PART I: IRAN: THE ANGUISHED ODYSSES OF DEMOCRACY -- 1. Iran: A Century of Undemocratic Violence -- 2. Iranian Encounters with Democracy -- 3. Democracy and Lawfulness in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution -- 4. The Road to Authoritarian Violence: From the Coup of 1953 to the Revolution of 1979 -- 5. The Two Sovereignties and Islamist Violence in Iran -- PART II: DEMOCRATIC NONVIOLENCE: THE NEW IMPERATIVE -- 6. Struggle for Democracy in Iran
Summary
Despite lacking any sort of military advantage over the regimes they have confronted, the Iranian people have never been dissuaded from rising against and challenging varying forms of injustice. Through the successful implementation of non-violent action Iranians have overcome the violence of successive governments by undermining their moral and political legitimacy. But more than a hundred years after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Iranians are still in search of a social covenant through which they can acquire and practice public freedom. The stakes are extremely high, if Iran fails to end its culture of violence as a state and society then it risks its future as a stable, democratic state. So how then can the Iranian people break the cycle of violent and oppressive regimes and start looking towards a non-violent and democratic future? There is no magic formula that will immediately end violence in Iran but this book argues that by shunning violence and showing a readiness to face down persecution that the Iranian people have a chance to secure their freedom
