Islamofacism, Iranian Style

Iran continues to demonstrate that Islamofascism shares all the defects of other totalitarian forms of government like Nazism and communism, and none of their charms.

The remark is facetious, of course, for Nazism and communism have no genuine charms.  Yet Islamofacism manages to find its home in even a deeper moral depth.

Wherever you find totalitarian regimes of any kind -- communist, fascist, or Islamofascist -- you find the same, sad human story that begins with severe invasion of basic human freedoms.  Before long, the totalitarian grip begins to tighten, and the people begin go lose their freedom of speech, their freedom to elect their own leaders (if they ever had it), and many other freedoms and liberties.

This is, of course, followed by resistance, resulting in even tighter repression, followed sooner or later by imprisonment and killings, and even more bloodshed.

To these evils of all totalitarian forms of government, Islamofascicm adds a deeply disturbed worldview that elevates murdering innocent civilians as a religious imperative, to be carried out even at the cost of "martyrdom."

The Washington Post described the deteriorating situation in Iran, where Islamofacism is being lived out with a vengeance:

Iran is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown that both Iranians and U.S. analysts compare to a cultural revolution in its attempt to steer the oil-rich theocracy back to the rigid strictures of the 1979 revolution.

The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups.

The move has quashed or forced underground many independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life, the sources said.

Few feel safe, especially after the April arrest of Hossein Mousavian, a former top nuclear negotiator and ambassador to Germany, on charges of espionage and endangering national security.

The widespread purges and arrests are expected to have an impact on parliamentary elections next year and the presidential contest in 2009, either discouraging or preventing reformers from running against the current crop of hard-liners who dominate all branches of government, Iranian and U.S. analysts say. The elections are one of several motives behind the crackdowns, they add.

Public signs of discontent -- such as students booing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a campus last December, teacher protests in March over low wages and workers demonstrating on May Day -- are also behind the detentions, according to Iranian sources.

"The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You're going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime's paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks."

Despite promises to use Iran's oil revenue to aid the poor, Ahmadinejad's economic policies have backfired, triggering 20 percent inflation over the past year, increased poverty and a 25 percent rise in the price of gas last month. More than 50 of the country's leading economists wrote an open letter to Ahmadinejad this week warning that he is ignoring basic economics and endangering the country's future.

Universities have been particularly hard hit by faculty purges and student detentions since late last year, according to Iranian analysts and international human rights groups. Professors still on campus have been warned by Iran's intelligence ministry about developing relationships with their foreign counterparts, who may try to recruit them as spies.

"Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated his goal of purging Iranian society of secular thought. This is taking shape as a cultural revolution, particularly on university campuses, where persecution and prosecution of students and faculty are intensifying with each passing day," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch.

In recent weeks, the government has also tried to dissolve student unions and replace them with allies from the Basij -- a young, volunteer paramilitary body, human rights groups say. Between April 30 and June 6, eight student leaders involved in the elections at Amirkabir University -- where Ahmadinejad was reportedly jeered as students set his pictures on fire -- have been jailed in Evin Prison.

The campus purges have been mirrored in virtually all government-funded organizations, as hard-liners have been slotted into positions in the civil service, security apparatus, financial institutions and public services in the two years since Ahmadinejad took office, Iranian analysts said.

Leaders of groups defying the new strictures -- such as bus drivers trying to unionize, teachers protesting pay rates below the poverty line and women's activists trying to gather 1 million signatures to demand reform of Iran's family law -- have been arrested, human rights groups said. Others have been summoned for interrogations by the intelligence ministry.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council last month also laid out new censorship rules in a letter to news outlets, instructing them to refrain from writing about public security, oil price increases, new international economic sanctions, inflation, civil society movements, or negotiations with the United States on the future of Iraq, according to Iranian journalists.]

There is hope only in this:  That Iran may be moving too far and too fast in repressing its own people.  The Persians are a proud people.   If pushed too far, they may yet rise up and throw off their tormentors.