"A JIHAD WORTH FIGHTING"
by: H. Aslan Aslani-Far
26 June 2009 6:02PM PST

Acrimonious complicity and indolent rebellion are, inherently, anathema to successful reformation; their appearance, at any time, the death knell of insurrection. They are the sole and exclusive provenance of complacency and, in time, a harbinger of established democracy, in decline.

Iran, in its current incarnation: a state torn between allegiance borne of fear and assuaged by intemperate religious interpretation; is victim to neither. For it takes great courage to march against God, and complacency plays no role in that crusade. But, is it God against whom the protesters in Iran march? The current regime would certainly like the people to believe so.

But this is opposition to the state, governed by clerics whose own abuse speaks volumes of the disintegration of faith as a tenet of life. Theirs is a struggle against a piety fortified within the walls of a missile silo – one that presents a predicament for the West and all nations whose membership in the “civilized world” should bear stark contrast to events now unfolding on the streets of Tehran. 

In the United States “Freedom of Speech”, in the abstract, is viewed as a universal right. As most things seen as abstractions, the lines are not clearly delineated between this and other “universal” rights. It is one patch in the madras we simply call “Freedom” and it is for this reason why that collective is so easily absconded with in this country, with little or no, fanfare.

The 2000 Presidential Election in the United States bears witness to this truth. Can it be effectively argued that the dubious results of that election, decided in halls hallowed, yet substantially biased in ideology, did not serve as a catalyst for all subsequent freedoms to be compromised? Were the seeds of complacency in an aging democracy supplanted by the hoes requisite to cultivate a new land, would the courage now seen in Iran not have appeared in full light beneath our own Stars and Stripes? 

We should like to think so.

Iranians taking to the streets today do so to protest the appropriation of one freedom in full recognition that the fight is for the sanctity of all freedoms. In this way, they work towards a madras of their own, yet must not forget that the central patch in this effort, boldly stitched on the flag of their oppressors, is both worthy and in need of liberation, itself. This is a lesson to be gleaned from the United States, for our most recent history has shown that dogma, under the cloak of religious faith, translates into subjugation of the tenets of faith to justify implementation of grotesque and abhorrent policies.

A Pyrrhic victory in Iran is assured and the merit of that sacrifice will be gauged, not by whether the victor in that battle is the vox populi or the steadfast assertion of vox populi vox Dei, but rather, by the liberation of the “Voice of God” from those prostituting it to subjugate a people, justify atrocities and maintain power. For Iranians, Mousavi, “the martyr”, may well be their best hope if his martyrdom manifests the kind of change he would be unwilling, or unable, to effectuate to yield freedom of this magnitude.