By Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
A quick look at the events of the first two years of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 amply prove that it was led by a sagacious leadership--men who had vision, foresight, ability, and determination to replace the old system with a new system through a series of constitutional measures and establishment of new institutions. All of this was done in a systematic way. All of this emerged out of mature political vision based on the fundamental principles of Islam as understood by the Shia school of thought, with the vilayat-e fiqh being the central guiding principle of the new political order.
The post-revolution Iran had to face enormous challenges, including an unjust, long, and cruel war imposed on it by the Americans through their proxy man in Baghdad. The war was funded by the United States directly and through its European allies and Muslim client regimes. Iraq received $35 billion in "loans" from the Western world and between $30 and $40 billion from the Persian Gulf states during the 1980s. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rfp-anx-d.htm)
When Saddam Hussein started to use chemical weapons, supplied or manufactured with the help of Americans and their allies (Iraq did not have the ability to make these weapons), the United Nations Security Council issued the declaration on March 21, 1986, stating that "members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops and the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons, in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons." The United States was the only member which voted against the issuance of this statement.
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) led to the death of half-a-million Iranians and Iraqis. According to a 2002 article in the Star-Ledger, "Nerve gas killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately. There were more than 90,000 Iranian men, women, and children who suffered for years from chemical weapons used by Saddam, most have now died. The international community--a terrible euphuistic expression of our times--closed its eyes to Saddam's war crimes. For "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, as Colonel Walter Lang, senior defence intelligence officer for the United States Defence Intelligence Agency at the time, described it. No one brought Saddam Hussein to a war crime tribunal but he paid for what he did in this world, and of course the final judgment rests with Allah alone.
The human and economic cost of the long war notwithstanding, since 1988, Iran has made tremendous strides in the education sector, in the development of its infrastructure, in the sector related to science and technology, and in devising a more just economic system. All of this has not been easy, and even though some 33 percent of eligible voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad, there is no reason to believe that all of these people are against the basic vision and values of the revolution. What the Iranian leadership needs to do is obvious: it needs to re-examine its strategy to win over a younger generation of Iranians--men and women who have little understanding of what Iran was like before the revolution.
A well-organised effort aimed at education, training, and reorientation of the Iranian youth to the ideals of the revolution, an agenda of social and political reform based on the founding principles of the revolution, and a refocused attention on the most precious asset of Iran--its youth--can ensure continuity of the gains made by the revolution so far. Institutions established by the revolutionary leaders need to rethink strategies, efficiency needs to increase and a certain degree of integration needs to be achieved in the universities which remain the most ineffective institution of the post-revolutionary Iran.
The university system has not received the attention it deserves, and although some experiments have been done to integrate and merge traditional Islamic education with the contemporary sciences, this experiment has not moved forward with the required speed, zeal, or focus. The most important step the Iranian leadership can take is in the sector of education. A basic question for serious Iranian thinkers is: What is Islamic in the education being imparted to young men and women in Iranian universities?
Beyond the ideological imperative is the practical question: What goals are these universities serving? Are they strengthening the vision of the Islamic Revolution or weakening it? What would be Iran like in 20 years from now when these young men and women in universities will take over the institutions of state and governance? These and other such questions need to be discussed at length in small inner circles of the revolutionary leadership, with the aim of developing a strategy aimed at strengthening institutions and protecting the vulnerable from slipping into hostile territory.
(Concluded)
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com