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All chiefs and no Indians
Everyone wants to be prince and no one the pauper.

By Arash Salardini
January 4, 2002
The Iranian

It saddens me that we still argue on the merits of various forms of government as they pertain to our country of birth when it should be clear to us that a society as literate and politically aware as ours can only be stable as a democracy. What word is more beautiful and noble in our tongue than azadi, the worthy aspiration of so many who have lost their lives for the very possibility of it. Yet many prominent Iranians advocate some form of autocracy that gives primacy to their class or particular worldview. The religious want theocracy, the aristocrats want monarchy, the rich want plutocracy... Yet all of us remain unfulfilled for divided we are ruled by the whims and interests of outsiders.

What is more pathognomonic of this disunity that the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, based in Washington DC, is headed by a most virulently anti-Iranian man who advocates starving our relatives back home or bombing them into desperation to the point where the alternative of risking death while protesting against the Iranian regime becomes plausible. No one has the right to risk others' unwilling lives to further a cause however seemingly right. If Mr. Timmerman wants an uprising against the Iranian government may be he can have the courage of his conviction and personally pick up arms against it. Otherwise we do not need a smug Washington insider to sit in the comfort of his office making life and death decisions for the poor people of Iran. Yet this man continues to speak on our behalf linking the Iranian government to the September 11 events and advocating an Afghan style campaign against the already oppressed people of Iran.

There are two cultural hang ups that we need to remedy before we can aspire to democracy. Neither of them are unassailable. Firstly we all need to realize is that democracy is not people ruling themselves but periodically choosing their rulers. Iran is a country of all chiefs and no Indians. Everyone wants to be prince and no one the pauper. I am myself not immune from this weakness as my earlier intolerant letter to The Iranian may attest. It is impractical that everyone's preferences are accommodated at every juncture and that we all individually should have a monopoly on truth. We should have the grace to bow to the opinion of the majority however wrong or ignorant we may feel it is. No one should feel that their social position or education gives them more of a right to an independent opinion than anyone else and those who purport to know the will of god blaspheme by mistaking themselves for the almighty.

Having said that, minorities and their rights to liberty and freedom of conscience need be protected. John Stuart Mill's warning against the tyranny of majority is as valid today as the day he penned it. There is no excuse for the persecution of minorities in Iran. No one has the right to rob the lives of others of normalcy and dignity. Even if the majority disagrees with the philosophy or practices of a few, nothing but mutual respect should be the currency of social exchange between such groups. We are as free as our freedom does not impinge on the freedom of others.

Our culture is not, as some suggest, alien to tolerance. The dual heritages of Shia Islam and Persian Civilization have elements that can easily be utilized in a future democratic Iran. Ancient Iran's respect for the rule of law is proverbial. Herodotus and other ancient historians relate various ways in which respect for the rule of law was insured. The king himself was bound by legal decisions and even his own decrees and the English phrase 'the law of Persians and the Medes' attest to the immutability of such laws, protecting from arbitrary decision. As is always the case with such discussion, some self-deriding Persian will write how tyrannical ancient Iran was and so on in response to this claim. Of course by modern European standards ancient Persia was an unjust place but compared to civilizations of its time it was superior. Yet the heirs to those other cultures live in much more stable legal cultures than we do.

Shia Islam, anachronistic as it may be to many of the readers of this web site, is inevitably the other heritage of Iran. Like it or not, Islam will always influence Iran and Iranians for the foreseeable future. But the accidental advantage of the Shia religious tradition is that the door of Ijtehad (jurisprudence) is not closed. That is laws can be remade in accordance with the necessities of life and times and no one can claim superiority for his or her version of Islamic law. One may say that this is not the state of affairs in Shia sect today and that the laws are not keeping pace with modernity. This is true but strong mechanisms exist within the faith for serious reformation of Islamic law.

So how can we achieve this democracy in our own cultural milieu? I do not pretend to know the answer but I keep my hopes alive. Anyone who will bring freedom to the people of Iran will gain an unsurpassed position of glory in the annals of our history. What I do know, however, is that the solution we seek should be indigenous. Our history makes us justifiably suspicious of outsiders purporting to want to help us. We needn't Western paternalism. Time and time again our embryonic efforts for democracy have been thwarted by short-sighted Western governments paranoid about communism or worried about the supply of oil. If the West wants to help us, it should not be at the strategic or even tactical level but rather at the logistic level. Our economy needs to improve as no affluent society remains autocratic for long. We also need practical expertise in management, legal structures and reform.

A democratic Iran has much to offer the world. Everything from the beauty of its culture to the undoubted talent of its people, not to mention a model of democracy for other Islamic countries. I will not live to see the day but the coming of freedom to Iran is inevitable and destined.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment for the writer Arash Salardini