I don't mean that in a bad way.
But when we talk about what the Iranian people are struggling for, calling it "democracy" may be clouding the issue somewhat.
They are, to be sure, struggling for many of the same things that go by the label "democracy" in Western culture. But because IRAN IS NOT A WESTERN-CULTURE COUNTRY, the word "democracy" distorts as much as it explains.
The Iranian's are struggling to achieve popular sovereignty and to secure effective universal human rights. But what that looks like will necessarily be rooted in their Persian and Islamic culture, not the Western culture of Latin Christendom.
More below the fold...
"Democracy" in Western culture has not only the literal meaning of "rule by the people" but many many deep connotations about what that means in relationship to the exercise of power -- political, economic, and military power; and to religion, to human rights, and many many many others.
What we tag as "Western" culture -- the predominant culture of most of Europe and those parts of the world where they settled and wiped out the indigenous culture - the Americas, Australia, South Africa -- is essentially the cultural descendant of Latin Christendom -- that part of the world where the Christian Church was led by the Roman Pope.
It is absolutely impossible to separate the process by which "democracy" emerged over several centuries of often violent, bloody struggle, from that culture. It is impossible to avoid the clashes between Catholic and Protestant and the hard-won value of mutual toleration in that history. It is impossible to separate out imperialism from that history. It is impossible to separate out the growth of capitalism from that history, nor is it possible to separate the process of industrialization. Nor the growth in power of nation-states, nor wars driven by nationalism.
The price paid for "democracy" was blood and tears and agony over centuries and it is a Western thing that cannot be fully translated to another mature culture -- and the culture of Iran is decidedly mature.
The intellectual framework built to explain and justify all of this - principles of justice, of political legitimacy, of universal rights - can be traced through the history of Western thought all the way back to their wellsprings in ancient Greece and the Jews (plus a certain dissident sect of Jews...). Again, we cannot separate "democracy" from these roots.
Near the end of that process, Thomas Jefferson had one of its better days. Everyone remembers the first bit of what follows:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
What concerns us today in Iran, however, are the latter two clauses.
The people of Iran are struggling to secure for themselves popular sovereignty - government "Of the people, by the people, for the people" - and effective universal rights.
The point of this diary is that those forms and means will come from their history and culture -- and, frankly, I don't know near enough about that to offer any coherent thoughts.
I know a few things though:
The essence of Islam is submission to the will of God. How Islamic and Shi'i specifically mullahs have evolved moral philosophy from that I don't know.
Khomeini's theory of velayat-i-faqih -- Islamic theocracy -- was and is something new, different, and unprecented in Islamic and Shi'a theology. Really. He seriously pulled this one out of his ass while sitting in exile in Paris. The role of clergy within Islam until then may have included the western idea of "judge," even in secular matters, but never "magistrate."
Iran is a multi-ethnic society -- I don't know how hard those ethnicities will pull to break away.
Iran has a history of a tribal culture as well. How much of that remains today, I don't know. Tribal influence in the cities is muted to say the least -- and all of the information we have about what is going on in Iran is about the cities.
Shi'ism is more comfortable with leadership as a concept than Sunni Islam. This goes back to the original source of Shi'is - the partisans of Ali (for leadership of the Muslim community) The Muslim ban on human images in art is a specifically Sunni thing. You can see from the various images from the protest marches, that pictures of leaders are prominent in many places.