In the Islamic system ruling over Iran, more emphasis is placed on not corrupting the people rather than understanding them. This characteristic is derived from the clergy who have always considered themselves as “knowledgeable” and others as “ignorant” throughout history. The clergy of present-day Iran have no new words for those who understand and for those who need to improve their scientific needs. In the midst of this, although the formation of an organization called FATA police has been advertised to justify the prevention of internet users from entering moral corruption, the essence of this organization is based on not allowing people to understand their true nature.

A user who is searching for corruption does not settle for the internet. Because the internet is a virtual space and the pursuit of corruption cannot be justified by describing and promoting a virtual pleasure. We never deny the harms of the internet – in any form or shape – but rather reducing a general concept to a specific term called corruption is an insult to the same understanding that our religious leaders fear from its prevalence.

These days in Iran, for years the average intelligence and knowledge of non-clerics has been surpassing that of clerics. This scientific and informational advancement has posed a great crisis for the less intelligent and knowledgeable clergy. In the past, the majority of people were illiterate and clerics were seen as “mullahs” or “ayatollahs” due to their education. Literacy, or the ability to read and write, in the field of jurisprudence gave clerics an advantage over the illiterate. However, the situation turned into a crisis when the literacy and awareness of others overshadowed that of the clergy. According to Iranian religious leaders, the main cause of this is the excessive use of social media and the internet, which accelerates the spread of knowledge and leaves no room for the effective presence of clerics in the future.

It is known that the establishment of the FATA police or organizations under the name of the Cyber Corps was intended to control and analyze free and non-governmental political and social information. This mission, from the very beginning, proved to be unsuccessful and unstable. This is because obstructing thoughts is much more difficult and destructive than closing a newspaper or a newsstand.

The emergence of individual and collective websites and blogs has become so widespread that it has limited the power of rulers and censors, causing them to accelerate their efforts to block and filter them. The Cyber Army hired a group of young people who were both seeking employment and believed in the steps taken by the army in this field. Their mission was to hack and destroy corrupt websites, even those of Iranian scientists and elites who had brief disagreements with the policies of the Islamic regime.

If the Cyber Corps does not fit within the framework of the law and, like many activities of the Corps and Basij, is outside the general rule of law, the Cyber Police was established to both legally deal with offenders and to always have the shadow of a legal entity over the heads of social network users.

Today, the Cyber Police has organized numerous cases and handed them over to the judicial system. In these cases, we sometimes come across funny subjects that make a person laugh uncontrollably. For example: Why have you paid tribute to the glory of the Achaemenid Empire on your website? Or why do you consider a student to have the right to protest and strike?

Since 1988, the decline in the importance of “actions against national security” and the commission of crimes such as spreading false information with different wordings, even on a personal blog, has accelerated to the point that a group of prisoners these days, after 1988, are somehow connected through the same writing and blogging and managing related websites. This whole attack on the realm of knowledge and critical thinking of the people, especially the youth, is the same concern of the rulers who are afraid of the direct understanding of their audience. Otherwise, they themselves know better that creating difficulties for a young person will definitely make them more eager to sell themselves to the same greedy government’s forbidden desires.

These days, the Cyber Police in Iran has its own laws, regulations, structures and special officers. This police force was directly established and funded by the leadership and its duties were predetermined. The story began when the leader’s office, which until yesterday had enforced respect and compliance with the government’s red lines through a two-line memo in all publications, suddenly found itself face to face with a vast and chaotic space, and to put it figuratively, a “rebellious knot” that completely rejected these orders and obligations and instead insisted on releasing its pent-up frustrations on the keyboard and sending it to thousands of others. This is where the sanctity of that memo was broken. And later, this breaking of the shackles of the repressive regime became the slogan of the people in the protests of 1988.

I sometimes see myself alongside the FATA officers, who consider their appetite for these days to be indebted to the blood of the martyrs of paradise. I think of a solution for the struggles and difficulties of these police and internet organizations. I see that the problem is spreading because the central issue of the FATA police mission is a transgressive technology. Something that if you capture it today with all your might and technology, tomorrow it will slip through another loophole and take on a different form. And since the will and reins of this technology are in the hands of others who have processed it themselves, those others – whether intentionally or unintentionally – do not leave much room for the FATA police to roam.

My suggestion to all the elders, leaders, and the head of the household is not to rush in understanding the people. Especially where the understanding of the people exceeds that of the rulers. They should think about the fact that the tools of murder, looting, and corruption range from a match and a kitchen knife to a telephone, satellite, and many other things that are easily accessible to everyone. If someone wants to kill themselves or someone else, all they need is to grab that kitchen knife. Or by lighting a match, they can set something on fire. Or they can pick up a stone and hit someone.

The best way to isolate and vaccinate the people of a society from social harms is not through excessive police control. Excessive police control throws the government officials and leaders of a society out of the people’s sight and puts them in the hands of oppressors, constantly exposed to ridicule and insults from the people. We must not close the way for our people, we must open the way for them. This statement and suggestion of mine is not at all accepted by the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who believe that people must be forced into paradise. Which paradise? Probably the same paradise where these gentlemen, the authorities and clerics of the government, are standing at the gate.