WHY HAS IRAN’S ISLAMIC REVOLUTION SURVIVED?
By James North
Mondoweiss
weiss/2009/04/why-has-irans-islamic-revolution-sur vived.html
April 15 2009
"Orientalism" is much more than just prejudice against Arabs and
Muslims. Edward Said, who did more than anyone to explore the ideology,
explained that Orientalism can include a genuine interest in the
languages and (ancient) history of the Arab and Muslim Other. But
Orientalists assume that Arabs and Muslims have a largely unchanging
Essence, which has persisted for many centuries. You can discover
this Essence by reading their ancient texts, the Quran, the Hadiths
and others. Said pointed out that it is no mistake that the leading
Orientalists – Bernard Lewis is a major surviving example – specialized
in philology, the study of words and languages.
Ervand Abrahamian, a professor at Baruch College and the Graduate
Center at CUNY, is the opposite of an Orientalist. He was born in Iran,
of Armenian extraction, and he has spent decades analyzing his homeland
not by burying himself in Sunni/Shi’ite theology, but by looking
at Iranian political parties, class formations, the distribution of
income, and government budget allocations. The indispensable Middle
East Report has just published his latest findings as part of its
valuable Spring 2009 issue on "Iran: The Islamic Revolution at 30."
His article is titled "Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived." An
Orientalist would answer that question with a few words: Islamic zeal
and fanaticism. Abrahamian includes militant Shi’ism among his list
of the four frequently-used explanations for the Islamic Republic’s
longevity – the others are "a reign of terror," the intense nationalism
promoted during the Iran-Iraq war, and rising oil revenues. He looks
closely at all four explanations, and finds all either wrong or far
from sufficient.
"If these stock explanations do not suffice, then what does?" he
asks. "The real answer lies not in religion, but in economic and
social populism." He reports that the Islamic Republic has over 30
years given "priority to social rather than military expenditures,"
"dramatically expanding the Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Labor,
Housing, Welfare and Social Security." He adds: "The military consumed
as much as 18 per cent of the gross domestic product in the last
years of the shah. Now it takes up as little as 4 per cent."
If Iran were, say, Paraguay, a detailed account of its internal life
would unfortunately not matter much to the rest of the world. But
the Bush administration and the Likud Lobby have turned Iran into a
potential flashpoint. In an earlier book that Abrahamian co-authored
(Inventing the Axis of Evil, The New Press, 2004), he showed how
Bush’s harsh rhetoric undercut reformers within Iran and destroyed
the growing movement toward detente with the United States.
Abrahamian’s work is no apologia for the Islamic Republic; he
recognizes it is not a genuine democracy, and it continues to violate
human rights. But by coolly analyzing the sources of its strength
and longevity today – instead of invoking the dusty texts of Shi’ite
theology – he helps us see how the outside world can reduce the
risk of war, which, some day, could even include a Mideast nuclear
confrontation.