On 11/18/06, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Nov 18, 2006, at 1:55 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> I would not call that a "left-social
> democratic model" but labels matter little after all. But if that's
> what Ali means, it's odd for him to hail Daniel Ortega as a beacon of
> hope*, while getting despondent about the Middle East. IMHO,
> Hizballah, the Ahmadinejad faction, etc. are more "left-social
> democratic" than Ortega! But Ali is from the Islamic world, so the
> religious grass must look to him greener on the other side of
> Muslim-Christian divide.
Tariq Ali, interviewed by me, November 2 <http://
www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#061102>:
> 23:29
>
> [Ahmadinejad declared that women would be allowed to go to football
> matches], which surprised everyone because they thought he was a
> hardliiner. He said, what's this got to do with the Koran? Women
> should be allowed to go enjoy a football match. That's been a
> change. Then he said that the religious police shouldn't be
> deciding how women should wear the hijab, as long as they wear it
> and they're modestly dressed. On which the hardcore clerics
> attacked him from the right and said, "No, this is absolutely
> wrong, all their heads have to be covered. Some of these women are
> defying us and flaunting it...." All this nonsense goes on all the
> time that gives indications of some of the social tensions in the
> country.
>
> If Ahmadinejad were clever - but he will not break from this way of
> looking at things - and he ended the social controls on the
> everyday lives of the people, women especially, his popularity
> would soar. But he's not going to do that because he might lose
> other parts of his base. But that's what is needed. Iran is
> desperately in need of social and economic reforms. Whoever does
> them will be king for a long time.
IMHO, Ahmadinejad is already a very popular man in Iran, far more
popular than Ortega is in Nicaragua, Evo is in Bolivia, Lula is in
Brazil, etc., and he can hope to eclipse other Iranian leaders
further. The only man who is comparable to his domestic popularity in
other nations is Chavez and Putin (Nasrallah would be as popular as
them if Lebanon weren't so confessionally divided).
I'd be happier if my Persian Prince managed to relax social controls
further, but consider the response of reformists to his defiance of
the cultural rightist clerics on women's sports spectator ship, hijab,
and so on. They could have seized his initiative, backed him against
the cultural rightist clerics, and pressed for more than he offered
through street mobilization, but they did not. That says something
about where they stand: their dislike of economic populism outweighs
their preference for cultural liberalization. I wonder what Tariq Ali
thinks about that.
In any case, Iran needs social and economic reforms, but the masses
don't get the reforms they don't demand. Ali ought to be happy that
the masses managed to vote their pocketbook in Iran last year, which
is a step in the right direction, imho, and their populist turned out
to be the most anti-imperialist among all contenders to Iran's
leadership. Myself, I feel lucky. It could have been a lot worse!
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
