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Throughout history Iran has always encouraged the
progression of technology while maintaining its strong ties to the Islamic
faith. It is because of this clash
between trying to maintain Iranian traditionalism and adapting to a
technologically advanced and socially progressive world that has caused the
Iranian government to become so authoritarian in the press. The former pushes the government toward a
dauntingly despotic religious fundamentalism, while the latter pushes the
people toward a liberal democracy, and the process of finding a reasonable
balance has proven particularly arduous.
Throughout this struggle for “traditional modernity,” a new gay
movement has arisen with the help of the Internet. The progression of this movement relies
heavily on the instantaneous speed of the Internet; however, it cannot reach
complete success without a change in the Iranian government. Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of
Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University
articulates this point well in his article, Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,
explaining, “Only time will tell whether that culture will approximate more
and more to the secularized Western model, or come increasingly under the
sway of a new religious militancy.
What can be said with some assurance is that it is unlikely to stay
the same” (Massad 365). Through an
overview of the Iranian government’s struggles to control the media and an
assessment of the effects of globalization on progressive ideology,
this
paper examines the effects of the Internet and globalization on the
underground gay movement in Iran,
as well as its implications on the broader struggle for power and democracy
in an authoritarian regime.
Struggle
for Censorship
With the rapid growth
of print media, as well as the significant rise in Internet users and
literacy in the late 1990s, the Iranian government has had to impose censorship
restrictions on the media because of its effect on the expanding
revolutionary movement. Babak Rahimi,
Professor of Islamic Studies at University of California, San Diego explains
the difficulty of such a task in his article, The Internet in Revolutionary Iran: “The democratic threat posed
to authoritarian regimes by the Internet is obvious: cyberspace is a powerful
medium of interaction that defies any form of strict supervision. As former U.S. President Bill Clinton has
said, ‘the effort of these regimes to control the Internet is reminiscent of
an attempt to nail Jell-O to a wall’” (Rahimi 1). Though portrayed as an extremely
conservative religious society, Iran has been surprisingly
progressive in its efforts to expand communication technologies. When the Internet emerged as a cheap way to
exchange information, the Iranian government embraced it with plans to
utilize its power to spread to word of Islam.
The curiosity of the Iranian people, however, led to interests in
ideologies outside of the authoritarian regime, and skepticism of the
government heightened (Brown). Rahimi
explains the point at which the government started to take action, saying,
“The pressure has been most evident since
the 6th
parliamentarian election in March 2000, when conservatives launched a series
of repressive measures targeting the reformist-dominated press” (Rahimi
5). After the restrictions were put
into effect, the conservatives banned some news agencies and imprisoned many
employers for producing publications that questioned the establishment.
The concern for
government censorship of the media, specifically the Internet, grew quickly
in the famous case of Ayatollah Montazeri, a dissident cleric who was once in
the running to become Iran’s
supreme leader. Montazeri surprised
the conservatives in the government when he posted his six-hundred-page
memoir on the Internet <http://montazeri.com>. His memoir “criticized the ideological
foundations of the Islam state” (Rahimi 6), and it had a significant impact
on the role of the Internet in the discussion of political ideology. It “expressed his fierce opposition not
only to the present leader, Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamenei, but also the very
political theological dogma of Velayat-e
Raqih, a move considered blasphemous in the eyes of the hardliners”
(Rahimi 6). Coming from a prominent
figurehead in Iranian society, Montazeri’s defiant act against the government
sent a message to the Iranian people that the Internet has the potential to
enforce change. Other reformist websites,
such as Emrooz.org and gooya.com have exposed corruption in the underground
brothel industry, “House of Chastity,” as well as Qusay Hussein’s connections
with the Revolutionary Guard (Massad).
These websites have sparked international interest, especially in the
Associated Press, further perpetuating the idea that the Iranian people have
voice in the government (Rahimi).
Ever since the Iranian public has started using the
Internet as a tool to voice their opinions, and especially after the initiation
of the U.S.-led war on Iraq,
the state has started to fight back.
On November 7, 2001, the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution
declared that all Internet Service Providers must erase any anti-government
and anti-Islamic sites from their servers, and that all Internet Service
Providers must be controlled by the state.
Following that act came another in January
2002, that ordered a list of “illegal sites” to be created, and a special
committee was established to investigate internet-related crimes and
offenses. Today, Iran has
thousands of websites blocked, and over one million banned, however, people
are still using the Internet to criticize the government and help the
progression of social movements (Rahimi).
Rahimi offers an explanation on why this might be happening when he
says:
“Part of the difficulty
facing the Iranian government is the boom in technological commerce, and the
state’s failure to take the necessary steps to provide software technologies
to contend with the increasing globalization of the market-economy – as has
been done in other Asian countries like China and India” (Rahimi 2).
Iran simply does not have sufficient expertise in the
field of technology to keep up with its people, so they instead impose harsh
restrictions on violators of Internet security in order to maintain control.
Globalization
of Collective Action
In their book, Globalization
and Social Movements, Pierre Hamel, Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Jan Nederveen
Pieterse, and Shasha Reseneil articulate the impact of globalization in Iran well
when they say:
“Perhaps
it is because it is so obvious that this phenomenon is often overlooked: much
collective action itself is a globalizing force. It is carried by technological
infrastructures and possibilities, propelled by political opportunities and
driven by necessity” (Hamel et al 24).
This is indubitably the case with the gay movement in Iran
today. Globalization and the speed of
information flow in the Internet are what helped start the gay movement, the
Internet has provided the infrastructure and possibility for collective
action, the developing revolution has provided the political opportunity for
a democracy in which the action can thrive, and the inborn desire and need
for individual expression and honesty has provided the necessity for the
movement to happen. Globalization is
often critiqued for its negative effects on the diffusion of culture and the
loss of national identity, however, globalization has allowed “many hundreds
of millions of citizens around the world to access information from outside
their own country’s borders much more easily than every before” (Brown
1). The accessibility of international
information is what allowed the gay movement in Iran to begin, and without it, it
would have never survived.
In a documentary by CBC, Out of Iran: The Persecution of Homosexuals in the Islamic Republic
of Iran, Arshan,
the founder of the Iranian gay movement, speaks of his motivations to start
acting for change. He explains that
the reason he started the PGLO (Persian Gay & Lesbian Organization) in
2002 was due mostly to the Internet.
He said that he saw information online about how other countries had
started accepting their own gay communities, and he wanted the same thing to
happen in Iran. This same trend can be seen in the history
of other gay rights movements around the world. Hamel et al explain that an American
soldier of German extraction made the first attempt to found a gay movement
organization in the U.S. after witnessing the early gay movement in Germany
as a member of the U.S. occupation, and the founders of the first gay
movement group in Canada included two Dutch participants who had been used to
having a community-run clubhouse in Amsterdam (Hamel et al). They go on to
explain, “in regards to the problem of modernity(ies),
globalizing forces have without a doubt introduced dramatic changes in the
meanings of community” (Hamel et al 12).
This global community afforded Arshan the knowledge and international
support to begin the movement for gay rights.
Globalization did not put the idea of homosexuality into the minds of
the Iranians, rather, it put into their minds the idea of plausible and
rational action toward social change, and the Internet has sped up that
process exponentially. Iran,
however, is completely different than many Western European countries. In 1979 homosexuality was deemed a capital
crime in Iran,
and sodomy was deemed punishable by public hanging. Arshan explains, “In many cases arrested
gays are tortured until they
confess
to ‘crimes’ they never committed.
Fabricated charges – usually of rape – are used to justify public
executions” (YouTube). Hundreds of gay
Iranians have been killed this way, while others must go through public
humiliation and government-mandated sex changes. After being arrested, Arshan fled the
country, and, now a resident of Canada, he helps keep the gay
movement alive through e-mails with the new leaders of PGLO.
Mani, another gay male living in Iran, took
over leadership of PGLO when Arshan was forced to leave. Similar to Arshan, Mani discovered the
group online, and became involved with the underground gay community soon
thereafter. In the documentary he
explains how the Internet is one of the only places where gay people can interact,
and even there they live in fear of exposure and execution. He said that they rely heavily on the
international support of their cause, which is spread through the use of
technology (YouTube). Blogs are one of
the most significant ways for gay people in Iran to spread the word of their
movement. As Ian Brown explains:
“While most states control
the import of printed materials, and have attempted to control audio and
television broadcasts into their territories, the Internet is a new channel
through which content from all over the globe can flow” (Brown 1).
With rising accessibility of the Internet, the gay community can be
discreet about their identities with blogs because it is extremely difficult
for the government to uncover the identity of an anonymous ‘blogger.” Blogs also allow international readers to
gain a
perspective of how gays live in Iran,
and how they can provide international support to help the cause
(Wallsten).
The easy access to information that globalization
has created has helped gather international support for the gay movement by
other refugees like Arshan. This
support has helped increase the efficacy of the movement because the refugees
know firsthand what it is like to live as a homosexual in an authoritarian
regime. In his article Whatever I Write is Political, Michael
Petrou interviews a gay woman who escaped from Iran
to Canada. Saghi Ghahraman is a gay poet living in Toronto who helps
gather support for the Iranian gay movement through literature. Petrou writes that Ghahraman is
“soft-spoken and writes about sex rather than advocating violent
insurrection” (Petrou 2). Ghahraman
was recently published in one of Iran’s leading reformist
newspapers, Shargh. After interviewing
Ghahraman, Shargh was shut down by the Iranian government. Alireza Malekian, director of the press in
the culture ministry, said, “the main reason for the ban was an interview
with a counter-revolutionary who promotes immorality” (Brown 2). In a society whose president was elected on
a platform of “moral cleansing,” it is interesting that someone who promotes
love and respect is banned from the Iranian press. Critiques of globalization squabble over
the idea of a “global culture” or “global community,” however, here, the
global community is one that is desperately trying to improve and save the
lives of millions of people who are forced to struggle with their identities
every day. Globalization, in this
case, is the catalyst behind the advancement and preservation of so many
lives. Rahimi elaborates on this idea, saying:
“..in the absence of
political parties, the media has provided the major, and at times the only,
forum for political actors to express themselves and actively engage in
political life” (Rahimi 7)
To these people, a McDonalds on every corner of every major city in
the world is a small price to pay for freedom of thought, expression, and
dignity.
The Future of Gay Iran
In an age of technology, war, power struggle, and
the fight for freedom, where does the gay movement go from here? It seems as though the gay community in Iran is
making progress, but how much progress can it make without any public
support? In a speech given at Columbia University
in late September, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that there are no
gays in Iran. Though he is also vilified as a denier of
the Holocaust and a supporter of terrorism, his voice still speaks louder
than the voice of the Iranian gay people, especially with its international
exposure through satellites and the Internet.
Supporters of Ahmadinejad take his word as truth and put it into
practice, so, while the students at Columbia
University laugh at his remarks, the
gay people of Iran
must feel the consequences (Cooper).
Because of remarks like these, as well as the public hangings of gays,
the gay community must remain silent.
In Jerry Zarit’s article, Intimate
Look of the Iranian Male, he talks about this muteness when he says, “Yet
with one or two possible exceptions, I never met an Iranian in his own
country
who
would completely acknowledge his homosexuality” (Schmitt & Sofer
55). Zarit further explains how the
men regarded sex with one another as simply an act of friendship, which most
of them pursued online.
Though the Internet is helping the gay movement by
allowing it a discreet space to interact and gain exposure, it is also
putting it in jeopardy with the Iranian government. As explained by Doug Ireland in his
article, Iran’s Solution for Gays:
“Many of the basiji, who
operate under the control of the Interior Ministry, are attractive young men
who use Internet chat rooms to post their pictures and ensnare gay men. According to several sources the Interior
Ministry has compiled a list containing the names of thousands of gay men,
many of whom have been arrested and are kept under constant surveillance”
(Ireland 1).
With a population around 70 million people, 70% of whom are estimated
to have been born after 1979, and an 18.1% increase in literacy in the past
two decades, the task of monitoring all internet users is extremely laborious
(Rahimi). According to Rahimi,
“universities are producing a large community of educated (though mostly
unemployed) Iranians in search of new ways to express themselves” (Rahimi 3). The easiest way to block access is to block
traffic to and from lists of websites specified by their Internet Protocol
address, but as Ian Brown explains, “with little effort, users are able to
evade such filters by accessing blocked sites using overseas Web proxies”
(Brown 6). The gay
community relies on these overseas Internet access points for international
support, and the availability of them changes every day.
The future of the gay
community in Iran
is uncertain and uncomfortable. There
is no clear evidence that the movement will succeed, or even survive, but one
thing that can be said with aplomb is that the movement will go nowhere
without the international support that is mustered through the globalization
of the Internet. In The Transparency Society, Gianni
Vattimao, a philosopher from Italy,
argues that the mass media, including computer information technologies,
could play a remarkable role in the new form of political society. He says that it is not that they make
society more “transparent, but more complex, even chaotic, and finally that
it is in precisely this relative ‘chaos’ that our hopes for emancipation lie”
(Vattimao 32). One could argue that,
with virtually anything and everything becoming available online, the
Internet is creating one big global community; however, the speed at which
the societies of the technologically connected world have been connected has
forced them into an ideological box not big enough for the diverse ideologies
of the entire world, and chaos and uncertainty have become the debris of this
world wide ideological clash. Maybe
this chaos will cause emancipation, or maybe it will cause more repression;
the realm of technology is hard to predict and even harder to control. It is in the hands of the global community
to utilize this tool for the betterment of community and the spread of
choice. This may be purely a Western
perspective, but only with the acceptance of democracy will any social
movement progress in Iran. Only with the acceptance of choice and
freedom of speech will its
people
begin to prosper, and it is up to the greater global community, the power of
the Internet, and the strength of globalization to make that happen.
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