Yet in the current demonstrations we are witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule. Islam\u2019s categorical imperative for both traditional and fundamentalist Muslims \u201d\u201d\u201ccommanding right and forbidding wrong\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d is being transformed.<\/p>\n
This imperative appears repeatedly in the Koran. Historically, it has been understood as a check on the corrupting, restive and libidinous side of the human soul. For modern Islamic militants, it is a war cry as well \u201d\u201d a justification of the morals police in Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the young men who harass \u201cimproperly\u201d\u009d attired Muslim women from Cairo to Copenhagen. It is the primary theological reason that Ayatollah Khamenei will try to stop a democratic triumph in his country, since real democracy would allow men, not God and his faithful guardians, the mullahs, to determine right and wrong.<\/p>\n
Westerners would do well to understand the magnitude of what is transpiring in the Islamic Republic. Iran\u2019s revolution shook the Islamic world. It was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that \u201cIslam has all the answers\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God. But the experiment has failed. The so-called June 12th revolution is the Iranian answer to the recurring hope in Islamic history that the world can be reborn closer to the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s virtuous community. Millions of Iranians said in the presidential election, and more powerfully on the streets since, that they want out of Ayatollah Khomeini\u2019s dream, which has become a nightmare.<\/p>\n