REFORMATION HYMNS

ISLAM, IRAN, AND BLOGS

What have the likes of me learned after 12 years of formal religious education? What is the outcome of being consistently bombarded with sacred information in this Islamic Republic of ours?

1. When you talk about your religion for over 20 years, its problems will be highlighted.

2. Religious education is the best way to create agnostics in the modern world. Just look around at the people you personally know who went to the infamously strict Islamic schools, like Haghani, Kamal, Moofid, etc.

3. Even those most addicted to religion will at some stage overdose.

4. The problem is not with Islam but with a few of our radical fellow Muslims.

The other day I saw a construction worker fast asleep next to a cement mixer; he appeared to have developed a deaf ear to all that noise. After so many years of being bombarded with religious facts you just stop hearing them.

Those who lived through the Islamic Revolution almost a quarter of a century ago are now a minority. More than 70 percent of Iran is under thirty, and for this population, literacy rates for young men and women stand well over 90 percent, even in rural areas. It is the voices of this educated youth that come through the phenomenon that is the Iranian blogosphere.

The Internet has opened a new virtual space for free speech in Iran, a country dubbed the “the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East” by Reporters sans Frontières (a/k/a Reporters Without Borders). With an estimated 700,000 blogs, Farsi is now the fourth most popular language for keeping online journals. A blogger asks: “Has everyone noticed the spooky absence of graffiti in our public toilets since the arrival of weblogs?” But unlike graffiti, Iran's blogs are boundless and global.

“Religious education is the best way to create agnostics in the modern world.”

In the last ten years over 100 media publications, including forty-one dailies, have been closed down. Yet today, with tens of thousands of Iranian weblogs, there is an alternative media that for the moment defies control. Even though the subject matter of many blogs may seem tame by universal standards, most surpass the limitations imposed by state censorship. There is an endless variety of bloggers who are fans of everything from Harry Potter to Marilyn Manson.

More than 70 percent of Iran is under thirty, and for this population, literacy rates for young men and women stand well over 90 percent, even in rural areas.

Iran's flowering youth are described by leading Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo (head of the Department for Contemporary Studies at Iran's Cultural Research Bureau) as the “fourth generation,” who are moving away from political Islam towards an “Iranian secularism” based on Islamic traditions and Persian cultural history. Testament to Jahanbegloo's thinking are the countless Iranian voices in the blogosphere who time after time try to partition the regime's deeds from their own Islamic belief systems. The following quote is by a young journalist who was threatened by the extremists for his writing:

In the name of God.

I commence with the name of a supreme God, the God of Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, the God of life itself. On the eve of the holy month of Ramadan when we are all the guests of God, the stench of fear, terror and revenge is in the air.

This air is the air of the Middle Ages when the tyrant clergy in the name of holy dictates and the protection of their faith would burn the bodies of worthy men and women….

What is this Islam of yours, that through its fight for righteousness has filled the world's atmosphere with the stench of decomposing corpses?

I tell you that the Shia are purely the followers of one God and no one else.

Your protestations are that you will safeguard the honor of the blood that was shed in the eight-year war with Iraq. No Iranian can forget those years which are a testament to the bravery of our youth…. They did not die for your contrived Islam but for the defense of their homeland and you are not the same breed as those blessed men….

If my pen and my literary activities are so harrowing to you that you want to kill me and now threaten me with a bullet… If my pen is the menace, I will resort to writing in my own blood: long live freedom, equality, peace and democracy, long live Iran and Iranians!

Your worship of the Supreme Leader is worthless, and as for your threats, I am not “a willow that will quiver at such breezes.”

“I have never feared death…. My fear is to die in a land where the gravedigger's wage is higher then the price of an individual's freedom”¹

ISLAMIC REFORMATION OR BUST

In February 2005 a young cleric and blogger, Mojtaba Lotfi, was sentenced to three years and ten months for posting “lies” on his website. Based in the holy city of Qom, Lotfi and a group of young theologians at the seminaries had dared to grapple with such thorny notions as the need for Islamic reform, twenty-first-century Islamic jurisprudence, and human-rights abuses by state clerics, as well as how to deal with social problems such as the use of ecstasy and the spread of HIV. Yet it was an article entitled “Respect for Human Rights in Cases Involving the Clergy” that earned Lotfi a prison sentence. One thing Iran's state clerics are rather sensitive about is being accused of being unjust and un-Islamic by other clerics.

However, Lotfi is not a lone voice. Abdollah Nouri was imprisoned for publishing sacrilegious articles. Eshkevari was accused of apostasy. Mohsen Kadivar was incarcerated for calling for the autonomy of political life from religion. These outspoken critics of the regime are all prominent members of the Shia clergy, as are many political dissidents in Iran today, and they are not on the fringes of society. Religious people complain that the mosques were full before the Revolution but are now often empty. Dissident clerics argue that the Islamic Republic's failings have brought about a loss of Islamic values, because people associate the system with the religion. As the prominent Islamic scholar Hadi Eghbal says in his blog [ghabel.persianblog. com], twenty-five years of rule by the clerics in Iran “has not made Islam stronger, but it has brought about a decline in the position of the clergy and religion in society.”

Ayatollah Taheri, the principal spiritual leader of Isfahan, Iran's second most populous city, has described the regime as “an enemy of Islam and humanity.” In July 2002, resigning from his post after twenty-five years as the Friday prayers leader of Isfahan, he condemned the ruling clerics for corruption and incompetence, adding that the only reason for his public protest was to defend the faith, which had been marred in the eyes of ordinary people because of its association with a so-called Islamic government.

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri is one of the most senior-ranking religious figures in Shia Islam. Under total house arrest until very recently, he has in effect also joined the blogging bandwagon by posting regular commentaries, as well as his memoirs and damning indictments of the regime.

Despite the general (and erroneous) belief in a unified Shia clergy, the dozen or so Grand Ayatollahs in the world have their own groups of followers and take very different positions, even at times issuing religious edicts, or fatwas, that contradict one another. Yet only a tiny section of these Grand Ayatollahs is affiliated with the ruling clerics in Iran. And some, like Montazeri, have openly questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Leader's absolute religious power.

Taking their cue from older theologians, clerics such as Kadivar and Eshkavari (and groups of young seminarians in Qom) are now questioning whether the mosques should be mixed up with a discredited and unpopular ideological regime. Many now openly speak of the need for an Islamic Reformation. Some argue that these clerics are at the heart of the battle over Iran's future and perhaps even eventually the future of Shia Iraq, advocating pluralism over an intolerant dogmatism. Ultimately these clerics possess the knack to hit Iran's theocracy where it hurts.

THE FREEDOM TO BE “BLASPHEMOUS”

While blogging gives some Iranians the freedom to defend their faith, for others it provides an outlet for their resentment and disapproval of a religious system that governs every aspect of their lives. Blogger Satgean writes:

I don't know what this Allah of ours is, that we call the most beneficent and merciful … that condemns you to burn in hell if you don't obey his commands….

I am neither Allah nor beneficent and merciful, but when I see my fellow men under pressure, displaying their limitations, I feel such a heavy weight of embarrassment on my shoulders that I cannot straighten my back to look them in the eyes … and if I can, I try to help them….

I don't try to make them totally lose the plot by terrifying them with hellfire….

In truth, I don't understand the “beneficent and merciful” bit and what good it does to us Muslims.

Blogger Fozool:

I shit on the whole of Hezbollah … and your distorted Islam and its ideology that you use to diminish a human being through torture.

All your bollocks analyses are obsolete…. This generation has finally, after 23 years, realized what sort of hole it's in….

The student demonstrations are proof that 23 years of brainwashing from primary school to university cannot even save you today….

People put an ayatollah and the clergy on the same level as pimps and thugs, and they would shove the whole lot of you up a donkey's arse if they could.

Blogger Deev:

Good tidings…. Today “Ayatol-shit” Hakim, the head of Iraqi Shias, was assassinated. Thank you, God, as there is one less Mullah in the world….

Yet, I wouldn't have been too unhappy if these senseless Iraqis could have experienced the misery of living under an Islamic Republic as we have for 25 years … but I’m jealous in a way…. Why don't our Mullahs die off so easily?

Although tame by Western standards, the off-the-cuff remarks of bloggers concerning the “sacred” Supreme Leader are denounced as blasphemous in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Blasphemy carries the death penalty, as do a variety of offenses, from murder, rape, and armed robbery to drug trafficking, adultery, and apostasy.

It remains to be seen how long a small group of aging clerics can impose their desire for an Islamic state on a society in which the majority of people are under thirty and have no memory of the Revolution. A young blogger addressing the “Leader of the Revolution” writes:

Your Holiness,

Have you ever fallen in love? Have you ever gazed into the crimson of the wine, when you can still feel the spot where she kissed you on your eyelids? Have you ever danced? Have you ever had Maz Maz [Iranian chips] dipped in Mast Moseer [a dip]? Have you ever worn jeans? Do you know what Mum roll-on deodorant is? Have you ever cried at night? How many years did you go to school? Have you ever made abghosht [an Iranian stew]? Have you ever got a barbeque going? Tell me, what is Newton's Third Law?

How many times has the scent of springtime in Shiraz [a southern Iranian city] driven you wild? Have you ever kissed a dog? Have you ever listened to Persian classical music? Or what about rap? Do you ever whistle?

Have you ever kissed her neck? What about behind her ears?

Have you ever downloaded an MP3 from the Internet? Do you ever ask the guy at the kiosk selling cigarettes how he's doing? Ever walked through town at midnight? Have they ever raided your home and confiscated your books?

Have you ever been forced into exile? Has it ever happened that you just can't get the pattern of those tiles in your mother's kitchen out of your head (for three nights in a row), but you just can't remember the color? Have you ever called your mother up from far away and asked her to describe the color of those tiles—at the mention of which you both uncontrollably sob?

Have you ever longed for the windows of your apartment in Tehran?

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

It is no secret that most of the rulers in the Middle East are out of synch with their youth, and Iran is no exception. But while many Arab countries are ruled by authoritarian leaders who are nonetheless more liberal than many of their citizens, people in Iran have already experienced the fullness of a radical regime. Ayatollah Khomeini came to power promising independence and a classless Islamic society. Iran's average annual oil income has more than doubled since the Revolution, but most indicators of economic welfare show that it has steadily declined, and the Iranian economy has been described as akin to the crony capitalism that grew from the ruins of the Soviet Union, controlled by a few state clerics who have amassed enormous wealth since 1979. While others in the region may dream of political Islamic utopias, Iranians understand the limitations of theocratic rule and have been there and done that.

Blogger khojaste writes:

Twenty-five years ago on a day like this, the first happy day of a New Year without a dictator, our parents said “yes” to something they had no understanding of: to an Islamic Republic.

A regime in which “Marxism would be taught at university by a Marxist lecturer” (a quote from Islamic Republic, a publication by Ayatollah Motahari [one of the founding theologians of the revolutionary state, President of the Constitutional Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a member of the Revolutionary Council. He was assassinated soon after the Revolution]).

A regime in which “a Zoroastrian woman would have identical legal rights to a Muslim man” (a quote from a documentary shown nationwide on January 11, 2004, on State television. On the program, a Zoroastrian woman—a lawyer, incidentally—twentyfive years ago gave this statement as her reason and guarantee in voting for an Islamic Republic).

But today I can't stop wondering why my mother didn't ask: “What exactly is this Islamic Republic?” Why didn't she ask: “How do you guarantee what you are promising us today?”

A quarter of a century later, the regime's attempt to shield Iranians from the West's “cultural invasion” has backfired magnificently. The country's youth is now almost obsessed with the Western culture that they have been deprived of for so long. Young people who aspire to a more Western lifestyle have even turned events like St. Valentine's Day into a local festival. Iran's former Deputy-President Ali Abtahi, a mid-ranking Shia cleric, greeted the new cause for celebration for young lovers in Islamic Iran in his blog [webneveshteha.com] by writing that although there are many irritated by all this, “We cannot deny the reality. And anyway the Islam that I know encourages life and love.”

Blogger Siprisk tells us:

The Revolution finally brought the clerics on the scene, stripping them bare so that they could perform their magic shows ... and this same revolution will kick the clerics out once and for all from the political scene....

“The revolution is unstoppable until it reaches its final destination: the rebirth of a humanitarian culture and a democracy.”

Europe struggled for five centuries to banish religion and superstition from political and social life, making a lot of sacrifices along the way. Our country will be the first country in the Middle East to go on this journey in a relatively short time frame. We must make this hard and hazardous journey ourselves. There are no chains harder and stronger than the chains of religion and tradition....

The revolution is unstoppable until it reaches its final destination: the rebirth of a humanitarian culture and a democracy. Towards the end of the revolution, no cleric will be able to go to a village and tell the people: “They didn't allow us to have Islam.” Believe me, defending religious rule will be impossible then. This rebirth has to happen in our country.

VIRTUALLY UNVEILED

After the 1979 Revolution, women were viewed as central to the project of changing the public morality, and wearing the veil became mandatory. Yet two and a half decades later, girls mock the strict guidelines by wearing their compulsory headscarves way back over their heads to reveal as much (illicit) hair as possible; meanwhile, the obligatory manteau gowns are getting shorter and tighter, to the point that they are no longer the black cloaks considered the ideal revolutionary hejab. Here blogger Atash (Fire) describes her encounter with the Morality Police:

I could feel the searing sun like a piece of burning coal on my veil…. My veil and my long robes make me smell like a corpse…. I walk on the street but can't see the end…. Far, far away, a group of trees are doing a choreographed dance….

And I, on the street, I’m walking…. Passersby, those in cars, can't see me, as if I’m here but I’m not…. Far, far away, I can see a mirror that has taken up the width of the street…. And the nearer I get to it the more distant I become…. I’m walking in a scorching heat that rips the breath out of you….

I catch a glimpse of myself, lighter, lighter, and lighter…. With each step in my mind's eye, I no longer feel the burden of my walk.

I’m wearing a white short-sleeved top, green shorts, and a scented straw hat…. I no longer smell like a corpse or like my grandmother's damp basement.

I walk freely and am spreading my fragrant sweet dreams among people who cannot see me…. They're running to get away from the harsh, searing sun…. What ecstasy….

There is a hand on my shoulder that abruptly swallows my world…. The toxic street voice with rage barks: “Pull your veil forward!” I hear it, but I don't want to hear it.

The street filth puts his hand in his back pocket to show that he's searching for something…. His mime does not frighten me. He pulls out a transmitter from his putrid shirt pocket and this time pointing at his black patrol van, with fury, hollers: “What do you say now?”

As I was stranded between two worlds…at high noon…I was hungry and thirsty…in an endless street where right at the end the trees were doing a choreographed dance…. My veil moved and came forward…. A few steps away my veil moved back again.

Prior to the Revolution, many traditional families refused to send their daughters to university. They believed it would violate their Islamic way of life. In those days, most educated working women didn't wear Islamic covering, but the majority of women did, especially in the provinces. Paradoxically, mandatory veiling may have helped some women to gain an education, especially in traditional families, as they didn't need to go through a drastic cultural makeover to leave the house or enter the workplace.

In 1936, when the Shah tried to make it law that all women should cease to wear their veils, he failed due to popular outrage. In 1975 women's illiteracy in rural areas was 90 percent and more than 45 percent in towns. Today, the nationwide literacy rate for girls between fifteen and twenty-four has risen to 97 percent.

In 2003 Shirin Ebadi—an Iran-based human rights activist—caused an uproar among Iran's ruling clerics when she attended the Nobel ceremony to accept the Peace Prize unveiled. She even received public death threats from extremist groups. Yet Ebadi has spoken out against the French ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools. “If there is a law [against headscarves], only extremists will profit from it, as it would be an excuse to prevent their daughter's education,” she said. “The better the girls are educated and the more they go to school, the more emancipated they will become.”

TRUMPING THE CLERICS

A committed Muslim, convinced that change in Iran must come peacefully and from within, Ebadi has battled for an interpretation of her faith that is compatible with democracy. For her efforts, Ebadi writes that she has been imprisoned and threatened with death by those who denounce her “as an apostate for daring to suggest that Islam can look forward and denounced outside the country by secular critics of the Islamic Republic, whose attitudes are no less dogmatic.” Yet she is far from friendless in Iran. After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, Ebadi was greeted at Tehran airport by a joyous crowd numbering “hundreds of thousands.”

Ebadi writes in her memoir, Iran Awakening (2006):

As I was defending the [divorce] bill to the commission, an imperious, traditionalist cleric sitting next to me gathered his robes and turned to address me: “Why have you written that male consent is not required for divorce?”

“Because it's not,” I said. “And I’ll prove it to you.” I pulled out the Shahr-e Lomeh, the Shia Textbook of Jurisprudence. “This is the book you study in the seminary, and on which you are tested in becoming a mullah,” I stated. “It says nowhere in here that male consent is required. So why are you insisting it is?”

For trumping this cleric with his own seminary's books, Ebadi was ejected from the session at the Iranian parliament. In another court battle, the judge sternly warned her, “Do not criticize Islamic law,” to which she responded: “I am only asking if justice has been served.”

More recently in Tehran (May 31, 2006), a group of women's rights protestors presented the authorities with a tight dilemma. As is the norm in such protests, at the outset all placards were to be removed. But this time the women were ready. They had ingeniously used white headscarves printed with bold red slogans to cover their hair—the authorities could not remove them.

Some people believe the regime is immune to change, but many others, especially women, are experts at finding ways around the constraints of the patriarchal system. These women activists are less interested in whether or not to wear the veil and more concerned with gaining access to education, wider employment opportunities, equality at work, and better healthcare for their families.

Since the Revolution, many other women have fought for democracy within the confines of an ideological state. They have dared to continue crossing the line, and in doing so they are steadily shifting Iran's cultural and political landscape.

HEROIC WOMEN VS. EVIL MUSLIM MEN

The Revolution's impact on women has been entirely paradoxical, as it has both opened up new possibilities for them and at the same time instituted the most repressive controls on their lives. Although they're discriminated against, Iranian women continue to play a considerable role in everyday life. A third of all doctors, 60 percent of civil servants, and 80 percent of all teachers in Iran are women. However, this cannot be explained through the tirelessly used Western media paradigm of brave, heroic women subjugated by a post-9/11 caricature of a brutal Muslim male.

Reading the intimate, online commentaries of Iranians, we are sometimes granted a rare glimpse of life beyond the crude stereotypes:

To my wife on our sixteenth wedding anniversary.

We have struggled and yet we have survived…. We have been humiliated, but we have not lost our dignity….

Do you remember when we were first married? We rented this room in south Teheran and had to share a toilet with the landlord…. There was no bathroom and we had to use a public bath….

Do you remember that time when we took all the money we had and went to a posh restaurant uptown? We had a wonderful meal and gave the rest of the money as a tip to the waiter…. We had no money left for a taxi … so we walked all the way home across the whole town…. We had a lot of energy then….

“We will go forward to change a world that was unjust for our children and make it a fairer place for our grandchildren.”

Do you remember the time our son was born? Through all that bombing and war … in that climate of death we built a new life…. And the evening our daughter was born…. With two kids and work, you still went to university and you were top of your class….

Do you remember getting war rations for dried milk? To prove that you had no milk, you had to show your breasts to the “sister” at the Komiteh every week ... but we would not have that…. “We'll work overtime and buy dried milk on the open market…. But we're not showing your breasts to anyone!”

I said all this stuff so you know that I haven't forgotten… our mutual troubles, growth and love can never be destroyed. We are just starting … with more energy than ever before….

We will go forward to change a world that was unjust for our children and make it a fairer place for our grandchildren.

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Yet at a time when headlines scream of a global crisis and a new era where Cold War rivalry is replaced by the clash of civilizations, such earthly voices are drowned out and rendered irrelevant. The Islamic world and especially Iran are under a media spotlight. More recently the protests across the Islamic world against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have been used to stress this looming clash of civilizations. On February 6, 2006, a small (albeit violent) demonstration outside the Danish embassy in Tehran was a top news story in much of the world. Among the protesters was blogger Saleh Meftah, a member of the Iranian Basij (revolutionary militia). The following day he wrote in his blog about the thrill and the fun-filled atmosphere of the attack, posting smug photos of himself taken inside the embassy compound.

When the story of Saleh's escapades was written up on Roozonline, a popular Iranian Internet news daily, the “counter” for his blog, which had been showing an average of thirty-one readers per day, suddenly shot up to 2,872 visitors. Roozonline recounted how Saleh had described the preparations the night before the attack and how “he and his friends used two cars and seven motorcycles to scout the Danish embassy to coordinate their efforts with the embassy guards,” while naming members of the student Basij who were “knowledgeable in planning, preparations and even help inside the embassy attacks.”

On the streets of Tehran, only the brave or the foolhardy would dare to confront a member of the Basij. But in this cyber-sanctuary, within a period of only two days, hundreds of angry comments were left on Saleh's page. The following is just a tiny sample:

• I cannot hide my hatred of you and your actions. It's your bestial breed that gives Westerners cause to insult our dear Prophet and faith.

• You've written here that, as you read the comments, “I am proud that the enemies of the Revolution are attacking me.” Listen, you godless fool.… What enemies!! They are ordinary people who are telling you how they feel … your fellow countrymen!!!!

• Unlike Iran, in the West what is published in a newspaper is not dictated by the regime. I agree with you that the cartoons are offensive but the best strategy is to ignore the ignorant. But as you're still young, I feel that it may not be too late to talk to you before it's too late … before you start seeing a divine light like our dear President. When you attack an embassy, you are attacking a whole nation. Do you honestly feel that what you did was justified and something to be proud of?

• You, Basij, just don't learn. No matter how many of you fill up our universities like flies through [government] quotas, you still don't seem to get wise to that fact you are being played. You talk of bringing the true face of the Revolution to the Westernized northern [affluent] suburbs of Tehran by setting fire to that embassy. My brother! While there, you should have opened your eyes. For your mentors and this nation's tormentors mostly live behind those neighboring grand high walls. But I also want to say that I commend you for not deleting the messages here and for upholding the democratic principle of free speech. This is all we want: to be allowed to speak out and not to be beaten to death for it. And this is a great chance for you to realize what people honestly think of you. Thank you.

Ordinary Iranian Muslims may well be dismayed by images of their Prophet dressed as a terrorist, his turban a bomb with a lit fuse, but the twelve million citizens of their capital, Tehran, were far from lit up with rage. Most don't support violent attacks on European diplomatic missions and have stayed away from the demonstrations. In any case, Iranians have no real freedom to gather in public; only a week earlier, hundreds of Tehran bus workers were imprisoned in an effort to crush their strike. In these circumstances, an attack by a 400-strong mob whose members act with impunity, injure police officers, and burn a car at the embassy compound cannot be seen as a spontaneous protest by the people, but is rather a foreign-policy directive from an extremist establishment trying to isolate Iran internationally for its own ends.

But again, as is the norm, the Western news coverage had us believe that this mob of 400 in a city populated by twelve million people represented the mood of the Iranian street.

REALITY VS. PERCEPTION

There is a vast gap between reality and the Western perception of Iran. Following the election of the hardline President Ahmadinejad in June 2005, this chasm widened further.

When Mohammad Khatami was in office (1997- 2005), Western political commentators often highlighted the toothless nature of Iran's presidency. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in June 2005 saw him quickly elevated to the position of the West's “worst nightmare,” and as such, he has become a central factor in the new Iranian political equation. Ahmadinejad's provocative speeches against Israel, calling for it to be “wiped off the map,” have sent jitters across the world.

Ahmadinejad has tried to represent himself as a champion of the Arab street, and it may perhaps be no accident that his Holocaust-denial speech was made at a summit in Saudi Arabia attended by most Muslim nations. Since his election, Arab newspapers have been awash with their support for Ahmadinejad and what they see as the West's double standards in hounding Iran while allowing Israel to possess a potent nuclear arsenal. Arab columnists out of harm's way and writing from the sidelines can enthuse and cheer Ahmadinejad, but many in Iran are aware of the dangers facing their country as a result of their new leader's stance. Former President Khatami has criticized Ahmadinejad, saying, “Those words have created hundreds of political and economic problems for us in the world.”

Iran has an abysmal human rights record. It may be hard to believe, but Iran also has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel. Under the present constitution, religious minorities, including Iranian Jews, must have an elected representative in Parliament. The Jerusalem Post has reported that “most of the Jews still resident in Iran are quite happy to be there and despite the anti-Israel hatred that often translates itself into anti-Jewish feeling, generally speaking, they are not persecuted” (May 5, 2004). The next year, the Jerusalem Post reported on Iranian Jewish immigrants to Israel who were moving back “‘home’ to Teheran” (November 4, 2005).

The Iranian Jewish exile Roya Hakakian has published a beautifully written memoir (Journey From the Land of No) about her life in Tehran before and after the Revolution. She has said that while growing up in Tehran, she never experienced anti-Semitism: “The people who persecuted Jews in Iran were the same people who persecuted anyone who didn't fall in line with the Government…. Our neighbors never turned on us and we always maintained close ties.”

Naturally, there has been widespread condemnation of the President's Holocaust-denial claims on the Internet. A writer on the group blog Sheepish lamented:

The myth of the holocaust, the myth of the extermination of Jews, the myth of Hiroshima, the myth of the Serbian massacres, the myth of those gassed in Halabjeh. The shameful myth of humanity.

While another writes:

Perhaps Ahmadinejad has never seen aging Jewish men and women, who sixty years after WWII, still recount with trembling voices and tearful eyes how they were separated from their parents and sent to Auschwitz … and he has not seen on their wrinkled arms their hacked-out prisoner numbers…. Where are those “ever-ready” defenders of Islam ... those who see Islam threatened and endangered to the point of extinction by even the slightest loosening of moral standards and who keep calling on others to revolt in defense of the integrity of their faith? Don't they have a problem with their Islam's accord with Nazism?

While Ahmadinejad was calling for a conference to assess the scale and consequences of the Holocaust, Hossein Derakhshan, the “godfather” of the Iranian blogosphere, traveled to Israel in a symbolic gesture of peace. He wrote:

As a citizen journalist, I’m going to show my 20,000 daily Iranian readers what Israel really looks like and how people there live. The Islamic Republic has long portrayed Israel as an evil state, with a consensual political agenda of killing every single man and woman who prays to Allah, including Iranians.

As a peace activist, I’m going to show the Israelis that the vast majority of Iranians do not identify with Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, despite what it looks like from the outside.

I’m going to tell them how any kind of violent action against Iran would only harm the young people who are gradually reforming the system and how the radicals would benefit from such a situation.

During my visit, I’m going to blog in both English and Persian, take a lot of pictures and record numerous video and audio reports and make a few podcasts.

Iran's President, described by George W. Bush as an “odd man,” has caused further astonishment and much media debate around the world with his references to Mahdaviat (belief in the coming of the Mahdi, a messianic figure). In a video recording, Ahmadinejad even talks of being surrounded by a divine light as he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September 2005. This has caused much ridicule in the blogosphere, with bloggers referring to their President as “luminous Mahmoud” or “the incandescent.”

Iran's leading (and recently exiled) satirist, Ebrahim Nabavi, has joked that conversations in Iran's communal taxis would go something like this: “In the Rafsanjani era, they're all thieves. In the Khatami era, they're all useless, and now with Ahmadinejad, they're all mad.”

But Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic visions have proved even more controversial in religious circles. According to Shia Islamic belief, the Mahdi will appear alongside Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad on Judgment Day. Yet Shia scriptures also abound with condemnations of any prediction by mere mortals of the Mahdi's arrival. The former parliamentary speaker and cleric Mehdi Karroubi, in an interview with the reformist Sharg Daily newspaper (January 7, 2006), fiercely attacked the new government's profane references to the Mahdi; he even cast doubt on the revolutionary credentials of the President's spiritual leader and mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: “In the first ten years of the Revolution, Mesbah was not known…. Wherever he was, I don't know. If anyone knows, they should tell us.”

Bootleg tapes showing Ahmadinejad's mystical belief in his own mission are available in Iran and can be viewed on the Web, yet the risks of adverse public opinion and an outcry from the seminaries led government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham to dismiss the tapes as forgeries made to discredit the President. Even the fervent Ahmadinejad and his backers realize that Iran is not a Saddamite society where a political leader can enforce his delusions upon the population.

“BUT THEY ELECTED AN ISLAMIC RADICAL”

A deluge of flustered media reports seemingly asks us to believe that the Iranian people have confirmed their radical Islamic sensibilities by electing Ahmadinejad. Iranians are routinely portrayed on news broadcasts as crowds chanting, “Death to America and Israel!” in archival footage shot during Friday prayers. Yet according to surveys by Iran's own Ministry of Culture and Guidance, fewer than 1.4 percent of the population actually bothers to attend Friday prayers.

Iran is also perhaps one of the few countries in the Middle East where people don't attribute their hardships to their undemocratic United States-backed rulers. A major national poll in 2002, commissioned by the then-reformist Parliament, revealed that 64.5 percent favored resumption of talks between Iran and the United States. As a result, three separate Iranian institutes, including the National Institute for Research Studies and Opinion Polls (Nirsop), were closed down, and the researchers involved soon found themselves in prison. Three years later, Abdolah Naseri, the former director of the state news agency, Irna, was put on trial for revealing that the regime's raison d'etre, enmity to the US, is not shared by the majority of Iranians.

Those who took part in that survey seemingly believe in Iran's integration into a global economy that can offer jobs and prosperity. Equally, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's electoral draw was based on promises of a better economic future. He had tapped into the vein of popular anger against corruption and cronyism, appealing to the minds and hearts of jobless youth and underpaid workers by promising food and housing subsidies for the poor.

Only months after his election, the populist powers of the man who famously donned a street sweeper's uniform in camaraderie with the workers were already in danger of eroding as union workers were arrested, basic groceries and metro subway prices went up, and the much-publicized government loans for newlyweds were as good as abandoned.

Ahmadinejad comes from and is endorsed by the hardline core of the regime that has ultimately controlled power in Iran since the Revolution. His ability or inability to keep his campaign promises will be a critical challenge for Iran's revolutionary elite. One young blogger writes:

I pray for Ahmadinejad's protection and well-being everyday. If allowed to run his course uninterrupted, by the time of the next election [2009] we will see a beleaguered and discredited President, the definitive collapse of all this revolutionary mumbo jumbo, and the ultimate demise of extremism. It is only then that you will see this society flower.

A NATION OF ISLAMIC MARTYRS

Ahmadinejad continually talks of the glory days of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) and of a “new Islamic Revolution,” at a time when even most of his contemporaries appear to have moved on. Iranians have lived through a recent violent revolution and a war with Iraq, bleak years that they logically don't want to encounter again.

The roads, streets, and narrow alleyways of Iran have been renamed after the hundreds and thousands of dead that the locals of these neighborhoods still vividly and fondly remember as young boys. As one blogger puts it:

The Americans fight and go to war to prove to the world that they are cheerful, beautiful, and sophisticated humanitarians. The Palestinians fight, as this is all they can do to defend their homes. We fought so that men who represent God … will have more chance of racketeering. We fought against another Muslim country to defend this Islam.

Blogger Shargi perhaps sums up the views of many when she says:

“God invented war so that Americans can learn geography.”

I hate war. I hate the liberating soldiers that trample your soil, home, young, and old under their boots. Believe me, I love freedom. But I believe that you have to make yourself free. No one else can free you.

In a jibe against an American threat, one blogger writes: “God invented war so that Americans can learn geography.”

In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, a baby boom was encouraged. According to Ayatollah Khomeini, a country whose youth were ready for martyrdom “could never be destroyed.” Although the population has indeed more than doubled since the 1979 Revolution, to almost 70 million, this master plan has not come to pass.

Blogger baba.eparizi writes:

When the most ruthless are the victors and not the wise … the story is truly of a bloody vicious struggle…. The ruthless killings at the dawn of the Revolution … the assassinations … eight years of devastation and war … the bombing of towns … the dastardly killings of prisoners en masse in the 1980s…. These are all the bloody roots of our story. Yet today these blood feuds are fading from the minds of a new generation … a generation that was created to fight for God … a generation that was created for martyrdom is suddenly aware of its predicament and the world around … and no longer believes in the endless wars of his forefathers…. A new generation is pressing forward to destroy the old formula.

ONLY IN IRAN

Ahmadinejad's attempt to bury the “unknown martyrs” of the Iran-Iraq war in public places illuminates the other realities of contemporary Iran. To keep “alive the memories and sacrifices of those who lost their lives fighting for Iran,” the new government has also tried to bury these unknown soldiers around Iran's university campuses. But this has met with such a strong student backlash around the country that in May 2006 officials announced that no more burials were planned.

At Sharif University (March 13, 2006), hundreds of students attempted to create a human chain around the graves to prevent the soldiers from being interred. A photograph of a protester, posted to a student's blog, shows her with a banner that reads: “They want me dead, so they can say I was one of them and that I existed because of them.”

These youth are perhaps the greatest challenge to the Islamic radicals, as they are part of a new generation of Iranians fonder of the truth than of martyrdom. A student blogger writes:

I was able to read my blog last night and my heart started shaking…. I had no idea so many of you were following my reports from campus….

But today I want to write about hope…. I want us to believe that we can all make a difference….

An old lady turned up yesterday among the demonstrators…. It brings a smile to my face when I remember her…because she stopped so many students from being beaten to a pulp…. She just kept going up to the Basij and pleading with them, “My son, for God's sake, stop beating those kids!”… You have no idea how much this meant to us….

Let us finally break this chain of hate … even against those who hit and arrest you…. All the children of Iran … believe even in our smallest efforts…. I have to tell you that my generation, we don't want to be anyone's heroes or martyrs for freedom. We want to live, and the Basij are a part of my generation, too.

Since his election, President Ahmadinejad has been under a frenzied Western media spotlight, his every move and directive making headlines. He was even reported to have banned Western music. But the gap between the president's desires and what actually takes place is vast.

Among Tehran's maddening traffic, the trance-techno soundtracks of homegrown pop sensation Benyamin relentlessly boom out of rickety taxis and flashy cars, but you won't hear him on state radio or television. Benyamin is detested by much of the older generation, Iranian literati and conservative clerics alike. He sings about love, boredom, but also about his faith with tributes to Shia imams. His popular demographically driven “reformation” hymns, which couldn't have been aired before the Islamic Revolution, reveal so much about Iran's journey in the past generation. If any attempt were made to broadcast them in Shia regions of Iraq today, they might well trigger riots similar in scale to those unleashed over the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

What is happening in Iran is more significant and more sustainable in the long-run than the mere overthrow of dictators; that, as we are witnessing in Iraq, is the easy part. A generational change threatens the survival of radicals. Yet while the gap between the rulers and the ruled widens, fanatics have raised the volume of their hardline rhetoric, desperately trying to reassert Iran's radical credentials.

The West must realize that it is the Iranian people and the bourgeoning youth of Iran who will determine the future of their country. An actual military attack against Iran (in addition to the obvious disastrous repercussions) will only set back society by another quarter of a century, unifying Iran's youth with the most hardline elements of the regime.

Today the Western media, through a prism of fear and stereotype, have further empowered the likes of Ahmadinejad in a confrontation in which Islam is seen to be pitched against the West. Yet the West must realize that radical Iran survives in isolation and conflict. As Ahmadinejad appears to be doing his best to provoke the West, a clash of civilizations is not yet inevitable—but pick up his gauntlet and it's a pretty good start.

Baby Boomers in the West have had enormous impact, driving change and transformation across the Western world; Iran's new up-and-coming youth may well prove as significant and influential, not only for their society but for the entire region. It seems possible that Iran, which a quarter of a century ago introduced a bemused world to radical Islam, may yet surprise the world all over again.