My friend has an ex roommate who is Iranian. I have met the chap, quite erudite and well educated, a philosopher of sorts with a wry way of looking at the world. He is a foreign student in this country and has just decided to return home.

He comes from a secular family from the urban elites and does not worship Islam in the same fashion as most of his countrymen. He is returning to join the growing insurgency against the Iranian government, and he does not expect to survive.

His has said goodbye to his Australian friends for what he believes is the last ever time. And he has told them of the frenzy amongst the un-Islamised urban classes against the clerical government.

I am not naturally one to often sympathise much with the troubles of ordinary Iranians. I am much more concerned with the fate of my own country, its culture and its people than I am with the conflicts in far away lands about which we know so little.

But I felt myself feeling rather emotional at the thought of this young man, the typical student type with the frame and musculature of a rake and the height of a small table, going off to fight for the betterment of his country and his people.

He could have done what many of his countrymen have and simply settled in my southern sunny land, forgetting the troubles of their people and abandoning them to their fate.

But he chose not to. He chose to fight for their right to a better kind of freedom than that which can be had under a theological dictatorship. He decided to give his life in advance for what is most likely a hopeless cause, for the urban protesters stand against not only their own religious establishment but the great mass of the rural population.

I felt so much envy for the spirit which could ignite the resolve of this young man. The courage of such a small, quiet, scholarly man moves me almost to tears. Where is this courage in our people today? Where has this passion, this animating spirit that drove us to create the greatest civilisation of all time gone?

Can we ever get it back?

I don’t know enough about these revolts against the state power in Iran to really do much else than admire motivations. I know that the urban elites make up a big chunk of the demonstrators and that there is a clerical veneer across the top. But how deep is the veneer?