June 18, 2009
Don’t Be Afraid, We are Many
Hoshang Asadi
“Young patriots, clear your teardrops. We are the winners of the Khordad (June) coup. I had written that we are many. We will again organize ourselves. We are going to a tough fight.”
It was the morning of the coup. The June 12th coup. The sky of Iran was dark; eyes full of teardrops. Streets gradually filled up. Then they overflowed. They rushed to squares. Their discipline flowed from their awareness, their zeal from their hearts; their organization from the Internet, all to confront the coup. The response of the coup perpetrators was insults. They called us “hooligans”, while we were slaughtered by their knife-rattling vigilantes in the streets, as blood covered our faces.
Mousavi, our elected president did not abandon us. At least not till now. We remember that in his campaigns he had said: “I come from the town of Khiabani [a legendary figure in the Constitutional revolution that took place between 1905 and 1911] … ”
We remembered Khiabani who used to say, “Tabriz wants sovereignty to lie in the hands of people. Across Iran. Now we make this request through our simple words. If Tehran rejects this, we shall rebuild Iran with radical principles. We say that democracy must reign over all Iran. Residents of provinces and the countryside must have the ability to freely cast their vote. To defend this right, death is the last stop. And we prefer death to this shameful life,” words that remind one of Patrick Henry who said “give me death or give me liberty”, more than a century earlier.
And now, two sides of old and new stand across the same field. One defines the orders of the coup while the other repeats the words of Khiabani, and wears a green scarf.
We had written that the “individual” had replaced “revolutionary cells” and that the “theology center” had become political which for many years were the rock beds of revolutionary principles to change society. And it is precisely on the shoulders of these individuals that civil society is built when he attains his rights.”
Today, this individual and citizen is in the streets. He does not follow the orders of any organization, not does he listen to any ideology. He is there to defend his civil rights. His right to choose, his right to have an opinion, his right to have a newspaper and civil institutions. His right to choose his job, clothes, to breathe, etc. These individual and personal rights exist in civil society and have become a common goal for the dignity of Iran.
First. June 15, 2009. Civil society is on the scene in Iran with millions of individuals. If the birth of an “individual” is the first characteristic of this “civil movement”, it also carries other features.
Second. The absence of the clergy in genera.. Iran’s contemporary clergy from the tobacco revolt of 1891 on has been presented in all of the country’s main political events, except those related to the leftist movement, and has played a positive or a negative role in them.
The importance of this lies in the fusion of religion and politics which is a cardinal cause of the creation of the civil society.
A historic fact about the current situation is that two of its leading clerics, Mohammad Khatami and Mehdi Karroubi have not been the leaders as much as parts of the huge gathering. Mehdi Karroubi had discarded his clerical robe and had chosen to wear black attire. Perhaps he himself did not realize that his historic action would turn into the symbol of courage and honesty in the fundamental change for Iranian society.
Third. The repeat of a historic rule. In human history and society, “new” always arises from “inside” the old. It begins with criticism of the old, then it rejects it, and finally gives way to the new through the mixture of the thesis and anti-thesis. It is still too early to conclude that the new has overcome the old. The new has only been born, and the old has not yet died. History has only delivered the new child. The child can not be destroyed any longer; it is here to stay.
Iranian society must spend its energy strengthening the body of its civil society. The creation of such institutions from the above has no utility. In the current historic period, civil institutions must strengthen themselves and expand into all kinds.
Fourth. Action instead of passivity. The coup and counter-coup of June 12 is the product of “presence.”
This victory has come about strictly because of the presence and participation of the masses. If we had stayed away, the Shiite Taliban who holds power in their hands, would have implemented the elections with their minority, and Ahmadinejad would have been “elected legally”. Those who had not voted would have held their groups responsible for staying away and we would have been happy that we had dented the legitimacy of the regime by staying away from the elections. But participation and presence actually accomplished this. It forced the regime to stage a coup. Their action led to people’s reaction. The system resorted to violence to impose the coup. The result of this battle became the headline of world news. People still did not go home. Their continued presence and the persistence of their elected president have taken the movement into a new phase. America and Europe have now questioned the validity of the election. All of these achievements are the results of participation and presence in the election.