In trying to understand the situation in Iran, I've been reading a lot more about what was going on that country.
First, Sex, drugs and Islam from Spengler
Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran's birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever. Demographers have sought in vain to explain Iran's population implosion through family planning policies, or through social factors such as the rise of female literacy.
But quantifiable factors do not explain the sudden collapse of fertility. It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Popular morale has deteriorated much faster than in the "decadent" West against which the Khomeini revolution was directed
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Two indicators of Iranian morale are worth citing.
First, prostitution has become a career of choice among educated Iranian women.
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Second, according to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, 5% of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century. The closest American equivalent (from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) found that 119,000 Americans reported using heroin within the prior month, or less than one-tenth of 1% of the non-elderly adult population.
From a review by Spengler of the book Predicting the death of , The crisis of Islamic civilization by Ali A Allawi, a "prominent Iraqi politician who recently served as minster of defense and finance in the American-backed Iraqi government".
Muslim countries could join the modern world. But the differences between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West run far deeper than the political surface, Allawi argues, and they begin with a radically different view of the individual, or more precisely, the view that the individual human being really does not exist to begin with.
"Islam departs from the mainstream of modern constructs of the individual and the group," Allawi observes. The notion of a human individual is absent from Islamic thinking and impossible to describe in the Arabic language, he argues. Only God has individuality and uniqueness; the individual is merely an instrument, as it were. Many Western readers will skim uncomprehending over this material, and thus miss the radical thrust of Allawi's argument. Western political scientists do not learn theology, whereas Allawi argues that in the Islamic world, politics is theology.
Both of which were referenced in Spengler's piece today Hedgehogs and flamingos in Tehran.
I had to review once again the Origins of the Shia-Sunni split and the linked article from NPR by Mike Shuster was invaluable. Even better, and absolutely essential for seeing the problem was the Shia-Sunni map which can be found at the same link. With greater understanding, I could turn to the Hedgehogs article.
Why did the mullahs fix the election? And why so obviously?
The trumpet which dare not sound an uncertain note was a call to Tehran's Shi'ite constituency, as well as to a fifth of Pakistani Muslims. Religious establishments by their nature are conservative, and they engage in radical acts only in need.
Tehran is tugged forward by the puppies of war: Hezbollah in Lebanon and its co-sectarians in Pakistan. With a population of 170 million, Pakistan has 20 million men of military age, as many as Iran and Turkey combined; by 2035 it will have half again as many. It also has nuclear weapons. And it is in danger of disintegration.
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Against a young, aggressive and unstable Pakistan, Iran seems a moribund competitor...Collapsing fertility is accompanied by social pathologies, including rates of drug addiction and prostitution an order of magnitude greater than in any Western country.
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Iran's aspirations for a restored Islamic civilization cannot exclude Pakistan's 30 million Shi'ites. The Taliban's insurgency inside Pakistan is directed against the Shi'ites more than any other target, and to make matters worse, Pakistani intelligence is agitating among Iran's own Sunni minority.
Are we looking at a civil war in Islam?