Pinoy Youth

The people of Iran are going through their own version of people power. With the disputed presidential elections in Iran, young people and women support the opposition amid arrests of journalists and other social activists. According to NY Times, this is the most sustained challenge to the Iranian government since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

There were, however, growing signs of divisions within the alliance united behind Mr. Ahmadinejad. Members of Parliament upset with the brutality of the government crackdown summoned the interior, justice and intelligence ministers to a hearing.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what comes next,” said an Iranian political analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution by the government. “Most likely, we are going to enter a period of relative uncertainly, with ebbs and flows, until the Islamic Republic of Iran is altered or finds a new avenue for legitimacy.”

Interestingly, about 70% of Iran’s population are under the age of 30.

I have been reading the commentary about the news at NY Times, reading the take of some Iranian, American and Islamic scholars about the Iranian situation. According to Hamid Dabashi,

If you were to follow youth culture in Iran at the turn of the century — from the rise of a fascinating underground music (particularly rap) to a globally celebrated cinema, an astonishing panorama of contemporary art, video installations, photography, etc. — you would have noted the oscillation of this generation between apathy and anger, frustration and hope, disillusion and euphoria. In their minds and souls, as in their blogs and chat rooms, they were wired to the globalized world, and yet in their growing bodies and narrowing social restrictions trapped inside an Islamic version of Calvinist Geneva. Read the full story at NY Times.

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