Since September 16, 2022 and the tragic death of the young Mahsa Amini – arrested by the morality police for a lock of hair, and died after three days in a coma – the indignant and revolted Iranian people have risen again, expressing their total helplessness in the face of an ideological system and an established order that he considers illegitimate.
Posted at 4:00 p.m.
This popular protest is far from being a novelty and is part of a wave of protest movements against the state and against all Islamic constitutional architecture. The particularity of this protest can be understood by its strong female presence, its strong determination, its universal and intergenerational scope, its collective unity and its creative and organized resistance to the authoritarian and totalitarian practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A two-speed society
Iran is endowed with a young and educated population, women and men, who aspire today to a different model of society than that proposed by the Islamic order and who stand up against the politico-religious authority and its anachronistic view of the world.
Since the advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979, part of the Iranian population feels held hostage in a whirlwind of so-called Islamic values, norms and codes of conduct imposed as the unique model to follow. No room is left for debate, negotiation or social and political compromise. The State has thus given itself full powers and the monopoly of morality and legitimate force, by imposing an absolute thought, and this, for 43 years.
After more than four decades, the Iranian people are able to draw up a nuanced and objective balance sheet of the acts and inactions of the state and put on trial the irreversible consequences of an imposed political and religious ideology.
This rupture and this total loss of confidence of society vis-à-vis the state power can be explained by the fact that the latter has never managed to establish a social contract and to fulfill its role as a responsible state. , protective and transparent, guaranteeing the well-being and safety of the entire population.
On the other hand, the systematic response, from the top of power down to the societal base, has been a blind and limitless deployment of direct, physical and violent repression, betting on the institutionalization of fear and terror as a mode of governance, in particular by means of the development of a series of archaic repressive organs, endowed on the other hand with modern means and equipment.
Today, two visions of the world are diametrically opposed: an Iranian society against an Islamic society, a free and plural thought against a single thought, a generation of Enlightenment against the darkness of religious obscurantism, the fight for a free life against the perpetual threat of death.
The great quest for freedom
Iranian society and youth are eager for freedoms: from freedom of expression to freedom of assembly, including freedom of thought, freedom of movement, of loving, of cherishing, of disposing of their bodies and of existing in as women, as beings in their own right, therefore equal.
This quest for the most fundamental freedoms is to be understood as a need for intelligence. Albert Camus emphasized that this awareness requires revolt.
Iranian youth are perfectly aware of their social condition, the flouting of their fundamental rights and deeply feel an omnipresent injustice.
She no longer wants to be a sacrificed generation and see her life confiscated like that of previous generations. In this sense, freedom truly becomes a matter of choice. This youth represents well the children of a republic, but which questions its Islamic attribute and no longer recognizes its sovereignty.
Between silence and denunciation
Many mobilizations of support for the Iranian people are held regularly in the major Western cities (Paris, Berlin, Montreal). Some governments, including Canada, have publicly and openly condemned the Iranian authorities’ brutal crackdown. The courage of the Iranian people affects public opinion since this denunciation of oppression, feminicide, infanticide and the crimes of an Islamic State is today at the cost of human lives.
On the other hand, the silence of feminists and certain Western intellectuals has been strongly noticed, criticized and is considered by the Iranian people as criminal.
It is now legitimate to question this silence or at least the reserve of certain people.
It is clear that a direct link can now be established between this silence, economic interests and also the fear of being considered Islamophobic. It is therefore not surprising that, for fear of violent reactions from part of the Muslim and religious population, the law of silence is de facto bet.
The void left by a critical intelligentsia, often presented as defenders of republican and democratic values, remains troubling. We seem not to realize that a population, admittedly born in a Muslim country and in an Islamic system, may also not want to identify with Islam and its precepts, without rejecting the freedom of worship with respect of everyone’s beliefs, while calling into question a State built on a politico-religious ideology.