On Saturday 17 January, the route from the Circus Maximus to the Roma Ostiense metro stop was criss-crossed by choirs from the Iranian community in Rome. Women and men strongly demanded an end to the ayatollahs’ regime and the return of an Iran free of the Islamic Republic. Several times, breaking the stillness of a sleepy Roman weekend, a clear cry went up: ‘Away with the Islamic Republic from Iran’.

The demonstration, called by the Radical Party, was joined by the main liberal forces: from Più Europa to Azione to the Liberal Democratic Party and Forza Italia. The presence of the Iranian community was massive and participatory. In that square, however, it was impossible not to be struck by an absence as conspicuous as it was politically significant: that of the Democratic Party, the trans-feminist collectives and a large part of left-wing feminism.

The deafening absence of the left

For the record, it is worth mentioning the Democratic Party’s participation in the demonstration called by Amnesty International at the Capitol on Friday 16 January. However, on the whole, the main opposition force led by Elly Schlein continues to maintain a timid and ambiguous position in the face of the courage of Iranian women, who risk their lives in Tehran and in the country’s main cities to claim rights that are often taken for granted in Europe and the free world.

In the face of the indolence of a substantial part of the left and the Western feminist world, a question forcefully imposes itself: is it mere political superficiality or deeper motivations, rooted in a long cultural tradition that has led a part of the radical left to indulge in, when not winking at, political Islamism?

The illusion of a political Islam as an alternative to capitalism

It would not be the first time. In 1978, as the Islamic revolution was taking shape in Iran, Corriere della Sera sent one of the most influential European intellectuals of the 20th century, Michel Foucault, to Tehran. In his reports, Foucault went so far as to define the revolution led by Khomeini as a ‘spiritual revolution’, reading in political Islam a possible alternative to both Western capitalism and Soviet socialism. In one of his reports, he wrote: ‘The Islamic revolution struck me as a political will. It struck me by its effort to politicise, in response to current problems, structures that are inextricably social and religious; it also struck me by its attempt to open up a spiritual dimension in politics‘.

That theoretical fascination, which did not take into account the theocratic and repressive nature of the new power, would prove tragically short-sighted within a few months. Yet, more than forty years later, its traces seem to resurface every time a section of the Western left struggles to unambiguously take the side of Iranian women and their individual rights.

Waking up from the idealism of the 1970s

If the Italian left is rooted in the tradition of European socialism, it cannot evade reference to the founding values of the European Convention on Human Rights and the entire system of international norms protecting fundamental rights.

It is unacceptable to re-propose ideological patterns inherited from the militancy of the 1970s, when hostility to the liberal-democratic system led part of the left to indulge in forms of political and religious radicalism presented as ‘alternatives’ to the European system. The winking at political Islamism, in the name of a supposed opposition to the liberal order, is not only a historical error: it is a renunciation of the very principles of emancipation and individual freedom.

That is why, today, the Italian left is called upon to make a choice of clarity

Siding unambiguously with Iranian women, and men, means defending the heart of universal human rights and reaffirming one’s belonging to a political tradition that cannot tolerate repression, theocracy and the denial of fundamental freedoms.