Iranians are not proud of Islam
by Jahanshah Rashidian
Iran aside, all Middle Eastern countries might freely choose Islamic states. The choice is due to an identity pride in their people's collective conscience. It is formed by emotion, tradition and history, not rationality. Rationality is a new paradigm shift in the Islamic world now initiated by Iranians.
Islam to Arab Middle East is melt with their history, a history of Caliphate and a period of "Golden Ages" of Islam, what led to military Muslim conquerors in long wars of “Jihad”, holly wars, against the “non-Muslim” world. The history of Arab and Sunnite Muslims has been proudly associated with this “Golden Ages” of Islam.
Reinforced by accumulated defeats during the Crusades and finally collapse of the “Golden Ages”, the Arab / Sunnite Muslims have the impression of being looked down by "non Muslims”, especially during the period of British / French colonisation -- a second Crusade of non-Muslims! The broken pride of Muslims is followed by the inception of a Jewish sate in 1948 in the “holy lands” of Muslims.
This Islamic identity which has been so mechanically imposed or patched up with the Arab / Sunnite world plays after all an identity formation for them and once being violated by “non-Muslims”, the reaction reaches nationalism coloured by a pan-Islamism. The reactions like Taliban’s anti-American, Hamas and Hezbollah anti-Semite character formations and are the recent examples of the pan-Islamic transformation.
Islamism in the ME is highlighted by the "non Muslim" invasion of the "holy" territories of "Muslim" Palestine -- a "third Crusade" of western arrogance by propping Israel potential up to occupy "Muslim" territories. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by Bush administration radicalised the ends. Under such circumstances, Islam has created an emotion of self-identity-defence which is expressed through an Islamic front of unity with its jihadist impetus endorsed by all its traditional and historical mentioned factors--such a right-wing and Islamic front has nothing to share with the leftist anti-imperialism.
However, in Iran we have the opposite factors, factors not in the favour of an Islamic identity, but even a disgrace to such an identity pride. The reasons are many, among which: We have the plague of the 33-year anti-Iranian Islamic regime, considered by most Iranians as a force of occupier. It is a reminder of the 7th. invasion of Muslim Jihadists who ravaged, killed, enslaved, destroyed and humiliated Iranians during two centuries of their occupation. Then we had the 16-17th century Safavid Dynasty that brutally imposed the Shiite sect on Iran by shedding blood of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Then we had the dark period of Ghajar Dynasty in 18-19th century by Shiitising Iran with all hysterical mourning rituals of Shiite Islam.
So, with all these negative and sorrowful experiences of Islam in Iran, Iranians are not proud of Islam, thanks to the Mullahs’ regime are now getting awareness to how Islam damaged and is damaging their country. This is the reason Iranians would never freely choose an Islamic state if there were such a choice. In this perspective, the Islamic regime in Iran seems to be the last bastion of leftovers of the Islamic invasion of Muslims in the 7th. Century and once collapsed will never be reset.
Iranians are the first nation in the Middle East who reached to this revolutionary awareness that Islamic values within an Islamic state do not lead to any future for freedom, independence and democracy because it categorically denies all of them. An Islamic state does not solve the future problems in our today's world at all, but will rather be used as populist trampoline for the corrupt, reactionary bunch of Mullahs or Islamists to create governments even with the help of "non Muslim" West, as it is the case of Wahhabites, Pakestani Islamist Generals, the US-backed Shiite government in Iraq, Hamed Karzai in Afghanistan, and maybe a faction of the Islamic regime called “Green Movement” as a government alternative to Hardliners in Tehran.
Nevertheless, Iran aside, thanks to imperialistic policy of the West and Zionistic territorial ambitions, accompanied with lack of democracy and high education, Islamisation of the region is occurring at a faster speed than its "democratisation". The average peoples in the ME are more gravitating towards Mullah’s regime while Iranians rebut them. For them, the brutal Mullahs and clown Ahmadinejad are celebrated as the “anti-Western” heroes who stand up to Western injustice!
I do not believe such a western-phobia helps us to push back imperialistic interests of the West. Such a baseless phobia is orchestrated by radical Muslims and their orthodox leftist chorister and does not lead to independence, democracy, welfare, and progress of people, but rather is an ideological tool of extremists to cook up extremist regimes like Mullahs’ regime in the region. Such extremist states sooner or later will be economically new dependent client states to the one or another foreign key power.
A sane state is a servant of its people, a friend of humanity, and is based on the universally recognised values of democracy. Only such a sate can be independent because it is a free and conscious choice of its people and less likely would bargain over the national interests with the key powers. Such a regime will be a part of the international community with no ideological love or pathological hate towards any country.
Iranian people today distance themselves from such an ideological sate, namely from anti-western phobia by the fact that they share many traits of western values in their life, values which are banned by the Islamic regime. Iranians look for western values of secularism and democracy despite of having 1400 years of despotic Islam behind them.
The trend of such a westernisation is not solely due to a spontaneous or conscious reaction to the disliked Mullahs’ regime, but long time before the inception of this regime, Iranian middle class has followed in majority a secular and western way of life. Sometimes confused between traditionalism and modernism or melt with a moderate Islam, Iranians have been more Iranians than Muslims and this is the core of discrepancy between the Islamic regime and an increasing majority of Iranians. This is a characteristic of Iranians who differentiate them from Arab /Sunnite Muslims and it is due to the fact that Islam, contrary to most Arabs / Sunnite Muslims, has never been an identity pride for Iranians. In the depth of collective consciousness of Iranians Muslims or non-Muslims alike, Islam is regarded as an imposed doctrine of non-Iranians.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150293456586664