Paper, Participation, Politics

79/89/09 by SLAVS & TATARS

BUSY PRESENTS BEGET BUSY HISTORIES

It is strangely refreshing to see that nobody “knows” anymore. The critical thinking previously reserved for epistemologists has been ushered in healthy doses into the domain of common sense. Where once intellectuals, nay-sayers, and outsiders alone celebrated the limits of human knowledge, today prime ministers, merchants, and manual laborers stand together amidst the fog of the present. To better understand the world around us, we decided to rip a page from the anti-modernist playbook, plowing forward by looking backwards to two key dates of the recent past – 1979 and 1989 – in the hopes of coming to terms with 2009.

A ROUGH BUT WELCOME SWING AT STABILITY

2009 has already refuted the Anglo-American model of capitalism. 1989 tore down the Wall and sedated Communism. 1979, though, provided a model of political Islamism that offers a counter-narrative to the Atlanticist understanding of the Middle East and Eurasia at large. The ripple effect set off by the Iranian Revolution is second only to that of the Russian Revolution in the 20th century. Like its Russian precedent, the events of 1979 in Tehran were based on an anti-imperialist ideology (instead of capitalist, read Western) which was subsequently exported beyond its borders. If Ceausescu, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh are the bastard children of Lenin, then the political impacts of such a diverse range of figures as Sheikh Yassin (of Hamas), Hassan Nasrallah (of Hezbollah) or Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (of Iraq) owe a great deal to the events of Tehran 1979.

Perhaps the last true modernist revolution, the Iranian Revolution resulted in massive and profound changes within a very short period of time. On New Year’s Eve 1977 in Tehran, President Carter made a toast to the Shah of Iran:

“Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.”

Within a two-year span, the Shah would flee the country, Khomeini would return from exile in Neufchâtel, outside Paris, the Iran hostage crisis would bring down the Carter administration, and the first Muslim theocracy in more than 1,000 years would come into existence.

THE MARCH OF THE IMMATERIAL

With some inadvertent help from the Bush administration (who removed two of Iran’s neighboring enemies, the Taliban to the east and Saddam to the west), Iran has been able to punch at or above its weight in a world of opponents whose boxing gloves aren’t getting any softer. And in the tradition of that very administration, it may be the only country in the Middle East to play such a significant role in the affairs of so many neighbors: Syria and Lebanon via Hezbollah, Palestine via Hamas, Afghanistan via the Karzai government, and Iraq with backing for the Shi’as. Still, to combine a theocracy with a republic – as the Islamic Republic of Iran does – is to collide two sufficiently complex notions: the mysticism of the rule of god (in a theocracy) comes crashing against the material concerns of the rule of man (in a republic). It is, after all, hard enough to deliver results on a material utopia without trying to advance a metaphysical one as well. Yet that is what the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted, especially in its early days: a politico-mystical salvation.

Today, 30 years later, as Iran prepares its presidential election, it is not only the country’s direction that is at stake but also the future of Islam’s relation with modernity at large. Just as the events of 1979 brought the religion out of seminaries and onto front pages of newspapers and prime-time programs across the Western world, Iran can today play a pivotal role less in redeeming the radicalism of Islam but rather in reinventing its progressive potential.