Velvet Revolution in Iran?
Greenfield: Martin Beck Matustik, a Czech-born professor of Philosophy at Purdue, makes a connection between pre-1989 dissidents in Prague and Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has become a leader in Iran’s nonviolent, democratic movement. He argues that “The specter of nonviolent democratic Islam is haunting the suicide bombers and religious zealots of every stripe…Iranian dissent […]
Greenfield: Martin Beck Matustik, a Czech-born professor of Philosophy at Purdue, makes a connection between pre-1989 dissidents in Prague and Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has become a leader in Iran’s nonviolent, democratic movement. He argues that “The specter of nonviolent democratic Islam is haunting the suicide bombers and religious zealots of every stripe…Iranian dissent has become, like the Central-East European and Soviet underground before it, the laboratory for imagining another possibility, a future world that would wed the most spiritual resources of religious life with the most advanced forms of democratic and economically-just institutions.” A Velvet Revolution in Iran? Not if the U.S. has anything to do with it.