Baby Steps

Many in the Iranian diaspora community have been hesitant to embrace the Green Movement, mainly because of Mir-Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi's shared reluctance to shun the Islamic Republic's constitution and their continued respect for its founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Abbas Milani's new article in the Wall Street Journal points to the newly released Green Movement charter, and notes:

The people's only path to victory, Mr. Mousavi argues, is sustaining a vast, democratic movement that is inclusive, pluralist, averse to revenge and violence, and prone to dialogue and forgiveness. While he admits that in any future Iran religion "will have a presence," he clearly advocates the independence of "religious institutions from institutions of the state." This is as clear a call for genuine secularism as has been in recent political discourse in Iran.

This is the right approach. The grassroots of the Green movement is by no means as monolithic (read: exclusively secular) as some in the West have incorrectly made it out to be, and moreover, the more inclusive the opposition-coalition is, the greater of a threat it poses to the regime. Especially when an increasing number of Muslims turn against the supposedly "Islamic" Republic.