On 7/7/06, Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> vigilante Islamic police . This imples that they are acting outside the normal channels of authority. Is this so?
I doubt it. I believe that the letter used the adjective "vigilante" simply to convey disapproval of the police, rather than to imply that it wasn't normal police. The poilce in Iran today are no better and no worse than they were in the Khatami and Rafsanjani years. After all, Zahra Kazemi was killed during the administration of the smiling Seyyed Khatami. The police don't answer to the President, though -- it does to the Supreme Leader: "At the top of the decision-making pyramid we have a Supreme Leader (Valli-e-Faghih) who is supposed to be the representative of God. Therefore, he practically and legally has the last word and the veto power on any important national or international decisions made by the government. He is not just the spiritual leader of the nation but also the ultimate political decision maker of the country. He controls the military, the police, radio and television and the judiciary system. Some of the most important commercial and industrial foundations are also directly or indirectly under his control" (Morteza Mohit, "Background to the Parliamentary Elections in Iran," Monthly Review, March 2001). What we ought to do is to defend the freedom of assembly in general without making it sound like the Iranian police were better or worse than they actually are. Ross thinks that the Turkish police, for instance, can be worse than the Iranian police, though the Western press tend to suggest the opposite; the letter signers either disagree with him on that or comparisons like that relativize the incident and therefore minimize it. Also, there are disagreements over facts.
> The principle demands were as follows: > > * Abolition of polygamy > * The right of divorce by women > * Joint custody of children for mothers and fathers > * Equal rights in family law > * Increasing the minimum legal age for girls to 18 (currently it > is 15) > * Equal rights for women as witnesses in courts of law > . speaks to the "westernization" of Iranian culture (read that as "assimilation"... the average Iranian most likely sees it that way...)
Demands like the above aren't "Western" demands, despite what the dominant ideology says, as well as what some Westerners and some non-Westerners in their support for or opposition to them say. They are simply demands of modernity. Those are valid demands for equal rights that I support. But one notices those who are making the demands aren't making them in the context of fighting for economic justice, which is the reason why they don't move the masses of Iranians. I believe that women's rights might be better advanced -- especially in countries like Iran -- if they were embedded in class demands on the economic front in the Bolivarian fashion. Otherwise, women's rights supporters will remain confined in small urban circles of relatively well-educated, better-off people, their demonstrations will remain small, and they will be no match for the ruling clerics. That's not in their interest, nor is it in the interest of the constituency they claim. There is a labor angle mentioned in the open letter: "the testimony of Parvin Ardalan and Noushin Khorassani, labour activists from Vahed bus company who participated in the event." But I'm afraid that the union is working with the Solidarity Center: <http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=565>. Have the signers of the open letter considered that relationship at all? I've wondered about it, as letter is silent on the matter. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
