It's a real shame when the only insightful political discourse you can find about Iran happens to be on a comedy show!
Here's Hooman Majd doing some media for his new book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran. He also blogs for Huffington Post.
Edit: And here he is talking about the book...
I wish I'd been able to see the annual Iranian American ta'arof competition. Ta'arof is a notoriously difficult concept to understand if you're not born into it. A good friend had lots of trouble when he moved to Iran accepting dinner invitations he shouldn't have.
Polite Iranian:Come to my house for dinner.
My friend: OK. How about next Tuesday?
Polite Iranian (looking shocked): Err.. Yes, come to my house for dinner.
My friend (repeating): I'm free next Tuesday.
Polite Iranian (stretching limits of politeness): Yes, please come to my house for dinner.
My friend (exasperated): It's either next Tuesday or never!
Ta'arof seems to cover so much of Iranian cultural codes and Westerners, even Iranian-Americans, can blunder through it without realising what should or shouldn't be accepted.
(There's more info about the event here.)
Being neither a Muslim, nor a scholar of Islam, I wonder how Muslims reconcile what appear to be cultural and social compulsions that receive a religious legitimacy from their faith?
Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks. And Allah hears and knows all things. [Sûrah al-Baqarah: 256]
So what can we say when a father murders his daughter for not wearing a hijab? No tabloid paper is going to pick up this news story and run it under the headline "Muslims condemn sickening brutality in name of Islam", because that's not their line on anything to do with Islam and because there is no outcry.
Turkey and France ban the hijab in universities. German states ban the hijab for teachers. More young Muslim women are adopting the hijab as an expression of defiance and an assertion of Islamic identity. But compulsion, force and violence in the name of Islam, persist in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc.
I listened to a girl wearing a hijab working in Primark explaining to her work colleagues (another teenage girl) why she wore the hijab:
It's part of my religion. It's a religious symbol.
But isn't it a cultural symbol from part of the Middle East and now a religious fashion statement? Modesty doesn't mean a rejection of beauty. It is less about appearance and more about humility, the way your carry yourself and the way you treat others. There is no modesty in forcing your opinions or culture onto someone else. That's chauvinism.
Jerry Muller has an article in Foreign Affairs called Us and Them arguing that ethnic nationalism remains one of the:
enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come...
It ruffled a few feathers and generated some vigorous repsonses.
Institute of Persian Language and Literature Studies and the Library for Iranian Studies. Both great-looking resources for finding about Iran, Persian and Persian history/culture.
Here's a video clip of Chris de Burgh (will he/won't he play in Tehran?) jamming with members of Iranian band Arian looking on:
And another video of Arian playing a concert in Tehran, thankfully without Chris de Burgh. Metallica, they ain't, but it still looks good:
Leila Hussein became known around the world for refusing the accept the brutal murder of her daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader. Rand was kicked and stomped to death by her father and brothers. Her father is reported as saying:
My daughter deserved to die for falling in love.
... even though her falling in love was nothing more than a schoolgirl crush. Her brave mother refused to accept the murder of her daughter as a cultural/religious necessity to cleanse the family of shame. Aligning herself with Iraqi feminists (because who else was going to shelter her?) she was murdered 3 weeks later.
The sad truth remains that in many countries in the world:
[a]ny woman who does not submit to her role as a passive piece of human garbage is a potential target in a patriarchal society scarred by years of violence.
Nobody will be punished for either of these crimes. When Du'a Khalil Aswad was crushed, kicked and stamped to death by the men in her family, videos put on the internet showed the police just standing by and watching.
Even in the UK female genital mutilation happens, forced marriages happen and girls are murdered by their families because of who they befriend or are attracted to. Why? Maybe a clue lies in the inability to challenge the communities and attitudes that allow these things to happen.
Whilst debating Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the thoroughly British former Islamist Ed Hussein can't quite bring himself to properly condemn stoning. He doesn't like it, but his condemnation is weak and spineless. He should have been angry, clear and ferocious in his denunciation of the violence against women in the Middle East, Europe and, sadly, in the UK. That lack of strength of conviction and anger from even progressive Muslims and missing discourse in Islam helps people like Leila Hussein's husband get away with their crimes.
Those Days
Those days
Poetry
Was my room
And wherever I felt unsafe
I gravitated into its eternal sanctuary.These days
There aren’t any rooms
That can harbor me against the crowd
and behind every window
inside and outside every room
a two-faced clown sneers.Fereshteh Sari (more samples from the book )
The book can be purchased online on Amazon. Some donations will proceed to a breast cancer research center in Connecticut.
It may not seem as though there have been many Iranian female poets or writers published, but there are certainly more than any other country (bar Israel) in the Middle East. There are several good anthologies of Iranian womens' fiction out there too. I think Palestine, Iran and maybe Lebanon stand out as being the countries in the region with the most thriving literary cultures.
I shed my clothes in the lush air
to bathe naked in the spring water,
but the quiet night seduced me
into telling it my gloomy story.
The water's cool shimmering waves
moaned and lustily surrounded me,
urged with soft crystal hands
my body and spirit into themselves.
A far breeze hurried in,
poured a lapful of flowers in my hair,
breathed into my mouth Eurasian mint's
pungent, heart-clinging scent.
Silent and soaring, I closed my eyes,
pressed my body against the soft young rushes,
and like a woman folded into her lover's arms
gave myself to the flowing waters.
Aroused, parched, and fevered, the water's lips
rippled trembling kisses on my thighs,
and we suddenly collapsed, intoxicated, gratified,
both sinners, my body and the spring's soul.
Original published in Deevar (The Wall). This translation comes from Sholeh Wolpé's Sin. Amazon has a whole bunch of Forough Farrokhzad poetry collections in translation.
I have sinned a rapturous sin
in a warm enflamed embrace,
sinned in a pair of vindictive arms,
arms violent and ablaze.
In that quiet vacant dark
I looked into his mystic eyes,
found such longing that my heart
fluttered impatient in my breast.
In that quiet vacant dark
I sat beside him punch-drunk,
his lips released desire on mine,
grief unclenched my crazy heart.
I poured in his ears lyrics of love:
O my life, my love it's you I want.
Life-giving arms, it's you I crave.
Crazed lover, for you I thirst.
Lust enflamed his eyes,
red wine trembled in the cup,
my body, naked and drunk,
quivered softly on his breast.
I have sinned a rapturous sin
beside a body quivering and spent,
I do not know what I did O God,
in that quiet vacant dark.
Original published in Deevar (The Wall). This translation comes from Sholeh Wolpé's Sin. Amazon has a whole bunch of Forough Farrokhzad poetry collections in translation.
