From Capitol Hill to Main Street, it’s amazing how many people think the fight in Iran is a battle between the forces of freedom and those of religious fundamentalism. And it’s amazing how wrong they are to reduce a complex struggle, the end result of which we cannot know regardless of who wins, to terms which miss the real issues which are in play and are likely to affect us all.
I am no fan of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and it’s pretty certain that when even the Mullahs who back him admit that there were significant “election irregularities”, the election was anything but fair and the results are anything but reliable. However, none of that means that the people marching in the streets are necessarily the champions of the kind of democracy which most Americans hold dear. In fact, there is not one shred of evidence that the followers of Mir Hossein Musavi would shrink one iota from the theocratic system in place, as much as they would shift power to a new set of theocrats.
Ultimately what goes on in Iran will be determined largely by the Iranians, but our response to the ongoing struggle there shines a light on any number of misguided premises that we hold about the relationship between faith and politics.
The first is the fact that the last time Iranians revolted against a repressive, anti-democratic regime, they went from the frying pan to the fire, trading the Shah for the Ayatollah.
Not all democratic movements bring the results for which we would hope. In fact, more than a few murderous regimes have ridden to power on the back of popular support, as we all know. But more importantly, is the popular misconception that the people in the streets of Iran must be more open-minded than the current government because they are using cell phones and Twitter to drive their struggle forward.
None of this means that the Mousavi movement, if that term makes sense, is necessarily a fundamentalist movement. It does mean that we should all re-check our premises about the sophistication of groups whose beliefs we think of as backward and even our assumptions about the superiority of populist movements which embrace democracy. Too often their embrace last only as long as the willingness of the demos, the people, to support the leaders of the movement.