K N Pandita
knp627@gmail.com
A report from a knowledgeable source says that more than 2,000 Iranian protestors, mostly the youth, have been killed in the ongoing anti-regime protests, and almost 12,000 demonstrators have been rounded up.
Anti-regime demonstrations have spread to almost all the 31 provinces of the country. Reportedly, no fewer than a hundred mosques have been vandalised. In the holy city of Mashhad, some mosques have been set ablaze, and many clerics are reported to have left the city for a safer but unknown place. The shopkeepers in the main market of Tehran have pulled down the shutters of their shops, and all business has come to a standstill.
The 86-year-old Supreme religious leader repeatedly says that the agitation is urged on jointly by the US and Israel. He repeats that if the US attacks Iran with the intention of changing the regime, Iran will react by attacking American interests all over the globe. The two sides are exchanging threats in a heightened tone. The Iranian theocracy has to project an enemy to neutralise the fervour of protesters. The US and Israel come in handy.
President Trump has repeated his warning that the US will strike if the theocratic regime in Tehran deploys its army to shoot the protesters. The shooting in Tehran and other towns in Iran has been going on since January 5, and if the grapevine is to be believed, more people have been killed in Iran in just two or three days than the numbers killed in the Ukraine war in 2 years, which is computed at 24,000.
Trump’s threats appear hollow and may even prove counterproductive. During its tenure of nearly four and a half decades, the theocratic regime has succeeded in profiling the US as Iran’s number one enemy (the “Great Satan” ) among ordinary Iranians. Trump needs to understand that Iran is not Venezuela. Ancient civilizations have a personality. Ali Khamenei cannot be taken to Washington in handcuffs.
Amusingly, a White House Press staffer says that Iran is sending messages to White House which are different from what they say on social media. Observers suspect talks behind the curtain are going on between Tehran and Washington.
At the same time, the regime could muster strength and collect a crowd of about a hundred thousand people in Tehran to raise slogans in its support. The regime quickly hyped the news. If it is true, then Iran is heading towards a civil war because, owing to the non-availability of a single channelising force among the protesters, the regime can drag on the fight back.
Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince, based in the West, has issued a couple of directives to the masses of Iranian people asking them to pour out on the streets in millions by way of a big show against the theocratic regime. Should he have chosen a more subtle and diplomatic stance in reaching the protesting masses or not is what history will tell him. But to presume him the showpiece in the ongoing turmoil is not yet substantiated by the ground situation.
The British press has been taking a very cautious note of the situation unfolding in Iran. So far, there is nothing in the British media that reflects its support for a democratic, non-religious movement. The Western press has been highlighting the collapsing economy as the only reason for a huge stir among the people of Iran. The near-collapsed economy is a reality, but neither the real nor the only cause of an agitation of huge magnitude against the regime.
The reality about Iran is that although it has done much service to embellish Islam, in cultural terms, its people never became truly Islamic. Iranians usually think highly of their pre-Islamic civilisation and traditions. In other words, the civilisation of the Arabs could not make real space or accommodation in the cultural periscope of the people of Aryan stock. This is true not only of Iran but also of the entire belt of the Asian lands that had become home to the Aryan race after its dislocation from the vast Steppes of Central Asia, to which Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and vast segments of the sub-Himalayan or North Indian region should also be added.
The history of Iran (to be precise, of Khorasan), Afghanistan, Northern India, the sub-Himalayan viz., Karakorum (literally meaning the lands to the East of Iran), Hindu Kush and Badakhshan regions, all have often revolted against the domination of Arab civilisation. Their resentment has been active as well as passive, depending on the ground situation. In Iran, revolts against Arab domination began from very early times. Most of these revolts were suppressed by the regimes using muscle power and support from local petty satraps.
On an ideological level, the confrontation between liberals and conservatives has a long history, beginning in early times and running down to the present day. From the very beginning of the Caliphate, Islam was treated as a dichotomy, which took the shape of ‘good Musulman and bad Musulman’ in our times.
The priestly class has always been influential in Iranian society. They have inherited the influence and not won it through their merit. The Shia religious hierarchy is close to the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy that had been in vogue in Iran for nearly four hundred years prior to the advent of Arabian culture. The mullahs or the mujtahids of the Shia clerical order are not entirely different from the Mobids and Dasturs of pre-Islamic Sassanian times in their socio-cultural construct. The headgear (dastar) is the same, the aba and qaba (gown and overall wear) are the same; the longish beard is the same, the irksome conservatism is the same, and the sense of racial superiority is not the same but highly sensitised. Nearly eleven centuries ago, the great Iranian epic poet Ferdowsi eulogised the Iranian race in his monumental work Shah Nameh as this:
Ze sheer o shotur khurdan o susmar
Arab ra bajaye rasidast kar
Kih taj-e kayan ra kunand arzu
Tofu bar to aye charkha garden tofu
Translation
By drinking the milk of a camel and eating the lizard
The Arabs have taken up their adventure to a stage
Where they aspire to the crown of the Kai royals (of Iran)
Shame on you, oh the rotating cosmos, shame on you.
However, this notwithstanding, Iranians embellished Islamic architecture, particularly the mosque construction, in place of fireplaces (atash kadeh), graveyards in place of morgues atop mountains called dakhmeh, namaz in place of (zamzameh) and Allah in place of Avestic Khotay (Khuda). Iran circumvented what Arab civilisation prohibited: they introduced dancing to the followers of a Sufi cult; they circumvented painting by embellishing the gateways of the mosques and seminaries; they introduced the great teachings of Greek philosophers, especially logic, as the key to all knowledge, which the Arabs detested.
The Iranian clergy have usually been at the forefront of supporting their cultural traditions against Arab domination. After performing their role successfully, they generally withdrew to their sanctuary (marj’a ) and curtailed their political role, whatever it was.
The revolution brought by Ayatollah Khomeini was significantly different because, after ousting the monarch in 1979, the Iranian ecclesiastical order grabbed power from the hands of the leftists who had actually spearheaded the anti-monarchy movement earlier under Mosaddegh, wearing the mask of nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry. The then Soviet regime strongly supported the Jibheh-e Milli and Tudeh upheavals. Monarchy was restored in 1953 through American instrumentality. The hatred and deep-seated animosity against the Americans, orchestrated by Khomeini and his political and ideological successors, was actually rooted in the CIA’s active intervention and restoration of the monarchy in 1953.
The clergy elbowed out the Leftist elements in the post-1953 movement, and they took the driver’s seat. The transfer of power was completed with the ascendency of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Feeling elated at the heroic victory of ousting the monarchy without bloodshed, the theocratic regime in Iran, totally inexperienced in statecraft, gradually pandered to the Islamization of Iran, the first step of which was to suppress the rights and freedom of Iranian women. Radicalisation of the freedom-loving Iranian nation was contrary to the age-old ethos of freedom. The theocratic regime entered even the smallest aspect of social life and dovetailed it to what it decreed as pure and impure.
Derailed by acute hatred and animosity for the state and the people of Israel, the theocratic state of Islamic Iran began its search for a nuclear facility to decimate Israel and thus record great success for the Islamic ummah. This was happening at a time when many Arab states, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and some West Asian states were thinking of mending fences with Israel.
Oppression and suppression unleashed by the theocratic regime against those defying the imposition of extreme conservatism earned the regime the ire and opposition of various segments of Iranian society. The Ayatollahs learnt nothing from the 2022 agitation by the women of Iran, which consumed nearly 500 young females.
In the ongoing protests, thousands of young Iranians have been massacred in cold blood. The theocratic regime is blind to the consequences of its fall on the Islamic ummah, a fall which is bound to happen. The ouster of the theocratic regime in Iran will have consequences for Muslims all over the world and force them to bring about big socio-political changes that will transform the entire complexion of Islam ever since its rise fifteen centuries ago in Saudi Arabia.
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