Iran: A society in transition or exploding?

Tehran province forensic statistics say that there is a fight every minute in the city. This only includes fights that are referred to the forensic medicine. Is Iranian society an angry and explosive society?

The brutal beating of a girl by a female police officer because of the way she was dressed, the throwing of a girl protesting against the mandatory hijab from a platform by a police officer, the bloody beating of the Gonabadi dervishes, the entry of armed men into the home of a police officer and the shooting of his family members, and other examples like these, are they just a few examples of the sheer violence in Iranian society, or should we also see another image of Iran: people who go to entertainment centers under the pretext of every holiday, even on days of mourning, dance in the exhausting traffic on the roads with music playing from their cars, and take videos of this dance among the crowds of cars lined up on the road and broadcast it on social media, dance to every tune in parks and entertainment centers, and so on.

A European tourist who spent six months in Iran, and most of his time in Tehran, said about the people of this city that it was as if two groups of people lived in Tehran; the first group of people who drive furiously all day long, refuse to give way to each other under any circumstances, aggressively push each other in lines at banks, taxis, and public transportation, and fight over taxi fares or their turn in line.

The second group of happy and cheerful people who come to the streets at night, park their cars in front of every fancy food stall and eat and drink on the side of the road, and listen to music loudly in their cars. As if these are the same people who, a few hours ago, were tearing each other's shirts over a few tomans more or less in fare.

“A society full of anger and exploding”

Phrases such as "an exploding society," "a society full of anger," and "naked violence in society" are phrases that are frequently used by some analysts and experts to describe Iranian society these days.

This group of experts is clearly worried, scared, and afraid that this exploding society will be dragged into the abyss of destruction. They believe that Iranian society is full of pent-up anger.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and jurist, attributes this pent-up anger in Iranian society to two things: political obstruction and judicial corruption. She tells DW that when there is no room for any political protest, these protests pile up and turn into pent-up anger.

However, she prefers to analyze this issue more in her own field of work, the legal sector. Sotoudeh says that the most important factor in bringing peace to a society can be its judicial system, which is the last resort where a person whose rights have been violated can turn to, file a lawsuit, and obtain justice, fairness, and equality.

According to this lawyer, however, the judiciary in Iran is in a widespread crisis, a crisis that is not limited to political cases. He says: "Cases that have been handled completely unfairly and disproportionate sentences have caused the demand for justice, fairness, and equality that society seeks to remain unanswered for years. These accumulated complexes manifest themselves in the form of anger and violence."

Hamidreza Jalaipour, a reformist political activist, has a different opinion on the matter. Last year, the head of the judiciary, Amoli Larijani, announced that 15 million judicial cases had been processed in the courts in just one year. This statistic also caused protests from some government officials. Jalaipour, however, believes that this level of referral to the judicial system indicates the public's trust in a part of the judiciary.

In an interview with Deutsche Welle, he emphasizes, of course, that this trust is not in the political part of the judiciary, the part that, according to him, has imprisoned environmental activists.

Jalaipour says he has personally visited the courts and spoken to 40 people who have legal cases. He says all of them were satisfied with the process of handling their complaints, and their only criticism was that the process was too long.

The sociologist concludes that people trust this part of the judiciary and prefer to leave their claims to the judicial system rather than using the old method of "arbitration", albeit at the cost of paying lawyers and spending a lot of time.

“Iranian society is not a violent society”

Hamidreza Jalaeipour does not agree with the assumption that Iranian society is one of pent-up anger. He even sees the way the police deal with women protesting against compulsory hijab as a result of the Iranian government's great patience and tolerance towards an issue that, he says, has become part of its identity: the issue of compulsory hijab.

This reformist political activist says: "They [the girls of Enghelab Street] have a demand that has an identity dimension for the Iranian government. For four decades, some have focused the identity of the revolution and the Islamic Republic solely on the hijab. The girls of Enghelab Street have challenged this, and in my opinion, this shows that both the government and the people have become more tolerant. Now they have dragged someone's leg, this is not a sign that it has become violent, by the way, you see their subsequent reactions, the police say I will follow up and follow them. Or a policewoman beats another woman, you see how sensitive our society has become and reacts to it. This does not mean at all that Iranians have become violent."

Nasrin Sotoudeh, who is a lawyer for a number of the girls on Enghelab Street, looks at this issue from a different perspective and says: "So much has been created in the guise of obstruction that even half of the population is deprived of the right to choose their clothing, and those protesting against the compulsory hijab are suddenly faced with government propaganda that their work is a form of encouragement of corruption, while this is not the case at all. They were protesting against the compulsory hijab and faced heavy sentences. This is a form of showing off the political power of the government in a judicial form, which can be one of the biggest mistakes of a government."

What is circulating in cyberspace these days is an image of different and sometimes contradictory faces of Iranian society; both the people dancing among the crowds of cars stopped in traffic and the woman screaming her forty-year-old anger at not having the natural right to choose what to wear in front of the camera, both images belong to the same society; a society in the process of exploding or in transition.

Source: DW