[R-G] Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "A Blind Eye to Iran's Realities"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/arshin_adibmoghaddam/2008/01/a_blind_eye_to_irans_realities.html>
A blind eye to Iran's realities
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

January 23, 2008 9:00 PM

Fariba Amini's Comment is Free article [LINK:
<http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/fariba_amini/2008/01/a_blind_eye_to_barbarism.html>]
published on January 13 2008 provided a particularly revealing example
of the "new anti-Iranianism" [LINK:
<http://english.safe-democracy.org/2007/10/25/the-new-anti-iranianism/>]
prevalent among many activists and "analysts" with scant knowledge
about the realities of contemporary Iran. By sweeping everything that
is happening within the country under the carpet (Persian, I would
think), we are not only discriminating against the whole range of
NGOs, women's rights activists, intellectuals, oppositional clerics
who are active within Iran's civil society, we are also disregarding
basic facts about the Islamic Republic.

According to the indicators cited in the World Bank's 2007 report
[LINK: <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGEP2007/Resources/MNA_Regional_Prospects.pdf>]
[PDF] on economic development and prospects in the Middle East and
North Africa, for instance, women's participation in economic affairs
increased from 33% in 2001 to 41% in 2006. In addition, the number of
female graduates starting a career has risen by 10% every year between
2000 and 2005. Could it be that the people with a "gloomy" demeanour
that Amini describes failed their entrance exams for university?

If emphasis about what is going wrong in Iran is not balanced with
achievements of society vis-à-vis the state, the argument becomes
mono-causal, and thus at best polemical: because Iran is ruled by a
clerical elite, there is no civil society; because the state espouses
an Islamic ideology, there can't be freedom; because the revolution
created new frictions and injustices, it must be discarded as
"barbaric".

How many articles in the liberal press did we read about the success
of female candidates in the municipal elections of 2007? Out of 264
seats available on councils in provincial capitals, 44 went to women
[LINK: <http://irannewsdaily.com/view_news.asp?id=143697>]. There were
majority votes for female candidates in Shiraz, Hamadan, Qazvin,
Ardebil and Arak. In the former two cities, female candidates who are
still in their twenties polled the most votes.

There is no suggestion here that Iran has reached the status of a
mature democracy, but there is more going on in the country than the
author's impressions of the parks and places in north Tehran reveal.

Distorting facts and resorting to fiction about the painful
democratisation process in Iran may open up illustrative career paths
these days, but serious analysts are obliged to separate facts from
fictions, especially when it comes to such contentious and complex
issues such as contemporary Iran. We all know where one-sided analyses
about non-western societies can lead us. A blind eye to the realities
in Iran can easily lead to the knock out of the country.

--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>