Wanting Less Islam, Not More

After a visit to Iran Tom Porteous paints a surprisingly upbeat picture:

Young women still get away with wearing minimalist and colourful hijabs, body-hugging thigh-length rupushes, make-up and nail varnish. The fashion for young men is longish hair parted in the middle and swept back with the help of copious handfuls of gel, a style that is designed to irritate the fundamentalists. Neckties too are back in fashion, precisely because they are frowned upon by the Islamists. Tehran’s parks are crowded with unchaperoned and unmarried couples. Vodka may not be available by the glass, but it is sold on the black market by the litre. Taxi drivers are more likely to make their passengers listen to rock music or slushy Iranian pop than the Koran. Even Tehran slang has been reshaped to reflect the general contempt for the backwardness of the Islamist regime.

Ahmadinejad’s new team have indicated that they want to reverse all this and return to the Islamic strictures of the 1980s. But the pragmatist conservatives in the regime know that there is no point exacerbating Islamism’s unpopularity by reimposing tedious rules on an unwilling and rebellious youth.

Precisely because it has had its Islamic revolution and been subject to Islamist rule, Iranian society is now more secular than other Muslim states, especially in the Arab world. There is little of the popular Islamist (and anti-western) fervour that seethes in the Arabian peninsula, the Levant and north Africa. Mosques are not well attended. As far as I know, there are no Iranian “terror suspects” held in US secret prisons. After 25 years of Islamist government, Iranians want less Islam, not more.

He points out the intensifying conflict between the hardline zealots around new president Ahmadinejad and the old guard round Rasfanjani who see him as a threat to their political and economic power. But he draws some strange conclusions:

[A] comparison between Iran and Arab states demonstrates the dilemma for those who would like to see more political freedom in the middle east. Iran is certainly closer to achieving real political liberalisation than any other Muslim state in the region, apart from Turkey. But this is partly because it has already had its Islamic revolution. The route to political freedom in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Syria may well lie through the same dangerous terrain.

Iran is closer to real political liberalisation because of its Islamic revolution? Only in the sense that after two and a half decades of theocracy most Iranians are heartily sick of it.

And this:

Ahmadinejad’s recent moves on the international and regional fronts, including his hostile statements on Israel, have been interpreted by some as signs of incompetence and inexperience. But they may in fact be part of a plan to provoke an escalation of the regional conflict in order to strengthen his precarious domestic position.

What if Ahmadinejad isn’t playing some astute political game? What if he’s exactly what he appears? – a small-minded fanatic and demagogue who actually means what he says.