I don’t seem to agree with you. A protest movement against reactionary fundamentalism always has the potential to flower into a “progressive” one – even if its character is distinctly amorphous as of now.
Leftists keep making the same mistake again and again – they expect to see a Che or a Chavez standing there mouthing secular, class-based slogans.
It just doesnt work that way. The immediate contradictions need to be analyzed. A repressive Government representing the forces of religious orthodoxy socially and vested inerests economically has to be fought – even if the movement is led led by egregious characters like Mousavi.
Of course I do not agree with Shuddha’s snides against our Leftists siding with Ahmedenijad when he was cornered by US imperialism. The contradiction then was different . It is possible to support and oppose rulers as and when the situation demands.
That is what dialectics is all about (though am aware of Shuddha’s antipathy towards that word (remember his article on Tienaman Square?) .
To clarify, will never extend this logic to supporting AITMC against CPM for the very simple reason that I refuse to consider TMC as more “progressive” than CPM, as recent events have rather conclusively proved much to the embarrassment of Aditya, Mahasweta and their ilk.

If recent public politics in Iran had revealed that an anarchist movement was underway, I might have joined you in your optimism, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem ot be the case.

To be sure, I am not holding a brief for Ahmadinejad or for 1979, but I do believe that the alternative is far from being the antidote to an ‘Islamist regime’. All the mullahs barring Khamenei seem to be backing mousavi – furthermore, rafsanjani (also in the ‘liberal’ camp) wants to strike deals with the Sauds! If we are talking about Islamic extremism, why would a ‘liberal’ minded people align themselves with a regime that doesn’t even pretend to care about civil rights. In Iran, it’s mullahs vs mullahs, except that one group seems to have a stronger israel-america policy.

I don’t know if ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ is an appropriate descriptive category for the iranian regime. To my limited knowledge, the term ‘Islmaic fundamentalism’ was coined by US foreign policy-makers post 1973 (OPEC statemnt) to describe the frontline states at the time. I think issues pertaining to the freedom of press, workers’ rights etc have more to do with state oppression/care/management irrespective of whether the state is ‘secular or not. The kind of state oppression faced by the iranian people isn’t confined to ‘Islamist regimes’ – it’s what you’ll find in ‘secular’ republics as well. For example, the Iranian state massacred the communists after the revolution, but communists have been massacred everywhere – by a ‘secular’ Indonesia, by a ‘secular’ Iraq, by a ‘secular democratic’ US, and a ‘secular democratic’ India as well!

I am not defending a regime that denies its subjects their civil rights, I just don’t think that a real potential revolution has presented itself…not yet.

and yes,

Inquilab Zindabad!

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Your point about a need to be careful with terms like the ‘Muslim World’ is well taken. And I do not by any means wish to underestimate the important differences and distinctions between and within different Islamicate societies, histories and traditions.

However, there are very few places in the world other than Iran where Islamic Fundamentalism has had the good fortune of having access to the myth and glamour of popular and ‘revolutionary’ credentials (a myth that hides the history of violent repression of all other currents in post 1979 Iran, not all of which were secular, or leftist, though many were, or even easily classifiable along the secular-religious spectrum). Hence the immense anxiety that the export of the Iranian variety of Islamism had, even for conservative Muslim rulers, even in non-Shi’ite societies.

I think that with a significant proportion of the Iranian population indicating that it is willing to jettison the shibboleths of the Islamist regime, we are entering a new phase. Even if the uprising in Iran (and it is an uprising no doubt) is defeated this time. The Islamist regime in its current incarnation will never again be able to do a convincing act of ‘representing the will of the Iranian people’. This will rub off a lot of its ‘revolutionary’ shine and ardour. It will begin to be seen as being as sclerotic as the myth of ‘actually existing socialism’ was in the Soviet Union.

It is my wager (and I admit that I may well be proved wrong) that this will have a profound impact on the choices and potentials opened up for new political and social visions in societies where Islam has a substantial presence. Wherever, they may be.

That is all.

best

Shuddha

– ‘muslim world’ and ‘broad-based, class-based, secular democratic politics’ are ambiguous categories that have been invented and re-invented in so many corners of the world that it becomes necessary to really spell out what they mean. I completely understand what you mean when you refer to a history of iran’s presence in the subcontinent. however you seem to turn that on it’s head by seeing it as a potential leader-by-example of the ‘muslim world’ i.e. there seems to be an assumed homogeneity of the ‘muslim world’ and its politics that lurks beneath your argument; even if it is to suggest that Iran is singular in that it is capable of wiping off the stain of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. and frankly – the burqa and hijab issue is both trite and difficult to put down to a ‘regime’ – it’s a lot more complicated than that. In short, by perpetuating these categories, you run the risk of affirming ideas that you seem to have criticised.
This isn’t just a technicality – Iran is often lumped together with the arab-populated countries because of it’s geographical proximity and it’s pivotal political position in the arab countries-Israel-America game. This region is often construed as the ‘muslim world’ although both you and I know that there is no empirical truth in that statement seeing that muslims virtually live everywhere. Furthermore, it almost sounds like you have too much faith in secular democratic politics -if the present government has the basij, the next one (ahmedenijad or not) will have its own.

I think gesturing to the iranianness of subcontinental-culture and politics is important, and as you have remarked – we need to update our awareness of Iran. We need to inform ourselves better of who these ‘workers’ and ‘peasants’ and ‘elite’ are when we refer to them – it almost sounds like we’re using Stalinist categories the way they were used in a context long gone (especially the workers v/s peasants binary that we continue to work with). this is like the whole ‘was there a french revolution’ debate – and your well-taken point about the political spirit in iran gets lost in it.

It isn’t easy deciding how to respond to Darfur, Iran, Myanmar but its sad that we’ve acted no differently than those we have criticized in the past. All the more troubling that there’s been so little of this point of view in the mainstream media.