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On Sept. 13, 22 year old Mahsa Amini was detained by the Iranian morality police and died in their custody three days later, allegedly at their hands. Protests have erupted across Iran and with solidarity actions taking place among the diasporic community across the world. A women- and youth-led movement has taken shape, and people are willingly facing brutality and even death in the streets, with slogans such as “We are all Mahsa” and “Life! Liberty! Freedom,” as women in particular cut their hair and burn their hijab (headscarves) to defy government regulation on their capacity for self-determination and unequal status before the law.
At the root of these protests is the call for revolution, no less than the complete reversal of the Islamic Republic instituted in 1979 with the ousting of the Shah, while others simply hope that some aspects of the repressive regime will subside.
In part one of this two-part Nonviolence Radio episode, we interview Mehdi Aminrazavi for his perspective on the protest movement and what he is hearing from his friends and family in Iran. Born in Mashhad, Iran, Dr. Aminrazavi participated in the protest movement to oust the Shah. Now a scholar of philosophy and mysticism, he is the Kurt Leidecker Chair in Asian Studies, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Program, and professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
In part two, we will speak with Leila Zand, who was born and raised in Tehran, and is now working on her dissertation about Track 2 Diplomacy for Iran/U.S. relations. She is a leader for Citizen Diplomacy with Code Pink.
For more on nonviolence in Iran visit the Metta Center.
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Stephanie: I was curious to get to know you a little better. You were born in Iran…and?
Medhi: Yes, I was born in Iran and raised in Iran. I was born in Iran in 1957 in the city of Mashhad. M-A-S-H-H-A-D. It is in the northeastern part of Iran, just a few hours driving to the Afghan border and a few hours of driving into the former Soviet border, or today’s Turkmenistan. I went to school there, high school and finished it in – what was it? 1975. And then I decided to go to the U.S. and study for four years and go home.
So, from there, then it was a long, long trip to Seattle, Washington. And I arrived in Seattle, Washington, at some point. I think it was – well, I’m pretty sure it was December, maybe 1975, I arrived in Seattle, not speaking a word of English. From there on, it was just going to college and ESL, you know, English as a Second Language, and doing all that.
I majored – double majored in city planning and philosophy, and finished both of them and worked as a city planner in Seattle Urban League. Then the revolution happened, and I sort of just lost interest in pursuing any material gain. So, I went back to school and studied philosophy and did my MA there. I did my PhD in that – in philosophy – at Temple University in Philadelphia, and then ended up at Mary Washington in 1990. That’s the gist of it.
I did become quote/unquote radicalized, if you can call it radicalization, when I was 15. I was mainly interested in social justice – the question of peace and social justice. When I was 15, I was very active. But gradually, I became politicized, and I became part of the revolution that was developing against the shah of Iran. Before 1979 Iran had a monarchy, which in hindsight, was a very modern progressive one, but it was still a dictatorship of some sort, a Middle Eastern dictatorship.
And I, and my generation, did exactly what that generation – I mean that age group, is doing in Tehran and all over Iran today. We took to the streets and basically raised hell, and caused mayhem and led the revolution which led to the collapse of the monarchy and then – you know, creation of the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran. Which at the time, none of us really knew what it entails. But we were young. And when you’re young, you know, the details don’t matter all that much, as it does when you get older.
And so, we created a revolution. And brought a whole bunch of conservatives – basically, medieval theocracy, mullahs, and ayatollahs – who almost immediately after the revolution went against everything we wanted. Which was freedom and independence and liberalism and, you know, so on.
And they established a medieval rule based on Islamic Sharia, and the rest is history. We all began to resist in any way we could. And so, lots of people joined underground movements – a lot of my friends. And they died or were executed. A lot of us, they just left Iran again.
Ten percent of the Iranian population, between 8 to 9 million people left Iran and live in places like Los Angeles, which has been named as Tehrangeles. Or Toronto which is Tehranto now, you know, places like that. We’re talking about several hundred thousand – over a million Iranians live in LA.
But as bad as all these laws were, the brunt of this horror, was basically carried by women. They’re the ones – I mean, I’m sitting in front of you with a T-shirt and, you know, short-sleeved T-shirt and I can go to Tehran just like this and in the streets and be fine.
But if you went just, you know, you’re well-dressed and covered and so on. But this is not acceptable. You know, your hair is showing. And then you have to wear a scarf. And then there are those – the more conservative ones say a scarf isn’t enough. Your entire body has to be covered. And then there are the ultra-conservative ones who say, you know, no makeup either. And so, on and on.
Stephanie: I’m interested in backing up a little bit and understanding better your participation in the overthrow of the shah. I was watching a documentary to kind of catch me up to speed, and they said, “Basically, overnight, 2,500 years of monarchy just – done. Finished.” I mean, that’s incredible.
Mehdi: It is. It is. Yeah. A big part of it was, really – socialism and communism in the 60s was becoming modus operandi, especially for intellectuals. When I was growing up as a high school kid, I had Marxist tendencies. So did every single professor, intellectual, in Iran in the Middle East. To be an intellectual was to be a leftist-Marxist, essentially.
And we wanted freedom, and we wanted equality, and we wanted social justice. Iran was a very, very wealthy country. Lots and lots of oil, money. But the distribution of wealth was not fair. And so, there were a small class of very, very wealthy people, a lot of poor people, but a large, growing middle class. And we, the youth, found that unacceptable.
And then, the Iranian government, in general, the shah in particular had become what we consider to be the puppet of the U.S. We did everything the U.S. wanted us to do. And we rebelled against that. We, as you said, Iran is a 2,500-year-old monarchy. And for us to become the banana republic of some large imperial power on the other side of the world, was unacceptable. It was a matter of national pride as well. And so, yeah, we rebelled.
Stephanie: I heard that to be anti-shah was to be – anti-U.S. and anti-shah went hand in hand.
Medhi: Absolutely. It was a package deal. Right. As an intellectual, as a college student, you would want to be anti-U.S. imperialism, anti-shah, pro-socialist in one way or another. And the Marxists were of two types. There were classical Marxist-Leninists and so on. And then there were Islamic-Marxism, and those were – to which, I belonged, actually. And that was even more lethal because – if you’re familiar with liberation theology in South America, that kind of a genre became very popular in which religious teachings about social justice and Marxism became one and the same.
And so, our brand of Marxism was Islamic-Marxists, and then they were Marxist-Marxists, but we all wanted equality and justice for all. Brings back memories.
When Ayatollah Khomeini went back to Iran in February of 1979, I was one of those people who was supposed to go back with him, but I waited until the semester was finished. So, I went back in April, the end of April, and joined the revolutionary movements and began to work in rural areas and participated in all sorts of stuff.
But then I realized that things are going in a different direction. We wanted democracy. They wanted theocracy. We wanted liberalism. They wanted the Sharia law to be enforced. We wanted to go forward. They wanted to go backward. And so, then resistance groups were formed, and the country was becoming more and more radical.
About a week or two – I can’t remember, it was 40 some years ago. Before they took the hostages, I went to the American embassy in Tehran, worked my way through the crowd and there was a pretty large crowd chanting outside of the U.S. embassy. I worked my way through, went to the embassy, and restamped my student visa, and came back just a few days before they took the hostages.
I had friends and knew people who waited a few days more. And they closed down the embassy. President Carter nullified all the visas, student visas, and so we became – we became status-less in 1979.
But they took the American hostages for 444 days. And being an Iranian in America was – became very difficult after that. Yeah. We became like the Japanese during the Pearl Harbor, or Germans during the Second World War in America. It was difficult. But yeah, that was the experience.
And then the war with Iraq happened. And that went on for eight years, in which 1 million people died or were disabled and displaced and so on. And then Iran just kept on going the wrong direction, trying to implement some medieval Islamic theocracy, which just simply doesn’t work in the modern world.
And I got further and further away from it. And women, in particular, because they really, reinstated medieval rule. Polygamy, which was forbidden during the shah, became legal after the Islamic Republic came, after mullahs came. Women dressed any way they wanted to before the revolution. After that, there were restrictions. I mean on and on and on. They really rolled back history considerably. We went back a few centuries.
Stephanie: Talk a little bit about the way that women are constitutionally less or worth less than men, how it’s embedded into the Iranian constitution.
Medhi: Yeah. Right. So, it’s a very peculiar thing. The entire country, after they came, it just became a very strange mix of modernity and tradition, and medieval and modern, and so on.
So, on one hand, 55% of university students are females. 50% of all the government employees are women. Over 50% of all medical students in Iran are female. But on the other hand, constitutionally – two women, essentially, are equal to one man. Essentially. And that shows itself in all sorts of ways.
Like in court, the testimony of two women is equivalent to one man. If you accidentally kill a woman and a man, you have to pay damages. And the damages for a woman is half a man, and so on, the blood money.
So, these medieval stuff came in, and then they gradually relaxed. Men having more than one wife, and more than two, and more than three. And so, we’re back to, you know, where things were when Muhammad was alive. And that was unacceptable for modern Iranians, and that’s certainly unacceptable for women. And Iranian women are educated. They’re very intelligent, very astute. But they couldn’t do much about the situation.
Stephanie: Now, Mahsa Amini and other women, they’re stopped by something called the morality police?
Medhi: The morality police. Yes. I’ve been stopped by morality police. Your listeners will find this interesting. My wife is American – Irish Catholic American from the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. And so, we did go to Iran a number of times, six, seven times.
When we would go back there, she would be covered, and you know, everything and so on, with very, very little make-up. You know, just a little bit of lipstick.
And so, her and I are walking in the street, Tehran, Mashhad, and then morality police – it’s called Gasht-e-Ershad. Morality police would come to us and say, “Excuse me, sir. Your wife is wearing too much make-up. So, you know, please be mindful of that.”
And of course, we didn’t want to argue with them. And so, she would, you know, wipe off her thing or just cover herself a little bit more. And that was that. But then, as the new generation – I call it the internet generation. Because the internet generation, even though they lived in Tehran and Mashhad and Shiraz and Isfahan, but they really were a part of this global culture that was very different from their parents.
And so, whereas I, or my wife would listen to these morality police and their advice and say, “Oh, sorry. It won’t happen again.” These kids, 15 and 16-year-olds, wouldn’t listen. They would confront them. They would fight with them. They would get arrested. They would be imprisoned and tortured and so on.
And so, as the younger generation came up, they not only looked down on my generation, as to, “Why did you do this to this country? You know, change is good, but for better, not worse. And you took the country back centuries. Why?” And so, they became more defiant and more defiant. And every year, new generation became more combative. And so, it erupted several times. Several times since the revolution.
Stephanie: I’ve read that the protests taking place in Tehran and the surrounding areas are the largest since the protests in 2009.
Medhi: Right. Right. Yes. We’ve had several of them. 2009, as you said, was the Green Revolution. We had a White Revolution in which ladies who wanted to protest wearing scarves, they would wear a white scarf every Wednesday. And then they would go in the streets and take it off and kind of show it, basically, you know, “We are protesting.”
And so, the protests became larger and larger and larger. And the government cracked down more and more. I would say since the revolution of ‘78, ‘79, we’ve had about ten uprisings altogether, about that. And each one gets larger. Each one gets more violent. Each one gets more specific as to what people want. First, it was – the first few were kind of – the slogans were general. Freedom and liberty and, you know, things like that.
And then gradually it became more specific, like we don’t want a religious government. We don’t want a theocracy. And then it became more specific. We don’t want a morality police. And then, often, these uprisings were around economic issues. One of them had to do with increasing the price of gasoline. And another one had to do with other issues. And so, Islamization of universities, whatever that means.
But now, this latest one has nothing to do with economics, which is very bad. Has nothing to do with all that generalities. It’s very specific. Young men and women – 15 to 25, 30, they have taken to the streets, and they’re demanding an end to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And what is remarkable about this, is that it started with women, because it centers around Mahsa Amini, who has become the grand martyr of Iran for this specific cause.
Stephanie: So, I’ve seen actions online – I know that there’s internet outages and there’s a lot of government repression toward the protesters who are just ordinary citizens coming out and saying, “Enough.” That there’s just been too much tension, and too much sense of control over their lives, feeling lost to these rules, and to punishment. So that women are coming out and cutting their hair or burning hijab.
Medhi: Yeah. So, to give one example – I have a sister. And she went shopping. Was it two or three nights ago? This is in the city of Mashhad. She went to shop. And then she got caught in – and this is night. It was around 8-9 o’clock. She got caught in the traffic of demonstrations.
She said, “Suddenly, there were demonstrations everywhere.” She said, “I was sitting in my car. Couldn’t go anywhere because of traffic, with all these thousands of people marching and yelling and so on.” And then the riot police came. And they assumed she’s there because she’s a supporter. So, they started beating on her car with their batons.
And she said, “I kept at yelling. I said, ‘I’m stuck in traffic. I’m just stuck in traffic.’” And they wouldn’t believe it, so they damaged her car severely. Same with others. They just kept banging on all these.
But yeah. She said, “This is – I haven’t seen this situation since the Iran-Iraq war, when the cities, in a completely military – it was like military occupation.” They’re everywhere. Thousands of government soldiers and so on.
But as it is the case, the youth don’t really take death seriously. And they come to the streets. They continue their demonstrations. I’ve been glued to the TV, day and night. We watch lots of Iranian channels, both from inside Iran, outside of Iran.
The thing about Mahsa Amini is it was really the straw that broke the camel’s back. Mahsa is a Kurdish woman, who actually came to Tehran to have a good time and visit her friends. And a number of clerics have taken her side because when you look at her picture and how she’s dressed, she’s dressed perfectly fine. There’s nothing there.
And so, the morality police arrested her for reasons we’re not sure why. And then, allegedly, when they took her to the van – they arrest them, and they take them to a van, and they take them to ‘re-education camps.’ Somewhere between her arrest in the street and their education camp, she must have been brutally assaulted. Her right side here was all bloody. And she went into a coma. And three days later, she died.
That sparked a major, major reaction by Iranians. I mean, this is ridiculous. You are imposing medieval rules on people. She was dressed perfectly fine. And then – I mean, that’s unacceptable. And it just blew up. It blew up. It was really the summation of a nation’s frustration after 40 years of repression that came out like a volcano.
Stephanie: I know one of the slogans is, “We are all Mahsa.” This could have been – I keep hearing over and over, “This could have been anyone.”
Mehdi: Yes. Yes. In fact, two nights ago, there was this girl – I don’t know if you saw it. Her hair was blonde, and she took her scarf off and then went to a demonstration. And she was shot six times and died. So, she’s dead. She’s dead. The next Mahsa. But it has sparked a major, major series of demonstrations, both in Iran and outside of Iran.
Stephanie: I mean it’s also amazing that when people are pushed, this is in a situation of injustice – their willingness to go out, speak their truth, demonstrate, protest, and it seems like in Iran, they absolutely know what they’re up against too. They know that they’re risking their lives to do this. Whereas, I don’t believe, in Washington D.C., anybody there is going to be risking their life to show solidarity, right? So, it’s a different environment altogether when people are willing to submit their life for something, there’s an incredible power. And it gets our attention. What’s going to happen?
Now, people are saying – I mean I was intrigued at the very beginning when you brought up the kind of parallel, at least the emotional or sentimental parallel between the ‘78-’79 overthrow of the shah, the revolution, and today.
But there’s a lot of analysis out there that are suggesting that there won’t be any regime change. So, do you feel hopeful that that could actually take place? And if so, how come?
Mehdi: Well, I am hopeful whether this particular movement does the job or not, I don’t know. But I can tell you, based on my own experiences and involvement in the revolution from the very beginning up to now, is that when people don’t achieve their goals, then they don’t go away. They just are pushed under the carpet, right?
And so, it will come back over and over. And each time it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more painful, and more violent, until we achieve our end. This is happening. That has been happening.
For instance, the beginning of school year was last week. And students throughout the country have boycotted going back to school, from K to 12 and beyond – universities. They said, “We are not going.”
All professors and teachers have joined them, so the entire educational system in the country is closed until the mullahs are gone, until the regime change is gone. And then others are thinking about joining them. In order for any revolution to succeed, in particular, in Iran, several other things have to fall in their place, and they’re not.
One, is that generally speaking, ayatollahs and major clerics traditionally always sided with people. They stood with people. They issued religious edicts saying that we support the people against the government and so on. The problem is, most clerics in Iran are now employees of the government. And so, that is not happening. I was hoping that the clerics would express their solidarity and support with people, and they haven’t done that. That’s number one.
The second thing that needs to happen is for military to join people. Even if not all of them, some of them. I was there in Iran when a large number of military cadets, Air Force cadets, and so on, would join the people on a daily basis. And when Shah’s army begin to join people, we knew that things are not reversible. I mean, there is really going to be a revolution. That hasn’t happened.
The third one which is absolutely essential is a nationwide strike by truckers, by shop owners and so on, particularly oil industry. If the employees of the Iranian Oil National Company would go on strike, then we know that a regime change is more likely than ever.
Finally, the major, major problem, the odd thing here, is that most if not all revolutions of all types have leaders. There is usually a charismatic person who leads the revolution. And under the circumstances, we don’t have one.
After 44 years of Islamic Republic’s rule in Iran, Iranian opposition, intellectuals, and so on, for all sorts of reasons, have not been able to come together, form a united opposition with a leader. What Iran needs is a charismatic leader who knows what he’s doing – or she’s doing, and we don’t have that. That’s one of the great weaknesses. Yeah.
Stephanie: Some people argue that having the charismatic leader is a weakness because you can kill the leader. They look at more like leadership groups or strategic councils and so forth.
Mehdi: Yeah. But you see the problem is, like a lot of us asking, is let’s assume for the sake of argument government collapses tomorrow, right? And then what happens on Friday? We get up to what? Utter chaos? We don’t want to become like Syria. We don’t want to become like Lebanon. We don’t want to become like Iraq. There is always, you know, a worse. And so, this is certainly bad, but absolute chaos?
And then Iran has its own internal geographical problems which could lead to the disintegration of the country. The same thing that happened to Yugoslavia, may – may happen to Iran. There goes to say they’re not Yugoslavia. It won’t happen. But Azerbaijan, the Turkish-speaking provinces, may well secede from Iran. Kurdistan may secede from Iran. The Arab population in Iran may just decide they want their own state.
And so, that is a likelihood. If you don’t have someone who would control the chaos that always happens after a revolution, the country might just implode. And that’s what I’m really worried about.
Stephanie: The front page of the New York Times this morning is talking about the Revolutionary Guard’s impact on Iraqi-Kurdistan, saying that they believe that they’re responsible for fomenting the discontent taking place. So, there’s a pretty heavy weaponry and attacks being carried out right now in Iraqi Kurdistan. And the relationship between Mahsa Amini identity being Kurdish. Is there anything that you can add to the discussion of why Iraqi Kurdistan is now being pulled into this or being scapegoated for what’s taking place.
Mehdi: That’s exactly – okay. So, the Kurdish situation is a very complex situation. Kurds were divided by the British, who decided the map of the Middle East. And Kurds were, and are, a large minority who were divided into different parts. Part of them live in Iran. Part of them in Turkey. Part of them in Iraq. Part of them in Syria. And so, they’ve always wanted to have their own country, so to speak. And that’s not happening, as far as any of the countries in which there is a sizeable Kurdish minority are living.
So, the fact that Kurds have had an aspiration for a statehood is a long one, is an old one. I mean it goes back for centuries. There’s no question there. Having said that, there are radical secessionists, separatists, among Kurds who want their own country, and their camps, military camps, are right outside of the Iranian-Kurdish border. They often make raids. They come in. They assassinate some Revolutionary Guards and so and so forth, they go back.
And so, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and military have been shelling them, bombing them, and so on, for the last 40 years. I was in Iran when the first Kurdish attempt for autonomy took place. This was actually the summer of 1979. And that’s when there was a major Kurdish uprising. Ayatollah Khomeini ordered a heavy-handed treatment of them. And that has been continuing.
So now, the Iranian government, of course, blames this on Kurdish separatists, on Iranian Marxists, on the CIA, on the Israelis, in particular. Everybody and their aunts and uncles are responsible for this, except government’s own policies, right? I mean 40 years of repression is enough to cause an uprising. But they’re using this as an excuse, right? This is a scapegoat. They’re trying to create a sidetrack.
There was a movie called, Wag the Dog? No. Do you remember what it was called?
Stephanie: I think that’s right, “Wag the Dog.”
Mehdi: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the American president was in trouble, and they decided to find a country to bomb just to, you know, create a distraction. So, yeah. So, the ongoing Kurdish Iranian conflict aside – and they’ve been bombing them and shelling them and so on for a long time. But this one is, I think, has to do with the scapegoat, as you mention.
Stephanie: And now, my other question was about the religious pluralism in Iran and since you’re a scholar of religion and it’s the Islamic Republic of Iran. So, talk about that relationship between the pluralism and the unitary religion of Iran and how that’s working out for people. And also I want to be clear that these protests aren’t anti-Islam.
Mehdi: Right. So, that’s a very good question. As you know, Iran is what is left over from a very, very large, if not the largest empire in history, that’s the Persian Empire, right? The Persian Empire, at one point, ruled over half of the known world, larger than Romans and so on.
And as it is always the case with empires, they’re a multicultural, multi pluralist – you know, pluralistic. Very much like Romans and so on. And Persian Empire, during its time, they really were interested in collecting taxes from different people, and leave them alone and offer protection.
So, in the Persian Empire, there were the Zoroastrians, and there were Manicheans, and there were Mithraism and all kinds of cults and religions. And then when Islam came, of course, with its emphasis on one god and one way to live and so on, it became more unitary, so to speak.
Having said that, the Iran I grew up in, there were Jews. Some of the oldest Jewish community in the Middle East lived in Iran. These are Jews who were brought by Cyrus the Great from Babylon 2,500 years ago. There was a considerable Christian community, Armenians, and the Syrians. And then Baha’i’s then all kinds of religions.
After the revolution, they decided that there are only four state recognized religions. And that was Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. No other religion was recognized. And people who were followers of other religions either had to convert to one of these, preferably Islam, or leave.
And then they began to crack down on some of these unrecognized religions, especially Baha’i’s who have been subject of major persecution by the government. And I would say the overwhelming majority of Jewish and Christian Iranians have left. There are more Armenians in Los Angeles – Iranian Armenians in LA, than there are in Iran, actually.
And so, then the circle of who can practice his and her religion became narrower and narrower. And then it wasn’t – gradually, it wasn’t enough to even be a Muslim. You had to be a Shiite Muslim, not a Sunni Muslim. We have over 10-12 million Sunni Muslims in Iran who are not allowed to have their own mosques in the capital.
And so, it has become a dictatorship of Shiism. And then within Shiism, then there are different denominations now. And a particular violent, political leftist, version of Shiism has taken over, which has zero tolerance for anyone else. And so, yeah.
So, repression is being practiced not only for women and so on, but on religious minorities, whatever is left of them. Most people don’t realize that the Iran I grew up in was a secular country. Of course, people had their own religions as they do anywhere else, like America, there are Christians and so on, so forth, but nobody forces you to go to church. But this is different.
This is not the traditional Islam my parents practiced, or my grandparents practiced, where everybody was interested in self piety rather than, you know, making sure that everybody follows the Sharia law. This is new to us.
Stephanie: I would just be interested in hearing your perspective on the role of the mystical tradition and offering resistance as a way of sort of an ideological resistance.
Mehdi: Yeah, mystical you said, right? The Sufi?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mehdi: Yeah. I mean, as you know, Sufism is the closest thing Islam has created to a nonviolent and universalistic approach to essentially worshiping God. And so, Sufis have always been – Sufism represents the mystical dimension of Islam. They have always advocated nonviolence. They have always advocated non-sectarianism. Rumi has this beautiful poem that says, “All religions claim to be about love. When I arrived at love, I realized that it had no religion.”
And so, the religion of love is the religion of Sufism. And Sufism and Shiism in general, and Iranians in particular, go way back. So, Iran has always – Persians – and this is not just to limit it to today’s Iran, the greater Iran, the greater Persia, the greater Persian-speaking people, which includes Afghanistan and Tajikistan and parts of Central Asia, they always were receptive to the mystical side interpretation of Islam because it is the most peaceful, most inclusive, most tolerant version of Islam.
And as you can imagine, the mullahs in Iran have been very harsh on Sufis. They have dismantled several major Sufi traditions. And so, Sufism cannot be practiced in Iran openly. They are kind of semi underground now.
The jurists of Islamist, fundamentalist Muslims have never liked Sufis. They have always been their arch enemies precisely because they put less emphasis on the law and more emphasis on love.
Stephanie: And how do you see those values being tied into a revolutionary movement?
Mehdi: So, you might be interested to know that one of these uprisings was a Sufi uprising. This was about – if my memory serves me right, three to four years ago. The Sufis belonging to a particular Sufi tradition, dervishes, Sufis. They had major demonstrations in Tehran, and they were dealt with very, very harshly.
A number of them were killed. A number of them were arrested and executed. Sufis went on strike. Their Master died. Another master left the country. And so, whereas Sufis will never endorse violence, they will never participate in a violent revolution, but they would be the first ones who would support a peaceful change in Iran.
The spiritual landscape of Iran has never been conducive to fundamentalism. You see, because it’s a fundamentally pluralistic society and has been since the old days of Persian Empire. We just don’t – one-size-fits all does not work in Iran.
Stephanie: Well, my last question would be about the diasporic community, you said over a million people from Iran are living in Los Angeles?
Mehdi: Correct. Correct. In California, in general, about 7-800,000 live in Southern California. That’s correct.
Stephanie: So, there’s a lot of potential there for support from the diasporic community, for the revolution happening now without being in the country. And I wonder if you’ve given any thought to solidarity actions or remembering what it was like to be in Iran during the ‘78-’79 revolution. What would have helped? What can people here do? That’s a significant population.
Mehdi: Right, right. In fact, the 8-9 million Iranians who have left Iran, the majority of whom live in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. What they have done for the last four decades has been to establish televisions – television stations, radio stations. I would say, just roughly, I’m throwing a number – something in the order of 70-80 television stations, and maybe 50-60 radio stations are operating outside of Iran.
And Iranians inside Iran rarely watch national Iranian television because there’s always a mullah who is praying and reciting the Quran and, you know, preaching and so on and so forth. So, they have turned Iranian television, radio into a Sunday school, 24/7. And so, the overwhelming majority of Iranians watch the media that the diaspora community have established overseas.
I mean, I do that religiously. Every morning I get up, and I watch these televisions that are either based in London or Los Angeles as a source of my news. Iran International is one of them. Oh, there are hundreds of them. So that is primarily what they’ve done.
I mean, the other thing that the Iranians overseas do – have done – has been to act as the IT department and the help desk – computer help desk for folks inside. We basically exchange information. I get clips all day about what demonstrations and where they took place and how they took place. And the first thing I do is just naturally I send it to my family and friends and anybody I know in Iran. And so that’s how information circulates.
Stephanie: Do you have anything that you feel that we haven’t discussed here that you’d like to share in this interview?
Mehdi: I do like to ask anyone who is concerned and, you know, feels they can do something about this, to do something about it. And the best thing Americans can do is to contact their officials, their Congress people and senators and so on. And ask them why the U.S. government does not take a more active role to help Iranian people.
You see, since Russians occupied Ukraine, we have given Ukraine tens of billions – to Ukrainian people, tens of billions of dollars to fight against Russians. We have trained people to fight Russians. You know, we do everything. But yet, Iranians are defenseless people. We don’t have guns in Iran. You can’t carry guns. Government has all the guns, and they’re very brutal.
And so, why is it that the U.S. does not help Iran? Because if this government does not go, if mullahs don’t go, they will end up with a nuclear bomb and that will destabilize the whole region. And these people are medieval fanatics. Imagine if Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis got their hands on nukes, what could happen?
And so, I think helping Iranian people to overcome this adversity is absolutely essential. And the United States is just about the only country who can really do the heavy lifting to help people bring this fiasco to an end.
Stephanie: But some people would argue that the U.S. use of sanctions or kind of military support can – I mean, we’re looking at this is about largely about women carrying this burden that sanctions unduly and unequally affect women. So, you know, guns being brought in could lead to abuse of those guns against women and so forth. Now, what about the promise of the nonviolent movement, the citizens movements getting funded or, you know, in ways that offer creative resistance or make people ungovernable?
Mehdi: Right, right. So, I mean, as a person who does not support violence in any way form or shape, but I and my fellow Iranians are wondering whether there are cases in which violence is justifiable. And I hate to say yes or no. I don’t know.
But, you know, fascism, there’s just – what do you do when you’re dealing with Stalin and Hitler and you know, and all these people. We need help. Otherwise, they will crush this movement like they have in the last four decades, and we are back to how it was.
But yeah, I mean any peace-loving person who can, who can help Iranians to come up with creative nonviolent ways of resistance – absolutely. Absolutely. I’m all for it.
Stephanie: I mean, there’s a lot of research out there these days that Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, “Why Civil Resistance Works” as a sort of a – you might have heard of it. But it was quite ground-breaking in terms of providing data about transitions to democracy, and violent transitions versus nonviolent or less violent.
But yeah, that is a big question and one that’s worthy of a lifetime of study. I think people are flipping the question, too, of not whether violence is morally justifiable, because sometimes it is. And so, then do you justify every for every form of violence, every act of violence? Versus asking what’s the most effective way?
Mehdi: Exactly. Exactly. And right now, a peaceful, nonviolent movement is more effective under the circumstances than a violent one. Because as soon as people use arms, then it provides the government with justification to bring in the tanks and mow down people, which I have the bad feeling we might be witnessing that in the next few weeks if the demonstrations continue.
Because the government has not come in with their heavy armaments yet. It’s just anti-riot police all over with batons beating people. And every now and then they shoot someone. But if this doesn’t work, if this phase doesn’t work, that they will go – they will bring in the big guns.
Stephanie: They’ll increase the repression.
Mehdi: Yeah.
Mehdi: I wasn’t advocating violence because I’m not. You know, he who takes up the sword will be perished by the sword, right? Jesus said, or close to it.
So, I definitely prefer nonviolent ways of resistance. I just – yeah, yeah. I hope a nonviolent resistance, as it has been in the last two weeks, continues, and it gets somewhere. And that’s why it’s so important for the clerics to support the people, and the military support the people – and what do you call it? Closing shops, nationwide boycotting. If these three things happens, then we can achieve this thing the nonviolent way.
Stephanie: You’ve been listening to Nonviolence Radio. And this has been Part 1 of a two-part series on the Iranian protests. We’ve been speaking with Mehdi Aminrazavi from the University of Mary Washington. The second portion of this program is with Leila Zand, an advocate for citizen in Track 2 diplomacy between Iran and the U.S. And you can find that at NonviolenceRadio.org.
With thanks to our mother station, KWMR, Matt Watrous, Ashley Jordan, Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence, to all of those who syndicate our show at Pacifica and especially to you, our listeners. Learn more and find out more about nonviolence at the Metta Center’s website, MettaCenter.org. Until the next time, please take care of one another.