Le débat en France sur cette question est vu, à l’étranger, avec incrédulité. Dans le monde musulman, il est perçu comme une preuve de l’islamophobie galopante ; mais, même dans des pays peu suspects de sympathies à l’égard de l’islam, les critiques sont nombreuses. Le New York Times du 26 janvier a publié un éditorial qui vaut la peine d’être reproduit et qui s’intitule « The Taliban Would Applaud »

« Il est facile de voir que les droits humains de la femme sont violés quand un gouvernement a besoin d’envelopper son corps et son visage dans un voile opaque, comme les talibans le faisaient quand ils dirigeaient l’Afghanistan. Il devrait être tout aussi facile de voir la violation quand une commission parlementaire française recommande, comme elle l’a fait cette semaine, d’interdire aux femmes qui portent de tels voiles — la burqa et le niqab — d’utiliser les services publics, y compris les écoles, les hôpitaux et les transports publics. (Le foulard musulman a été interdit dans les écoles publiques depuis 2004.)

Les gens doivent être libres de prendre ces décisions pour eux-mêmes, et non de se les voir imposer par les gouvernements ou la police. »

Petite incidente. Cette formule est amusante, car elle renvoie, sans que les auteurs le sachent évidemment, à une formule d’un texte de Karl Marx, dans Critique du programme de Gotha (1875) : « Chacun doit pouvoir satisfaire ses besoins religieux et corporels sans que la police y fourre son nez. »

« Au lieu de condamner la recommandation, le président Nicolas Sarkozy semble déterminé à aller plus loin. Il a déjà déclaré que les voiles qui cachent tout le corps ne sont “pas les bienvenus” en France. Le président du groupe parlementaire de son parti (M. Coppé) veut faire passer une loi qui interdit le port de la burqa et du niqab dans les rues. Les talibans seraient contents. Le reste du monde doit déclarer son rejet de cette mesure.

Enter Twitter and Facebook, which rapidly became vital tools to relay news and information on anti-government protests to people inside and outside Iran. Although the authorities had banned access to Facebook during the run-up to the elections, users found ways around the restrictions and, during the demonstrations, Mousavi himself used Facebook to contact supporters and the outside world. As Ahmadinejad was calling the protesters “football hooligans”, messages relayed via the social media (often repeated on global media outlets such as the BBC and CNN) showed the protests to be peaceful.

These events show the potential role of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube in facilitating protest and dissent during times of conflict and suppression — as well as enabling the spread of state propaganda and surveillance. The Iranian case reveals the new and complex role of social media in contemporary geopolitics. For traditional media such as newspapers, television and radio are often territorially-bound, and thus subject to national laws (libel, censorship) and political-economic power structures (political pressure, ownership bias, advertiser demands); whereas social networking media are often decentralised, non-hierarchical and contain user-generated content.

Two weeks after the Iranian elections, global “tweets” (messages posted via Twitter) on Iran and the elections continued to flow at an astonishing rate. A quick glance at twitterfall.com (showing which subjects are generating the greatest number of messages from Twitter users) towards the end of June indicated that tweets on Iran were coming in at over one per second, and showed no sign of slowing down. It took the death of Michael Jackson to knock the Iranian elections and the protests in Tehran from the top of the twitterfall.com list of most popular topics.

Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged the defeat in a speech broadcast on television (Al-Manar) on 8 June:

“We accept the results announced by the interior minister. Candidates will, of course, have the right to contest the results at the Constitutional Council if they have reasons to do so. This, however, is another matter. We accept the results that were officially announced. We accept these results with sportsmanship and a democratic spirit. We also accept that the rival side, the pro-government team, has won the majority of seats of the Chamber of Deputies, although the opposition has maintained the same number of seats in the parliament. It has lost in some constituencies and won in others… As you may know, I used to say at past celebrations that in Lebanon there is a difference between parliamentary majority and popular majority. Parliamentary majority can be a popular majority or it cannot be. In all cases, we agree that they have a parliamentary majority. As for a popular majority, research and statistics centres are supposed to revise figures accurately to know who enjoys a larger popular support. Since we all agree to appeal to the ballot box and the opinion of voters to decide parliamentary majority, such a revision may help us know about popular majority. If the majority of votes go to the other camp, I will then admit that they also enjoy a popular majority.”

This popular majority gave the Hizbullah-Michel Aoun alliance over 100,000 more votes than the other camp (the Daily Star acknowledged in its 10 June leader, “Nasrallah is walking a thin line when it comes to Lebanese elections” and Al-Manar TV said on 9 June that, according to a study by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information, “the popular support for both teams shows that 839,371 people voted for the opposition lists, while 693,931 people voted for the pro-government lists”.)

Qifa Nabki, a Lebanese blogger, who like most commentators had predicted a victory for Hizbullah and General Aoun, gave four reasons for the results (“Anatomy of a Victory”) on 8 June.

“I know that many in the opposition are going to start blaming the Maronite patriarch for their loss — as he issued a statement a couple of days before the election which seemed to chide Lebanese Christians into voting for March 14. But when we consider the fact that the FPM performed very well in the Maronite heartland — with sweeps in Kisrawan, Jbeil, Baabda, Zgharta, and a strong showing in the Metn — I’m not so sure that this explanation holds much water.”

“Far more decisive, in my opinion, seems to have been: (1) the high turnout of Sunnis in Zahle — many of whom came from abroad — coupled with a low turnout of Christians; (2) strong feelings of antipathy towards Hizbullah by the Christians of Beirut who voted decisively for March 14th’s list in the district of Ashrafieh; (3) some rare rhetorical blunders by Nasrallah in the past couple of weeks, calling the events of May 7th “a glorious day” for the resistance.”

On her blog “Just World News”, Helena Cobban reminded readers (““M-14 win in Lebanon”, 8 June):

“The prime contest in the election was not, as many western analysts wrote, between Hizbullah and its opponents. Because of Lebanon’s blatantly gerrymandered and discriminatory political system, the Shiite Muslim community that is the largest single religious community in Lebanon, representing around 40% of the population, has only a tiny number of members in the confessionally constituted parliament. Hizbullah could only ever expect to keep the 11 seats in the 128-seat body that it had before yesterday ; and it has done that.”

“The main contest, then, was inside the grossly over-represented Christian community. Here, Hizbullah’s allies in the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) apparently lost in a major way to supporters of March 14 who are also members of extremely well-entrenched political ‘families’ and ardent supporters of the present system of Christian political privilege.”

Paul Salem, in his own comment published by the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace on 9 June (“In Lebanon’s Politics, Four Years Is An Eternity”) wrote:

“… there are reasons to believe that Hizbullah might be quite comfortable with the results. Had its coalition won the election, the group would have immediately faced a number of challenges. The Arab and international community would have reacted negatively, putting Lebanon’s political and economic relations in jeopardy, which would have shaken investor and depositor confidence in Lebanon and precipitated escalating economic pressures. Second, Israel would have cried that the results confirmed Hizbullah’s domination of the Lebanese state, making the group more vulnerable to attack. Third, had the March 8 coalition won, it would have largely been on the back of Christian voters delivered by General Michel Aoun, who would then have demanded rewards from his coalition allies—including electing him president, something Hizbullah and Amal would not support.”

On his blog “Syria Comment”, Joshua Landis examined on 8 June the Syrian authorities’ reactions (“Syrians Silent and Disappointed but Ready to Put Lebanon Behind Them”):

“The newspaper, al-Watan, runs a large headline reading: “Political Money Wins in Lebanon.” So what does this mean for policy? Much depends on whether March 14 tries to rewrite Doha and get rid of the blocking third in Lebanon’s cabinet, as Hariri said he would do. He may feel obliged to carry through with this, or at the very least, raise it as his initial battle cry, because his win was more substantial than expected. My hunch is that any attempt to undo Doha will threaten to take Lebanon back to the paralysis and dark days of the pre-Doha era and will thus be abandoned. There is no stomach for such extremism today — not in Washington, Riyadh, or in Damascus or Tehran. The Obama era has changed things and Syria is waiting to move ahead with the US.”

“In many respects, Syria-US relations have been on hold, awaiting the outcome of the June 7 elections. Now that elections are over business can resume. The US, gratified at their results, can send Mitchell to Damascus as a sign of magnanimity in victory. Washington will be in a stronger position, but ironically, Damascus too may feel a certain relief in the very highest halls of the foreign ministry. It has avoided the complications of an Hizbullah win, which could have strained already bad relations with the US even further. The Lebanon situation will take some of the oomph out of Syrian hardliners, who may believe that Syria is winning the long term struggle for Arab public opinion and can afford to play hardball with Washington.”

“A dovish lobby is also taking root in Damascus. As more and more Syrians begin to make money due to of the liberalization process, they develop a keener taste for the joys and promise of wealth. Equally, they gain a keener awareness of the price tag that comes attached to ‘resistance’. In this they are not unlike the Lebanese. A significant internal lobby for getting rid of the sanctions is building in Syria. All the same, Syria is a long way from accepting to abandon the Golan to Israel. Even those who feel the real urgency to move ahead economically are not prepared to concede the Golan. It is a bind that we all keep returning to.”