Iran Must Democratize its Theocracy - Philosophy Club
Iran Must Democratize its Theocracy –
And Will Need the Help of Women to Do So
Please join us in Auerbach 320 or online this Wednesday, Oct. 19, from 1 p.m. – 2 p.m., for our next meeting of the University of Hartford Philosophy Club as Brian Skelly speaks out about the Women’s Democracy movement in Iran.
To join the meeting online click here or follow this link:
https://hartford.webex.com/hartford/j.php?MTID=me84ea764b03ad4bd0357bb507647393a
If you have trouble joining, call Brian Skelly at 413-273-2273.
The death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Jina Amini on Sept. 16, after having been taken into custody by Iran’s notorious Guidance Patrol for “not wearing her hijab properly” has set off a protest movement unique both in its being aimed squarely at the religious leaders of that country as well as having been led from its outset by women. Also known as Iran’s “morality police”, the Guidance Patrol has in recent times been upping its effort to counter a growing resistance movement by Iranian women whose more and more open defiance of the hijab law, put into effect in 1979 as part of the Iranian Revolution that ended the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty begun by Reza Shah (1878-1944) and inherited by his son Mohammed Reza Shah (1919-1980), is increasingly being understood as a rallying cry for the democratization of Iran by its people, one which places women front and center as principle agents of radical social change.
Reminiscent of Liberia’s Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace movement begun in 2003 and which led to the resolution of the nation’s Second Civil War, women across Iran’s ethnic and religious spectra have been uniting to face up to a religious autocracy whose policies and stay in power have been antithetical to the welfare, happiness, and economic and social development of women, arguably stunting the economic development of the nation as whole while doing great harm to the nation’s position in the world.
Just how to push for democracy in a country such as Iran is a sticky question. For it is a theocracy, which is commonly assumed to be non-democratic. Even some Western Catholics sometimes smugly insist that the Catholic Church, also a theocracy, cannot be a democratic institution, giving reasons such as that the laity does not get to vote for popes, or that its doctrine is not determined by majority rule. But these reasons are red herrings since neither majoritarianism nor universal suffrage is essential features of what makes an organization democratic. The defining feature of democracy in any organization is not formal but intentional: a culture of universal ownership, shared, maintained, and cultivated genuinely from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Any organization, therefore can therefore be democratized, not by scrapping its entire constitution and starting all over from scratch, but rather in situ, by mere (although radical) change of attitude: from alienation to reconciliation, from autocracy, which operates blindly and deafly without the benefit of the eyes and ears of its own constituency, to a community of universal proprietary interest, which thrives off its unmistakable advantage of candid and free communication up and down the hierarchy, in which all recognize their stake in the organization and the role they must play in its decision-making processes, beginning from free and open expression of opinion in the public forum on up into the representative ranks. Representative democracy can only be such with effective ongoing communication between representatives and their constituents; otherwise, it collapses by default into oligarchy.
At any rate, we must wonder why it is that we have lived so long with the sloppy assumption that theocracy cannot be democratic. The opposite of democratic culture is nothing more than a culture of alienation, the bane of social existence, which once set in tends to spread like gangrene, killing off effective organizational action and life. More pointedly, what would make us think that democracy should be anathema to religion? Assuming, as we will for the remainder of this reflection, that God exists, what should God have against democracy? In particular, is there anything about the Abrahamic religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. that forces opposition to democratic culture? Should we worship God as a divine autocrat? Does God prefer an autocratic government? These are embarrassing questions to ask because although when forced to answer them, we can see the inanity of answering any of them in the affirmative, in the darkness of our confusion about religion and our relationship with the supernatural, we have tacitly been doing just that down through the generations. (Full Document).
An ongoing weekly tradition at the University since 2001, the University of Hartford Philosophy Club is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.
Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.
Please be a part of us as we continue this great tradition online and in the classroom!
For more information, please contact Brian Skelly at bskelly@hartford.edu