Wilders Mania

In defence of the right to offend (FT.com):

But his announcement in late November that he would make a short film to that effect sent the government into a panic. The cabinet met in secret. It ordered foreign embassies to draw up evacuation plans in case of mob violence. It put the mayors of Dutch cities on alert. It arranged meetings with imams and other Muslim representatives, distancing itself from Mr Wilders' positions. The interior, justice and foreign ministers summoned Mr Wilders to meetings, and the country's terrorism co-ordinator warned him that he might have to leave the country for his own security. The government reportedly investigated whether it would be possible to block or delay Mr Wilders's broadcast.

The FT writer Christopher Caldwell looks at the Wilders controversy over his platonic film about the the Koran. This is an interesting point of view that equates Wilders with Western liberalism and its drive to separate us from Biblical command. Not so sure I buy the argument... Do you?

Mr Wilders is something of a bogeyman in polite Dutch society now. He should not be. His perfectly legal effort resembles the kind of mischievous testing of boundaries that civil libertarians have engaged in whenever they have sought to hasten social change in the face of an indifferent or hostile electorate. In seeking to reopen such questions as, first, whether Islam is a religion, and, second, whether ancient scripture is sheltered from our laws regulating hate speech, Mr Wilders is the comrade-in-arms of those western legal activists who have agitated successfully for gay marriage, euthanasia and bans on religious display.

In the end, the best response to Wilders is the cold shoulder or humor.

If there is a violent response, doesn't that just make his point? It's like fuel for him and even for people who might not agree with him but who see his vindication in a violent response. Who am I to tell people what to do? But if you are a Muslim who is offended by Wilders, then the most effective protest you can offer is to ignore him completely .

I prefer Eutopia's response to the mania. It's generous and humorous.

read more | digg story

New site for K

Global Voices beat me to the announcement of Kamran's new site, which we worked on over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. I have to say that getting Kamran to launch his website was a bit like getting a cat to swim. He is the worst imagineable client: never satisfied. In fact, he has been fiddling with the design for the site for ten years. "It's too boxy..." "Can we do this?" "Why can't we do that?" In the end, I forced him to accept the limitations of the web and my own coding limitations, and I think the site turned out really well.

He plans to add some more images of New York and some of the images for his project: "Missing Son." So stay tuned...

It may be a bit image heavy for servers in Iran. Sorry... we will launch a tiny version someday.

A “Robot” for Analyzing the Persian Blogosphere

Interesting interview with Kamangir about his analysis of the Persian blogosphere. Here's an Excerpt:

Q: How do you evaluate Iranian blogs' impact in Iranian society?Big and even bigger. Not that every single Iranian reads blogs. But I am amazed how conveniently we cross the red lines put in place by the state to discuss issues of interest. There is a very long way to go, but this phenomenon is fantastic in that it offers a method to think together and freely discuss issues of mutual interest.Q: Any ideas to share with the Global Voices audience?One of my hobbies these days is to go inside the database of KiBeKi and look at random blogs. I am amazed how many fantastic Persian blogs are out there, most of which do not have the deserved readership. The Persian blogosphere has been initially shaped around a few famous blogs. This is gradually turning into a more scattered pattern of readership. I believe that anyone who wants to know about the Persian blogosphere has to refrain from restricting themselves to the “first-generation” blogs and must try to go deeper than that.

read more | digg story

Republic of Suffering

I heard a fascinating interview with historian Drew Gilpin Faust who writes about the American Civil War. She talks about the way the Civil War forced Americans to redefine their notions of what made for a good death. In pre-CW America, apparently, the way a person died was a predictor of how they would be received in the afterlife. A Good Death meant a quick transition into heaven. She reads from a letter that a soldier writes while he is dying and states that he knew his father would be "delighted" to hear from his son as he died. It's really an interesting an interview.

Here is an excerpt from her introduction to her book, This Republic of Suffering:

The Civil War confronted Americans with an enormous task, one quite different from saving or dividing the nation, ending or maintaining slavery, or winning the military conflict—the demands we customarily understand to have been made of the Civil War generation. Americans North and South would be compelled to confront— and resist—the war's assault on their conceptions of how life should end, an assault that challenged their most fundamental assumptions about life's value and meaning. As they faced horrors that forced them to question their ability to cope, their commitment to the war, even their faith in a righteous God, soldiers and civilians alike struggled to retain their most cherished beliefs, to make them work in the dramatically altered world that war had introduced. Americans had to identify—find, invent, create—the means and mechanisms to manage more than half a million dead: their deaths, their bodies, their loss. How they accomplished this task reshaped their individual lives—and deaths—at the same time that it redefined their nation and their culture. The work of death was Civil War America's most fundamental and most demanding undertaking.

Glowing men: a story from the research for my book

I met a young Iranian-Dutch storyteller a few weeks ago who told me a story from the Iran-Iraq war. “The children who fought in the war were told that a death in battle meant that they would go straight to Paradise. They were told that the body of a martyr would smell like rosewater so even when some recovered bodies that had been decomposing out on the battlefield they would swear that all they smelled was rosewater. That’s how much they believed what they were told.”

I can hear the groans already. Many Iranians who were in the regular military will dispute this story… but the storyteller was not talking about the regular military, he was talking about the child volunteers who cleared minefields while they listened to rousing religious music sung by Ahangaran, which my friends in Iran tell me is very hard to get a hold of in Iran now, but which you can hear on YouTube.

“Sometimes when morale was low,” he continued, “a glowing man would appear on the horizon. The young soldiers would point and say: 'It’s the messiah!'” The Mehdi, the last Imam appearing after centuries in hiding. “There is a story I heard that the Iraqis captured several of these glowing men. They were all painted with phosphorous.”

If anyone is reading this from the discussion list I belong to, you know that I queried about the veracity of this story. After all, storytellers are not the most reliable sources, just the most interesting. I could not get any confirmation and eventually thought that it was simply hyperbole.

A few days after I had given up either proving or disproving the story a broad-faced friend from Iran was visiting us with his wife and son. We were eating dinner together: roasted potatoes with chicken, rosemary, and garlic prepared by my excellent chef who, thank god, I am married to. (You should taste his gormeh sabzi or zereshk pollo… To die for…). I knew that Amir had been in the military. “Did you ever hear of men dressing as the last imam?” I asked him offhandedly.

“Have I heard of it? I saw it with my own two eyes." He pointed at his eyes for emphasis. "Tori, it was not to be believed. We were on a hill overlooking a battle being fought by the Basij. We were not in the battle ourselves,” he explained. “There was just a sliver of a moon. A cloud passed over the moon, and I turned my head and saw a glowing man in the distance. ‘What the hell was that?’ I asked. This guy was painted with phosphor and riding a white horse. I asked my commander about it. He told me, ‘They send men dressed in phosphor to ride with the Basijis all the time.’ Really. It was unbelievable.”

I told him that many Iranians I had had contact with denied that something like that could have ever happened. He told me that he saw this in 1983 (1362, for Iranians) at the Meymak Front, during one of the biggest battles and worst defeats for Iran: Valfajr-3.

Merry Christmas

Sentence #6

A sign with a the silhouette of a sheep marks the place where two men sweat over a massive cooking pot filled with snouts, toes, brains, and tongues.

Sentence #5

Qom is the beating heart of Iran’s revolutionary regime: filled with seminaries, clerics, politicians, and truck stops.

Sentence #4

Oh God, please help me control my aversion to uninvited physical contact is the prayer I said as I waited in line to board Iran Air, walked through the airlock, and on to a plane full of Semitic faces: a plane full of men who could have been asked off of a flight in America just for having one eyebrow.

Sentence #3

Yet when I finally board Iran Air for the trip from Amsterdam to Tehran, the only thing that scares me is knowing that I am going to spend time in a culture where the buffer zone of personal space I manage to maintain between myself and others – even the people I love – will be shattered by people who are more comfortable speaking nose to nose.

Sentence #2

Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport is shabby and unimaginative: perfect for trench-coated men who could lurk behind its wide columns or in its dark wooden payphone booths.

Not my sentence...

Zarah Gharaman's:

"With so many joyful people on our side, it was impossible to believe that those who despised happiness could ever prevail over us."

Thanks for the link, Marie.

#1 sentence of the day

I love this blog by Jane McGonigal called The Best Sentence of the Day. I have decided to copy her model and present sentences (and maybe even paragraphs) from the book I am writing about my experiences in Iran. That way, I can blog without taking away from my writing time. So here is the first sentence:

After so many days crammed from early morning to late night with work and packing and goodbyes, it is a relief at last to sit in this office and let Javanmard take care of our problems while we talk about Genghis Khan and drink tea.

The arranged marriage

This article about an Iranian yenta from Nazila Fathi of the New York Times made me wonder: do expat Iranian women ever return to Iran to find a husband?

Excerpt:

''But I do not like to be called a matchmaker,'' he said, laughing. ''It reminds me of old women.''

In business for the last three years -- and swamped since newspaper articles publicized the opening of his office three months ago -- Mr. Ardabili is doing a unique job in a country where, after the 1979 Islamic revolution, dating was banned and extramarital relationships became subject to severe punishment. Some restrictions eased after the election of President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate, in 1997.

Still, Mr. Ardabili is careful to work within approved Islamic standards. His Web site has links to statements of permission from half a dozen prominent Iranian clerics.

''I just want to be a true cleric, and as a cleric my job is to help bring balance and happiness to people's lives,'' he said, adjusting a white turban over his clumsily dyed brown hair. That, in Persian culture, means marriage and having children.

I'm a stumbled upon fool

And an apology to all those folks who got emails from me...

Okay, I am a complete idiot. I hope some of the designers of Stumble Upon read this so that I can tell them how pissed off I am. I read something like: "add your contacts and see who else is on stumble upon." SU showed me a page of people I knew. I clicked on "add" or something like that and it added every single contact in my address book.

Years and years of effort to avoid sending spam, automated emails, and other annoying bullshit down the drain. I've avoided opening viruses, avoided sending on chain letters, avoided joining endless annoying viral networks only to have all my credibility ruined by a misleading interface. Am I alone?

Where can I complain about the horrific information design?

Why isn't the blog fun anymore?

Afshin asked me that question in an email. He's right. The blog is not fun anymore. So look at this video from
Abjeez instead. They are fun.

More cool paintings... the work of Ahmad Morshedloo

Check out the work by Ahmad Morshedloo at Payvand.

Oppression is weak

"In an open society it is impossible to kill, jail, or occupy everyone who disagrees with you." (Bill Clinton speaking at the World Affairs Council)

The regime in Iran is a house of cards. Many may talk about their strength. I’ve heard it: money is rolling in because of the high price of oil. Yes. That is a strength. The revolutionary military supports the current president. Many in the Arab world and beyond see Ahmadinejad as a damn against the tide of Western imperialism. Another strength. They are acting boldly. Another strength. The world is paying attention. Yep, yet another.

Why do I say they are weak? A government that stones a man for adultery, sentences a woman to lashings for promoting the rights of women, imprisons professors, blocks social networking sites, and locks up union leaders is weak. W-E-A-K. We know now how weak the revolution was when Iraq attacked in the early 80s thus uniting the population behind the regime. That revolution was so weak that it tortured, killed, and imprisoned nearly all of the political thinkers and activists in the entire country.

Weak regimes respond with violence. Weak regimes keep their populations in a state of fear.

Read about the weaknesses here:
Listen to Halleh Esfandiari
talking to NPR about her imprisonment

Kamangir writes about the sentencing of feminist Delaram Ali

Here is an account of the stoning of the man put together by Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices

Read a report from the OpenNet initiative on Iran

Covering Iran from Khatami to Ahmadinejad

This interview is with the journalist Angus McDowall, who Kamran and I met while we were in Iran. We always enjoyed his articles and his stories about reporting in Iran.

1. Why did you decide to report from Iran in the first place?

I decided on Iran for several reasons. When I first went there, I was very inexperienced having only worked as a staff writer on an economic magazine writing about Saudi Arabia. But I really wanted to be living in an exciting country with lots of culture and history and reporting for big newspapers on interesting stories. I sat down with a friend who has won several big reporting awards and she told me I should go to Iran, Iraq (this was just before the war) or Algeria. She said Iraq would be the biggest story and anyone who had been there since before the war could really make a name for themselves, but that it would be very hard to report while Saddam stayed in power. She said in Algeria I would meet people who made me feel proud to be alive and that there was a delicious edge of raw danger (she's a little nutty that way), but I'd need very good French. In Iran she said I'd find a country that was mesmerising in its own right, but also a really big and underreported story. How right she was!

2. Did you ever feel any anti-British hostility? If yes, can you describe it to us?

I certainly did feel anti-British hostility. But because Iranians are so polite - and often very willing to separate British people from their government - I was rarely made to feel unwelcome. Only a couple of times did I meet people who turned their anger directly on me. One was a taxi driver who wanted to charge an outrageous sum - some three or four times the normal rate for a city journey - and told me he was trying to take back all the money my people had stolen from him over hundreds of years. He started shouting and it was very embarrassing. He was a little out of control. Another time I was interviewing people down near the court off 15 Khordad street and someone started shouting at me because of the British government.

When I first arrived in Iran I used to argue with people who said Britain was behind everything. I thought it was a ridiculous idea (I still cannot see that the UK has had any say in Iranian domestic politics since before the revolution, or that it has had any chance to steal Iranian oil) and imagined I could talk people out of it. That was a mistake and occasionally people became quite upset with my insistence that although Britain had a shameful colonial past, and although its present foreign policy has a terribly imperialist slant, it has no control over Iran at all. After a year or two, I stopped arguing and started just to enjoy the notoriety. I'd always laugh knowingly when someone hinted at British plots and slip the old line about it all being the work of the English.

3. Were you ever scared while you were there?

3) I was never scared during protests and things like that because my adrenaline was up and I was pretty sure that the worst that could happen to me was that an untrained policeman would give me a few knocks before carting me off to prison for a couple of hours. I did get quite frightened during my arrest with Gareth [Angus and a friend were arrested for inadvertantly wandering into an unmarked military area] because it seemed qutie plausible for about 48 hours that we would be charged with spying or something and imprisoned for a couple of years. When I was in Garmsar I dreamt incessantly about life in prison. It was really no joke.

But the most regular frights I had in Iran - like everyone else, I expect - happened on the roads. I have really never seen driving like it in any of the dozen Arab and African countries I have spent time in. Simply terrifying.

4. What was your biggest tarof blunder?

When I had recently arrived in the country I was with a couple of people reporting an oil conference. They were all new to me but we were getting on well. One said she was going to see a concert that night and asked if anyone wanted to come. Everyone else politely said they were busy but I immediately said I'd love to (in mitigation, I had only been in Iran about six weeks and was going insane with boredom because I hadn't yet made a single friend and the prospect of another night wandering around the market by myself drove me nuts). But how embarrassing - it was her uncle giving the concert and the whole family was there with me sitting at the front next to them as the only interloper.

5. Can you tell us a bit about the most unusual story that you covered while you were in Iran? (even if it was not published)



The most unusual story was the one I never did cover but always wanted to: the Japanese Yakuza. I kept hearing hints about these guys who were part of the big work migration to Japan in the early 90s. Because so many of them were big, tough kids from south Tehran, they slid seamlessly into the Japanese underworld, pushing drugs, pimping girls and generally acting as the muscle for Japanese gangsters. Many of them - I'm told - have those fantastic tattoos you associate with Yakuza, as well as other picturesque (!) motifs such as missing finger parts to do with honour rituals or something. They were all kicked out along with the other Iranians in the late 90s and came back to Tehran where they doubtless continued their eccentric but highly criminal careers with less flamboyance.

6. Most interesting person you met?

It's really hard to isolate just one interesting person. My friend Dr Khateri is a very interesting man. He joined up to fight as a child from Kermanshah and endured several years of the war. A true idealist, he joined a seminary and flirted with extremist Hezbollah-style groups in the early 1990s, getting to know people like Massoud Dehnamaki the filmmaker. But when he quit the seminary to become a medical doctor, specialising in chemical weapons treatment, his world view started to change. And when he travelled to foreign countries he positively mellowed and now has a pretty liberal world view. He took me to Kurdistan several times to travel, to report and to share a fascination with phenomena like dervishes. I really miss him come to think of it.

7. Most memorable interview?

Most memorable interview is also a hard one. It's probably one of the interviews I did after the earthquake at Bam. It wasn't memorable because anything particularly fascinating or unusual was being said: it was simply the intensity of the pain, shock and anguish that stayed indelibly with me. I still shudder to recall it.

8. What do you miss most about Iran?

Friends most of all, of course. But more generally I miss the bread, I miss the sound of Persian and the pleasure of trying (ineptly) to speak it. I miss little excursions out of Tehran. Most of all I miss the body language and facial expressions such as the disdainful flick of the head to mean 'no'.

War, no war... part two

Part two.

He is on a scholarship trip in the Netherlands for a couple of months. I did not know he was here until a common friend asked me if I had seen Namver (not his real name). I call him right after I talked to our common friend.

We are both doing some research on two different projects. We agree to meet another friend of his who is a long-time university professor and researcher at a well-known institute in Amsterdam.

“You just have to agree with whatever he says; otherwise we will be here for couple of days.” Namver tells me. I agree and walk to meet his friend in that institute. Not even two minutes pass after we meet and start our conversation that I start scratching my head.

“There are a lot of power struggles in the Iranian government at this moment,” he says.

I think dinggggggggggggggggggggggg, you don’t have to be rocket scientist to know that. It is so simplistic to come up with this again.

Yes we do have a power struggles in Iran, and we have had them for a long time, since the first days of our recorded history. What is new about this? I think to myself.

Are any of those involved with this power struggle worthy of trust? Are they really so diffirent from each other? Or do they just want the same thing but have different ways of getting it?

“Maybe this power struggle will end up in war,” the professor continues.

Bush is getting ready for war I am thinking...




They are counting minutes



Ohhhhhhhhhh…War.

When I talk to my friends most of them, like I am, are against war (At least in public).

Not only because they think war is devastating, but also so that they can tell everybody later that “I told you so” when things go wrong. And you know, things always do go wrong.

Power struggle or no power struggle, Iran should get ready for a nasty war, I think by myself quietly. There will be war. I have been saying this for almost two years, but I don’t want to tell anybody, “I told you so.”

“Americans are seeing that the option of diplomacy is not getting them anywhere. You can see that clearly. There are still some people in the Iranian government who believe we should be more willing to work things out with the European negotiators, but those people are not inside the power lines,” the professor tells us. “Look at history, and you can get your answer. Those mullahs don’t make deals until things get really bad.”

I don’t think this any more. This time I don’t believe they will compromise. Ahmadinejad said, “We don’t need experts; we need believers.”

Believers in what?

We all agree that if Iran is attacked and there is the possibility of regime change that we would see months of horrific bloodshed in the streets of every big city in Iran. Mobs will go wild and tear apart Teheran. The regime must know this. Just look at these pictures Kamangir found.

We talk about what might happen: pardons, arrests, riots, etc.

“What about 125,000 revolution guards forces?”

“Will they target us?” my friend adds. “What will happen to the MEK? Can you imagine if they get power?”

We all decide not to think about it.

I don’t personally know any Iranians outside Iran who would openly say that he wants the US to attack Iran. I am sure there are many in US who are just jumping up and down waiting until the day the US bombers attack Iran. Most of those are not people who care about the lives of Iranians that may be lost in case of war as long as this regime gets the lesson they deserve. Those people are just waiting to take power for themselves and steal more of our resources and money.

In Iran I met many people who could not wait to be (freed) by America. In the last two years I heard many Iranians say that they cannot take it anymore and that living cannot be worse than what they have even if there is attack.

I hate to admit that most of those people who I spoke to felt I had a direct line to the white house and wanted me to tell Mr. Bush “please just don’t hit my house.” One guy said that he wanted to paint an American flag on the roof of his house. “America. Friends,” he said he would write under the flag.

I don’t think it is a question of if there will be an attack but more of when. One friend says, “If it’s war or the regime, maybe war is not so bad.” Then my wife says, “What if it is war and the regime?” We both look at each other, and we are just shocked.

The sanctions and the talk of war are pushing Iran closer to Russia and China, some may think, but most Iranian don’t believe that Russia is there to help us. Russia is like poker player who is holding his cards close so that he has more options. Later they can say, “we were the only friend you had in those hard days when you were under attack from all over the world.” Or they can say to the US, when we realizes the danger of Iran with the N weapon, we took the right side. (Listen to this interesting interview with Steve LeVine on Fresh Air)



A couple of months ago when I met a friend here in Amsterdam who just married a nice Iranian girl, I was shocked to hear a different story. He told me that there are a couple of other possibilities. “Imagine Khameneie would get really sick from whatever he has and die in the next couple of months and there is a fight for his replacement and a lot of people are putting Rafsanjani forward since most of the people believe Ahmadinejad is not able to deliver what he promised two years go. He would be in power, and he would make a deal with US. End of story,” he told us with a small smile but self-confident face.



(http://pedramweb.blogspot.com/)

I told him, “Imagine Rafsanjani would die long before Khameneie.” When I told him this scenario, he was not happy. He told me, “You Iranians are always unpredictable.” I shook my head and told him that is the problem with the west, you only see things in black and white.

He was clearly frustrated with me. Yes there are a lot of options out there, but none as effective as a military attack.

His boss, a professor at a university in Amsterdam, told me a couple of months ago during a dinner, that there is 3rd option: the West could find a way to live with a nuclear Iran.

“Like they live with Pakistan?” I asked. “What about if things change in Pakistan, and you don’t have a president like Mosharaf who changes his polices in one night from not worried about terrorists at all to commando in chef of the war on terror in the region?” The professor had to leave after my question, so I never heard his answer.

……….

“Dadash jan Khoobi?” I asked my brother when I called him yesterday.
I can’t wait to ask him how he and his family is doing, but I asked him first, “Are the people getting ready for war?”

“Which war” he asked.

“Here in the west everybody thinks there will be a war or better put: an attack.”

“Na dasash jan (No my dear brother ) don’t worry, there would be no attack. Nothing will happen,” he is confident. Why? I don’t know. “Na dadash jan, nothing would happen,” he changed the subject. I don’t know if he does it because he is worried he is being recorded or he just wants to make feel better.

“Iran said that they would fire 11,000 rockets in the first few minutes if they are attacked.”

“How many?”

“11,000.”

“What would they do when those are finished?”

“Fire 11,000 more?

“How is your wife?”

“I miss you too.” This time there is no way I can change the subject

I hung up the phone, stretched, flexed my muscles like a bodybuilder would, looked out the window happy to have heard his voice but worried very much about whether he and his family would be okay when and if an attack starts.

I would never forgive anyone who would attack and harm my family and friends. That is why I hate and can never forgive the Iranian government for killing and imprisoning and torturing of a lot of my dear friends. They killed the dreams of millions.