Revolution with Asef Bayat

Revolution with Asef Bayat

[00:00:00] Nahid Siamdoust: Salam. In the name of the God of Rainbows, welcome to Woman Life Freedom, all in on Iran, a podcast series in which we’ll go deep in conversations with experts on various aspects of the revolutionary uprising that began in Iran in September when 22 year old Mahsa Jina Amini was killed in Morality Police Detention. In each episode, we’ll unpack an important aspect of the unfolding of this historic moment in Iran.

[00:00:44] Nahid Siamdoust: I’m your host, Nahid Siamdoust, an assistant professor of Media and Middle East Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Our intention is to quote unquote, archive the important insights of our experts here and now, both in their capacity as professional observers, as well as humans living through these momentous times. Stay tuned.

[00:01:11] Nahid Siamdoust: This week we’ll be speaking with Asef Bayat, who needs no introduction when it comes to a study and discussion of social movements and revolutions across the Middle East. He is Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Illinois at Iran Champaign, and has published what by now, are really classics, his 1997 street politics, his 2009 Life as Politics, how Ordinary Citizens changed the Middle East Revolution without revolutionaries about the Arab Spring and his latest revolutionary life, published by Harvard University Press last year. But first, let’s situate ourselves in the timeline.

[00:01:57] Nahid Siamdoust: Every week, I’ll try to situate us a little bit in the timeline of the protests of the Woman, Life, Freedom protest that started in September. So the most momentous things that happened, events that happened this past week. today is February 6th, 2023. So last night, Shervin Hajipour, the producer and musician of the song Baraye, received a Grammy announced by the First Lady, Jill Biden.

[00:02:21] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s the first Grammy given out under the category of social change. And, Baraye is the song that soundtracks this podcast, this particular version is, sung by Ifa. So it’s a metal musician in Germany who actually came of age in Iran making music, but has done a cover of Baraye. There’s so many different covers of Baraye at this point.

[00:02:42] Nahid Siamdoust: The song has become truly universal, sung in all kinds of different languages and contexts all over the world. And, Hajipour received a Grammy for this song, which, at this point every Iranian knows by heart. So that’s the most momentous thing that’s happened this past week. It’s all over social media and, everybody is, claiming a little victory in the revolutionary uprising that has been happening, even if small in comparison to the bigger picture.

[00:03:11] Nahid Siamdoust: The other important thing that’s happened is that Iran’s most prominent reformist, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who’s been under house arrest since the 2009 Green uprising and the elections then he has issued. At the time, he was really arguing for, and reformists have been for a long time, for sticking to the constitution, arguing that things could be reformed if we only listen to the spirit and the letter of the law.

[00:03:37] Nahid Siamdoust: In Iran’s existing constitution, he’s issued an open letter basically saying he no longer believes that, and that he believes that a whole new system, a whole new constitution, must be constructed and a referendum held in order to compose a assembly that would lead and direct this new movement.

[00:04:01] Nahid Siamdoust: So that’s a turnaround for sure, among the reformists. And Khatami has in some ways also backed this, although he seems to still argue that also in a letter that has been published, he seems to believe that things could still be fixed if we only stuck to the Constitution. I know some of these debates are moot for many people who have for long now surpassed any kind of reformist discourse.

[00:04:28] Nahid Siamdoust: But it’s still of note to mention here. So now let’s move on to our guest interview.

[00:04:45] Nahid Siamdoust: Hello! Today on the Woman Life Freedom Podcast: All in on Iran, we have Professor Asef Bayat. He’s currently the Katherine and Bruce Basian, professor of Global Entrance National Studies, and Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies at Urbana Champaign, University of Illinois. He was previously Professor of Sociology at Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of Society and Culture of the Middle East at Le University in the Netherlands.

[00:05:09] now you’ve got your Bachelor’s in Political Science in 1977, so just a couple years before the revolution happened in Iran in 1979 and your PhD in social sciences from Kent University in England. In 1984, you’ve held positions in a wide, spectrum of academic institutions, from Berkeley to Columbia, Oxford, to Brown.

[00:05:31] and of course, starting in 1986, you taught sociology at the American University of Cairo for 17. So you had a long stretch of time that you spent in Egypt, so you’re one of those rare social scientists who has clear insights into both the politics of the sort of Iranian sphere and the Arab states.

[00:05:53] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast, professor Bayat.

[00:05:57] Asef Bayat: Yeah, thank you so much, Nahid. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:05:59] Nahid Siamdoust: Before we start this conversation, I just wanna say your work has helped me think through,of the processes that I’ve been looking at in my own work, and you have so many different concepts that have been so helpful throughout the years.

[00:06:10] whether it’s the idea of quiet encroachment, which you have in life as politics, how ordinary people change the Middle East, you’re, published, by Stanford University Press in 2013. The idea that people through ordinary everyday acts can push back certain boundaries and really lead to the change in certain regulations.

[00:06:28] your idea of social non movements, which I’ve personally have applied to the easing of the hijab rules in Iran over the last, 20 or more years in which people not, women, not through organized movements, but through this sort of daily actions of non-movement, I’ve really pushed back and changed the restrictions on the hijab or, the combination term.

[00:06:51] Nahid Siamdoust: The Porte manteau revolution. So I’m not sure that’s the port manteau, but the combination in terms of revolutions, not a revolution, not a reform, but somewhere in the middle. And then for my own work, you’re writing on anti-fundamentalism, the highlighting the fun in the middle and how these lawmaker republics have been, fundamentally, against fun has been useful for my own writing on music and culture.

[00:07:14] and of course, your work on Post Islamism, right? Your, also 2013 book on post Islamism and, yeah, the different faces of Islamic activity and how sub society such as Iranian, in many ways have moved beyond Islamism, which is so relevant to our conversations of Post Revolutionary, the later period of post-revolutionary Iranian sphere. And most certainly the woman life freedom movement and of course, revolution without revolutionaries making sense of the Arab Spring in your book from 2017. So there’s so much to talk about with you and I couldn’t really think of a better guest for my podcast for the first guest for my podcast series.

[00:07:55] Nahid Siamdoust: So thank you again. I do wanna take us back to, part of my aim in this podcast series is to try to weave in the personal, into the political a little bit, something that we don’t really do much in academia, and I think that robs us of certain kinds of understanding, and I think you actually do that really well in your work because you’re examining social movements from the street level up.

[00:08:17] it’s really inherent in your work, I think. And, so I just wanna start really with, on the personal front with yourself and just ask you a little bit, what was it like? As a person in your twenties coming of age, in pre-revolutionary Iran getting a bachelor’s in political science, no less, what kind of world were you inhabiting as a 20 something year old in 1970s Iran?

[00:08:39] Nahid Siamdoust: What did it feel like to be alive then in that period? What did it feel like to be an Iranian in that period? Where was your mind politically?

[00:08:48] Asef Bayat: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Nahid. this is a wonderful opportunity for me. not only talk about, the current, work, scholarship and so on, and its relation to what’s happening in the region in Iran these days and so on..

[00:09:03] But also how, one, intellectual sort of landscape, is formed. So this is a great opportunity. Thank you for, having me here to talk about these issues, right? Really, my sort of trajectory, or shall I say my status, in my twenties, for instance, in Tehran, in some ways been formed by the way in which I have grown up and where I grew up, just so maybe I should flashback a bit.

[00:09:28] I actually was born in a very small village. Not more than 150 people. In the area Shahriar which is close to Tehran. And, when it was small village, we didn’t have really, no modern amenities of, running water, electricity, or nothing, or no roads and so forth.

[00:09:45] Asef Bayat: So it was, basically a bunch of, sort of sharecroppers and then when the land reform came, because my kind of family did not, have, they were not agricultural, people. They were he was a shop owner. Consequently, we didn’t have land. So we were one of those kind of waves of landless, agricultural people who were forced to actually, at the time we said migrate, mohajerat mikonan,

[00:10:12] to Tehran, which, we ended up in the south Tehran. And, I think parts of also, moving, from the village was because the school, went up to, fourth grade and after that and I reached, there was no school and I remained school desk, for about six and my father, who only could read and write, and he was a truck driver, at night he would teach me and so forth.

Nahid Siamdoust: Wow.

Asef Bayat: So we landed in South Iran, and, so I brought that sort of baggage of, being a sort of a village guy, entering into city with this all, intrigues with its all dynamics, which I really loved it.

[00:10:50] Asef Bayat: Interestingly, despite the fact that I was from a very small village, I just love this big city energy and light and this complex dynamics. So from the very really first moments, I became really interested in cities. how they work and so forth. but also as a person of, as I said, a migrant with, having an accent, in Tehran and trying to fit into the kind of urban world.

[00:11:15] Asef Bayat: I was very conscious about my position, about the position of marginalized, people. And the, I could hear, the way people were talking about or in Egypt. Villagers or villagers. In Egypt, they call it fallahin even if these people have been living there for years in this city but at their sort of habitants, their, the way in which they carry themselves and their way of life and so forth, put them in that category. So I was one of them. So I became in some way aware, very sensitive, really, from the, The moment really, we began to live there about kind of social issues, about the stratification, about, marginalization and yet very fascinated, by the world in which I had entered. So during the, so I did my, of course, high school there, interestingly, in an Islamic school, which was very fascinating to me. So I became very religious. In fact, it was, one that we were forced to pray in the school. collect the player.

[00:12:21] Nahid Siamdoust: Wow. Asef so you were part of this wave of urbanization that happened in the sixties and seventies in Iran.

[00:12:27] Asef Bayat: Exactly. And then you found yourself in this marginal positionality. I just wanna ask you, the high school that you went to, is that the one, if I, remember correctly the one next to Hosseiniyeh Ershad, or… No. That, no, that was, later. That was later. So when we moved, yeah. When we, the one that, it went in the south Iran was Jamiyat’e Eslamiyoun. It was, basically, a group of sort of school. Basically constructed by at the time I would say Islamists. Wow. Okay. Who? Yeah, it was, that way of, yeah. changing the youth, what they said. and, socializing them into, religious, upbringing and so forth, indu schools.

[00:13:02] We had collective prayer, we had alternative, sort of entertainment. We were not supposed to go to see movies and so forth. The whole thing were supposed to be spent really in this school. And I became really, very religious at the time. and I used to do collective prayer.

[00:13:15] Asef Bayat: I had to do add-on, On the rooftops and so forth. but, but after a few years, I got really, felt… the, how should I, the pressure of this, indoctrination. And I rebelled and I tell my father, no, I’m not going to go to the school anymore. Okay. And that was a time when we were, when we moved and we moved to, Bo Hack, or, where my father had found a new job there. so that’s the new school where, I went, which was close to Hosseiniyeh Ershad. As, and then I went to university and so forth in the university. Then a lot of people. I found a lot of people like myself, who were from hinterlands, from, provincial areas, villagers and so forth.

[00:13:54] . And we identified, we found each other in some way.

[00:13:56] Nahid Siamdoust: And they were, can I just give you a little pause for those who might not know the significance of Hosseiniyeh Ershad, where Ali Shariati gave his famous sort of pre-revolutionary lectures that really revolutionized a lot of, especially Islamist leaning.

[00:14:10] Nahid Siamdoust: That’s right. people, since we mentioned Jose Niha a lot, but so at in university then you found a lot of other kids like yourself, correct. Who had come from the margins.

[00:14:20] Asef Bayat: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then, so we found each other and. We formed the somewhat color of reading groups and, we began to be critical of what was happening.

[00:14:36] Asef Bayat: And, as I said, I had been very religious and I became very anti-religious. I became really the other side and, I began to read Darvin and historical materialism. I leftist literature. And, then I became really, leftist, and, so the, then they, of course, towards the end of my, studies, things began to change in Iranian society at the time.

[00:15:01] Asef Bayat: So that was a late, seventies or so. And, and the.. not demonstrations, the first sort of, sign of letter writings by intellectuals, began and the Goethe-Institut, forum, I don’t know if you, I’m sure you have read about it. 10 day of, yeah, at the, yeah.

[00:15:19] Asef Bayat: 10, yeah. days of, 10 nights of, poetry reading, which became very political and we just, participated in it and so forth. So that was the context really. So it was it was a time, for people like us, a time of, in very interesting, dynamism, hope so that was a time also of, oil boom. and, rapids of modernization in the cities, new consumer commodities. but at the same time, very repressive. So socially, economically. At the time, Iran society was changing very dramatically. and, and, certain groups, middle classes were becoming, I would say quite, off.

[00:15:58] and, literacy was going up and I think consumption was getting better. politically, we felt, a very repressive. And, I think that combination is something that I think Professor Abraha early on highlighted this, this kind of, uneven development.

[00:16:14] Asef Bayat: He says, that you had the economic development, but political underdevelopment, and I think that’s, was, a correct, formulation. that at the time, as a young person, really.

[00:16:24] Nahid Siamdoust: And the, you just mentioned you went from being more, drawn into an Islamist current, into going toward a leftist chapi sort of current, and I’m just curious, were the, was the political pull or social pull into those two directions, which would be the, if as you yourself and historians have written about the two strongest pulls, of course, the political currents that led to the revolution, ultimately, would you say they were equal or which one had the greater ideological attraction, would you say, in the 1970s of Iran?

[00:16:57] Asef Bayat: That’s very good question. I think my own experience, I, in the way that, I became religious, I became religious. Not necessarily political, religious. So in other words, my religiosity in the school and the way in which we were trained were more pious, somewhat fundamentalist piety, but still there wasn’t much of a talk of politics. yeah. And leftism, however, was very, was clearly of course, political and it has blueprint, but direction was strategy and so on and so forth.

[00:17:30] I will say that at the time, as I have actually written about, Iran was, on the, in a situation where, Islamization, in the political sense really had begun. when, that process what is stopped by an Islamic Revolution in other words, political Islam, I will say, in the 1970s was not, as, as strong as, has been claimed, in retrospect impose revolution.

[00:17:56] Asef Bayat: Interesting. And I think largely, what transpired after the revolution, it was transpired after the revolution, after the change, in the, state. So we, as the leftist people and also liberals and others participated, of course wholeheartedly in, in their revolution. but the outcome, of course, we never expected, this to be, a religious, sort of state.

[00:18:22] which then unleashed islamization, largely from the top.

Nahid Siamdoust: Interesting.

Asef Bayat: Yeah, so political Islam, I would say was not terribly strong, especially when you compare it, which I did, with what was going on later on, shall say in Egypt, political Islam, just before, the, in the, so shall we say in the eighties and nineties was very powerful.

[00:18:44] Whereas in Iran of the 1970s necessarily was not that really, strong.

[00:18:50] Nahid Siamdoust: That’s an interesting insight, and I wonder if you would then, because people and social scientists are still trying to really make sense of the 1979 revolution. Right? 43 years, almost 44 years later. Very true.

[00:19:00] Nahid Siamdoust: People are still grappling with it. And every now and then you hear the formulation, you know that the revolution was hijacked by the Islamists because of the leadership of, a charismatic leader. And so it sounds based on your description of 1970 Iran, that kind of formulation might not be far off such an, yeah, such an exaggeration.

[00:19:20] Asef Bayat: Yeah. of course, one, perhaps, one criticism that one can level against hijacking is, that there was a plan that they do it. They knew it. What they were, they knew it what they were doing, and then they implemented it. So this is too simplistic. But the processes, however, the process, what happened, in some way, allotted, for those people who wanted to take, the direction of a revolution in a certain direction it really, happened. So I think we should be methodologically, we should be paying, good attention to the existing forces that, were grappling with in what they wanted and the dynamics between them. both internally and international factors and so on, that eventually led to that outcome.

[00:20:10] Asef Bayat: You see what I mean? Of course. but there are of course now, stories and memoirs that people have been written. And, for instance, that the Constitution that had been written just, drafted that is in Paris and Iah, who many apparently had signed it and had approved it, they didn’t have anything, with respect to velayat-e faqih or religious rule, nothing.

[00:20:34] And, and they, and he wanted to actually place it, onto the referend. But then, Mehdi Bazargan, who was a kind of liberal, religious person. And he basically argued that, look we have promised people to put that into a.. to ratify a constitution within a constituent assembly.

[00:20:58] Asef Bayat: So we should do that. And, I read, actually, apparently I told, Rafsanjani had told him that if you did that, then the clerics will change the whole thing.

Nahid Siamdoust: Wow.

Asef Bayat: So that’s very interesting. Yeah. If this is true, it’s very insightful. This is really what happened when it went to constituent assembly.

[00:21:19] Which a large number of them, they which it wasn’t actually clerics. It became Majles-e Khobregan. It was from the original. Consequently, and the rest is of course, history. The expert assembly. So there were, there, there was of course the tendency not part of, certain segments, uh, of, the new elites to, pull, the revolution in sort of Islamist direction, but then they would have to ask, why they were successful and how come they were successful, why others were not successful.

[00:21:48] Asef Bayat: I think these are the questions that when we talk about revolution, they should pay attention to, Where is this account? Which accounts? The account that you just talked about in terms of Rafsanhani saying if you give this to the constitution assembly, there will, because there is now a discussion about, what is happening and the, and the new declaration that, Khatami has given and so on. So there are actually, I read a couple of days ago on this..

[00:22:12] Nahid Siamdoust: Interesting. So I’m just wondering, so if we’re to ask the question, why did they, why were they successful in pushing this through? How could they really eliminate these competing factors so easily?

[00:22:22] Nahid Siamdoust: Do you think in the end that perhaps, given that Islam was a part of a majority of Iranians lives, is that a fair comment to make about everyday life and practices that was perhaps the most trusted, I suppose religious and ideological force that people simply didn’t think, could do them harm.

[00:22:41] is that a fair way to express this?

[00:22:44] Asef Bayat: Partially, yes. I think, the key thing is, when there is a political breakthrough happens, and I think that’s very relevant to today’s Iran too that one had to think about, have to think about when the political breakthrough takes place.

[00:23:03] One has to see which groups are the most capable and willing to actually take power because that’s the time of competition to exert part to exert hedge money. Despite the coalition that is often formed before the political breakthrough, before the collapse.

[00:23:25] Whichever thing is general vague and so on. we want a different future and so forth, but when the political breakthrough happens, when you know the collapse happen, then that’s the moment. See, who are the most capable that usually they would really take over. Unless, prior to that, there is an agreement, there is a rational coalition that people get together and agree on what to do and so on and so forth. If you don’t have that and the coalition is basically imaginative, right? rather than real. Then, like the competition is pretty, inevitable.

[00:24:03] It’s interesting these days right now. the competition exists before the collapse. maybe that’s okay. You know what I mean? There are a variety of forces and so forth. The competition is inevitable and conflict is inevitable. The point is when that happens before the collapses or after now it is before, right?

[00:24:26] Whereas in the right revolution of, 79, it was after. Yeah. but as I said, the alternative to. this imaginative, coalition is, a deliberative coalition. that is people actually sit down and talk and say, okay, we are different, but we agree on certain things.

[00:24:42] And we go up to this far and, we agree on whatever. And, when the new situation arises, then for instance, we leave it to the, elections and the will of the people and so on and so forth. So that could be a deliberative, in some way rational, negotiative process.

[00:25:02] Nahid Siamdoust: That’s really interesting. So I wonder, I guess the revolution perhaps was inconceivable enough in 1979 that people just didn’t really organize enough about what shall happen afterwards. Whereas now there’s so much anticipation of the kind of collapse that you talk about, that there’s a whole lot more conversation about what kind of coalition, what kind of groups might take over, even though without too much leadership.

[00:25:26] Nahid Siamdoust: And of course that’s been something that’s been at the center of a lot of these discussions and debates. I wanna take us a little forward, and it’s interesting to me because of course, the question of whether the woman life freedom movement was a revolution or an uprising, or. has also been a very heated conversation with some people, being very upset when the word revolution isn’t used as if calling it a revolution will, will it into being a revolution.

[00:25:50] Nahid Siamdoust: And if, calling it protests or uprisings in some ways takes away from the, the power and the, sort of transformational nature of this movement. And, I realize this is, not a question that, it’s not a, it’s not a popular question to ask, so I won’t ask you right away what, how you would describe this movement.

[00:26:07] Nahid Siamdoust: But I wanna, we’ll get there eventually, but I wanna take us to 2009 because you have written about, something like a revolution and, these kinds of, pushing away back the boundaries in, on, on a very daily kind of basis that forces the system or forces the given circumstances and conditions to adapt and bring about certain kinds of changes in the social and political lives of people.

[00:26:31] Asef Bayat: I think, the great movement of 2009 was largely a reaction of a kind of popular reaction to the counter reform on a slot of the. value satisfaction. that is the, yeah, the clerical, hardline really, faction that, did not want to see the kind of reform that have been unleashed since 2000, the decade of 2000 by the Presidency of, president and so on to, to carry on. And, they were very adamant that this would be an existential threat to the project of, without family consequently fought against it. And, part of it, I think. I can’t, I don’t have time to describe, what they did and so forth.

[00:27:19] But, one thing, which people thought that they were doing was, this fraud in the elections and, and they, basically, reacted to that. But it wasn’t just the perception fraud or perception of, fraud, but the accumulation really of, grievances, largely political grievances that, they had, these people that basically they wanted an accountable government.

[00:27:45] It was a democracy movement. it wasn’t a movement to necessarily transcend and go beyond the existing system they wanted to make. they wanted to see the system. work democratize and to be more accountable. And I think today, however, it seems that project, is seen by people to not to work that, in other words, this, there is this perception that this system is not, reformable.

[00:28:16] Asef Bayat: And this has been expressed also by, a number of reformists themselves. And that includes of course, a new statement the day before yesterday. So in this sense, politically at the political level, the current, I would say, episode the uprising is very different.

[00:28:36] The Green Movement, even. It’s very different from, 2000 and, what was it, 17 and, 2019? Uprisings.

[00:28:43] Nahid Siamdoust: Mir Hossein Mousavi, of course, the leader of the green movement, who’s still under house arrest and former prime Minister during the Iran Iraq war. And someone who has come around to issuing the statement that you just mentioned, that the system is not performable.

[00:28:57] Nahid Siamdoust: Do you think? It was not, of course there’s a regime change, faction that has been very strong and, in the us that is almost a historical, in pointing to the way in which, the political situation in Iran has progressed over the last, let’s say, 15 or so years.

[00:29:12] Nahid Siamdoust: And, they point to people who ever thought of reform reforms as being possible, as having been completely either naive or regime apologist. Do you think in 2009 it was still conceivable that this system could reform from within, in a way in which, it’s elected elements as opposed to its appointed elements, right?

[00:29:31] Nahid Siamdoust: Iran being a kind dual system at that point still, I think at this point we can safely assume that it’s mostly an appointed and engineered system. but do you think in 2009 it was still conceivable, were people too naive to believe because this is millions of Iranians coming out on the streets and asking for those reforms, right?

[00:29:49] Were they naive to believe that it was possible still then?

[00:29:55] Asef Bayat: It’s very difficult to answer this question because, because it didn’t work. Now we know that it didn’t work. Now why it didn’t work? was it because, people were naive or perhaps there were other, factors involved? Let me just say that, I’m not sure, that necessarily it was naive because previously, prior to the green movement, there was a period where, really the idea and ideas of, reform, gain incredible momentum and, I’m talking about after the elections of, president Kami. and I think some notable.. I think social and cultural openness relatively, of course did take place. And I used to go there very often. And I could actually observe very significant changes that happened then with the previous decade.

[00:30:49] And the elections that took place in the parliament really changed, and Parliament was very critical of the policies of the non-elected bodies. And, the press really became amazingly good and open. And, there were a time of social movements, movement.

[00:31:09] Asef Bayat: Movement, the youth movements. And a lot of dualization began and so forth cultural openness. So there was a lot of debate. There was a time for a very serious debate about the nature of Islam estate and the critical voices where, present in public sphere and so on, so people could see that, that elections actually matter and it gives results.

[00:31:35] and we can experience this result, right? And perhaps precisely for this reason that the other side was so adamant that the other side, the sort of the hardline, we say, or without the FPI side. So they felt the threat and basically they want, they decided that from there to stop it.

[00:31:58] Asef Bayat: So where they, where you know, people, naive. there were evidence that things could actually change, but why, it didn’t, continue. that’s the fundamental question. So in other words, in a green movement. So the kind of resistance that took place was of course, adamantly nonviolent and a mass movement and so forth.

[00:32:21] And, I was thinking at the time, later on, try to compare it, with what happened, the Arab Spring of 2000 and, 11. it’s very difficult for me, sitting outside and then expecting certain things. It is not necessarily, very humble, right?

[00:32:38] . But I was thinking, is it possible for people who are on the street stay rather than go home? in fact, the security forces these days, they complain about the bravery of the new generation, right? And in fact, they have expressed that, they don’t afraid of us anymore.

[00:32:55] Whereas at the time they were afraid. they would disperse despite the fact that there was a sort of really a massive sort of presence of people, on the street. if they had resisted, would, change, would that lead to change? I don’t know. It’s very difficult to say.

[00:33:11] But what I’m trying to say is that, I wonder if there could be a different way of resisting, or not. and of course against me, certain reformers would say that actually people shouldn’t have done it at all. and. because that, made the regime more aggressive and to push for its claims and, further, take the society further towards a established way of governing, right?

[00:33:39] Nahid Siamdoust: It seems to me, in 2009 that it really was a key moment and it was very clear from, Khomeni’s speech. the first speech he gave after the elections that he was not going to give an inch and there was not going to be any kind of, compromise or any taking step toward anybody who thought that the elections were fraudulent.

[00:33:57] Nahid Siamdoust: And instantly he referred back to his, very well established. Do you know, thinking of, tahan and, foreign intervention and all of that. And this is something that he’s continued of course, throughout these recent protests. And, it’s true that, yeah, but..

[00:34:15] Asef Bayat: I was gonna say also, but beyond this, in terms of how perhaps resistance could have happened, it was also limited, right?

[00:34:21] Asef Bayat: It was largely, I would say urban middle class, sensibility and their largely presence. Although we have heard things, for instance, my own village that people were, pro, green movement and so on. But it was largely, as I said, urban in the big cities like Tehran and Taris and so on.

[00:34:40] But the marginalized groups, and especially rural areas were not necessarily part of this, process. And I think that was one of the kind of a key, perhaps weaknesses. and the regime had, certain still social basis. strong social basis still has and which that again differentiates it from what is happening today. Which has become really national movement with a variety of constituencies. Rural, urban, marginalized, middle classes and, ethnicities and so on.

[00:35:14] Nahid Siamdoust: Much more widespread. And though I was much more, but was reporting on the 2009 uprising, in Iran, and I was in a lot of the protests and personally because of the people whom I interviewed, I like to push back a little bit against the notion that it was mostly middle class.

[00:35:29] Nahid Siamdoust: Okay. Because I talked to all kinds of people, like a grandma from actually Shahriar, a mechanic, the kinds of people you wouldn’t really count as being part of the middle class, but I know that, yeah. ideologically or in terms of intellectually that’s what it was.

[00:35:43] Nahid Siamdoust: It was a movement for reform. I think you are right and others are right, because this is something that is held to be an understood sort of notion of the green uprising. it certainly was in this aspiration, it was a middle class movement.

[00:35:56] Nahid Siamdoust: And that it aspired for these, intellectual goals of reforms and elections and these things rather than sort of economic goals, right? But, if we move it forward a little bit, and you already talked about the Arab Spring.

[00:36:11] Nahid Siamdoust: I know that, you have compared actually the woman life freedom movement more to what happened during the Arab Spring. And I wonder if you could, just give us a little bit of your insight and where you see the comparisons between these two uprisings or slash revolutions.

[00:36:27] Asef Bayat: Yeah. One is the way in which it really began. They both began and I think, the triggers, and so largely it was the self revelation of, Mohamed Bouazizi that, somewhat, inspired and inaugurated the uprising there. But of course there was a basis for it, right? Protests had happened earlier on in, the provinces and so forth. But that moment was, I think, very significant. In Egypt, it was the killing of the young man who was reportedly tortured really to death after his arrest, that created this incredible outrage on the part of young people and others.

[00:37:09] Asef Bayat: And that was the beginning. But again, these countries, and their political economies had bases were grievances, socioeconomic, and political, that, but they were the triggers. And, in Iran it was of course, a tragic death in custody.

[00:37:27] So in some way these are comparable. And I do think, also that in terms of, grievances in social and economic, but they were also political. They’re all I will say comparable. So socioeconomically, these societies are not pretty friendly to the majority of people.

[00:37:47] Asef Bayat: And politically they are basically, autocratic and all of them are in a similar have position. But I will say that, however, in the Iranian case, there is much more social. Of the life world than we had seen in the Arab world, ever. It is not really comparable, Iran, perhaps, this point is well, at a point that that incident happened was more comparable perhaps to Afghanistan under Taliban.

[00:38:20] Asef Bayat: And that’s why Iranians saying Talibanization of the regime, right? That process has been happening. I think that really matters and the kernel in some way of their life world, maybe in any society or women. and, so I will say the colonization in some way of the life world, has meant decolonization of women and their model thinking and living and their lifestyle and as basically in the denial of really citizenship, not much social, rights, civil in some ways, civil rights in the sense that, there are sex segregation in the parks and in the institutions and universities and so forth. So there are much more, I would say, social and cultural grievances in Iran than you have had in the Arab world prior to their uprisings.

[00:39:13] Nahid Siamdoust: And you had a piece out in October, in New Lines magazine, “A Global Iran Is Born”, which apparently was an interview that was published in Etemaad newspaper on October 10th and then translated and published in New Lines Magazine. And you mentioned in that piece very much you point to the issue of dignity and life, which is comparable between what happened in the Arab Spring and then in the Woman Life Freedom Movement and.

[00:39:39] Nahid Siamdoust: Which of course is also reflected in Shervin Hajipour’s song Baraye which last night won a Grammy for.

[00:39:45] Asef Bayat: That’s right.

[00:39:46] Nahid Siamdoust: The first song ever to be given an award for social change, a song for social change. It was announced by the First Lady, Jill Biden. And in it we really hear this note that the song is obviously written from tweets by ordinary Iranians.

[00:40:01] Nahid Siamdoust: And we really get this sense for, how much this movement really is about a sense of dignity and a normal life, and a respect of nature and environment and animals and human beings, and this, basic decency toward life. and you write in your piece, and I quote, “when you talk about a global Iran, that you’re talking about a collective quote collective of people separated by geography, but very much together in feelings and concerns and in dreams” end quote.

[00:40:30] Nahid Siamdoust: And I’m just wondering if you can tell us a little bit about how do you think this notion or this sense of a global Iran, which I think we all feel and we know because of this the huge waves of migration that have happened over the last 40 years. And these layers and layers of expatriate Iranians all over the world, that there is in fact this global sort of network or coalition of Iranians, feeling what you write in your piece. And I wonder if you do you think helping the cause of Iranians who are still living in Iran and trying to really bring about a change to their current political situation.. is it helping them? How do you see that, that dynamic working out?

[00:41:09] Asef Bayat: Sure. I would say prior to the green movement, I think we had perhaps two Iranians, those who live in Iran and those who lived outside. And I think there was some sort of degree of I would say separation and even some kind of a suspicion that those people who left, they didn’t care much about what was happening.

[00:41:34] Or they couldn’t stand by, the kind of troubles that others have endured. And so, they left for a more comfortable life. I think this changed in some way, during the Green Movement. I think there was a good degree of sort of unity and togetherness and shared feeling between the two sides, the two Iran.

[00:41:58] Asef Bayat: But I think in the current, uprising, this has been, I think, pretty unprecedented in terms of the, sort of identity of, concerns and the dream of, a different kind of Iran that, both outside and insider is really a share. one reason of course has the number of Iranians have outside have increased, and, there are millions now.

[00:42:22] But also I think, the new communication, I think technology has helped to maintain much more, a much closer connection. the, the existence of all these videos and so on, one could watch and actually feel that as if one is in the streets of Mashad. what was happening.

[00:42:41] Asef Bayat: And there is this kind of, solidifies in some way that shared, feelings. And I think, Iranians, outside, have been pretty instrumental in their support for a kind of meaningful change, in Iran. And I think Iranians inside Iran also realize it because they also are connected much better to what is happening outside Iran that they used to be in the past.

[00:43:10] So the connections and closeness has been possible on both sides. And there is some kind of appreciation, I think, in some way of both sides. And in this sense, I think, this global Iran somewhat has been generated and a lot of as Iranians living in America, Europe or whatever, they live as if that they live.

[00:43:36] Asef Bayat: And think constantly about Iran. A lot of their lives seems to be even temporary, although it could be permanent temporariness. in the sense that, they’re having this dream of, just going, back to Iran and they’re living here temporary. but this can practically last forever.

[00:43:55] Asef Bayat: And I think this is also a situation of many diaspora population in the group of certain political constraints in the home country.

Nahid Siamdoust: How did you feel about when this recent uprising as yourself as an expatriate who very much thinks and works on these developments in Iran, how did you personally feel about what was happening?

[00:44:17] Nahid Siamdoust: And was it, is it different from previous waves of uprisings that you’ve seen in post-revolutionary Iran?

[00:44:23] Asef Bayat: It was, it was. I was of course, like many others, I was, totally surprised and I didn’t expect, although I had the written about, both in the context of the Arab countries and in Iran, that the dynamics of the struggle that has been going on in the region.

[00:44:40] And also in Iran, that is this continuous everyday struggle for creating more liberating norms and practices in society has been going on for now four decades. But, it was predictable that at some point this quiet encroachment actually became really very unquiet, noisy encroachment and this aggressive encroachment would lead to a turning point because the other side that is the adversaries, the state and power, would also react. And I think this what happened, in the case of Mahsa Amini and the sort of women wanting to have control over their lives as human beings, as citizens.

[00:45:36] and they have been struggling for this for decades on daily basis in the workplaces, in the parks, in the buses, in the education system, and in the courthouses. and they have been, in my view, have been successful in pushing the boundaries and winning new trenches as they move forward and teaching to their children.

[00:45:57] And that’s key teaching to their children. And now those children have taken the, what do you call.. the banner of their elders and they are pushing forward. And when the sort of politics at the top? No, this is the politics at the bottom. Politics at the top changed. That is what in Iran they called, yeknavakhti, your homogeneity of all the source all the powers, right?

[00:46:23] Asef Bayat: Executive and parliament and presidency and judiciary and so on, became one old, heart liners. Then they began to basically say, okay, that’s enough. Stop. Stop. It’s going too far. So it’s going too far. So here they are pushing over there, they are saying, stop. And in fact they want to regain.

[00:46:44] Asef Bayat: That’s the thing. Not just stop, regain, again, the life world day, every day, life of people. And the result was of course this incredible conflict and the role of women been quite incredible and unique. In terms of not only the recognition of the dignity of women and beyond that dignity of human being, but also recognition of the centrality of women’s question within a big uprising.

[00:47:15] Asef Bayat: Recognition by men, also recognition by a lot of traditional women who actually do wear like my mother, hijab and so forth. that is, I think, quite unprecedented and extraordinary.

[00:47:29] Nahid Siamdoust: Yes. And it’s been such an inspirational movement in the ways that you just described, and you’ve also written about this sort of social non-movement, which has been such an interesting way of thinking about things, about how women really have pushed those boundaries on a daily basis through the ways that you describe, whether it’s through wearing the hijab less tightly, or pushing in the courts and on the streets and in politics and elsewhere.

[00:47:53] But when we look at the region… and we just talked about the Arab Spring, of course, the outcome of the movements in the region are not at all uplifting. We’ve seen this wave of authoritarianism, the air winter, which you have also written about, the turning around of these, the really sort of depression of those movements and the strong hand of authoritarians and dictators, in the end winning the calculations and the dynamics, and not least even recently in Tunisia, the one example that we could hold up, in the Arab world saying Tunisia managed to transition from the dictatorship to democratic system.

[00:48:29] Nahid Siamdoust: Even there case aid, of course, has now, instituted a constitution that is more restrictive than what existed under Benani. And so I wonder, if you, and yet we don’t wanna compare what’s happening in Iran to what happened in the Arab world. Not only because we wanna have a better outcome of it, and I’m just wondering.

[00:48:49] Nahid Siamdoust: We’re without asking you to look into your crystal ball, but we’re, as a social scientist who’s studied these movements for decades and who has experienced them as a human being yourself, right? In 1970s, Iran and Onward, and the waves of protests that have happened in Iran.

[00:49:05] What is your, I don’t know. What’s, what do you think? Where are we heading? What’s going to happen to Iran? What’s going to happen to us? It’s hard. Where do you see this unfolding?

[00:49:14] Asef Bayat: All I can say is that, it’s not just all I can say, but one of the things I can say is that things are not inevitable.

[00:49:24] The dynamics of revolutions are very complex and in the sense that the dynamics are not restricted, or the process is not restricted within a national government, nation state, but rather, has been influenced by variety of happenings, here and there outside and so on.

[00:49:45] Asef Bayat: Now, the fact that, look, the fact that, Arab Spring, at least at the political level, in terms of democratization has failed. What would they expect to lead a for a different outcome elsewhere? Because the idea is that people are supposed to learn, right? And not only, of course, regimes learn, right?

[00:50:10] Asef Bayat: The adversity learn from each other to stop change, but also people learn to push for change. In other words, what happened in the Arab Spring? Is not necessarily the outcome that perhaps Iran should experience. And if there are, as I say, attention to what happened there try to address those.

[00:50:34] Asef Bayat: So that’s the most important thing I can really, say. yes. They did lead to, again, authoritarianism and one can discuss it or why, they happened. But let me also add that while as a nuance, is that although at the political level things didn’t change at a social and cultural level, a lot has changed.

[00:50:59] Asef Bayat: And I think that’s key. And I’ve tried to address those changes, at the grassroots level among people, among women, among young people, among subjectivities in terms of relations of hierarchy in the education system and so on, in farms, factories, families. And these things matter, and I think significant changes happen, and I have tried to address those in my latest book, Revolutionary Life, the Every Day of the Arab Spring.

[00:51:26] And you correctly brought the example of Kais Said and what happened to Tunisia. But over there also there has been incredible resistance against Kais Said who once was a kind of a savior. He, no, he is no longer a savior. And the indication of last elections it was a defeat really, in terms of participation.

[00:51:48] Asef Bayat: It was very low, incredibly low. So that actually it is illegitimate in some way, elections, and in other words, because societies, have been transformed and they do not necessarily, buy what, certain, populist, leader, rises up and, wants to do. I think in the context of Iran and the fact that you are asking me this question shows also the awareness that we are aware of what happened elsewhere, and it is we should be addressing, I think, the situation that we are, at now.

[00:52:24] Asef Bayat: And I think a lot of people are thinking to avoid that kind of outcome.

[00:52:29] Nahid Siamdoust: For sure. And, it’s an unfolding story. And as it unfolds, we will be reading you closely, and, watching closely and hoping for the best and working toward the best. And, thank you so much for being on this program, for giving us your insights from the personal to the intellectual and your work, your writing. It has been really a pleasure having you and talking to you about these momentous and historical, events that have been taking shape.

[00:52:55] Asef Bayat: Thank you so much, Nahid again, for the opportunity to reflect on some of these, I think, important issues that a lot of our fellow citizens also think about. Thank you. Great.

[00:53:06] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you so much. Thank you Professor Bayat.

[00:53:08] Asef Bayat: Bye.

[00:53:08] Nahid Siamdoust: Take care.

[00:53:09] Asef Bayat: Bye bye-Bye.

[00:53:15] Nahid Siamdoust: All right. That wraps up our interview for this week. Thank you for listening. My guest was Asef Bayat. He’s the Catherine and Bruce Bastian, professor of Global and Transnational Studies, and Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Illinois Urban Champaign.

[00:53:36] Nahid Siamdoust: You were listening to an episode of Woman Life Freedom, All In On Iran, broadcast to you from the University of Texas at Austin. I’m your host, Nahid. Until next time, Jin, Jian, Azadi. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.