critics and representatives of the regime. They wish to see their reforms -- the establishment of the rule of law and democracy, the creation of an effective administrative authority, an endogenous boost of economic growth through a controlled opening to the global market -- as a revised continuation of the course of the revolution itself. To this extent, the reformers are also loyal to the constitution. This was what Ayatollah Beheshti's son, who went to school Germany, wanted to express when he said: There will be no revolution within the revolution.
Can Iranian society solve these contradictions?
Nobody knows that, of course. You would, for example, have to have a greater insight into the thoughts of young women, above all those with an academic background. Women already comprise over half the student population. How many of them would take off their headscarf in public if they could? Do these heads contain a powder keg that the regime of the old ayatollahs has to fear more than anything else?
As an example, the mostly apolitical tourist guide who accompanied me to Persepolis just finished her studies. She speaks English, is interested in Freud and Jung and reads translations of contemporary American and Portuguese novels. She is appalled by the situation of a friend whose spouse is quite nasty and who will not agree to a divorce. All the court did, my guide said, was to encourage her to give it another try. No, she doesn't mind the separation of genders at the mosque. But she rejects a purely conventional religious practice. If a deeply-felt religious belief is present, a Christian or a Jew count just as much as a Muslim. She is sure: "Cultural relations," meaning the amount of freedom in her own private life, have changed since Khatami first came into office. She points to her headscarf to illustrate her point: It now sits a little further back, revealing a few inches of hair.