“Forces of Fortune”: Vali Nasr believes a prosperous Muslim middle class will bring stability and democracy to the Middle East.

Political scientist Vali Nasr is an advisor to US President Barack Obama and is viewed as one of the country’s leading specialists on Iran. In his view, recent reform movements in the Islamic world are partially driven by a new middle class. Ramon Schack spoke to him.

In your book “Forces of Fortune” you analyse the new middle class in the Middle East, which has effected long-term change on the national economies of countries such as Turkey, Dubai and other countries in the region. In your view, does the sustained unrest in Iran also represent an uprising of this new middle class?

Vali Nasr: As I discuss in my book the reform movement in Iran has its roots in the rise of a new middle class that since the late 1980s grew in size as the Iranian economy privatized and opened up to some extent. As this middle class grew in size and prosperity it demanded more cultural openness, political freedoms and engagements with the global economy and world culture. In many ways, in Iran economic opening preceded demands for political opening.

Economic activism supported civil society growth and reflected growing middle class values. Both the power and limits to reform movement today is reflective of the relative size of the middle class and the private sector economy it relies on. The middle class has made the reform movement possible, but the middle class is not yet large enough to guarantee its ultimate success.

In the past, the middle classes in the Middle East were often propped up and controlled by whichever regime happened to be in power – for example through political campaigns in the education system or through forced cultural change. How does today’s new middle class differ from the old one in the countries of the region?

Nasr: The old middle class is not a bourgeoisie as the term is understood, and therefore has not played the historical role of a bourgeoisie. A middle class that is created by the state and depends on the state is ultimately not a force for political change. The middle class that transformed the West and is now transforming large parts of newly-industrializing world is not dependent on the state, but on markets – its interests are tied to the global economy and it absorbs cultural and political values that would serve its economic interests.

We can see from history and recent experience that an independent bourgeoisie – a middle class tied to markets and commerce – is a force for liberalism and democracy, and also stability and moderation. The old middle class was not capitalist but statist, the new middle class is capitalist – it is much closer to the historical models that have shaped modernity, democracy and global markets everywhere.

How could Islamic nations such as Iran be integrated into the global economy?

Nasr: As I discuss in my book, integration in the global economy is a matter of internal economic reform combined with greater trade. This combination forces economies to change, and ties wealth generation – and the class that most benefits from it – to global economy and culture. The economic transformation then requires legal and political reform and these put together force countries to align their interests with the rest of the world and embrace more open political systems governed by law and universal values.

If you analyse the foreign and defence policies of the US over the past few years, would you argue in favour of placing less emphasis on political pressure and military might, and more on opening up world markets in order to better integrate the Islamic world?

Nasr: The economic transformation I write about is a long-run solution to the larger problems the West faces in the Muslim world. In the long run if the climate of confrontation and distrust between the West and the Muslim world is to be replaced by the kind of relations that exist between the West and Asia or Latin America, then there has to be more economic ties and shared economic values and interests and participation in the same global market.

Presently it appears that the “Chinese model”, which champions economic liberalisation coupled with an authoritarian leadership, is gaining worldwide appeal. Might such a model not be more attractive for Islamic countries than the western system that you yourself admire? This would mean that regimes there would be spared a loss of power, which is something that has to be in their best interests.

Nasr: The Chinese model has certain attraction for many countries that are moving beyond authoritarianism and closed economies. Perhaps the Chinese model itself is a transition phase – albeit a longer one – to democratic capitalism. But what is important in discussion of the Muslim world is not the system of government, but that even in China the middle class, as it integrates into the global economy, it adopts certain values and interests – so whether more authoritarian or more democratic, China’s middle class is embracing many global economic and cultural values, and interdependence obviates open confrontation.
Go to original article.

Huffington Post:  Texas Textbook MASSACRE:

‘Ultraconservatives’ Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum

Thomas Jefferson? Who’s that?

The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum's world history
standards on Enlightenment thinking, “replacing him with
religious right icon John Calvin.”
.

AUSTIN, Texas – A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.  Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic,” and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.  Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board’s most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of “whitewashing” curriculum standards.

Free Iran:  If Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s leading Founding Fathers and the author of the Declaration of Independence, isn’t safe from religious conservatives here in the US, then what are we to do in the Islamic world?  It is astonishing that we still have to defend the Age of Enlightenment or evolution (85 years after the Scopes trial) in America.  Is religious bigotry and intolerance hardwired into human beings?  Can we not escape it?  If it weren’t for America’s deeply rooted democratic institutions, what would these folks do if they ever took power? How right was Jefferson when he said that “The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.”

President Barack Obama travelled to Cairo in June 2009 to promise a new beginning between the US and the Muslim world based on “mutual interest and mutual respect”. In The Future of Islam, John Esposito has written the handbook for this new age of engagement. Intolerant of the extremists bent on provoking a clash of civilisations – western Islamophobes and violent Islamists alike – Esposito’s book is a calculated appeal to the moderate middle ground upon whom the success of Obama’s policies depends.

Esposito is the right man for the job: he is a leading scholar of modern Islam, with more than 35 books on the subject to his credit, and heads a centre for Christian-Muslim understanding at Georgetown University. In the course of a long and distinguished career, he has come to know the leading Islamic scholars of our age, who have shaped his sympathetic engagement with Islam and its reformers. His lifelong study of religion has left Esposito convinced that Islam is like any other faith, and he has dedicated himself to undermining assumptions of “Islamic exceptionalism”. He argues that what moves Muslims is not unlike what moves Christians and Jews alike.

The book opens with an introduction to Islam for the lay person, setting out the basic tenets of the faith. Esposito goes to great pains to break down preconceptions of Islam as a monolithic faith. Most of the world’s 1.3bn Muslims live in 57 countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa, in which Muslims comprise the majority of the population. The geographic spread of Islam as a global religion has meant great diversity in worship and beliefs – not one Islam but many Islams.

In the 20th century, large and expanding Muslim minority communities have emerged in western Europe and the US. Islam is now the third-largest religion in North America, and the second-largest faith in Europe, where the Muslim population has grown from 12m to 20m over the past decade. The growing Muslim presence in Europe and North America makes a mockery of geographic divides such as “the west” and “the Muslim world”. Obama needs to take on board the welfare of Muslims in the US as much as addressing the political concerns of Muslims in Asia and Africa for his appeal to succeed.

The expansion of Islam’s presence in the west has not led to greater acceptance or understanding. In 1997, the Runnymede Trust, a British think-tank, coined the expression “Islamophobia” to capture the growing animosity towards Muslims in the west. It is, Esposito maintains, as dangerous to western civilisation as anti-Semitism and it should be fought with as much determination.

Esposito turns to the role of Islam in politics. Beginning with Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, he examines Islamist politics from the fully democratic Justice and Development Party, now ruling Turkey, to the Jihadi Islamists who engage in terror tactics to advance political ends. He explores how America’s inconsistency in promoting democracy in the Muslim world, and unwavering support for Israel’s use of force against its Arab foes, have served to encourage the anti-Americanism of many radical Islamist groups.

For many in the west, Islam represents a medieval theology, ill-suited for modern times. What Islam really needs, they go on to argue, is a Reformation leading to an Enlightenment and a separation between religion and state – as though all faith communities were condemned to repeating Christian Europe’s experience, with all the bloodshed and intolerance that it entailed. Where, they ask, are the Muslim Martin Luthers of today?  

IND:  The Islamic world doesn’t need “Muslim Martin Luthers” because the Protestant Reformation didn’t lead to religious tolerance and pluralism.  After Martin Luther, for the next 150 years, the Protestants fought the Catholics in bloody civil wars.  The Protestants  weren’t anymore tolerant of dissent than the Catholics they detested so.  It was only with the rise of the Enlightenment that the role of religion begin to lose its grip in Western Europe.  It was only when the political elite and later the people began to say that damn with both your houses that human liberty was attained.  The Islamic world needs more intellectuals like John Locke and wise political leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and above all James Madison (the father of the U.S. Constitution).  People who appreciated the dangers of power and who knew how to create checks and balances and establish division of powers – unlike the French “Enlightened” revolutionaries.

Esposito believes the question is misguided, suggesting that Islam is static and there are no Muslim reformers at work. He argues reformist Islam has a long and illustrious tradition that is alive and well. “The number and diversity of today’s reformers belie the oft-raised question (with its implied scepticism) ‘Are there any Muslim reformers?’ I could wish there were fewer, because I would not have faced the difficulty of selecting a representative sample.”

The most fascinating and original material in the book is in Esposito’s treatment of Islamic reformers today from both Muslim majority countries and Muslim minority communities in the west, engaged in debates that are setting the agendas for Islam in the 21st century.

Several engaging personalities emerge from Esposito’s “representative sample”. In 2005, Amina Wadud, a Muslim convert in New York, broke a 14-century taboo and became the first woman to lead a mixed congregation of men and women in Friday prayers. A devout Muslim and feminist, Wadud has termed her decades-long struggle for women’s rights as a “gender jihad”.

Amr Khaled, an Islamist televangelist from Egypt, attracts more hits on his website than Oprah Winfrey. “Khaled blends conservative religious belief with a charismatic personality and speaking style,” Esposito explains, “Western self-help, management-training jargon, and an emotive crowd-pleasing performance full of stories, laughter and tears.”

And then there is Muslim reformer Tariq Ramadan. He is defining a new notion of identity for European Muslims and drawing on the experience of Muslims in Europe to propose reforms for Muslim majority countries. In this sense, the west has a contribution to make towards the reform movement in Islam. “Muslims in the west,” Esposito concludes, “have been a resource in the development and dissemination of models for reform, from fresh religious interpretations of the Koran and Islamic tradition to their applications on issues of democratisation, gender equality, human rights and religious pluralism.”

In Esposito’s analysis, Islam needs no Reformation: reformers are at work in all corners of the Muslim world. The need for change is in the west itself. Recognition of a shared Judeo-Christian heritage was key to combating anti-Semitism after the second world war. The fight against Islamophobia will only be engaged when the west recognises “that the Children of Abraham are part of a rich Judeo-Christian-Islamic history and tradition”. Through his scholarship and engaging writing, Esposito proposes the way forward for a better future for both Islam and the west.

Eugene Rogan is director of the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford. He is author of ‘The Arabs: A History’ (Allen Lane)

Go to Financial Times.

In an article published in Gooya News, a Farsi news site outside Iran, Akbar Ganji, an outspoken Iranian dissident, wrote an article in which he criticized Mohsen Kadivar, a Duke University professor and Iranian cleric, for his recent remarks at various public events in the United States.

Ganji, who spent several years in prison in Iran, accuses Kadivar of taking advantage of the current crisis to promote his religious interpretation of Islam and his own standing as a prominent Islamic scholar. Ganji implies that Kadivar’s writings and speeches are designed in a way to position him as the logical alternative to the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who was the spiritual guide of the opposition movement and who died recently. Kadivar was perhaps Montazeri’s most prominent student during his long life; he studied under him for more than a decade in the holy Shiite city of Qom.

Ganji also criticizes Kadivar for his implied criticism of Abdolkarim Soroush, a well-known Iranian intellectual. Kadivar and Soroush have disagreements over many religious concepts and core Islamic teachings, such as the notion of divine revelation and the role of the Prophet Mohammad as the receiver of such revelations. Contrary to common belief held by most Muslims, Soroush believes that the Koran is not entirely the result of direct revelations from God to Mohammad through the Archangel Gabriel. Kadivar is opposed to the notion of going beyond the holy text, as proposed by Soroush, and allowing open interpretations of the Koran. This very debate, and disagreements over other theological issues, have created what some people call a feud between Kadivar, who has a theological orientation, and Soroush, who is more of a secular intellectual. Go to Inside Iran.

Iran is the new Eastern Europe during the last phase of the Cold War. Like Poland during the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s, the protestors in the streets of Iranian cities are not crazed ethnics demonstrating on behalf of some illiberal blood-and-soil nationalism, but enlightened, technologically savvy multitudes crying out for universal values of democracy and human rights. As such, they have captured the imagination of liberal intellectuals in the West. Even as the United States is tied down with 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran promises to be the signal issue of our time.

Just as the enemy of the Polish workers was a calcified secular religion – Communism—the enemy of the Iranian democrats is a clerical autocracy in its gerontocratic, Brezhnevite phase of existence. Beyond all its religious pretensions, it is protected only by goons in the security services. Solidarity was the spark that contributed to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, which changed the map of Europe. A new regime in Iran would do no less for the Middle East. It would have a positive, pivotal influence on both the political and the security situation in Iraq—pushing Syria towards authentic moderation, and helping undermine Hezbollah and ease the path toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. More broadly, it would unleash democratic tendencies throughout the Middle East, from North Africa to the Indus, forcing regimes and populations to focus more on their internal problems, thereby undermining radicalism.

An Iran that is both democratic and Shiite would tip the balance against the Sunni Wahabi extremism emanating from Saudi Arabia. And, in a globally networked world, where news of such regime change could not easily be suppressed, leaders in similarly autocratic countries like Venezuela and China would have cause for concern. Clearly Iran, bordering both the oil-rich Persian Gulf and the oil-rich Caspian Sea, is now more than just the geographical pivot of the Greater Middle East; it constitutes the central drama in Eurasia.

It seems possible that, whatever the fate of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be destined be the last Supreme Leader of Iran. The rest is harder to predict. The proletarian uprising against the Russian czar in 1905 did not lead to regime change for twelve years. There was a decade-long hiatus between the rise of Solidarity and a non-communist government in Poland. Despite the inspirational effect of the Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007, that country is still stuck with its benighted military junta. So while we in the West hope that 2010 turns out to be the year of the Iranian Counter-Revolution, the truth is that we don’t really know: these revolutionary inflection points are dependent on a host of intangibles that puts intelligence agencies far behind the curve.

We are not in control. But something wonderful has begun: nothing less than the most positive development in the Middle East since President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. And while that daring gesture led only to a cold bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel, the Green Revolution in Iran carries the potential to unleash a true Islamic Reformation.

Go to Atlantic.

IND:  Another excellent piece by Dr. Milani.  This essay highlights a split within Shiism that could have profound positive ramifications.

The Green Movement is a revolt against theocracy. Most of its adherents are young Iranians with little or no religious motivation. Yet, an iconic figure of the revolt was the nation’s highest-ranking cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri; and, last month, Ashura, a holy day celebrating martyrdom, occasioned some of the movement’s most massive protests.

Perhaps the fact that the movement has acquired a Shia veneer shouldn’t be terribly surprising. During the past century, no social movement in Iran has succeeded without draping itself in religion or without a strong Shia contingent in its leadership.

But to limit the discussion of the Green Movement’s religiosity to rhetoric and political maneuverings is to diminish the significance of the happening. The Green Movement (and the Ayatollah Khamenei’s clumsy response to it) has exacerbated a split with Shiism. It has accelerated the development of profound and potentially far-reaching doctrinal innovations. The course of the coming months will determine the extent to which these innovations will transform Shiism and Iran.

To varying degrees, thinkers and theologians identified with the democratic movement have been offering a new reading of Shiism that makes the faith more amenable to democracy and secularism. The most significant innovation—found in essays, sermons, books, and even fatwas—is the acceptance of the separation of mosque and state, the idea that religion must be limited to the private domain. Some of these thinkers refuse to afford any privileged position to the clergy’s reading and rendition of Shiism–a radical democratization of the faith. And others, like Akbar Ganji and Mostafa Malekian, have gone so far as to deny the divine origins of Koran, arguing that it is nothing but a historically specific and socially marked interpretation of a divine message by the prophet. The most daring are even opting for a historicized Muhammad, searching for the first time in Shia history for a real, not hagiographic, narrative of his life. Go to New Republic.

The decision to defrock a dissident ayatollah – widely considered to wear the mantle of spiritual leader of the opposition – has pried open conflicts within the Islamic Republic’s religious core.

The Qom Theological Lecturers Association, a regime-aligned grouping of clerics, mandated Saturday that Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei’s edicts are no longer religiously binding. The ruling was furiously disputed by the rival Association of the Lecturers and Scholars of Qom Theological Seminary and the Association of Combatant Clerics.

“It’ll be tough work [defrocking Sanei],” says Nicola Pedde, director of the Rome-based Institute for Global Studies and a frequent visitor to Iran. “It’ll provoke a massive movement from the clerical side and, possibly, totally and completely religiously delegitimize the regime.”

“With the exception of Ayatollah Nuri Hamedani, who is strongly in favor of the regime, all the objects of emulation are unhappy,” said an Iranian political analyst, speaking on the phone from the seminary city of Qom. “With the exception of [Ayatollahs] Sanei and Mousavi-Ardebili, who issue anti-regime proclamations, the conservative clerics remain silent, even though they oppose the regime.”

“The Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed,” said dissident Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar in a December interview with German magazine Der Spiegel. “I do not know when exactly, but I am convinced that the regime will collapse.” Go to CS Monitor.

Iranian authorities have locked the doors of a prominent mosque in the southern city of Shiraz that is the base of an opposition ayatollah, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

The closing of the mosque is apparently aimed at silencing Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Mohammad Dastgheib, who is based there.

Dastgheib is a prominent supporter of opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi. He is also a member of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts, the body charged with selecting and supervising Iran’s supreme leader.

Dastgheib has used the mosque as a platform to deliver sermons fiercely critical of the Islamic republic’s current regime.

The same eyewitness told RFE/RL the mosque “has a long history as a center of the people’s opposition to the shah of Iran.”

The Islamic republic’s government has long seen mosques as bastions of support. In this case, however, a mosque is at the center of opposition to it.

During the shah’s rule, the opposition used mosques to rally support against the government. But the shah reportedly never ordered the closure of a mosque for political reasons. Go to Radio Free Europe.

IND:  This is a positive step forward.  We need as much transparency as possible in order not to repeat the same mistakes as in 1979.  One glaring omission, though, is the absence of any reference to the two pillars of democracy: separation of powers and checks & balances.  Sadly, Iran’s history is full of examples of the corrupting influence of power – of idealistic individuals who in time and with an overdose of chaplosy (Persian word for kiss a**ing) by those surrounding them eventually turned into tyrants.

Five religious intellectuals, Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Seyyed Ataollah Mohajerani, Abdolali Bazargan, and Akbar Ganji, while expressing their full support for Mir Hossein Mousavi’s statement #17, outlined ten demands of the Green movement in their view:l

1. Resignation of Ahmadinejad and holding a re-election under the supervision of independent organization, cancelation of the pre-approving screening by the guardian council, and formation of an independent commission consistent of the representatives of the protesters to the election results for legislating new criteria to enable fair and free elections.l

2. Release of all political prisoners and the investigation of the cases of torture and assault of the protestors over the past few months in open trials with the presence of juries and the right to select and have lawyers as well as compensating the victims and their families.l

3. Freedom of all media including press, audio and video media and cyber media; allowing the newspapers that were closed down by the government to re-open; permitting independent and non-governmental satellite television channels and the removal of extensive filtering of internet; clearing state-run televisions and radios from liars.l Go to original article.

On Sunday, January 3, five important religious intellectuals issued a joint statement in which they declared their full support for the leaders of the Green Movement in Iran, and listed ten demands that they believe must be met in order to get the country out of deep crisis. The ten demands include the five that Mousavi had already listed and are, in fact, practically identical with what he had listed in his Statement No. 13.

The five signatories are Dr. Ali Akbar Soroush, the distinguished Islamic scholar; Dr. Mohsen Kadivar, a student of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, a progressive cleric, and an outspoken critic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (for which he was jailed a few years ago); Akbar Ganji, the investigative journalist who was imprisoned for six years, Ataollah Mohajerani, former Majles [parliament] deputy and Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance in the first Khatami administration (a short period Iran enjoyed a relatively free press), and Abdol-ali Bazargan, son of former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, a well-known Islamic thinker.

The statement begins by declaring that,

Six months ago millions of Iranians demonstrated [peacefully] in the streets, in order to regain their rights that, through the treacherous elections, had been taken away from them, and to protest against all the insults and belittling by the government. The security and military establishment responded to the peaceful demands of the people violently and ruthlessly, and tried to prevent people from being present in the public domain and debate, and attempted to link the Green Movement with foreign powers and aligned with their policies. Go to Tehran Bureau.

Even religious scholars who until recently did not openly defy the regime, have now joined the calls of the opposition. There is the well-respected Ayatollah Yussuf Sanai, for example, who was a friend of Khamenei, who went so far as to state that Khamenei’s continuing struggle for power is against Sharia law. There is Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili, the former president of the judicial branch of Iran, who this summer openly declared his solidarity with the dissident Ayatollah Montazeri. And there are the ayatollahs Bayat Zanjani, Dastghaib, and Taheri who have aligned themselves with the protesting masses. Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in neighboring Iraq—who is held in great esteem by Shiites also in Iran—has declared that the oppression of the demonstrators is un-Islamic.

All this is significant because it broadens the protests to a truly popular movement. The students and educated class don’t need fatwas to turn against the regime. But due to the criticism by prominent ayatollahs, the regime is losing its moral legitimacy even in the eyes of less educated and more pious Iranians.

The regime is not only losing the clergy but also the military. The communiqués from opposition groups and those that reach me personally all indicate that a large part of the Revolutionary Guards is no longer willing to be used as an instrument of oppression. Video images from nearly every demonstration show Revolutionary Guards members joining ranks with the protesters. A declaration signed by air force and army officers and published on the Internet warned radical Revolutionary Guards members to “Stop the violence against your own population.”

This rift also explains why the much-anticipated “China Model” of ruthless and widespread use of force against the population, with thousands of deaths and executions in a matter of days, never happened. If Khamenei could have been sure about the loyalty of the military, he would have used it a long time ago to crush the rebellion for good. The only element of the Revolutionary Guards which still seems to be loyal to the regime is the Quds division, a hodge-podge of terrorists from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other regions.

If the protesters shake off the yoke of theocracy and savagery, their success could herald the failure of political Islam way beyond Iran. At this turning point in history the West has no logical alternative but to unequivocally support the Green Revolution. The fate of this movement far outweighs the useless nuclear talks that will only buy the regime time and undeserved international legitimacy. The demonstrators in Iran on Dec. 7 rightfully exclaimed: “Obama, are you with them [the regime] or with us?” History will not judge him lightly if he chooses the wrong side. Go to WSJ.

In a SPIEGEL interview, Iranian Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar, currently a visiting research professor at America’s Duke University, discusses the recent death of opposition leader Hossein Ali Montazeri, the frustrations Iranians have with their regime and the future of the green movement and the prospect of an escalation.

Kadivar: You are right that the Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed — a fact that few have expressed as clearly as my teacher in the last few months. Incidentally, when Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had his falling out with Khomeini, three months before the supreme religious leader’s death in 1989, he said: This state is so different from the one we dreamed of and worked to create. Still, it is not Islam which has failed, but rather a particular interpretation of Islam. IND:  It is the mixture of state with any form of Islam that has failed.  The Iranian people are not making these sacrifices to now experiment with mixing Mr. Kadivar’s interpretation of Islam with the state and possibly tolerate another 30 years of tyranny. I also want to express that there hasn’t been a revolution in Iran yet. The opposition is becoming increasingly clear in the formulation of its objectives and more daring. Still, we need to remain patient. I do not know when, exactly, but I am convinced that the regime will collapse. Go to Spiegel.

IND:  A very interesting piece.  After what’s happening in Iran, individuals like Mr. Khaled are critical in helping Islam embrace modernity.

Amr Khaled’s unique brand of Muslim preaching has made him one of the most popular preachers in the world.

Such is his appeal, he was recently named the 13th most influential person in the world by Time Magazine.

In Cairo, his DVDs stand on the top shelves reserved for best sellers in the Virgin record store, next to Bruce Willis and Charlie Chaplin.

His controversial style, comparable to the almost rock star approach of some of America’s Christian evangelists, has drawn criticism from the religious establishment and he has moved away from his native Egypt.

Ironically, thanks to the proliferation of satellite channels, he is now able to reach far greater numbers than he could have ever done had his message remained within the confines of a mosque or a lecture hall.

She believes the new breed of preachers appears to fulfil an important need.

“They have found a way to interject religion into a more modern lifestyle. In other words, your behaviour is what defines a good Muslim – not how many times you recite the Koran in one week, or how many times you go to the mosque,” Ms Abdo argues.

In this sense, the young televangelists represent a paradigm shift. While the emphasis in traditional preaching is on rituals, theirs is on personal conduct and social responsibility.

“The Prophet Muhammad said to work, to support a poor family is better than to stay in a mosque 40 days,” Mr Khaled has said. “How faith can help support the society, that is my way.” Go to BBC.

IND:  This article focuses on important events in years 1959, 1969, 1979, 1989 and this year.  99 is absent and so are 49, 39, & 29.  Although the writer is not certain what the significance of this year will be, we think 2009 is the year that history will judge that radical Islam got discredited as a political and economy ideology and that Islam at long last embraced modernity – starting in Tehran and eventually spreading to all over the Islamic world.

Writing recently in Foreign Policy magazine, Christian Caryl makes the case that 1979 was really the critical year, unleashing the economic and religious forces that have remade the world in the three decades since. Caryl’s class of ‘79 certainly includes some compelling characters: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, coming to power in Iran; Margaret Thatcher, starting to remake British politics and global economics; Pope John Paul II, inspiring his native Poland’s Solidarity movement; and Deng Xiaoping, moving China toward free markets.

Caryl sees a straight line between his year and the collapse of communism, particularly in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the papal visit to Poland, which “set events in motion that would culminate in the nonviolent revolutions of 1989,” he writes. Indeed, Kaplan, Kirkpatrick and Caryl all rely on what one might call the Groundwork Argument — the notion that even if a year did not feature this or that historic moment, it laid the groundwork for the significant stuff that would follow in some other important year.

So, it may not be a 1776 or a 1989, but 2009 seems destined to go down as a year of at least some significance. What for? Who knows. We just live here. Fortunately, it needn’t be for something that actually happened in these past 12 months, but perhaps for some future event that will be linked to our calendar. Go to Washington Post.

The protest face of the movement is dominated by younger activists who are waging a wider civil disobedience campaign that includes dozens of less visible tactics, from commercial boycotts to wearing green en masse at televised sports events and graffitiing slogans on surfaces ranging from buses to banknotes.

“The Green Movement belongs to the youth,” says Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an exiled filmmaker who claims to speak for the opposition. “When the revolution took place, Iran’s population was 30 million; now it’s 70 million and most are young. They want freedom. They want to fall in love. They want the opposition. They want a normal life. ” Anti-regime activities are often not coordinated; many initiatives emerge from small groups or individuals — “ordinary people who invite others to go to the streets, little people with charisma, like artists or writers who invite people to go to the streets,” Makhmalbaf says.

The third layer of opposition consists of feisty clerics who challenge the actions of the current regime. An increasingly hostile public debate among mullahs who support and oppose the regime reflects deep divisions in the world’s only modern theocracy. The debate includes questions about the role of a Supreme Leader granted the absolute powers (and implied infallibility) of a political pope, and even the very principle of theocratic rule. The fact that the clergy, deemed guardians of the Islamic Revolution, are engaging in this debate also provides cover and legitimacy for the wider public to challenge the regime.  IND:  What’s taking place in Iran is Islam’s Enlightenment.  This movement is paving the way for Islam’s embrace of modernity. Go to Time.