“The real strength of Darolshafa’s text is that it shows the main divide in Iran is not simply about who supports the Islamic Republic and who opposes it. The deeper issue is a struggle over the meaning of change itself. For the first people, survival comes first. For the second, the fall of the regime at any cost. For the third, a secular and legal transition. And for the fourth, social revolution. “This is not just a disagreement over tactics. Each of these projects produces its own people and speaks in their name. One calls on the “Nation of Imam Hussein.” Another invokes the “Nation of the Lion and Sun.” The third speaks of the “Iranian nation” or “the people of Iran.” And the fourth speaks of the working class and the oppressed. The conflict is not really over words. It is over hegemony. It is about which force gets to present itself as the true political voice of society.” A good summary
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51