Hello my readers, if there are any?!!!!
There was another reader on Persian paradox, who had made comments I could not stay silent to, so I wrote a response to him that hopefully will make him think twice about insulting Iranians!!!
This is what Mr. Soleslide had said a few days ago:
http://ebtekarm.blogspot.com/2008/12/khatami-speaks-out.html?showComment=1228479780000#c7440873255320746939
and after I left him that original response which you see underneath his comment, i.e. this amazing video link to the documentary called "Iran, Seven Faces of Civilization":
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5356229498218843348&hl=en
I added this more complete (and "dandoon-shekan") response:
http://ebtekarm.blogspot.com/2008/12/khatami-speaks-out.html?showComment=1228874880000#c6477434954462790805
good, eh?!
;-)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
A Conversation with a Fellow Persian Paradox Reader
If there is anybody reading my posts here, they know that my whole "weblogging" practices started when I discovered Dr. Ebtekar's Persian Paradox site, wanted to voice my opinions to her and her Reformist colleagues (and I did, plenty!!!), but sometimes when I read comments by some of her other readers with whom I wanted to "beg to differ", Dr. Ebtekar wouldn't find it appropriate to post the comments I would write on her Persian Paradox as responses to her other readers. So, I decided to come and write my comments and make my points on my own weblog and invite free and uncensored comments from her other readers.
One of those fellow Persian Paradox fans with whom I started to have these kinds of "web-tag" conversations (i.e., I leave a comment for you, you read a comment for me, and so on) was a fellow expat who signed as Holly first (just as I sign as Kathy sometimes) but then created her own weblog called "Black Chador" and is now signing with that name. Holly and I have been conducting a series of quite stimulating conversations lately over here as well as on her site. One of her latest posts prompted me to write a rather LENGTHY comment for her, which I would like to copy it here for my own readers as well.
Here's Mrs. Black Chador's new post:
http://blackchador.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-chador.html
and here's my response to her as a HUGE comment:
Dear Holly,
I would like to show you a couple of quotes here, and ask you to guess who they came from?
1)
"The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People."
2)
"Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice."
go ahead guess! whose are these quotes??? Khomeini? Khamenei? perhaps Khalkhali? ha?!!!! what do you think????!!!! maybe the second one is from an Al-Qaeda leader???
:-)
No, my dear friend, these sentences are both from Maximilien Robespierre, the most influential member of the Committee of Public Safety established on 6 September 1793 in the most horrifying period of the French Revolution called "La Terreur" or "The Reign of Terror".
What's my point?
You see dear friend, if Iran had Revolutionary Committees and Courts in the first couple of years between 1979 and 1980 where some radical "bloodthirsty mullah" types like Khalkhali acted the way Maximilien Robespierre acted between 1793 and 1794, let's NOT "throw the baby out with the bath water", and let's stay more optimistic about the chances of having our revolution EVENTUALLY correct and REFORM itself according to principles of Enlightenment, albeit Islamic Enlightenment which is the only kind of Enlightenment appropriate for a country of 90% Muslims with a 1400 years of Islamic history!
December 8, 2008 8:13 PM
I hope others might be compelled to join us in this free, democratic, fair and stimulating conversation as well!
:-)
Long Live Freedom of Speech!
One of those fellow Persian Paradox fans with whom I started to have these kinds of "web-tag" conversations (i.e., I leave a comment for you, you read a comment for me, and so on) was a fellow expat who signed as Holly first (just as I sign as Kathy sometimes) but then created her own weblog called "Black Chador" and is now signing with that name. Holly and I have been conducting a series of quite stimulating conversations lately over here as well as on her site. One of her latest posts prompted me to write a rather LENGTHY comment for her, which I would like to copy it here for my own readers as well.
Here's Mrs. Black Chador's new post:
http://blackchador.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-chador.html
and here's my response to her as a HUGE comment:
Dear Holly,
I would like to show you a couple of quotes here, and ask you to guess who they came from?
1)
"The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People."
2)
"Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice."
go ahead guess! whose are these quotes??? Khomeini? Khamenei? perhaps Khalkhali? ha?!!!! what do you think????!!!! maybe the second one is from an Al-Qaeda leader???
:-)
No, my dear friend, these sentences are both from Maximilien Robespierre, the most influential member of the Committee of Public Safety established on 6 September 1793 in the most horrifying period of the French Revolution called "La Terreur" or "The Reign of Terror".
What's my point?
You see dear friend, if Iran had Revolutionary Committees and Courts in the first couple of years between 1979 and 1980 where some radical "bloodthirsty mullah" types like Khalkhali acted the way Maximilien Robespierre acted between 1793 and 1794, let's NOT "throw the baby out with the bath water", and let's stay more optimistic about the chances of having our revolution EVENTUALLY correct and REFORM itself according to principles of Enlightenment, albeit Islamic Enlightenment which is the only kind of Enlightenment appropriate for a country of 90% Muslims with a 1400 years of Islamic history!
December 8, 2008 8:13 PM
I hope others might be compelled to join us in this free, democratic, fair and stimulating conversation as well!
:-)
Long Live Freedom of Speech!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
My Memories of Iran's 1979 Revolution
I was a small kid, but I still remember the incredibly inspiring feelings of those days!!! Days like the "ashura" of 1978, or in our Iranian (solar) calendar, 1357, the year of the revolution.
In fact, I think that "ashura" was my first time participating in The Revolution, albeit it was an accident that I found myself in the middle of the revolution that day!!!
A note here to those readers who are not familiar with "ashura":
Ashura = Anniversary of Imam Hussein's Martyrdom in the battle of Karbala, some 1300 years ago
Imam Hussein, Grandson of our Prophet Mohammed = One of Shiite Islam's most revered saints, as the ultimate symbol of Courage and Sacrifice
In Iran, for decades and centuries long, even in the pre-revolution era of Shah's monarchy - Iranians of all races, creeds, or political persuasions, even those who were self-proclaimed as atheists and Godless - when it came to this particular religious day (ashura), everybody suddenly remembered that they were born Muslims, and not only Muslim, but Hussein loving Shiites!
For example, I'm the granddaughter of a couple of old "Tudeh" activists. I had a socialist grandmother, and a mother who hated anything political b/c of the hardships she endured as a child due to her parents' revolutionary ideas. But even my upper-middle class, non-religious, intellectual family would take part in "ashura"!
Every year, my mom would take us to watch the "ashura" processions, and my cool teenage brother would even join the chest-beating and sign-carrying droves of black-shirted men, most of whom would surely go back to their not-so-religious lives the next day!!!!
I must admit though, to most of us (especially kids), "ashura" meant "polo nazri", i.e., the most heavenly delicious food ever cooked on Earth, and served to everyone for free during that day!!!! That special food called "polo-nazri" is so incredibly mouth-watering and amazingly delicious that no matter how rich or poor you were, you had to go get some!!! and the good thing about it was that mosques and community centers that cooked it and gave it away, were not discriminatory about ONLY giving it to the poor! They would cook enough to give to anyone who showed up, rich or poor!!! So, yeah, to be perfectly honest here, that was the main reason we always went to the "ashura" events! and that's still the only thing I miss about not being in Iran for "ashura" every year!!!! :-)
Anyway, that year as in every other year, my mom took us to this particular downtown "tekiyeh" (religious community center) where her uncle would always donate money for the costs of their neighborhood "ashura" events. Outside that "tekiyeh", was where I noticed how the "feeling" and the atmosphere of the day was very different this year from the previous years! There was definitely something in the air!!!! It was so palpable that even a kid like me could feel it!
I don't remember the name of the street but there was a huge bridge in the middle of it where all the protesters were marching on. I remember witnessing a whole other kind of "ashura" that year! That year, even my 16 year old brother was no longer interested in impressing the cute girls in the audience and getting their phone numbers! He actually wanted to join the revolutionary activists who had replaced their traditional "chest-beating" practices with fearless chanting of anti-Shah slogans!
I remember my mom was so scared she kept begging him not to go, but teenage boys are teenage boys, and he wouldn’t listen, all of the sudden he was inside the crowds, screaming Down with Shah! I remember I was kinda scared for his safety b/c my mom was, but at the same time, I was so incredibly moved and excited I had goosebumps all over my arms! It was an incredible feeling! Just indescribable!
That was it, from that day on, Tehran turned into a city of "Allah-o Akbar" at nights, and student marches and strikes in the days!
I remember how I was fascinated by all that passion and fervor, and became an even bigger nuisance to my big brother than I usually had been (being a silly little sister)!
I would follow him around everywhere, and at nights when he defied our mother’s orders and went to the rooftop for the “Allah-o Akbar" rendez-vous with the nation (as was the directive from the leader of the revolution Imam Khomeini), I would go up with him to scream those two magical words that eventually brought down 2500 years of unpopular dynasties and tyrannical monarchy in Iran!!!
The two words that every night, at a certain time (I think it was 9pm), all people, from all neighborhoods, man, woman, young, old, religious, secular, Muslim, Marxist, rich, poor, would all scream in unison! In UNISON!!! That was the magic of it!!!
They all took refuge in the darkness of night, feeling less worried about being recognized by Shah's secret police who could be anywhere!!! My mom had every reason to be worried though, those SAVAK agents could recognize voices too!!!
But, she couldn't stop him, he had caught the revolutionary bug, and I as his "sertegh" little sister was right three with him on the rooftop screaming "Allah-o Akbar"!!!
Allah-o Akbar = God is Great
I have other memories, memories of finding myself in the middle of the Revolution (again by accident), hearing slogans like "mardom chera neshastin? homaafara ro koshtan!", hearing the sound of the gun, people being shot, seeing ambulances rushing to the scene of the massacre, ... and then when we managed to escape from that scene and got back to my grandma's house Uptown (Niyavaran) safe and sound, away from all the dangers, I did something that now seems strange, but for a little kid, I guess it made sense at the time!
I don't know why, perhaps it was so that I wouldn't forget what I had just witnessed! But as soon as I got to grandma's house, what I did was I took my grandmother's lipstick that was on her night-stand, and started writing all those exciting slogans I had heard that day, I wrote them all over the mirrors and windows of her house!!! That was the crazy part of it!!! I turned my grandma’s house into a Revolutionary Headquarter!!!
My grandma was cool though, she was an "avant-garde" revolutionary chick herself! In fact when she saw that, she just smiled at me, whereas any other day, she would have screamed my head off for doing such a stupid thing!!!
Perhaps that was my way of showing my frustration and protest to my mom whom I saw as the uncool one, not letting me stay there in the scene of action that day and be a young Che Guevara!!! I so desperately wished I could have fought alongside those brave young revolutionaries who were shouting those exciting slogans while facing gun shots and arrests!!!!!
The worst part of it was that my brother was not there that day. Actually that's why we had accidentally found ourselves in that scene of action in the first place!!! My mom, my pregnant aunt and I had gone downtown to a bank. I don’t know why we had to go to that particular bank? I guess it was the only branch that had foreign exchange?!!!!? I don’t know. I need to ask my mother about it! But we had gone there to buy some UK Pounds to send to my brother in Cambridge!
Yes, by that time, only a few weeks after "ashura", my mom had succeeded in sending him off to a foreign land, in order to keep him safe and far away from the revolution!!!
Anyway, as we were coming back from the bank, my aunt saw a street vendor selling a certain Iranian delicacy (del o jigar), and she (being pregnant) just had to have some!!! So when my mom stopped the car to buy her some of that "viyarooneh", that was when we heard those slogans, and saw those people first marching and then running, and shortly after, we heard the shootings of police guns and the sirens of ambulances!!! ... It was my most REAL and up-close encounter with the Revolution!!!
I remember how my mom was angry at her little sister for not being able to resist her cravings, and was really giving her a hard time (criticizing her) for not hurrying up. And I remember how my silly silly aunt was laughing!!!! just laughing as she always does when she's either nervous or very very scared!!!! It was a surreal scene!!!! :-)
There are many other memories, but my best memory of those years is that of the Referendum Day, Farvardin 12, 1358 (which was I think April 1, 1979)!
The day Iran voted for the new name of Islamic Republic of Iran to be the official name of our country!!! The results? 98% of the Iranian population voted Yes to that name, and I was so disappointed that kids were not allowed to vote!!! :-(
To describe the amazingly inspired feelings and the incredibly HOPEFUL atmosphere of that day is not easy! To this day, when I think about it or when I am trying to describe it to other people, I get teary-eyed and start humming that particular song which was playing on the radio that day, all day long!!!
“dar bahare azadi jaye Mosadegh khali, jaye Mosadegh khali”
translation: “In this Spring of Freedom we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here, we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here”
As I said though, it will take much more energy and concentration from me to be able to come up with a good description of that day! It's not easy to describe and accurately convey the intoxicating sense of FREEDOM that an entire nation was sensing that day! One has to allocate a lot of time and evergy in order to tap into the memory of passion that existed back then and capture the essence of that day’s historic uniqueness!
So, perhaps I shall continue that story later, in another blog! :-)
Until then, ...
In fact, I think that "ashura" was my first time participating in The Revolution, albeit it was an accident that I found myself in the middle of the revolution that day!!!
A note here to those readers who are not familiar with "ashura":
Ashura = Anniversary of Imam Hussein's Martyrdom in the battle of Karbala, some 1300 years ago
Imam Hussein, Grandson of our Prophet Mohammed = One of Shiite Islam's most revered saints, as the ultimate symbol of Courage and Sacrifice
In Iran, for decades and centuries long, even in the pre-revolution era of Shah's monarchy - Iranians of all races, creeds, or political persuasions, even those who were self-proclaimed as atheists and Godless - when it came to this particular religious day (ashura), everybody suddenly remembered that they were born Muslims, and not only Muslim, but Hussein loving Shiites!
For example, I'm the granddaughter of a couple of old "Tudeh" activists. I had a socialist grandmother, and a mother who hated anything political b/c of the hardships she endured as a child due to her parents' revolutionary ideas. But even my upper-middle class, non-religious, intellectual family would take part in "ashura"!
Every year, my mom would take us to watch the "ashura" processions, and my cool teenage brother would even join the chest-beating and sign-carrying droves of black-shirted men, most of whom would surely go back to their not-so-religious lives the next day!!!!
I must admit though, to most of us (especially kids), "ashura" meant "polo nazri", i.e., the most heavenly delicious food ever cooked on Earth, and served to everyone for free during that day!!!! That special food called "polo-nazri" is so incredibly mouth-watering and amazingly delicious that no matter how rich or poor you were, you had to go get some!!! and the good thing about it was that mosques and community centers that cooked it and gave it away, were not discriminatory about ONLY giving it to the poor! They would cook enough to give to anyone who showed up, rich or poor!!! So, yeah, to be perfectly honest here, that was the main reason we always went to the "ashura" events! and that's still the only thing I miss about not being in Iran for "ashura" every year!!!! :-)
Anyway, that year as in every other year, my mom took us to this particular downtown "tekiyeh" (religious community center) where her uncle would always donate money for the costs of their neighborhood "ashura" events. Outside that "tekiyeh", was where I noticed how the "feeling" and the atmosphere of the day was very different this year from the previous years! There was definitely something in the air!!!! It was so palpable that even a kid like me could feel it!
I don't remember the name of the street but there was a huge bridge in the middle of it where all the protesters were marching on. I remember witnessing a whole other kind of "ashura" that year! That year, even my 16 year old brother was no longer interested in impressing the cute girls in the audience and getting their phone numbers! He actually wanted to join the revolutionary activists who had replaced their traditional "chest-beating" practices with fearless chanting of anti-Shah slogans!
I remember my mom was so scared she kept begging him not to go, but teenage boys are teenage boys, and he wouldn’t listen, all of the sudden he was inside the crowds, screaming Down with Shah! I remember I was kinda scared for his safety b/c my mom was, but at the same time, I was so incredibly moved and excited I had goosebumps all over my arms! It was an incredible feeling! Just indescribable!
That was it, from that day on, Tehran turned into a city of "Allah-o Akbar" at nights, and student marches and strikes in the days!
I remember how I was fascinated by all that passion and fervor, and became an even bigger nuisance to my big brother than I usually had been (being a silly little sister)!
I would follow him around everywhere, and at nights when he defied our mother’s orders and went to the rooftop for the “Allah-o Akbar" rendez-vous with the nation (as was the directive from the leader of the revolution Imam Khomeini), I would go up with him to scream those two magical words that eventually brought down 2500 years of unpopular dynasties and tyrannical monarchy in Iran!!!
The two words that every night, at a certain time (I think it was 9pm), all people, from all neighborhoods, man, woman, young, old, religious, secular, Muslim, Marxist, rich, poor, would all scream in unison! In UNISON!!! That was the magic of it!!!
They all took refuge in the darkness of night, feeling less worried about being recognized by Shah's secret police who could be anywhere!!! My mom had every reason to be worried though, those SAVAK agents could recognize voices too!!!
But, she couldn't stop him, he had caught the revolutionary bug, and I as his "sertegh" little sister was right three with him on the rooftop screaming "Allah-o Akbar"!!!
Allah-o Akbar = God is Great
I have other memories, memories of finding myself in the middle of the Revolution (again by accident), hearing slogans like "mardom chera neshastin? homaafara ro koshtan!", hearing the sound of the gun, people being shot, seeing ambulances rushing to the scene of the massacre, ... and then when we managed to escape from that scene and got back to my grandma's house Uptown (Niyavaran) safe and sound, away from all the dangers, I did something that now seems strange, but for a little kid, I guess it made sense at the time!
I don't know why, perhaps it was so that I wouldn't forget what I had just witnessed! But as soon as I got to grandma's house, what I did was I took my grandmother's lipstick that was on her night-stand, and started writing all those exciting slogans I had heard that day, I wrote them all over the mirrors and windows of her house!!! That was the crazy part of it!!! I turned my grandma’s house into a Revolutionary Headquarter!!!
My grandma was cool though, she was an "avant-garde" revolutionary chick herself! In fact when she saw that, she just smiled at me, whereas any other day, she would have screamed my head off for doing such a stupid thing!!!
Perhaps that was my way of showing my frustration and protest to my mom whom I saw as the uncool one, not letting me stay there in the scene of action that day and be a young Che Guevara!!! I so desperately wished I could have fought alongside those brave young revolutionaries who were shouting those exciting slogans while facing gun shots and arrests!!!!!
The worst part of it was that my brother was not there that day. Actually that's why we had accidentally found ourselves in that scene of action in the first place!!! My mom, my pregnant aunt and I had gone downtown to a bank. I don’t know why we had to go to that particular bank? I guess it was the only branch that had foreign exchange?!!!!? I don’t know. I need to ask my mother about it! But we had gone there to buy some UK Pounds to send to my brother in Cambridge!
Yes, by that time, only a few weeks after "ashura", my mom had succeeded in sending him off to a foreign land, in order to keep him safe and far away from the revolution!!!
Anyway, as we were coming back from the bank, my aunt saw a street vendor selling a certain Iranian delicacy (del o jigar), and she (being pregnant) just had to have some!!! So when my mom stopped the car to buy her some of that "viyarooneh", that was when we heard those slogans, and saw those people first marching and then running, and shortly after, we heard the shootings of police guns and the sirens of ambulances!!! ... It was my most REAL and up-close encounter with the Revolution!!!
I remember how my mom was angry at her little sister for not being able to resist her cravings, and was really giving her a hard time (criticizing her) for not hurrying up. And I remember how my silly silly aunt was laughing!!!! just laughing as she always does when she's either nervous or very very scared!!!! It was a surreal scene!!!! :-)
There are many other memories, but my best memory of those years is that of the Referendum Day, Farvardin 12, 1358 (which was I think April 1, 1979)!
The day Iran voted for the new name of Islamic Republic of Iran to be the official name of our country!!! The results? 98% of the Iranian population voted Yes to that name, and I was so disappointed that kids were not allowed to vote!!! :-(
To describe the amazingly inspired feelings and the incredibly HOPEFUL atmosphere of that day is not easy! To this day, when I think about it or when I am trying to describe it to other people, I get teary-eyed and start humming that particular song which was playing on the radio that day, all day long!!!
“dar bahare azadi jaye Mosadegh khali, jaye Mosadegh khali”
translation: “In this Spring of Freedom we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here, we wish Dr. Mosadegh was here”
As I said though, it will take much more energy and concentration from me to be able to come up with a good description of that day! It's not easy to describe and accurately convey the intoxicating sense of FREEDOM that an entire nation was sensing that day! One has to allocate a lot of time and evergy in order to tap into the memory of passion that existed back then and capture the essence of that day’s historic uniqueness!
So, perhaps I shall continue that story later, in another blog! :-)
Until then, ...
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Advice to Iranian Feminists
I just wanted to say this to Dr. Ebtekar and her fellow Reformist sisters and Muslim feminists:
This is your most opportune time to do GOOD for Iranian women, so I hope you take inspiration from Iran's ONE and ONLY Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other courageous women who have tried to speak out.
If Imam Khomeini's own granddaughter (Zahra Eshraghi) dares to speak out against sexism in Iran, then politicians like Dr. Ebtekar and politicians' wives like Dr. Rahnavard (wife of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi) shouldn't stay silent and continue to put up with the status quo anymore!
It's time for real change in Iran's Islamic Republic, and WOMEN are the ones who can bring that CHANGE!
Good Luck to you all!
This is your most opportune time to do GOOD for Iranian women, so I hope you take inspiration from Iran's ONE and ONLY Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other courageous women who have tried to speak out.
If Imam Khomeini's own granddaughter (Zahra Eshraghi) dares to speak out against sexism in Iran, then politicians like Dr. Ebtekar and politicians' wives like Dr. Rahnavard (wife of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi) shouldn't stay silent and continue to put up with the status quo anymore!
It's time for real change in Iran's Islamic Republic, and WOMEN are the ones who can bring that CHANGE!
Good Luck to you all!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
America's Spring of Freedom
Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty, They Are Free At Last!
America just voted the FIRST ever black president into the White House, but as we see in the reactions of the people from all over the world, Barack Obama is not only the president elect of the United States of America, he is identified as the President of the World!
Why? Because not only African Americans and every single person in the world who knows anything about America's Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s see in him the realization of Martin Luther King's DREAM, not only the entire population of the African continent see in him the vindication of their ancestors who were treated as subhuman possessions of the White English "gentlemen" savagely stealing and taking them to the New World as slaves, but also because almost ALL Muslims (the ordinary, God fearing, moderate Muslims who have no terrorism on their minds) identify with Obama and call him "One of Us"!!!!!
Simply by electing Barack Hussein Obama, America has just closed up all terrorist recruiting shops for AlQaeda, and ALSO, it empowered freedom seeking, pro-democracy reformists in Iran to stand up to the likes of Ahmadinejad!!!!
Contrary to what most anti-Obama Republicans tried to do by scaring the American people of this great man's middle-name, it is PRECISELY due to his Muslim roots and his middle-name that actually the world's extremist, fundamentalist, radical hate-mongers who don't even make up 0.1% of the Muslim world's population of 1 billion, will NOW have no leverage or credibility with their anti-American rhetoric!
Why? Because NOW the uneducated Muslim masses (who are very similar to the HATEFUL uneducated racist masses in America's deep south, among them 2 neo-Nazis who actually tried to assassinate him), the ones who have bought their leaders' nonsense about the dysfunctional nature of Western Democracy, can just point to America's PROOF (i.e., Obama's victory) to the contrary NOW and say: "but if that's NOT really a democracy, then how could a black man with a Muslim middle-name get elected to the highest office?"
This is a historic moment not only for Americans, not only for African Americans, not only for minorities in the United States of America, but for every SINGLE Human Being all over the world who EVER had a dream, ever dreamed of one day tasting the sweetness of Justice and Freedom, and every single person who has ever had the Audacity to Hope for a better tomorrow!
I for one (a Persian Canadian "Citizen of the World"), in the morning after that HISTORIC night, when I woke up on November 5th, in a +15 degrees Celsius Spring-like weather (not a normal occurrence in Canada!!!!!!!), had ONE song playing over and over again in my head, and that's the song that I remember (as a 9 year old wide-eyed exuberant kid, watching the beginning of the formation of a brand new Republic on the FIRST ever Referendum Day in Iran of 1979) being played on the radio, the song that our entire nation was singing all day long on that glorious day:
Doctor Mohammad-e Mossadegh, Mossadegh, mobaarez-e bozorg, Mossadegh, mobaarez-e bozorg! dar bahaar-e azaadi, jaaye Mossadegh khaali, jaaye Mossadegh khaali!
I guess my subconscious went back to that song because I was thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how the Americans must be missing him now! So, I started to sing that same melody with these words:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. King, revolutionary man, Dr. King, revolutionary man! It is the "Spring of Freedom", we wish Dr. King was here, we wish Dr. King was here!
I really couldn't contain myself! I started imagining that today is the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s spirit up in heaven, together with the spirits of Mahatma Gandhi and Patrice Lumumba and John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and many many more heroes of HUMANITY, are all having a celebration up there with God Almighty!
Then I thought of our Iranian heroes and martyrs who must also be invited to that bash, like Amir Kabir, Dr. Mossadegh, Mohandess Bazargan, Dr. Shariati, Dr. Chamran, Ayatollah Taleghani, ..., and then I sighed, thinking sadly that probably it won't be too long before this group of heavenly angels will have other heroes like Nelson Mandela and Teddy Kennedy, and Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi joining them up there in that garden of Eden.
I'm glad President Mandela and Senator Kennedy have already gotten the recognition and honoring that they deserve from their people, but can Iranians be allowed to honor such revolutionary heroes as Dr. Yazdi and Ayatollah Montazeri before they leave us behind?!
November 5th 2008 is the day HOPE is born in the world, and I think it has the potential to be the day that Iranians' "Spring of Freedom" in 1979 finally gets a chance to breathe its fresh air into the wet soil of humanity and see flowers of FREEDOM bloom!
It can be the day the Iranian revolution can begin anew, to reform itself, to reorient itself in the direction that its martyrs and founding fathers had in mind, and the freedom loving people of Iran can start to HOPE that they can join their brothers and sisters around the world in screaming:
Yes We Can!
God Bless Barack Hussein Obama!
God Bless Seyyed Mohammad Khatami!
Long Live Freedom and Democracy for ALL!
Now, ...
In the spirit of seeking FREEDOM for Iranians, I would like to refine some of the predictions I made in my previous post here (about Iran's 10th presidential elections next June):
I still maintain that President Khatami will not nominate himself (because Iranians need him as their 3rd Supreme Leader one day), but also I still stand by what I read from that picture of him standing between Dr. Aref on one side and Dr. Zarif on the other! I still think he wants to endorse Dr. Aref as the Reformist candidate for presidency next year and recommend Dr. Zarif as his potential Foreign Minister. But what I would like to tell President Khatami is this:
Sir, I understand that in our Eastern culture, AGE and seniority is a very important virtue to be highly considered in all positions of power, which is why you will think of Dr. Aref or Dr. Kharrazi before you would ever recommend a 48 year old young man like Dr. Zarif for the job of president, but remember Dr. Martin Luther King's expression:
The Fierce Urgency of Now!
This was the reason Teddy Kennedy endorsed a 47 year old Barack Obama, and now that he is the leader of the FREE world, with whom Iran would like to one day have those "grand bargain" negotiations (about which you faxed George W. Bush in 2003), don't you think Iranians should send a counterpart who UNDERSTANDS America, understands the western culture PERFECTLY, is already considered by American politicians and scholars as "the MOST brilliant diplomat in the world", is called by western journalists "a suave looking Iranian who speaks with a flawless American accent", and has already made personal connections with President Obama's future cabinet members, such as Chuck Hagel? (the second picture in the page below)
http://american-iranian.org/multimedia/pictures/events/aic_june_25th_event/album0.html
Dear President Khatami,
PLEASE endorse Dr. Javad Zarif for president, PLEASE ask all your friends (like Mr. Rafsanjani and Karroubi and others) to endorse him, and make sure ALL Iranian voters know of the AMAZING service he has done to his country by saving Iran from the war mongering intentions of John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who said on the eve of Iraq's invasion:
"Everybody wants to go to Baghdad, but REAL men want to go to Tehran"!
Dear Iranian Youth,
Let's start a grassroots online campaign for Dr. Zarif, (something like the www.barackobama.com) and URGE him to run, URGE the elder leaders of Iran's pro-democracy movement to endorse him, and organize the ground operations needed to get ALL Iranians on board and have them learn about who this great man is!
I wrote many blogs on my.barackobama.com over the past 21 months, and underneath them all I always wrote "Obama All The Way", I will now dedicate that slogan to Dr. Zarif!
Zarif All The Way!
America just voted the FIRST ever black president into the White House, but as we see in the reactions of the people from all over the world, Barack Obama is not only the president elect of the United States of America, he is identified as the President of the World!
Why? Because not only African Americans and every single person in the world who knows anything about America's Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s see in him the realization of Martin Luther King's DREAM, not only the entire population of the African continent see in him the vindication of their ancestors who were treated as subhuman possessions of the White English "gentlemen" savagely stealing and taking them to the New World as slaves, but also because almost ALL Muslims (the ordinary, God fearing, moderate Muslims who have no terrorism on their minds) identify with Obama and call him "One of Us"!!!!!
Simply by electing Barack Hussein Obama, America has just closed up all terrorist recruiting shops for AlQaeda, and ALSO, it empowered freedom seeking, pro-democracy reformists in Iran to stand up to the likes of Ahmadinejad!!!!
Contrary to what most anti-Obama Republicans tried to do by scaring the American people of this great man's middle-name, it is PRECISELY due to his Muslim roots and his middle-name that actually the world's extremist, fundamentalist, radical hate-mongers who don't even make up 0.1% of the Muslim world's population of 1 billion, will NOW have no leverage or credibility with their anti-American rhetoric!
Why? Because NOW the uneducated Muslim masses (who are very similar to the HATEFUL uneducated racist masses in America's deep south, among them 2 neo-Nazis who actually tried to assassinate him), the ones who have bought their leaders' nonsense about the dysfunctional nature of Western Democracy, can just point to America's PROOF (i.e., Obama's victory) to the contrary NOW and say: "but if that's NOT really a democracy, then how could a black man with a Muslim middle-name get elected to the highest office?"
This is a historic moment not only for Americans, not only for African Americans, not only for minorities in the United States of America, but for every SINGLE Human Being all over the world who EVER had a dream, ever dreamed of one day tasting the sweetness of Justice and Freedom, and every single person who has ever had the Audacity to Hope for a better tomorrow!
I for one (a Persian Canadian "Citizen of the World"), in the morning after that HISTORIC night, when I woke up on November 5th, in a +15 degrees Celsius Spring-like weather (not a normal occurrence in Canada!!!!!!!), had ONE song playing over and over again in my head, and that's the song that I remember (as a 9 year old wide-eyed exuberant kid, watching the beginning of the formation of a brand new Republic on the FIRST ever Referendum Day in Iran of 1979) being played on the radio, the song that our entire nation was singing all day long on that glorious day:
Doctor Mohammad-e Mossadegh, Mossadegh, mobaarez-e bozorg, Mossadegh, mobaarez-e bozorg! dar bahaar-e azaadi, jaaye Mossadegh khaali, jaaye Mossadegh khaali!
I guess my subconscious went back to that song because I was thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how the Americans must be missing him now! So, I started to sing that same melody with these words:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. King, revolutionary man, Dr. King, revolutionary man! It is the "Spring of Freedom", we wish Dr. King was here, we wish Dr. King was here!
I really couldn't contain myself! I started imagining that today is the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s spirit up in heaven, together with the spirits of Mahatma Gandhi and Patrice Lumumba and John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and many many more heroes of HUMANITY, are all having a celebration up there with God Almighty!
Then I thought of our Iranian heroes and martyrs who must also be invited to that bash, like Amir Kabir, Dr. Mossadegh, Mohandess Bazargan, Dr. Shariati, Dr. Chamran, Ayatollah Taleghani, ..., and then I sighed, thinking sadly that probably it won't be too long before this group of heavenly angels will have other heroes like Nelson Mandela and Teddy Kennedy, and Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi joining them up there in that garden of Eden.
I'm glad President Mandela and Senator Kennedy have already gotten the recognition and honoring that they deserve from their people, but can Iranians be allowed to honor such revolutionary heroes as Dr. Yazdi and Ayatollah Montazeri before they leave us behind?!
November 5th 2008 is the day HOPE is born in the world, and I think it has the potential to be the day that Iranians' "Spring of Freedom" in 1979 finally gets a chance to breathe its fresh air into the wet soil of humanity and see flowers of FREEDOM bloom!
It can be the day the Iranian revolution can begin anew, to reform itself, to reorient itself in the direction that its martyrs and founding fathers had in mind, and the freedom loving people of Iran can start to HOPE that they can join their brothers and sisters around the world in screaming:
Yes We Can!
God Bless Barack Hussein Obama!
God Bless Seyyed Mohammad Khatami!
Long Live Freedom and Democracy for ALL!
Now, ...
In the spirit of seeking FREEDOM for Iranians, I would like to refine some of the predictions I made in my previous post here (about Iran's 10th presidential elections next June):
I still maintain that President Khatami will not nominate himself (because Iranians need him as their 3rd Supreme Leader one day), but also I still stand by what I read from that picture of him standing between Dr. Aref on one side and Dr. Zarif on the other! I still think he wants to endorse Dr. Aref as the Reformist candidate for presidency next year and recommend Dr. Zarif as his potential Foreign Minister. But what I would like to tell President Khatami is this:
Sir, I understand that in our Eastern culture, AGE and seniority is a very important virtue to be highly considered in all positions of power, which is why you will think of Dr. Aref or Dr. Kharrazi before you would ever recommend a 48 year old young man like Dr. Zarif for the job of president, but remember Dr. Martin Luther King's expression:
The Fierce Urgency of Now!
This was the reason Teddy Kennedy endorsed a 47 year old Barack Obama, and now that he is the leader of the FREE world, with whom Iran would like to one day have those "grand bargain" negotiations (about which you faxed George W. Bush in 2003), don't you think Iranians should send a counterpart who UNDERSTANDS America, understands the western culture PERFECTLY, is already considered by American politicians and scholars as "the MOST brilliant diplomat in the world", is called by western journalists "a suave looking Iranian who speaks with a flawless American accent", and has already made personal connections with President Obama's future cabinet members, such as Chuck Hagel? (the second picture in the page below)
http://american-iranian.org/multimedia/pictures/events/aic_june_25th_event/album0.html
Dear President Khatami,
PLEASE endorse Dr. Javad Zarif for president, PLEASE ask all your friends (like Mr. Rafsanjani and Karroubi and others) to endorse him, and make sure ALL Iranian voters know of the AMAZING service he has done to his country by saving Iran from the war mongering intentions of John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who said on the eve of Iraq's invasion:
"Everybody wants to go to Baghdad, but REAL men want to go to Tehran"!
Dear Iranian Youth,
Let's start a grassroots online campaign for Dr. Zarif, (something like the www.barackobama.com) and URGE him to run, URGE the elder leaders of Iran's pro-democracy movement to endorse him, and organize the ground operations needed to get ALL Iranians on board and have them learn about who this great man is!
I wrote many blogs on my.barackobama.com over the past 21 months, and underneath them all I always wrote "Obama All The Way", I will now dedicate that slogan to Dr. Zarif!
Zarif All The Way!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
My Predictions for Iran's 10th Presidential Elections
This article (below) which I found on the Asia Times website, is in my opinion one of the most accurate and in-depth analyses I have read so far about Iran's presidential elections coming up in 8 months!!!!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JJ17Ak01.html
It's a wonderful piece of analysis, it confirms a lot of things I was guessing about what's going on in Iran, I feel exactly the same as the writer of this article, and I think he's spot on!!!!!
why do I say that? if you scroll down to the last picture on this page (below), you'll see why!!!!
http://yazdonline.com/NewsDetail.aspx?id=979
In this picture you see Dr. Aref standing on the right of President Khatami and Dr. Zarif on his left (or looking at the picture, Zarif on the right and Aref on the left), and as they say "A picture is worth a 1000 words!"!!! :-)
I know people in Iran are so disillusioned and skeptical about FREEDOM (or lack there of) in their Council of Guardians, that they think their only chance for a winning, viable and credible Reformist candidate is President Khatami himself and nobody else, but they need to realize that the world is changing, and Mr. Khatami is actually much more valuable to them as the leader of the Reform movement than a mere President!!!
Now, here's the humble opinion of this "Citizen of the World" (me) about who should be selected by the two main political parties of Iran as the nominnees of the Center-Right and Center-Left camps, and hence, hopefully pushing the current fundamentalist rulers of IRI's establishment i.e., Ahmadinejad's Far-Right to the margines! Who among the candidates that the writer of this Asia Times article is mentioning, should be chosen by the "National Confidence Party" (Center-Left) and the "Islamic Coalition Party" (Center-Right)?
Yes, as Mr. Askari points out, Iranians need to come up with a soft-spoken, Western-educated, smart and rational president to represent them at that "Grand Bargain" negotiating table with President Obama at the other side, but who?
From the right: Dr. Ali Larijani or Dr. Ali-Akbar Velayati,
From the left: Dr. Mohammad-Reza Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi,
The question is, which one of them, if elected will have the WISDOM and necessary foresight to appoint Dr. Zarif as his Foreign Minister or better yet as the head of Iran's National Security Council?
Watch these videos of Dr. Zarif's AMAZINGLY brilliant speeches at Princeton University and in front of UN, and you will know why I believe so strongly in Dr. Zarif being the ONLY man who can SAVE Iran:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1857501937527604694&q=javad+zarif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVQZd9oyaz8
But the other thing that's important for the future of Iran's Reform movement, is that their candidate should be popular enough to be able to polarize the Iranian electorate, and establish the idea of a two-party politics in Iranian mentality! It's time that the radical, anti-democratic fundamentalists of Iran get to see and ACCEPT that the two sides of the political spectrum have to coexist and respect one another, no matter how they feel about each other's views!
Fundamentalists like Ahmadinejad who do not even like the idea of party politics, need to realize that they can no longer continue to destroy people's credibility and dignity just because they have differing views, they can no longer continue their character assassinations of the other side, and they can no longer even contemplate the shameful practices of the Guardian Council by disqualifying candidates just because they are on the left of the political spectrum in Iran!!!!!!
It's time that the wise men of the Expediency Council do something about REALLY and TRULY allowing Iran to be a non-monolithic society, and recognize the fact that the two sides NEED to each come up with candidates that will solidify their respective bases fairly and freely!
I believe that eventually, after a series of "primary-style" party elections, the "National Confidence Party" nominting either Dr. Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi from the left, and the "Islamic Coalition Party" nominating either Dr. Larijani or Dr. Velayati from the right, can push radical, extremist, anti-democratic fundamentalists like Ahmadinejad to the fringes of society, and will give the Iranian people a CLEAR choice between the Right and the Left!
Now, unlike Mr. Askari who wrote that article on Asia Times, I would like to also include Dr. Ebtekar in the race? She was not mentioned in that article because she's a woman, but I will explain why she should be considered as well:
We all know that with the current fundamentalist makeup of the Guardian Council (headed by a staunch backer of Ahmadinejad, i.e., Mr. Jannati), there is no way a woman can be given the permission to run for presidency, because people like Jannati are by definition anti womens' rights! They consider women as second class citizens and they say so in public without any shame!!!! But if the reform movement of President Khatami is REALLY progressive and liberal enough to actually want to do something to eventually change that sexist mentality in Iran, they need to start talking about it SERIOUISLY, starting this election cycle!
Just like in America, where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama competed for the nomination of their party, in Iran too, the National Confidence Party aught to at least bring a woman into the field (and there's no other Iranian woman more qualified than Mr. Khatami's former Vice-President Ebtekar), and start to legitimize even the idea of a woman president in Iran, which at the moment is considered an impossible dream! Of course, she will be disqualifiued by the Guardian Council, leaving only one of those two men as the only reformist (or Center-Left) candidate, but in and of itself, the fact that a legitimate party, headed by a prominent cleric (Mr. Karroubi) and led by Iran's most beloved popular leader (Mr. Khatami) will nominate a woman to the Guardian Council for consideration as a presidential candidate, it will be a huge step for Women's Rights in Iran!
Now, even if Dr. Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi ends up losing the 50-50 divide, by a small margine of 49-51, and one of the two moderate-conservative candidates (Drs. Larijani or Velayati) who will hopefully be nominated by the "Islamic Coalition Party", ends up winning the election next June, this evidence of a polarization (i.e., the 49-51 results) will give the fundamentalists in the system, an accurate picture of how popular and powerful former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani and former Parliament Speaker Karroubi still are in being able to move the masses behind their preferred candidate! This is a very IMPORTANT lesson for the fundamentalists to learn! At the moment, it looks like they seem to think Iran is one big united family 100% behind every single opinion Mr. Khamenei has, which is obviously not true! Iran is NOT a monolith, so let's prove that to its own people as well as to the world!
So, for me (half-way across the world from Iran, but looking at it from the proverbial 10000 feet view) the best two candidates representing Iran's Left and Right, are Mir Hossein Mousavi and Ali Akbar Velayati.
BUT NO CLERICS for president, please!!!!! I hope somebody can convince Mr. Karroubi that Iran is going to need good rational and moderate clerics in the Assembly of Experts, the Guardian Council, and the Judiciary system!!!! There are enough non-cleric Islamic experts and experienced young intellectuals to run for presidency, so popular and fair-minded clerics like him can be much more help to the people if they try to get into the existing governmental clerical bodies, hopefully replacing fundamentalists like Mr. Jannati in that shameful entity called The Council of Guardians (or in better words: "Council of Discriminators")!!!!! Same goes for Mr. Rowhani! Please learn from Mr. Khatami and Mr. Rafsanjani, and exert your powers in places where people REALLY need you!
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JJ17Ak01.html
It's a wonderful piece of analysis, it confirms a lot of things I was guessing about what's going on in Iran, I feel exactly the same as the writer of this article, and I think he's spot on!!!!!
why do I say that? if you scroll down to the last picture on this page (below), you'll see why!!!!
http://yazdonline.com/NewsDetail.aspx?id=979
In this picture you see Dr. Aref standing on the right of President Khatami and Dr. Zarif on his left (or looking at the picture, Zarif on the right and Aref on the left), and as they say "A picture is worth a 1000 words!"!!! :-)
I know people in Iran are so disillusioned and skeptical about FREEDOM (or lack there of) in their Council of Guardians, that they think their only chance for a winning, viable and credible Reformist candidate is President Khatami himself and nobody else, but they need to realize that the world is changing, and Mr. Khatami is actually much more valuable to them as the leader of the Reform movement than a mere President!!!
Now, here's the humble opinion of this "Citizen of the World" (me) about who should be selected by the two main political parties of Iran as the nominnees of the Center-Right and Center-Left camps, and hence, hopefully pushing the current fundamentalist rulers of IRI's establishment i.e., Ahmadinejad's Far-Right to the margines! Who among the candidates that the writer of this Asia Times article is mentioning, should be chosen by the "National Confidence Party" (Center-Left) and the "Islamic Coalition Party" (Center-Right)?
Yes, as Mr. Askari points out, Iranians need to come up with a soft-spoken, Western-educated, smart and rational president to represent them at that "Grand Bargain" negotiating table with President Obama at the other side, but who?
From the right: Dr. Ali Larijani or Dr. Ali-Akbar Velayati,
From the left: Dr. Mohammad-Reza Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi,
The question is, which one of them, if elected will have the WISDOM and necessary foresight to appoint Dr. Zarif as his Foreign Minister or better yet as the head of Iran's National Security Council?
Watch these videos of Dr. Zarif's AMAZINGLY brilliant speeches at Princeton University and in front of UN, and you will know why I believe so strongly in Dr. Zarif being the ONLY man who can SAVE Iran:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1857501937527604694&q=javad+zarif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVQZd9oyaz8
But the other thing that's important for the future of Iran's Reform movement, is that their candidate should be popular enough to be able to polarize the Iranian electorate, and establish the idea of a two-party politics in Iranian mentality! It's time that the radical, anti-democratic fundamentalists of Iran get to see and ACCEPT that the two sides of the political spectrum have to coexist and respect one another, no matter how they feel about each other's views!
Fundamentalists like Ahmadinejad who do not even like the idea of party politics, need to realize that they can no longer continue to destroy people's credibility and dignity just because they have differing views, they can no longer continue their character assassinations of the other side, and they can no longer even contemplate the shameful practices of the Guardian Council by disqualifying candidates just because they are on the left of the political spectrum in Iran!!!!!!
It's time that the wise men of the Expediency Council do something about REALLY and TRULY allowing Iran to be a non-monolithic society, and recognize the fact that the two sides NEED to each come up with candidates that will solidify their respective bases fairly and freely!
I believe that eventually, after a series of "primary-style" party elections, the "National Confidence Party" nominting either Dr. Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi from the left, and the "Islamic Coalition Party" nominating either Dr. Larijani or Dr. Velayati from the right, can push radical, extremist, anti-democratic fundamentalists like Ahmadinejad to the fringes of society, and will give the Iranian people a CLEAR choice between the Right and the Left!
Now, unlike Mr. Askari who wrote that article on Asia Times, I would like to also include Dr. Ebtekar in the race? She was not mentioned in that article because she's a woman, but I will explain why she should be considered as well:
We all know that with the current fundamentalist makeup of the Guardian Council (headed by a staunch backer of Ahmadinejad, i.e., Mr. Jannati), there is no way a woman can be given the permission to run for presidency, because people like Jannati are by definition anti womens' rights! They consider women as second class citizens and they say so in public without any shame!!!! But if the reform movement of President Khatami is REALLY progressive and liberal enough to actually want to do something to eventually change that sexist mentality in Iran, they need to start talking about it SERIOUISLY, starting this election cycle!
Just like in America, where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama competed for the nomination of their party, in Iran too, the National Confidence Party aught to at least bring a woman into the field (and there's no other Iranian woman more qualified than Mr. Khatami's former Vice-President Ebtekar), and start to legitimize even the idea of a woman president in Iran, which at the moment is considered an impossible dream! Of course, she will be disqualifiued by the Guardian Council, leaving only one of those two men as the only reformist (or Center-Left) candidate, but in and of itself, the fact that a legitimate party, headed by a prominent cleric (Mr. Karroubi) and led by Iran's most beloved popular leader (Mr. Khatami) will nominate a woman to the Guardian Council for consideration as a presidential candidate, it will be a huge step for Women's Rights in Iran!
Now, even if Dr. Aref or Mir Hossein Mousavi ends up losing the 50-50 divide, by a small margine of 49-51, and one of the two moderate-conservative candidates (Drs. Larijani or Velayati) who will hopefully be nominated by the "Islamic Coalition Party", ends up winning the election next June, this evidence of a polarization (i.e., the 49-51 results) will give the fundamentalists in the system, an accurate picture of how popular and powerful former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani and former Parliament Speaker Karroubi still are in being able to move the masses behind their preferred candidate! This is a very IMPORTANT lesson for the fundamentalists to learn! At the moment, it looks like they seem to think Iran is one big united family 100% behind every single opinion Mr. Khamenei has, which is obviously not true! Iran is NOT a monolith, so let's prove that to its own people as well as to the world!
So, for me (half-way across the world from Iran, but looking at it from the proverbial 10000 feet view) the best two candidates representing Iran's Left and Right, are Mir Hossein Mousavi and Ali Akbar Velayati.
BUT NO CLERICS for president, please!!!!! I hope somebody can convince Mr. Karroubi that Iran is going to need good rational and moderate clerics in the Assembly of Experts, the Guardian Council, and the Judiciary system!!!! There are enough non-cleric Islamic experts and experienced young intellectuals to run for presidency, so popular and fair-minded clerics like him can be much more help to the people if they try to get into the existing governmental clerical bodies, hopefully replacing fundamentalists like Mr. Jannati in that shameful entity called The Council of Guardians (or in better words: "Council of Discriminators")!!!!! Same goes for Mr. Rowhani! Please learn from Mr. Khatami and Mr. Rafsanjani, and exert your powers in places where people REALLY need you!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Advice to Freedom Loving Iranians!
As someone who was born in Iran, lived through the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and then left that world behind in pursuit of her own personal freedoms, now having lived more than half of her life in the West, I think I have the advantage of being able to look at the situation in Iran from the proverbial "10000 feet view"!
I left Iran 21 years ago, and at that time, the fundamentalist hijackers of our revolution had managed to completely steal the Republic from its Founding Fathers. The future of Iran seemed as bleak and hopeless as it did in its worst periods in history, such as the Ghajar era, the Mongol invasion, the 2 centuries of silence, ...!
Of course, a lot has changed over the past couple of decades in Iran, and most significant of them is the Reform Movement of former President Khatami in 1997. However, the pace of CHANGE has been very slow and the success of REFORM has been hindered by the fact that unfortunately Iran's fundamentalists of the far-right have continued to maintain and exert their power and influence on the society more than any other group in that country's political spectrum.
Now a days, when I read about Mr. Khatami daring to extend a hand of cooperation to the once vilified Freedom Movement of Iran, and how he is trying to reintroduce the notion of "liberalism" to the Iranian public, it all seems hard to believe for me, and I'm shocked but quite pleasantly so!
However, I shouldn't perhaps be too shocked, because thanks to the new approach that seems to be taken by the rational, pragmatic, and smart liberals in America, such as Barack Obama and his friends and supporters (young and old), I think the Theocratic Dictatorship of Iran can see no other choice but to save itself through major and REAL reforms and course-correction! Hence, their need for the REAL revolutionaries of 1979! Thank God there are also rational, pragmatic, and smart people even in the clerical class of Iran!
I have been writing (on Persian Paradox = Dr. Ebtekar's weblog) about my Utopian "dream" of a push by the Assembly of Experts to revise the wisdom of keeping "Supreme Leadership" as a lifelong term, and instead, to change it to a finite term of 25 years, at the end of which there can be celebrations and hoopla and fanfare to commemorate and recognize the achievements of the outgoing Supreme Leader, and passing the torch of our revolution's "Principles" to the incoming Supreme Leader!
Why do I have this dream???
Even though I was only a kid during the revolution, but I do remember somethings and I'm sure people like Dr. Ebtekar who were young adults and university students at the time, and actually involved in the revolution, MUST remember the slogans and the ideals and principles that their fellow revolutionary students sacrificed their lives for:
"Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic"
Let's look at these slogans carefully:
Independence? What did PEOPLE mean when they shouted for Independence? Iran was not a colony, it wasn't under the occupation of any other country, so why was it so important to DEMAND "Independence"??? They were talking about political, technological, and economic INDEPENDENCE from the Shah's Western masters (i.e., United States of America, United Kingdom, and Israel)!
Freedom? That one was much more obvious to most people, due to the despotic and dictatorial nature of the Shah's rule which made it impossible for people to exercise their basic and inalienable rights and freedoms, like Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Opinion, ...
Islamic Republic? This one of course has TWO parts to it, and I would like people like Dr. Ebtekar and other politicians in Iran to pay attention to the origin of this term! Let's remember 1979!!!
What were PEOPLE referring to when shouting and screaming these slogans in front of the bullets of Shah's Imperial Guards? What were they expressing as their HOPES and ASPIRATIONS for the future generations as they were taking their last breaths, wounded and on the verge of ascending to heaven, lying in the pool of their own sacred blood? Those martyrs (shaheed) of the 17th Shahrivar who gave their lives for this revolution of which you have now become custodians, what did they mean when they said "Islamic Republic"? Did they simply mean "Islamic rule"? Were they referring to the sermons of Ruhollah Khomeinin in Najaf about "Velayat Faghih"????!!!! Did those young university students mean to say we want to just replace the Shah (king) with a Faghih (priest) and that's how we hope to insure our country's Independence and Freedom????!!!! I'm sure you know the answer to that!!!!
Maybe there were a number of clerics involved in the revolution, who were inspired by Ruhollah Khomeini's sermons about an Imam-Ali-like regime in which social justice could be promoted in the style of that Imam's moral teachings, but the youth, the majority of the revolutionary activists who GAVE their LIVES for that revolution did not learn their principles from those sermons, they learned and were inspired by the theories put forward by Ali Shariati, Morteza Motahhari, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, Ayatollah Taleghani and other such Islamic intellectuals who had written books and given speeches at the Hosseyniyeh Ershah for years, had been taken to jail, had been tortured by the Shah's secret service (SAVAK), and had a REAL moral authority to speak of the principles of the REVOLUTION they were inspiring in the youth! Ayatollah Khomeini was in France by then! Safe and Sound!
So, what did that two-word term of "Islamic Republic" really mean? What did those Founding Fathers have in mind when they specifically said Islamic REPUBLIC?????
We had a draft of what they meant in the original constitution which scholars such as Dr. Beheshti, Ostad Motahhari, Prime Minister Bazargan and others wrote in the first few months of 1979, in that glorious "Spring of Freedom"! It was a REPUBLIC based on the rule of law, by the PEOPLE, of the PEOPLE, and at the same time, under the moral guidance of Islamic laws, headed by a high priest (=Faghih) called "Supreme Leader" as a supervising arbiter of its moral direction! It was NOT meant to become an "Islamic Hokoomat" (Islamic Rule), but an "Islamic Republic", in actuality, and not just in name!
Now, with respect to these 3 slogans and principles of the revolution, where is Iran after almost 30 years? Do people feel that they have "Freedom of Speech", "Freedom of Opinion", "Freedom of Press", "Freedom of Religion", "Freedom of Expression"????? Do people feel that they are totally "Independent" of both Western AND Eastern influence in their political, technological and economic standing in the world? and most importantly, is this "Islamic Rule of the Clerical Class" what people had bargained for 30 years ago? Is what Iran has right now, truly a REPUBLIC? Do people vote freely and elect their representatives according to what they know of them? or according to what the clerical class allows them to know? Are presidents and members of the Parliament allowed to express opinions and put forward agendas that are not 100% in agreement with ONE doctrine and ONE alone, which is that of the "Supreme Leader"? Then what does the title of president even mean? If the policies of the regime are set by the "Supreme Leader", then isn't the president only a slave to those policies? Isn't the Parliament bound by the policies of ONE and only ONE person alone???? Isn't this more reminiscent of the Pahlavi monarchy than what any of those martyrs of 17 Shahrivar ever dreamed of as they took their last breaths on earth hoping that their bloods could pave the way for a better society in which there was:
Independence, Freedom, and Islamic Republic?
The beauty of the Reform Movement headed by former president Mohammad Khatami, is that these short-comings are recognized!!!!
So, according to my Utopian dream, ... if the next president of Iran (anyone BUT Ahmadinejad) manages to make that "grand bargain" deal with President Obama within the first term of his presidency, and therefore allowing Mr. Khamenei to claim HIS own leadership's success in demanding respect for Iranians and achieving Iran's technological and political INDEPENDENCE, then it can be packaged (by the pragmatic and realistic ones in the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council) as this:
1) Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini achieved the first goal of our revolution = Islamic Republic
2) Seyyed Ali Khamenei achieved the second goal of our revolution = Independence
3) Seyyed Mohammad Khatami is the only leader who can pave the way for us to achieve the third goal of our revolution = Freedom
At this very crucial time in history, all Iranian reformists and Freedom-seeking leftists, with the backing of Mr. Khatami and Rafsanjani, NEED to prove to the world that Iran is on its way toward that Utopia! You need to demonstrate the non-monolithic nature of Iran and the MODERATE and peaceful characteristic of an IRI regime that can be possible within the next 9 months!
Good Luck!
I left Iran 21 years ago, and at that time, the fundamentalist hijackers of our revolution had managed to completely steal the Republic from its Founding Fathers. The future of Iran seemed as bleak and hopeless as it did in its worst periods in history, such as the Ghajar era, the Mongol invasion, the 2 centuries of silence, ...!
Of course, a lot has changed over the past couple of decades in Iran, and most significant of them is the Reform Movement of former President Khatami in 1997. However, the pace of CHANGE has been very slow and the success of REFORM has been hindered by the fact that unfortunately Iran's fundamentalists of the far-right have continued to maintain and exert their power and influence on the society more than any other group in that country's political spectrum.
Now a days, when I read about Mr. Khatami daring to extend a hand of cooperation to the once vilified Freedom Movement of Iran, and how he is trying to reintroduce the notion of "liberalism" to the Iranian public, it all seems hard to believe for me, and I'm shocked but quite pleasantly so!
However, I shouldn't perhaps be too shocked, because thanks to the new approach that seems to be taken by the rational, pragmatic, and smart liberals in America, such as Barack Obama and his friends and supporters (young and old), I think the Theocratic Dictatorship of Iran can see no other choice but to save itself through major and REAL reforms and course-correction! Hence, their need for the REAL revolutionaries of 1979! Thank God there are also rational, pragmatic, and smart people even in the clerical class of Iran!
I have been writing (on Persian Paradox = Dr. Ebtekar's weblog) about my Utopian "dream" of a push by the Assembly of Experts to revise the wisdom of keeping "Supreme Leadership" as a lifelong term, and instead, to change it to a finite term of 25 years, at the end of which there can be celebrations and hoopla and fanfare to commemorate and recognize the achievements of the outgoing Supreme Leader, and passing the torch of our revolution's "Principles" to the incoming Supreme Leader!
Why do I have this dream???
Even though I was only a kid during the revolution, but I do remember somethings and I'm sure people like Dr. Ebtekar who were young adults and university students at the time, and actually involved in the revolution, MUST remember the slogans and the ideals and principles that their fellow revolutionary students sacrificed their lives for:
"Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic"
Let's look at these slogans carefully:
Independence? What did PEOPLE mean when they shouted for Independence? Iran was not a colony, it wasn't under the occupation of any other country, so why was it so important to DEMAND "Independence"??? They were talking about political, technological, and economic INDEPENDENCE from the Shah's Western masters (i.e., United States of America, United Kingdom, and Israel)!
Freedom? That one was much more obvious to most people, due to the despotic and dictatorial nature of the Shah's rule which made it impossible for people to exercise their basic and inalienable rights and freedoms, like Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Opinion, ...
Islamic Republic? This one of course has TWO parts to it, and I would like people like Dr. Ebtekar and other politicians in Iran to pay attention to the origin of this term! Let's remember 1979!!!
What were PEOPLE referring to when shouting and screaming these slogans in front of the bullets of Shah's Imperial Guards? What were they expressing as their HOPES and ASPIRATIONS for the future generations as they were taking their last breaths, wounded and on the verge of ascending to heaven, lying in the pool of their own sacred blood? Those martyrs (shaheed) of the 17th Shahrivar who gave their lives for this revolution of which you have now become custodians, what did they mean when they said "Islamic Republic"? Did they simply mean "Islamic rule"? Were they referring to the sermons of Ruhollah Khomeinin in Najaf about "Velayat Faghih"????!!!! Did those young university students mean to say we want to just replace the Shah (king) with a Faghih (priest) and that's how we hope to insure our country's Independence and Freedom????!!!! I'm sure you know the answer to that!!!!
Maybe there were a number of clerics involved in the revolution, who were inspired by Ruhollah Khomeini's sermons about an Imam-Ali-like regime in which social justice could be promoted in the style of that Imam's moral teachings, but the youth, the majority of the revolutionary activists who GAVE their LIVES for that revolution did not learn their principles from those sermons, they learned and were inspired by the theories put forward by Ali Shariati, Morteza Motahhari, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, Ayatollah Taleghani and other such Islamic intellectuals who had written books and given speeches at the Hosseyniyeh Ershah for years, had been taken to jail, had been tortured by the Shah's secret service (SAVAK), and had a REAL moral authority to speak of the principles of the REVOLUTION they were inspiring in the youth! Ayatollah Khomeini was in France by then! Safe and Sound!
So, what did that two-word term of "Islamic Republic" really mean? What did those Founding Fathers have in mind when they specifically said Islamic REPUBLIC?????
We had a draft of what they meant in the original constitution which scholars such as Dr. Beheshti, Ostad Motahhari, Prime Minister Bazargan and others wrote in the first few months of 1979, in that glorious "Spring of Freedom"! It was a REPUBLIC based on the rule of law, by the PEOPLE, of the PEOPLE, and at the same time, under the moral guidance of Islamic laws, headed by a high priest (=Faghih) called "Supreme Leader" as a supervising arbiter of its moral direction! It was NOT meant to become an "Islamic Hokoomat" (Islamic Rule), but an "Islamic Republic", in actuality, and not just in name!
Now, with respect to these 3 slogans and principles of the revolution, where is Iran after almost 30 years? Do people feel that they have "Freedom of Speech", "Freedom of Opinion", "Freedom of Press", "Freedom of Religion", "Freedom of Expression"????? Do people feel that they are totally "Independent" of both Western AND Eastern influence in their political, technological and economic standing in the world? and most importantly, is this "Islamic Rule of the Clerical Class" what people had bargained for 30 years ago? Is what Iran has right now, truly a REPUBLIC? Do people vote freely and elect their representatives according to what they know of them? or according to what the clerical class allows them to know? Are presidents and members of the Parliament allowed to express opinions and put forward agendas that are not 100% in agreement with ONE doctrine and ONE alone, which is that of the "Supreme Leader"? Then what does the title of president even mean? If the policies of the regime are set by the "Supreme Leader", then isn't the president only a slave to those policies? Isn't the Parliament bound by the policies of ONE and only ONE person alone???? Isn't this more reminiscent of the Pahlavi monarchy than what any of those martyrs of 17 Shahrivar ever dreamed of as they took their last breaths on earth hoping that their bloods could pave the way for a better society in which there was:
Independence, Freedom, and Islamic Republic?
The beauty of the Reform Movement headed by former president Mohammad Khatami, is that these short-comings are recognized!!!!
So, according to my Utopian dream, ... if the next president of Iran (anyone BUT Ahmadinejad) manages to make that "grand bargain" deal with President Obama within the first term of his presidency, and therefore allowing Mr. Khamenei to claim HIS own leadership's success in demanding respect for Iranians and achieving Iran's technological and political INDEPENDENCE, then it can be packaged (by the pragmatic and realistic ones in the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council) as this:
1) Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini achieved the first goal of our revolution = Islamic Republic
2) Seyyed Ali Khamenei achieved the second goal of our revolution = Independence
3) Seyyed Mohammad Khatami is the only leader who can pave the way for us to achieve the third goal of our revolution = Freedom
At this very crucial time in history, all Iranian reformists and Freedom-seeking leftists, with the backing of Mr. Khatami and Rafsanjani, NEED to prove to the world that Iran is on its way toward that Utopia! You need to demonstrate the non-monolithic nature of Iran and the MODERATE and peaceful characteristic of an IRI regime that can be possible within the next 9 months!
Good Luck!
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