Ryan Streeter
Of the Arizona tragedy, Ross Douthat wrote this morning in the New York Times, "From the Republican leadership to the Tea Party grass roots, all of Gabrielle Giffords’s political opponents were united in horror at the weekend’s events. There is no faction in American politics that actually wants its opponents dead."
Indeed, assassinations such as that of Salmaan Taseer in Pakistan remind us just how different our situation is in America from havens of organized extremism. Nothing about this fact dilutes the horror of what happened in Arizona. But it is a good reminder of the scale of threats that exist around the world.
Paul Marshall has been a tireless advocate over the years for the rights of religious and other minorities around the world in countries that oppress them. He is to be commended for drawing our attention to the attacks happening against Christians and others in Iran right now. While we struggle with the results of violence at home, it is also good to remain aware of how violence abroad by some of America's adversaries emboldens the perpetrators to the extent that they think America looks away.
In a National Review post today, he writes of the escalation in attacks in Iran, which began on Christmas and have possibly resulted in as many as 600 arrests.
The bad news is that religion as a tool of oppression is alive and well. The good news is that, in Iran, the recent spate of repressive activity is a sign of weakness.
These arrests reveal a great deal about Iran’s rulers. First, they still take religion utterly seriously: Even as they face internal political challenges and the bite of external economic sanctions, and while worms chew the innards of their nuclear program, they still resolutely divert resources to repressing peaceful religious rivals. With all due allowance to the ineradicable political constants of personal venality, partisan rivalry, state ambitions to regional hegemony, and realist drives for security, the Iranian regime remains committed to its perverted religious goals, and for them will sacrifice economic advantage and bourgeois comforts.
Second, they are weak. They are panicked by growing but peaceful and usually apolitical religious movements comprising a tiny percent of the population. Iran’s religious minorities are growing because many Muslims can no longer tolerate the regime’s version of Islam. The regime lacks confidence that it can appeal to or persuade people any longer, so it resorts instead to beating or killing them, or burying them in cells. Many such regimes can survive decades, but few have survived generations.
