Iran's Raisi Says Muslim Youth Not Interested In Western Culture
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has said that young Iranians are not attracted to Western culture any longer, while hundreds of thousands emigrate every year.
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has said that young Iranians are not attracted to Western culture any longer, while hundreds of thousands emigrate every year.
In the 35th International Conference on Islamic Unity in Tehran on Tuesday Raisi said, “Western culture and political-economic systems are not attractive for the youth. If young [Muslim] people in the past wished to live in a Western cultural environment and lead Western lifestyles, today they do have such demands.”
Raisi’s statement comes across as a contradiction to years of statements by Islamic Republic officials who have been voicing alarm at the high rate of emigration and what is usually dubbed as a “brain-drain”.
On the same day when Raisi spoke, a prominent economist, Bahman Arman, told the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) that 700,000 people leave Iran every year, citing figures by the Statistical Center of Iran. While economic reasons exist for migration, religious restrictions on social life is an important factor in encouraging relocation to other countries.
Raisi’s statement also contradicts a huge morality police force that arrests young people daily, especially women for preferring a free lifestyle and defying obligatory hijab and restrictions on mixed-gender social gatherings.
In 2017, a top official in the ministry of roads said that 1.5 million professional and educated Iranians are waiting to emigrate to Australia and Canada.
The Islamic conference is a public relations event organized by the Islamic Republic to show that there is unity among Shiites and Sunnis and to carve a place for the clerical regime among other Muslims.
Raisi in his speech also praised Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Qods (Quds) Force, claiming that the general who was killed by US drones in January 2020, was a leading figure in promoting Islamic unity. In fact, Soleimani was seen by many Sunnis as a dividing figure, bent on arming and using Shiites to advance Iran’s foreign policy goals in the region.
Raisi also said that after the second World War “the ruling system” only saw one power on its way to full domination and that was Islam. The statement is not compatible with history that witnessed an epic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, or capitalist democracies and Communist dictatorships. Political Islam did not emerge as a force until the late 1970s.
Iran’s hardline president went on to say that there is an “Islamic awakening” now that should not “go cold”. He accused the West of conspiracies such as allegedly creating the Islamic State group and dividing the Muslim world. He called on the participants in the conference to unite against conspiracies and defend the Palestinians, which he said is the most important issue for the Muslim world.
Raisi told the conference that the Islamic Republic pursues stability in Muslim countries while “the enemy” is bent on creating instability. The term ‘enemy’ for the Islamic Republic usually means the United States and Israel.
Iranian media including Etemad daily and Rouydad24 website noted that only 74 days after his inauguration as Iran's new President Raisi (Raeesi) faced serious opposition in the parliament on Sunday.
A day before that, pro-administration news agency ISNA had lashed out at Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf for criticizing the Raisi administration and calling it "an incompetent government with inefficient managers.” Only one day after that hardline daily Kayhan, that often speaks for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office, criticized the Raisi administration over the rising price of home appliances.
The media were surprised that it was the like-minded conservative camp and not his political rivals in the reform camp who have started criticizing Raisi's government without even giving him a hundred days for trial and error.
Hardline lawmaker Elias Naderan on Sunday warned Raisi not to try to circumvent the Majles. He made the comment in response to the administration's decision to amend the budget bill to meet some of the long-standing salary demands of Iranian teachers who have been taking to the streets to voice their grievances in recent months. Naderan attributed "most of the country's problems" to "lack of coordination in Raisi's economic team." He asked: "Who is responsible for the situation of the country's economy?"
Meanwhile, Naderan warned Raisi that "The decline of the national economy will inevitably entail an uncontrollable rate of inflation."
Other lawmakers said it was regrettable that they had to address the Raisi administration with the same critical rhetoric they used against the Rouhani administration, Etemad reported. The daily also quoted the lawmakers as saying that "regrettably, Raisi's responses to criticisms is the same as his predecessor's and the problems in question remain the same."
The media agreed that some of the criticism may be motivated by factional and individual expectations but at least part of it highlights demands that have remained unmet as more than two months have passed since Raisi's promises to tackle them.
Ironically, the president was in a meeting of the government's Economic Coordination Board exactly at the same time his economic policies were being questioned by the Majles. The parliament first discussed issues of foreign policy with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian at a session behind closed doors and then started an open session about the economic and financial issues, including the teachers' case.
According to reports, the general mood at the session was one of disagreement with Raisi's economic policies. One of the MPs close to Ghalibaf even said that the attempt to unify the government has effectively "slaughtered” the revolution. Hardline supporters of Khamenei have taken over all three branches of the government since 2020, with promises that united “revolutionary forces” would work efficiently to solve mounting problems.
One of the advocates of the ‘revolutionary’ brand, Ruhollah Izadkhah, called for "purging the country's management of godfathers and those who pursue their own political goals rather than following the interests of the nation." Izadkhah had earlier warned Raisi to get rid of red tape and not allow wrapping a revolutionary title around inefficient approaches." He told Raisi: "Hand over the government to the people and the youths."
Also in Sunday's session, Ghelich Shadmehr, another lawmaker, harshly criticized the Raisi administration for creating security problems in parts of the country by changing provincial boundaries which he said is an unnecessary measure. Mansur Arami, a lawmaker from Hormozgan Province also raised the same concern about his constituency.
In another development, hardline daily Kayhan referred to Khamenei's order to ban the import of Korean-made home appliances and said the way the government enforced the ban has led to an unusual rise in the price of Iranian-made home appliances. According to Kayhan, as the government did not oversee the operation of Iranian companies, they increased the price of their products without increasing their output and improving quality.
Ezzatollah Zarghami told reporters on the sidelines of an exhibition that the government wanted to address farmers’ problems but would not allow wells near the historic monument dating from the 6th-century BC. Zarghami said he had been misunderstood by critics since he said last week, on a visit to the Unesco World Heritage site of Pasargadae, that that the issuing of well permits needed to be reviewed, given problems of irrigating land.
"Zarghami has backtracked and denied his previous remarks about agriculture in Pasargadae and like other authorities has claimed that his remarks were distorted,” the reformist Aftab-e Yazd newspaper said Sunday.
Etemad newspaper wrote in a commentary Sunday that studies had shown “the only way to save Pasargadae is to shut down wells,” while the minister had defended the “extraction of water within the limits of historical monuments instead of worrying about…wells and limitless water extraction."
President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) last week visited the ruins at Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire close to Pasargadae. Raisi said the palace complex was both a relic of Iranian art and "a message to oppressors to behold the fate of those who oppress the people."
Raisi critics have slammed the idea that the Achaemenids were "oppressors" and accused the president of undermining national identity. Persepolis and Pasargadae were both destroyed by Alexander the Great after the Achaemenid empire collapsed to the Greeks, Macedonians and their allies in 330 BC, some 200 years after the empire was founded in the 6th century BC by Cyrus.
The Achaemenid empire, which was strictly hierarchical and covered a variety of ethnic groups under the Persians, is minimally represented in school history books in Iran.Persepolis was a “dynastic, perhaps ritual, center,” wrote historian Richard Frye, where the priestly caste was influenced by the teachings of Zoroaster.
“Raisi and Zarghami's remarks showed they have no knowledge of and no interest in Iran's ancient history,” Morteza Kazemian, Iran International analyst, said Sunday. "They don't relate to that history and the symbols of Iranian identity in any way."
Esmail Kahrom, an environmentalist known internationally for his jointly edited book The Lion and the Gazelle, has warned that Cyrus tomb could sink into land holes caused by water extraction 40 years from now if agriculture expands. Kahrom, a former adviser to the head of the department of environment, has argued the local economy should rely on expanding tourism.
Kahrom has drawn a comparison to the historic Khajou Bridge in Esfahan, where the transfer of water from Zayandeh Roud to other provinces, and for use in agriculture and industry, has dried up the river over 20 years and led to cracks in the surrounding groundand the bridge’s structure.
There is also land subsidence at Esfahan’s airport, historic monuments, and residential and commercial buildings. Experts say Iran has under ten years to deal with land subsidence.