Cell Phones vs. Chadors in Tehran

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 to terms which miss the real issues that are in play and likely to affect us all. Not to mention that nobody really knows what will come out the other end of this ongoing struggle, whichever side emerges victorious.

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 that most Americans hold dear.

In fact, among the things that are unfolding here is a struggle between three followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini about who will wear the mantle of his power: Khameini, Khatami, and Rafsanjani. 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.

Such change might bring a new level of openness to Iranian culture and politics, but the fact that this movement is about allowing every vote to count should not be confused with it bringing the kind of civil society in which most of us believe. Cell phones and Chadors are far more compatible than many people understand.

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.

The underlying premise of that misguided belief is that religious fundamentalists are backward idiots, living in a previous century, who either could not know how to exploit such technology, or would be threatened by the freedom promised by such technology and therefore avoid using it. Nothing could be more false. Actually there is significant evidence that in many cases, the more conservative the religious group, the more aggressive they are in their use of new technology.

Fundamentalists are not fools, and when we assume that they are, it is we who are foolish. And even though I may not be one, I know that very sophisticated thinking and technological capacity find their place in all fundamentalist communities.

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 lasts only as long as the willingness of the demos, the people, to support the leaders of the movement.

By Brad Hirschfield  |  June 25, 2009; 12:10 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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