Stifled by clerics, Iranians escape online

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/16/MNGFI33BVI1.DTL

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Esfahan, Iran -- Whiling away the hours in a tearoom nestled under a 4-century-old bridge on the Zayandeh River, drinking cup after cup of steaming tea and puffing on a water pipe, Kaveh and his friends think only about escaping. To anywhere.

They don't want to talk about politics. "We hate the mullahs," he said, referring to the hard-line Shiite Muslim clergy who wield ultimate power in Iran. "But we try not to be political. It's not received well in this country. ''

Their escape, for now, is the Internet. Asked what he does online, his buddy, Massoud, answered with a leer: "You know what."

Both young men laughed. "What else is there?" asked Kaveh.

Faced with the seemingly implacable force of a conservative religious establishment, some Iranians like Kaveh have traded their rising hopes for democracy and freedom for more escapist pursuits, including Internet porn. Indeed, in scores of interviews -- from the capital, Tehran, to Esfahan and Yazd in the south and the Caspian Sea in the north -- many Iranians said they have become wary of politics.

"Many people now are demotivated, and this political apathy is increasing dramatically," said Fazal Miboudi, a pro-reform mullah who is a professor of political science at Mofid University in Esfahan. "We are in an increasingly polarized and divided society. That's why officials are concerned, because it's dangerous."

Orthodox pressure

Ever since Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric, swept to the presidency in 1997 elections with overwhelming support from the nation's youth, his attempts to limit the power of unelected religious authorities have been repeatedly beaten back by orthodox bodies such as the Guardian Council.

"We were cheated," said the 25-year-old Kaveh, a salesman for a wholesale plastics company. "The reformists have done nothing."

For solace, increasing numbers of Iranians have embraced the Internet --

up to 3.5 million since it arrived here four years ago -- but not always for high-minded reasons.

"Chat and pornography have driven the whole technology sector in Iran," said Massoud Bozorgi, CEO of Chavoosh IT Development Co., the largest Internet service provider in Esfahan. "That's why most people buy computers. It's sad, but true."

In a country where the morals police can arrest and whip an unmarried couple for holding hands in public, online flirting with the opposite sex is officially banned. But enforcement of social strictures has loosened markedly in the past couple of years, and the police have rarely made such arrests.

So chat rooms -- especially those promising romance -- have proliferated.

"I'm fed up with the heavens here," wrote one young woman in a chat room for Esfahan residents, using a flowery Iranian term meaning general life circumstances. "My heart is burdened, and I have agony in my heart. Someone should talk to me."

She quickly attracted several male suitors, and in a while she had picked one, and they disappeared from the chat room -- apparently a match successfully made.

Earlier this year, the government announced a new campaign against anti- Islamic immorality. Newspapers quoted officials who said a list of 15,000 subversive and pornographic sites would be sent to Internet service providers, with orders that they be blocked. But the crackdown apparently fizzled.

"The list the government gave us is very small, really, a few dozen at most," said Abdollah Fateh, president of ParsOnline, Tehran's largest private Internet service provider. He said most of the blocked URLs are news sites that provide aggressive coverage of Iranian news, including Radio Farda, a U.S. -government-run radio station set up in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the political news site Gooya.

Double standard

Government censors seem to make little effort to filter out sex-and- romance Web sites, but numerous opposition political sites are locked. Many Iranians assume the double standard is intentional, leaving them an outlet to blow off steam without threatening the religious power structure.

When politics is spoken of -- often in hushed tones, but sometimes with unexpected openness -- the desire for some form of Western democracy is expressed frequently. Some even support a restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy, which was overthrown in the 1979 revolution.

"Eighty percent of the people want to throw out these mullahs," said one middle-aged man, standing in the middle of Esfahan's majestic Imam Khomeini Square, surrounded by the blue-and-yellow-tiled domes and towers of 400-year- old mosques, palaces and bazaars.

His voice rose as crowds milled around him -- workmen pushing carts full of Persian carpets, women enveloped in head-to-toe black chadors and the occasional European tourist.

"After the Americans invaded Iraq, we all thought they would come here next, and we were hoping so much, so as not to give the bastards the satisfaction," said the man, who asked that his name not be published.

He continued, nearly shouting: "We would have received them with open arms. But they didn't come, so we figured they would get involved behind the scenes with the protests" -- a reference to the mass pro-reform demonstrations that swept Tehran and other major cities in June and were halted only with hundreds of arrests.

"But the Americans didn't do anything. Now, what are they doing? Are they doing some deal with the Europeans about the nuclear issue?" the man asked, referring to Iran's promise last month, after meeting with several European foreign ministers, to suspend enrichment of uranium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons, and open up their facilities to international inspections.

He stopped and looked around, as if waiting for police to grab him. A few large sparrows flapped their wings. No one even raised an eyebrow.

When Khatami was first elected in 1997, about 80 percent of eligible Iranians voted among a population of 68 million, and his bedrock support was among the youth -- a huge advantage in a country where 70 percent of the population is under 30 and the voting age is only 15.

Now, with social reforms blocked by the conservatives, Khatami's cause has been further weakened by his government's failure to provide jobs for young people.

High unemployment

As many as half of the 2.5 million university students are unable to find jobs after graduation. Unemployment is officially 16 percent -- though economists say it is probably about 21 percent -- and government reports say that more than 200,000 educated professionals leave the country each year.

"I can only keep my best people here for a few months before they emigrate," said Fateh, the head of ParsOnline. "I can only pay them about $500 a month. What are they supposed to do?"

"It's a system disorder, not just one factor or another," said Faribor Reistana, an independent economist in Tehran. "Even with the high international oil prices that we have now, the government is too corrupt and dysfunctional to generate more employment or stop the brain drain."

The old guard has taken advantage of the new wave of voter apathy. In February, conservatives won landslide victories in municipal elections largely because reformists stayed away from the polls.

In Tehran, the liberal reformers' stronghold, only 12 percent of voters cast ballots, and conservatives took 14 of the 15 city council seats. Reformists now fear that low turnout will allow the conservatives, who now hold only 54 seats in the 290-member Majlis, or parliament, to win control in legislative elections in February.

"I cannot deny that many factors will demotivate many people from voting in February," said Parviz Esmaeli, editor in chief of the English-language Tehran Times, a conservative daily that is controlled by religious leaders. "Political tension, plus a smear campaign against the regime by the opposition,

make people have a cynical view."

He paused. "And there's also the problem of not meeting the basic needs of the people."

Despite electoral disaffection, opposition to conservative Islam appears to be growing, reformists say. The trend was acknowledged Friday by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds final power in Iran.

"Our dear youth should be vigilant against a cultural wave that has been created by the Americans," he told thousands of worshipers in a sermon in Tehran. "This is an injection of moral laxity, atheism and apathy toward morality, apathy toward the disciplined code of ethics of Islam. It is leading young people to promiscuity and permissiveness."

Ebrahim Yazdi, leader of an outlawed pro-reform political party, the Freedom Movement of Iran, says the movement is gaining strength. "Before the Revolution, secularism was basically an imported idea, imposed on Iran from the West by the shah," he said. "Now, it's domestic. It's different from the shah's time. The internal pressure for reform is strong and deep."

Another key change, says Yazdi, a former foreign minister and spokesman for the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is the emergence of women in the reform movement. "Before the revolution, the bulk of women stayed at home and were completely apolitical. Under the revolution, they have become politicized, '' said Yazdi, who is currently under indictment for slandering religious leaders. "Now, they are a major factor in the reform movement."

However, Tehran human-rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, says secular politics and culture have not become an alternative to Islamic rule.

"Iranian political parties are not viable, they are weak,'' she said. "But this doesn't mean people can't decide our destiny. Iranians are searching for a correct version of Islam, one that governs society and our daily lives in a way that is not oppressive, especially regarding women."

Caspian Sea escape

Far away from Esfahan's old Persian heritage or Tehran's modern megalopolis is the place where Iranians go to escape -- the Caspian Sea coast.

The shore is gashed with mile after mile of gritty apartment blocks and gaudy high-rise hotels. Iranians flock there from the desert plateau to feel the humid, rainy Caspian climate and smell the breeze off the water. Few people swim, though. The Caspian is polluted, and women must obey the Islamic dress code and remain fully clothed even in the water.

Leaning against a railing on a dock overlooking the water recently were 22-year-old Ali and his girlfriend, 19-year-old Azadeh.

They had sneaked away from their families in Tehran for the day. "They are conservative, you know," said Ali.

Azadeh wore a beige headscarf, a black coat and white pants, an outfit that put her at the modern end of Iran's dress scale.

Striking up a conversation, Ali at first said he and Azadeh were married. Finally, he admitted that they had not yet wed and were risking a run-in with the morals police -- and their families' wrath -- if they were caught.

"If it weren't for our friends," he nodded down the dock at another couple, "we would just be at the park in Tehran."

"Or at the mosque," Azadeh said.

When the conversation turned to politics, Azadeh said firmly, "We don't care about that. We don't believe any of the politicians anyway. We just want to be free."