FUNDAMENTALISTS DAYS NUMBERED IN IRAN
By Nader Sadighi*

Twenty-four years after Ayatollah Khomeini's bloody revolution, more than 60% of young Iranians are distancing themselves from Islam.

When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini started his Islamic Revolution in 1978, he could not imagine that two decades later almost 99% of his followers and believers would go against his newly founded republic and its religious ideology.
As we all know, he had the full support of devoted Muslims, as well as Communists and other cosmopolitanists such as Fada’is, Mojahids, youngsters, and even few so called "intellectuals", not to mention the local mobs.

It is a common belief now that despite the exaggeration by the Western media at the time, the exact numbers of the demonstrators and revolutionaries were far lower than reported, and those who participated, certainly did not represent the silent majority of the Iranian population of 36 million.

In other words, not every Iranian bought into the revolution, especially the Islamic version. Nonetheless, the ayatollah did enjoy the support of a large portion of the eligible voters of the time.
In ad dition to the strong support of his active followers at home, foreign governments, such as the ex-Soviet Union,

Western democracies and international media, all threw their weight behind him. Some even regarded him as a new saint or another Mahatma Gandhi, who had risen to bring a new order to wealthy Iran and the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and to dignify humanity.

It did not take long for most of those naive believers to find out the true nature of the man and his backward religious idealism. It did not take long for the ayatollah's saintly image to wash away. "Leader of Islamic Holocaust", "Father of Religious Fundamentalists", “Founder and Feeder of Hezbollah" seemed to suit his image better. His party was "Party of God" and soon he was perceived as "The War Monger" who wanted to establish his own brand of government in the neighboring countries and to free Jerusalem.

Some others say that the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution had the same ambition as Osama Ben Laden to achieve the utopian goal of a religious society based on the Koran and traditional Islamic Sharia law.
Despite his mischievous legacy, I believe the ayatollah (unintentionally) made a great contribution toward the awareness of Iranians and especially the social behavior of the second generation of the Islamic Revolution in understanding and appreciating the true consequences of secularism.

In practical terms, Islamic government has proved that it has no real solutions to Islamic society's problems. In other words, it has demonstrated that the only solution to the people's needs and the management of a vast government machinery and bureaucracy in a modern age is the adoption of secularism, democracy and freedom under the banner of law and equal opportunity for all regardless of their gender, religious and political believes.

In this respect, we may hypothetically compare the contribution of Ayatollah Khomeini to the valuable works of great Iranian thinkers of the early 20th century such as Ahmad Kasravi and Agha Khan Noori, who were pioneers of secularism in Iran.

Of course, there are big differences between the latter two and the ayatollah in every sense. Today, 24 years after Khomeini's bloody revolution, more than 60% of Iranians under 30 years of age are distancing themselves from Islam.

This does not mean young Iranians have chosen atheism and/or irreligion. It simply means that the majority of the Iranian young generation are distancing themselves from religious ideology and are appreciating the logic of secularism and liberty.

During the last two years, demonstrations against Iran's Islamic fundamentalist religious establishment have spontaneously erupted all over the country, all of which add to the evidence that the power of fundamentalism in Iran has faded and the pace of secularism has picked up momentum.

Islamic fundamentalism may only survive in countries like Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and other fanatical religious societies for a few more decades, but its days are certainly numbered in Iran. ENDS ISLAMISTS DAYS ENDA 51102