The Iranian example.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Comment - Iranian's use of nonviolent civil disobedience to protest against the results of the presidential elections - Essay

Regardless of how things ultimately pan out in ran, the protests against the election results in hat country provided us yet another example of the use of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Islamic world.

Indeed, defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi invoked the name of the ultimate icon of modern pacifism--Mahatma Gandhi--in urging his followers to fight on. He asked his supporters to "adopt the tactics of Gandhi, the tactics of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience," said his spokesperson Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the acclaimed film director.

So measured was the protesters' response to the violence the government unleashed on them that when people caught the suspected killer of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose murder became a global symbol of the repression, they let him go after confiscating his weapon and ID.

"What we are wimessing since the first demonstrations against the results of the presidential elections might very well be considered as a major nonviolent movement in a Gandhian style," writes Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian dissident in exile in Canada. "Today, Mousavi has become the symbol of nonviolent protest in Iran, but the true hero of the Iranian civic movement is the emerging republican model of nonviolent resistance."

A significant part of this resistance movement consisted of artists, who hoped for a cultural thaw after the repressive freeze of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Among Mousavi's supporters were a who's who of the luminaries of Iranian cinema (perhaps the best in the world), with names like Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, and Dariush Mehrjui.

Artists were just a small number of the protesters, however. It was an inclusive movement that encompassed many segments of Iranian society, from students to unionists, posing to the Islamic Republic a threat like no other since the Iranian Revolution thirty years ago.

"Grandparents walk alongside their children and grandchildren," reported the Inter Press Service. "University professors, artists, and intellectuals have joined. Even some members of the Iranian national soccer team wore the color of protest--green--on their wrists while playing South Korea to a 1-1 draw earlier in the week."

A wonderful aspect of the mass mobilization was the prominent role played by women. They were in the forefront of many of the protest events, often jostling with the security forces. Underlying this activism was a paradox: While the Iranian social setup discriminates against women on several...