The Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad is not suspected of being a modern politician. But: He blogs. He pays attention to his Blog “Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s Personal Memos” 15 minutes per week. He has promised this to his readers, in any case. Indeed, the president not always succeeds in keeping to his promises. He writes: “Few months ago I wrote the last entry in my Blog!” As a good politician he makes virtue of necessity: “However, this does not mean that I haven’t kept my promise. I have spent the time to read the numerous news which was sent me!”
The Iranians belong to the most busy users of the Internet worldwide. Seven million people surf regularly, there are about 80,000 private Internet sites. Only in Tehran there exist 5.000 Internet cafés. “Today the Iranian Internet diaries make Farsi to the fourth-most frequent language, in which the sites are written”, writes Nasrin Alavi, author of “We are Iran“.
Her book shows a picture which isn’t similar to the official Iran. In the net there are no taboos. One writes about everything what is hidden, otherwise, in the Iranian republic with pleasure. The Blogger discuss drugs and sex, about the Mullahs and their power avarice, about war, torture and prison, about religion and the custom guards. The scene is wild, rebellious, coloured and above all carried by a burning longing for freedom: “One day there will be no more censors. Then you and I will saunter with a bottle of champagne through the streets!“ If Iran should experience once a democratic revolution on the street, it was already anticipated in the net.
Iran is a good example for the direct connection between the virtual life and the repressions in the real life. In 1997 when Mohammed Chatami became president, the liberal press entered a period of prosperity. The censorship was eased. 2000 this slight freedom was gone again. The conservative authorities went forward with big hardness against liberal media. Within only two years more than hundred newspapers and magazines were forbidden, many journalists were condemned to long-standing prison sentences. At that time the critical minds of the country started their new virtual lives on the Internet. Many famous journalists published there news, comments and analyses. Political groups and NGO’s followed. Within short time a new counter public expanded. peaceiran.blogspot.com shows, how passionately political subjects were discussed. And because Ahmadinejad could not prevent the large movement in the net anyway, he began to show his own presence with a blog.
This only lasted for a short time, and the regime stopped this also. In April, 2003 the police arrested the online journalist Sina Motallebi which had maintained a critical and very popular web log. Motallebi was the first journalist worldwide who was condemned because of his activities in the net. Many other Blogger and online journalists followed Motallebi in the prison.
Hossein Derakhshan, “father” of the Iranian blogs, couldn’t be reached also. He wrote in 2000 instructions in Persian how one could start a Blog. The journalist published, when his newspaper was forbidden, first on the Internet. When the police threatened him, he emigrated to Canada. Nevertheless, he contradicts those which state frivolously, the regime in Iran practices censorship in the net systematically: “In Iran nobody waits for the confirmation of such announcements, they are presumed as truth!“ The regime stamp on Blogger, however, there is a system behind it. The message: We can meet everybody any time.
The Mullah like internet activities, also the most conservative followers. Many of them give the world their piece of mind on their own web pages. In the religious schools of Iran hundreds of students sit daily at their computers to do theological research.
The importance of the Internet for Iran is described by Nasrin Alavi in her book: “It is almost a revolution in the revolution. Since the tragedy 9/11 political movements are in the focus of the attention in the Islamic world. It is possible that Iran, which blew world’s mind with the radical Islam a quarter century ago, could surprise this world once again.”
