 The coming individualism
Iran's irreversibly metamorphic process towards democracy
See French
text
By Reza Zia-Ebrahimi
May 1, 2002
The Iranian
In the current political debate in Iran and in the Iranian exiled milieu, democracy
(its eventuality and its opportunity) has become a central theme and a stumbling
block. The main issue is to know if a democracy is possible in Iran, by taking into
consideration the current value systems of the country, particularly Islam and its
final manifestation, political Islam. Thus, it would be advisable, in this reflection,
to consider Islam apart from its purely theological definition, and to do justice
to its social functionality, which is that of a transporter of moral values.
Since its advent, Islam, for the societies that adopted it, has been more than a
religion. In the very body of its Holy Scripture, the Koran, although sometimes equivocal,
Islam contains social norms that have a tendency to regulate all aspects of the believers'
lives. It regulates relations that in the Weststern Judeo-Christian tradition and
elsewhere, are ruled by civil law: birth, marriage, marriage settlement, successions,
and etc. This regency of human relations has an eminently collective pole, which
is placed in opposition to an individual one.
By comparison, the Christian message, regardless of its institutionalization through
Papacy and the Church, addresses only the believer and him alone. It addresses the
individual. In the Western Christian world, this bilateral relation between the individual
and the divine, which is more or less latent depending on the historical periods,
has resulted in individualism which is the milestone of democratic concept.
 On the other hand Islam as a vehicle of moral values
through the normative ascendancy that it practices on the believers' collective life,
has ipso facto assigned a subordinate rank to individual and his/her moral and ethical
values. By the evolvement of collectivity into an indisputably supreme value and
its prevailing domain over the one of the individual's, there is not much place left
for democracy which is by definition the reign of added individualities and the recognition
of the individual's rights as an independent agent, not a passive subject of Power.
In such conditions, one can better understand why democracy, not as an organization
of public power (called "Republican", by contrast to a military regime
for instance), but as a moral expression of the individual and his/her rights, has
so far had such pitifully miniscule progression in Muslim countries. Some of these
countries pretend being democratic (in particular Turkey or even Lebanon), but an
analysis of the exertion of power and the pre-determination of individual position
in these countries simply demonstrates that they are not democratic.
What about Iran? Is Iran distinguished from its fellow Muslim countries in regards
to its readiness for democracy?
It seems advisable to give a positive answer. The reason is that Iran has experienced
what no other Muslim country has experienced in the twentieth century, namely two
decades of political Islam coupled with genuine constitutionalism and let's say a
"secular" space (Olivier Roy) where the political game can take place.
This game implies debates, inquiries and even some times reforms. Within it lies
the main originality of the Iranian experience in relation to Afghanistan and even
Sudan, which have also experienced so-called Islamic regimes (even though I can't
bring myself to place the label of Islam on the atrocities committed by the Taliban).
These regimes; however, were either short-lived and domineered by force (in the case
of Afghanistan) or devoid of a genuine political debate at a high scale (in the case
of Sudan).
 By having Islam confronted by the terrestrial and concrete
sphere of public life (and consequently by making it open to criticism), the Iranian
Revolution has made possible a debate on religion, its values, and its relations
with society. These relations have enormously evolved and I would even say progressed
in these last twenty years, whereas this progression would have previously taken
centuries.
The result of questioning Faith through criticism of the political regime has brought
about grosso modo two distinctive reactions in the masses, besides political
Islamism, which today clearly comprises the minority. On the one hand a certain fringe
of the society (wrongly or justly, not rendering a place for discussion here) has
dissociated from the religious phenomena -- so much so that an important part of
Iranian youth nowadays consider themselves "agnostic" nay "atheist".
On the other hand, another fringe of the population, more prominent in my mind, has
dissociated from religion as a normative vector, an "Ideology" which tends
toward regulating private lives of individuals and in the extreme case of Iran, it
even takes power and reigns as the absolute master through all classical mechanisms
of the State.
Therefore, there is a certain dissociation of Iranian masses, or at least those who
are active in this debate, or generally of political conscience, from the normative
function of religion being precisely the one that denies the individual the benefits
of collectivity. The mass discourse endeavors to do justice to an intrinsically spiritual
religion that would concern only the believer.
Consequently, as I see it, the two ideations that we just briefly touched upon (rejection
of religion or an approach with a more esoteric, personal, and eo ipso more
individualistic religion) can be legitimately considered as the foundation which
will in a hardly assessable future build a democratic society where individuality
is able to express, flourish, and blossom.
 At this stage, Iran benefits from a genuine political
readiness for the coming of a democracy. This democracy, however, would have followed
a course and a politico-philosophical evolution completely different from those of
the Christian West.
Moreover since 1997 and the launch of the regime's "Reformist Movement"
(or in accordance with Pr. Jalili "the Reformist Illusion", it maybe premature
to come to any conclusion yet), the Iranian people and in particular its youth have
proven through the use of democratic instruments such as elections, the press, and
pacific gatherings, that Iran has launched an irreversibly metamorphic and regenerative
process in this sense.
This vast social movement is backed by a new intellectual elite rightly named "post-Islamist"
(the leading figure of which is the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush). The social magnitude
of this democratization movement is such that one can hardly imagine anything but
the establishment of a democracy.
Paradoxically, one of the greatest fruits of the 1979 Revolution was the provocation
of debates on political Islam and consequently Islam's innate harboring of moral
values that deny individualism. It seems progressive democratization is on the inevitable
historical path of Iran and its civilization.
I would like to thank my friend Alexander Theocharides for having indirectly contributed
to this article. See French
text.
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