[R-G] Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, "Independence Is a Hard-earned Reality in Iran"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is by far the most attractive exponent of what
the bulk of rank-and-file Green Movement protesters stand for.  There
are types of pro-Green commentators, both Iranian and non-Iranian, who
think that the Green Movement is (or at least can be) an incipient
movement toward secular liberal democracy (e.g., Saeed Rahnema) or
social (or even socialist) revolution (e.g., Reza Fiyouzat), but
reading and listening to what Green leaders and rank-and-filers are
writing and saying, the movement is by and large what Adib-Moghaddam
says it is.  Furthermore, it is most probable that Adib-Moghaddam's
confidence in Iran's independence is warranted, though leftists in the
West, given our position in the division of labor, must be vigilant in
counteracting all attempts by imperialists, which are real, to exploit
the movement. -- Yoshie

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aam280709.html>
Independence Is a Hard-earned Reality in Iran
by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Iranians are writing their history.  The pen of the revolutionaries of
the 1970s has been supplemented by the keyboard of a new generation.
Ayatollah Khomeini's supporters perfected clandestine pamphleteering
and the distribution of audio cassettes to subvert the regime of the
shah; today's activists use Facebook and Twitter to get their message
across.  This is not a movement for western "modernity"; this is not a
battle at the end of which Iran will be either pro-western or
anti-western.  This is a movement that is realising the original
utopia of the revolution in 1979: independence, freedom, Islamic
Republic.

Indeed, out of these three emotive ideas, the first (independence) and
the third (Islamic Republic) have been repeatedly linked in the
official discourse of successive Iranian governments: "the Islamic
Republic is independent" has not only been the standard response of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the questions of inquisitive foreign
journalists, but one of the main ideological narratives after the
revolution in 1979.  It is ironic that Ahmadinejad and his nefarious
backers allege that the mass movement against their electoral coup de
force has been inspired by foreign agents, organised by the BBC, CNN,
or the British embassy in Tehran.

What makes the current protests historic is the fact that "the west"
isn't even an issue.  The demonstrators do not really care what Gordon
Brown, Barack Obama or others think.  They start from a firm belief in
the independence of Iran which has been achieved after the Islamic
revolution in 1979.  Of course, I am not suggesting that governments
are not plotting and scheming to fulfil their destructive agendas.
The curse of oil has brought the country that unwanted attention.
What I am saying is that since the revolution in 1979 Iranians have
written their own narrative.  Independence is a hard-earned reality in
Iran, one that the post-revolutionary generation has paid for dearly.
Does the establishment really want to suggest that large swaths of
Iranian society are easily manipulated by foreign agents?  This goes
against what they have propagated for three decades now.

It is another irony of this historical conjuncture in Iran that some
in Britain and beyond seem to reiterate the myth that Iranians are
risking life and limb in order to jump on the western bandwagon
("modernity"), to become less "Muslim" (irrational), whiter, a bit
more like us.

Consider the recent article by Martin Amis.  It is not only that Amis
alleges it was not Saddam Hussein who actually started the Iran-Iraq
war, but Ayatollah Khomeini (a vulgar example of historical
revisionism).  It is not only that he implies that Iran would attack
Bahrain and that equipped "with weapons of fission or fusion"
Ayatollah Khamenei "may delegate first use to Hezbollah, or to the
Call of Islam, or to the Legion of the Pure".

The whole article is a patronising example of contemporary
Eurocentrism.  Dissect it and you will find that terms such as
Khomeini, Islamic, Shia, Mahdi are garnished by adjectives such as
insane, militant, senescent, delusional or laughable.  Read all of
this against Amis's prescription, expressed in July 2008, that Muslims
should "suffer until they get their house in order", that they should
be banned from travelling, deported, and strip-searched, and you will
discern that the Iran he envisages is very different from the one we
are fighting for.  In the bifurcated world-view Amis seems to believe
in, Islam is retroactive, archaic, destructive and inherently
anti-western.  Everything must be rescued from it, including the
concept of Iran -- which is why Amis seems to think that most Iranians
must have stopped being Muslim, since they are now protesting for
their rights in such a progressive manner.  He should note that the
protesters are shouting Allah-u-Akbar (God is great) and that the
colour green is also the colour associated with Islam.  To these
Iranians, there is a truly emancipatory and libertarian message hidden
beneath the power-political perversion of their religion.  Certainly,
they are not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as Amis
seems to hope.

Both Amis and Ahmadinejad are wrong.  They should listen to the
slogans of the protesters, to their rap, their melodic utterance of
dissatisfaction with a country that they feel a part of and that they
have helped to build up.  This is the first mass movement in
contemporary Iranian history that is entirely future-oriented; it is
thoroughly positive, idealist, vigorous and utopian in the empowering
sense of the term.  All major upheavals in the recent history of the
country, the so-called Tobacco Revolt in 1891 against the concession
of exclusive tobacco rights in favour of a British citizen, the
constitutional revolution in 1906-1907, the nationalisation of the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company under the premiership of Mohammad Mossadegh
between 1951 and 1953 and the Islamic revolution itself were very much
anti-colonial struggles: necessary signposts in Iran's path towards
independence.  Today, the demonstrators indulge in the luxury that was
bestowed upon them by previous generations.  They live in a
politically independent country -- which is why they can afford to
express an entirely future-oriented vision in the first place.  They
are the visionaries of Iran, not the establishment, not privileged
opinion makers in Europe or North America, not us.

By attributing domestic dissent to the interference of sinister
foreign powers, Iran's political independence, which has been achieved
through blood and sweat, is seriously undermined.  Any suggestion that
domestic politics in the country can be determined by external forces
is a slap in the face of all of those who have fought and died for the
progress and independence of the country, including those hundreds of
thousands killed in the trenches of the Iran-Iraq war that Ahmadinejad
and his backers purport to speak for.  This is one of the many
tragedies that he and his institutional supporters are perpetuating.
At this very moment they are being tried by the post-Islamist
generation of the country; stay tuned, their verdict will be executed
soon.

Born in Istanbul and educated at the University of Hamburg, American
Universtiy (Washington DC), and Cambridge, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
lectures on politics and international relations at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.  The author
of Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic
(Hurst/ Columbia University Press, 2007/2008) and The International
Politics of the Persian Gulf (Routledge, 2006), he was the first
Jarvis Doctorow Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.  He
was also elected Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge European Trust
Society at the University of Cambridge.  His latest publication Iran
in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic is now
available for worldwide distribution from Hurst & Co., Amazon.com, and
Columbia University Press.  This article was first published by the
Guardian on 28 July 2009; it is reproduced here for educational
purposes.