Backwashed Ideals

We went to see family we hadn't seen in a decade and seventy-five percent of the night was spent listening to old men yelling about old ideals.

The theme of the night was mislabeling. What was titled a debate was really two men either blindly attacking each other (Why didn't YOU become a martyr in the Iraq-Iran War?) or passing the logical reasoning exit and moving straight towards the reiteration of contrived ideas. (The Ayatollahs are FASCIST, DICTATORS, PUPPETS OF PINOCHET, THIS ISLAM IS CORRUPT!)

The "debate" was between a fundamentalist Muslim and a non-religious expatriate. But ninety-percent of the party had left the room by the end of the slaughterfest, and no conclusion was reached.

I too am guilty of getting sucked into the debate, and the one question that had the fundamentalist at a loss for words was the question of whether Iran is or isn't a democracy?

The man brought up statistics about the extraordinary amount of people who had voted in the elections, and stated that Khomeini had been chosen by the people, the law had been chosen by the people, the presidents had been chosen by the people, but democracy is more than a high voter percentage, it's also about a variegated spectrum of candidates.

Two hundred million people can vote on the following: A male Shi'a, a male Shi'a, a male Shi'a, a male Shi'a or a male Shi'a. I asked the man once again if Iran's a democracy and he refused to say yes. I asked him if I could be president if I was Baha'i, the answer was No, a Jew, the answer was No, a woman, the answer was No, a Sunni, the answer was No.

But the definition of democracy that he knew stated that Iran was, in fact, a democracy.

After that debate went unresolved my cousin asked a hypothetical question: If a referendum was given Friday for the will of the people to change the law, would the law remain the same?

The man said Yes, the people have voted on the law.

But here's where America can be praised: the ability for change.


Iran's constitution has been written in such a way that the ideals of the generation that wrote it are preserved, no matter what the people of this age want or don't want.


Iran is a country stagnating in a Puritan quagmire, and the muck that has stopped the people from moving is fear. No matter how difficult the process western nations allow for change through diplomacy, change in Iran is made through blood shed. (See Islamic Revolution in Iran.)


Yesterday I was walking down the street and my cousin had to walk in front of me so that the logo on my t-shirt wouldn't be seen by the police. If I follow the steps of the greatest advocates of liberalism (Thorough, King, Gandhi) and achieve change by transgressing the law, I could possibly find myself with a noose around my neck, or, what is more likely, I would find myself being whipped.

Iran's system of government is a democratic dictatorship. If a Shi'a wants to survive as a government official in Iran, in order to be a success he must, or will, adhere to the fundamentalist Shi'a values, which means, though appearances change, ideas don't. One can say that a single person hasn't been in power since the Islamic Revolution and that single person doesn't have the power, but each official and the government body he is a part of is governed by the same isolated revolution of ideas, and for the sake of survival in the political game the ideas are backwashed into society.