A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CURRENT IRANIAN SOCIETY AND THE ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT OF IRAN

A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CURRENT IRANIAN SOCIETY AND THE ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT OF IRAN

Current Iranian society as a social system could be explained through several models such as system model, general system model, structuralism, functionalism, conflict model, exchange model, as well as phenomenological and existential model. Employing structuralism and systemic analysis, paying attention to different aspects of the system and social processes within the system such as, compromise, consensus, conflict and competition, we can analyze the current Iranian society. Structuralism as one branch of macro-sociology is the study of society as a whole based on the assumption that society is created though the relationship and interaction between individual actors, roles, positions, statuses, and society. Through a mutual interactionsociety shapes the behavior of individuals and individuals influence society. Within the structure of the society, different social groups engage in social processes of compromise, consensus, conflict and competition to deal with each other. It is obvious that different social groups and individuals across the factors of nationality, religion, ethnicity, races, political parties, etc. in Iran, are competing with each other for four major tangible and non-tangible commodities or rewards such as power, privilege, prestige and wealth.

We should consider that the human ecological system of Iran composed of population, territory, technology, social organizations, and finally culture, are real entities. Different components of the ecological system, are interacting with each other and through a dynamic state of change tries to maintain the whole system. Concentrating on social processes within the system, we soon realize that Iranian government that is based on Islamic ideology and puts the main emphasis on the religion versus other tangible aspects of human ecological system such as population, territory, technology, social organization, and other material aspects of the culture, neglects all aspects of the infrastructure, for the sake of a superstructure of Islam as a religion.Iranian Islamic Government and its authorities neglect the fact that, without having a population to develop culture and civilization, the concept of the culture is meaningless. Without a culture, religion that is only a small non-material part of the culture could not even exist. Thus, certain population has developed certain type of culture and civilization and within that culture they created their religion based on their individual and social experiences and their interaction with their natural environment.

Iran has had one of the best ancient religion that was highly functional for people of Persian empire for thousands of years, with their own God or Ahurmazda and Evil, or Ahriman and the first concept of paradise or Heaven was created by Zoroastrian Persian, which they called it Paradis, until Mohammed an uneducated shepherd who later on became a financial advisor to Khadijeh a rich Arab merchant woman became active in economic exchanges travelling to different part of the Middle-East and meeting with people who provided him with knowledge of Zoroastrian, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism which were the more ancient religions. Among these people the most influential person was Geber, called by Arabs as “Salman Farsi”, who spent most of his life with Mohammed, and followed him as a shadow and during many years and in different setting thought and educated him about different religions particularly Zoroastrianism. That is why most of Islamic activities, customs, rules, and traditions are the continuation of the Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Judaism.  The interesting phenomenon is that Arabs borrowed the concept of God from the Persian Zoroastrian people who called it Ahurmazda and called it Allah, which was the most personal and tribal statue belonging to Mohammed’s uncle. Zoroastrian believed in two complementary forces of Ahurmazda the positive force of God and Ahriman, the negative and destructive force of Evil. Arabs and Mohammed brought the same concept of God and tried to sell it to the Persian with the new name of Allah. This happened with the help of Salman Farsi who used to be Zoroastrian, converted to Christianity, the Soryani or Assyrian branch of Christianity that didn’t believe in Jesus as a God, son of God, and holy spirit, in other word trinity. The religion of Islam is based on copying other previous religions and creating a socio-economic-political organization with its emphasize on Khoums and Zakat as a revenue to pay for the freeloaders who are members of clergy group who are considered parasites and leaches by majority of Iranian people. There are approximately half a million clergies in Iran who are using other taxpayer’s money to continue their parasitic life style.

Islam under Islamic Republic Government of Iran is full of contradictions, hypocrisy, lies, manipulation, charlatanism, fraud, superstition, magic, and many other negative and evil practices. The religious group, who were mostly poor people before the revolution, now became highly rich only by stealing money from Iranian people both rich and poor.  In order to stay in power and destroy anybody who would have objection to their looting and stilling and rubbing people out of their money and wealth, they hired thousands of mercenaries from their representative countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Chechnya, Afghanistan and other African countries. The money and wealth that needed to be distributed among Iranian people is being paid to these hired mercenaries to suppress the uprising within Iran and to follow the expansive ideology of Shia’ Islam. Islamic Government of Iran does not really care about Islam. What Islamic religious people in Iran are after is Power, privilege, prestige and wealth. The emphasis on expansionism of Shia’ Islam by Islamic Republic of Iran, is to create mercenary groups outside Iran to be able to control people inside Iran and maintain their power on one side and to expand their revolutionary Jihadist ideology outside Iran. No activity in Iran is really Islamic. It is only inhumane and against Iranian people and their culture and civilization.

Iran possesses an ancient culture and civilization and people of Iran with different ethnicities, races, religion, sexes, etc. have lived in harmony with each other in a peaceful co-existence for thousands of years. However, the Islamic Government of Iran using Islam as a religion put the emphasis only on the superstructure and during the last 40 years tried to destroy nationalistic, patriotic identification of Iranian people for the sake of Islamic ideology and exporting the revolution to other countries and to create Islamic republics, across the middle east and with the Islamic leader to be the calif of Shi-at Moslem groups. Income from Iranian natural resources such as oil, gas, metals, precious stones, carpets, pistachios, and many other products export has been assigned to pay the expenses of expanding Islamic ideology of Shi’ism in the Middle-East and Africa. This external expansion cost Iran millions and Billions of dollars to the point that when Islamic Government of Iran could not afford the extra expenses, began to stop the payments of government employees for many months including the teachers, workers, drivers, etc. Then, Islamic Government began putting its hand in the pocket of all Iranian people by taking their money from different banks, taking funds from the Iranian citizens retirement funds, increasing the price of the oil in a country that billions of gallons of oils and gas.

Employing a conflict theory to analyze current Iranian society, we should pay attention to the fact that after the Iranian revolution, what happened was restructuring the society through the factor of religion. Those who were members of higher hierarchy of religious power, assigned the highest level of power, privilege, prestige and wealth to themselves and the rest of it were divided among other members of lower levels. But this effort involved, killing, executing, and forcing to escape the strong and rich people whom they labelled as Taghoot or rebels, Mofsed-fel-Arz or rotton people of the planet, Infidel (Kefir), etc. and after executing them or forcing them to escape from the country, confiscated their wealth and properties. Thus, nothing really changed in Iran except higher echelon of religious people took over the wealth, property and money of the previous rich people who used to live in Iran before the revolution and majority of people became highly poor and many of them stepped down to the level of below poverty.

The conflict in Iran is not just conflict over obtaining power, privilege, prestige, and wealthbetween those who have namely religious clergies and those who don’t have namely masses who are either at poverty level or below it. A secondary conflict exists between Islam as a religion and Nationality of Iranian people. Islamic Republic of Iran tried to destroy the nationalists and nationalism for the sake of Islam as an ideology. They suppressed Iranian people and declared that whoever who state he or she is a nationalist is against Islam and Islamic Government. Islamic Government of Iran tried to get rid of many nationalistic Iranian celebrations such as New rooz (Iranian new year), Chaharshanbeh soory ( the Ceremony of putting up seven fire base and jumping over the fire), Shabe Yalda (The longest night between the Fall and the Winter , Sizdeh Bedar (Iranian group picnic) on the thirteen day of the Iranian New Year, and many other nationalistic and ancient festivities. Islamic Government of Iran tried to destroy many National monuments, statues, and settings across the country, but Iranian nationalists had uprising and revolted against this process of de-nationalism for the sake of vitalizing Islamic values that are in opposition with Iranian people’s interests.

The social classes that were more scattered in Iranian society and had several socio-economic classes, before the revolution, were changed to three new classes of upper, middle and lower classes. The recent upper class includes the higher level religious authorities such as the leader, president, and some military and guards higher level authorities and their families. The middle class include the middle range religious authorities, military personnel, some people who are considered merchants in Bazar and other economic departments. The rest of the population which are more than seventy to eighty percent of Iranian citizens became members of the lower classes including those who are living at poverty level or below it. One major process was that people of the middle class who lost their income, their savings in the banks, their retirements or businesses stepped down to lower classes.

Islamic Republic of Iran which can’t justify its rule over the Iranian people, and supporting other Islamic groups of Shia’s outside Iran, in order to keep them quiet, creates many external conflicts and wars to create an artificial and temporary unity inside Iran. If Iranian citizen complain about their u8nfortunate financial, political and social situation and problems, Government authorities tries to shut them up by saying that Iran is in conflict and war with external forces. Thus no one should have any complaints. What is missing from current Iranian society is consensus, compromise, while competition and conflict exist among many different social groups in the country. Power and authority are scarce commodities that different individuals and groups within Iranian society are competing and having conflict over. The ruling power is trying to maintain the authority and power to themselves, but the ruled and oppressed citizens are trying to redistribute the authorities, power and wealth.

The Islamic Republic of Iran can also be analyzed employing Pareto’s “Circulation of Elites” and the “Lion and the Foxes”. According to Pareto, the famous Italian sociologist, “There are three social classes in any society: One is the Lions or the ruling class, the second class is the class of Foxes. And the third class is the masses”. According to him the class of Lions, are at beginning,revolutionary when they come to power, but very soon after they enjoy the power, privilege, prestige and wealth, they become conservative and soft. The Foxes are the social class that are interacting with both sides meaning with the Lions and the masses and have some influence both ways. When the Lions get too soft and conservative, getting too comfortable, and losing their power, the Foxes will influence and join the masses against the Lions and gradually will overthrow the Lions and they will become the new Lions class and this circulation of elites will continue through the historical time. The authorities of the Islamic Republic Government of Iran who used to be revolutionaries during the Iranian revolution of 1979, gradually became institutionalized and after rubbing Iranian people from their power, prestige, , privilege and wealth and living in the state and life style of luxuries, turned into new conservative group trying to maintain the status que. However, now, is the time for the Foxes to act, and join the masses who don t have anything to lose except their miserable life, poverty and chains that are on their hands and feet and overthrow the evil government who is against its own people and continuously oppress them, arrest them and put them in jails, or kill them by putting several artificial labels upon them to justify to execute them.

What is needed is polarization of different social groups and unification of the remaining middle class and the lower class to create a new revolutionary group who could stand in front of the Lions who are losing their power on a daily basis and based on the corruption, stealing, torture, oppression and destruction of the natural resources of the country (Example consumption of more than seventy percent of underground water, destruction of biological environment, creation of more than six hundred unnecessary and dilapidated dam, drying up many lakes, swamps, and rivers such as the Oromieh lake in Azarbijan, Zayandeh rood (River) in Isfahan, etc. have created a major drought across the country. Another necessary factor in this situation is class consciousness of the lower class and middle class that is stepping down to become part of lower class under the poverty level. When people of middle class and lower class that are under the same negative stimuli which include many different factors such as oppression, suppression, high prices, scarcity of the most basic products such as food and medicines, lack of freedom, dignity and respect, being under constant coercive power and treatment, they gradually become aware of their similar evil fate and thus, get united and respond similarly by trying to overthrow the evil government.

Marxian analysis of the society is partially based on the assumption that society is a social organization within which we have two opposite relations of domination on one side and sub-ordination on the other side. The dominant class has the power, privilege, prestige, and wealth or property monopolized to themselves and the dominated class is denied these commodities. This opposition itself is based on the opposition of class interests. The opposition becomes intensified when the dominated class becomes aware of their unfortunate fate, and develops class consciousness. At this point polarization occurs between the subjugated or dominated class and the dominant class which gradually turns into violent conflict and finally revolution and social reorganization and redistribution of power, privilege, prestige, and wealth. Iranian society similar to many other societies, as a social system reveal inequality of  resource distribution which causes conflict between the dominant class of religious people and the dominated people which in turn will lead to overthrow and reorganization of the whole religious system of Islamic Republic Government of Iran.

Iranian society at this point is identified by social disorder, dis-census, and anarchy which is not able to provide Iranian citizen with the most basic necessities of life and is destroying Iranian people, culture, civilization and their way of life. Islamic Government of Iran has created so many external conflicts with many countries in the world to the point that it makes it difficult for Iranian people even to travel to other countries and being respected.

Based on exchange theory, human beings are viewed as rationally seeking to maximize their  material benefit or utility in the transaction with others in the free market places. People are motivated to receive some type of economic rewards. However, under Islamic Government of Iran, the main exchange is occurring between different departments of the governments and outside world particularly by the army branch of Guard that are over the import and export. They import some goods illegally and sell it to Iranian people ten times more than its real value. Even the merchant groups in Iran are going bankrupt because of Iranian Islamic Government legal and illegal exchange operations. Islamic Republic of Iran confiscated many businesses, factories, companies, buildings, properties, housing units and organizations that belonged to Iranian peopleunder several revolutionary organizations such as Jihad Sazandegi, Bonyade Mostazafan, Boniyad Shahid, and committee of Seven and used the Marxist groups to conduct their Marxist ideologies and practices within these so called revolutionary organizations under the name of Islamic organizations. (Bonyad means foundation).

In summary, Islamic Government of Iran stole money from Iranian citizen in many possible ways and instead, built schools, colleges, refineries, housing units and many other establishments in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan and several countries in the African continent, while Iranian citizen are suffering and living under poverty level or below poverty level. Authorities of Islamic Republic of Iran declared that nationalist Iranian are traitors to Islam and that Islam is more important that Iran and Iranian people. These back-warded people think that an artificial man-made ideology is more important that the real people and their territory, organizations, technology and the real culture, that is tangible and necessary for establishment of any country. Iranian citizen are not only competing with religious authorities for their social, economic, political rights to stand on their feet, now they have to compete with the people of other middle eastern countries who are receiving the money that belongs to them.  The Islamic entities and social institutions that religious class have created in Iran, which are socialistic in nature, camouflaged under Islamic labels, and are antagonistic to Iranian Citizen’s interests, gradually put majority of Iranian people under oppression, exploitation, and social pressures which created a class consciousness about peoples ill fate and miserable life conditions and at this point Iranian citizens don’t have anything to lose but their own miseries.

Based on all the above mentioned social problems and conflicts both within Iranian Society and outside within international societies and lack of abilities of Islamic Republic Government of Iran to provide Iranian with their necessities of life as well as their freedom. Dignity and happiness, change is inevitable.