The current situation in Iran is both a result of and response to a complex combination of socio-political repression and economic corruption. But it is expressed through a range of different discourses – nationalist and leftist, to be sure – but most significantly by different Islamic discourses that read the uprising as a struggle between an Islam of power, represented by Iran's ruling regime, and an Islam of freedom, represented by many Muslim thinkers who oppose it.

This tension has theological and philosophical roots that can be traced back centuries, particularly through debates over the meaning of tawhid. The interpretation of this theological concept is a critical distinction between the systems of "power-based" and "freedom-based" Islam. In power-based Islam, tawhid signifies a monotheistic belief in which God is regarded as an omnipotent being who cultivates a master-slave relationship with believers. Fear is the defining characteristic of this belief, which links the most powerful to the most powerless in a relationship of obedience. People have no "rights" in this system; all that exists is their "duty". In this version of tawhid, believers are thus understood to be duty-oriented beings who can touch the gates of heaven only by obeying religious authorities, the only ones deemed capable of deciphering God's word, and by fulfilling duties as defined by these authorities.

In Iran, this school of thought, in its most radical form, is represented by Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi, who is the ideological power behind Ahmadinejad's government. In his most recent book, War and Jihad in the Qur'an, he defines human beings in Hobbesian terms as creatures who are by nature violent and ruthless. In his view, such violence is endorsed by a God who was himself caught between two inevitable forces: his intrinsic creativity, on the one hand, and the creation of nature, including its evil creatures, on the other. According to Yazdi, God was aware of the destructive tendencies in people but had no option but to create them. His brutal creation then had to be controlled in order for life to continue, which is why Yazdi developed the doctrine of harekate qasri, which asserts that force and violence must be used to bring people onto the right path. This doctrine dovetails with Khamenei's strategy of imposing submission through fear, the method now being employed openly and systematically to crush the green movement.

This discourse has been challenged by many other Muslim thinkers, however, including Mehdi Bazargan (who was prime minister in 1979), Mohammed Shabestari, Abdol Karim Soroush, and Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in the last years of his life. The most systematic challenge has come from Abol-hassan Banisadr (Iranian president, 1980-81). According to Banisadr, the original meaning of the term has been replaced by its opposite through a series of historical, theological and philosophical processes. In numerous works, but particularly Free Intellect, he defines tawhid as the absence of all power in the relationship between God and humans, people with each other and people with the environment. He argues that this meaning of the concept is clearly discernable in the Qur'an, which explicitly states that God has given his guidance to all people irrespective of their status as believers or non-believers.

According to this model, tawhid is not about developing a master-slave relationship with God but rather being liberated through a relationship with God. Tawhid liberates from relationships that limit and confine. The concept thus provides people with a guiding principle that is compatible with their independence and freedom. It is not difficult to see how important this is for the creation of a democratic and participatory political culture, and a state organised to provide the conditions for the exercise of individual and social freedoms, and thus for social justice. In contemporary Iran, particularly in the opposition movement, we are observing a struggle to establish this possibility through the expression of a freedom-based interpretation of Islam, against a power-based interpretation which justifies the control of state and society through force.

This struggle is not a new phenomenon. The freedom-based model has emerged in the past, also in response to the brutality and corruption of a religion put into the service of a state. It developed in a less elaborate form during the 1979 revolution; then, Khomeini was left with no option but to identify with it in order to maintain his political position. It was also present in the first draft of the Iranian constitution. Soon after the revolution, however, Khomeini moved away from this rhetorical commitment. Indeed, 30 months later, under the pretence of legality, he orchestrated a coup against the country's democratically-elected president who was demanding that Khomeini observe his commitments. But during this short period, the genie was released from the bottle; the power-based discourse came to dominate.

Since that time, the principles of freedom that initially inspired the 1979 revolution have remained sources of inspiration for many of the thinkers that now comprise the intellectual foundation of the Green movement. This movement can thus be understood as the popularisation of an interpretation of Islam that fuelled the unfinished 1979 revolution and that is now seriously, if not yet successfully, challenging Islamic authoritarianism. If it does succeed, however, it could pave the way for the growth for a movement of liberation in Islamic countries and among Muslim communities in the west.