Insurgent conservatism

The winding year saw the rise of figures and phenomena that promise to be of crucial importance this year. Al-Ahram Weekly keeps track of a changing vista

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was more or less unknown until his unexpected victory in the presidential elections in June. Thanks to his fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric and his militant approach to Middle East politics, he has since proved himself one of the most controversial figures in the region. A staunch conservative who has vowed to reinstate the values of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad has been raising eyebrows in his homeland and all across the world.

He set off the new year on the same provocative note, railing against Zionist crimes on 1 January, and comparing the Israeli position to that of Nazis during World War II. He was quoted as challenging the West to name a single crime the Nazis committed during WWII that Israelis haven't committed more recently. This was but the last in a string of such insightful statements in which he hoped Israel would be "wiped off the map" and called the Holocaust "a myth". His stance on nuclear negotiations is no more lenient, with Western political analysts regarding him as a hardliner rather than a pragmatist, without the least willingness to diplomatically accommodate the nuclear issue.

Domestically, his policy now undermines the Reformists, who have adopted a reconciliatory approach throughout their seven years in office. His opponents- predecessors Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mohamed Khatami are criticising Ahmadinejad for generating international tension and isolating Iran; and key partners like Russia and China have seconded that opinion, raising questions about his political inexperience, for his anti-Israeli comments are widely seen as against Iran's national interests and effectively an aid to American neo-cons and Israelis. What exactly does he mean, moreover, by the need to "confront the West's cultural invasion of Iran and promote Islamic values"?

Only a few weeks ago Ahmadinejad, in his capacity as head of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling to ban all Western music, including classical music, on state broadcast outlets; the ban also provides for censorship of the content of films. The ruling shocked Iranians and raised concern over the future of social freedoms. "This president speaks as if he is living in the Stone Age," Mohamed Reza Hosseinpour told AP as he browsed through a Tehran music shop. "This man has to understand that he can't tell the people what to listen to and what not to listen to." Many are concerned about a possible re-run of policies imposed in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, which condemned all popular music, including Iranian pop, as "un-Islamic" -- instigating a crackdown that was implemented not only on music shops and musicians but even in people's homes and cars. The same concerns exist over a clampdown on "un-Islamic" dress codes.

Yet Iranian-born political analyst Amir Taheri saw Ahmadinejad's election as the new president of the Islamic Republic as "good news". According to Taheri, "Ahmadinejad's presidency will force the people of Iran and the rest of the world either to come to terms with the Khomeinist revolution or challenge it in a meaningful way."

By Rasha Saad