Yesterday, while watching the news coverage of Iran’s street protests following the tumultuous and allegedly rigged election, I saw a haunting video.  A young woman named Neda was shot in the street by the state-controlled Basij militia while watching a protest.  She immediately fell to the ground and died quickly as her screaming father clung to her, his agonizing sobs of grief shattering the air.  In the few days since her death, the video of Neda’s last moments has spread virally all over Iran and the world.

While foreign media is not allowed in Iran at this point, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and CNN I-Reports have given us glimpses into the window of the conflict.  We do know that Neda has become one of the first female martyrs in this conflict, and her name has become a source of strength and a symbol of resistance for the protesters in the street.  It was in watching this video that I began to realize some striking similarities between this conflict and the Protestant Reformation.  These protesters are fighting against a government that has merged religion with state.  Iran’s elected President is subordinate to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  This relationship is similar to Catholic nations before the Protestant Reformation.   While kings had authority over temporal matters, the pope had authority over spiritual matters.  However, the pope could threaten the king with excommunication and popes eventually overstepped even the loosest of spiritual boundaries with calls for Crusades.  Brave martyrs like Jan Hus told the Vatican that they did not have the power to wage war, as ministers were called to love their enemies.  As a result, Hus and many other reformers were burned at the stake. In modern-day Iran, many citizens are being rounded up and imprisoned for questioning Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s decision to declare Ahmadinejad the winner of the election.  Among those detained are former President Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh, the founder of a women’s newspaper named Zan and a reformist, as well as over a dozen journalists, some political figures, and innocent bystanders. 

Muslim clerics are now split on the election results and the decision to hold a recount, which is an unusual occurrence in Iranian religious politics.  Will we see clerics openly stand with the people in calling for more freedoms?  Will this lead to less religious control over government?  Will this lead toward an Iranian-Islamic reformation of sorts?

I am also interested to see what role women will play in this struggle.  We know that many women are out in the streets, most women want the right to work (and many men agree with this), and a majority of women voted for reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.  Currently, women account for 65% of college entrants in Iran.  With the memory of a female martyr inspiring a nation to cry freedom, what will Iran look like for women in the future?

While we cannot directly help our Muslim brothers and sisters struggling for freedom in Iran, let us pray for their safety and their freedom.