Nura in Iran

Ashura in Qom

2007-02-01T23:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

After a long hiatus, I write to you about Ashura commemorations in Qom, because it has been too unique of an experience to not share with anyone.

On the night before the 9th of the Islamic month of Moharram, the seminary took us by bus to a speech by a famous alem (religious cleric) in Qom, Mr. Tehrani, who also happened to be in my mom’s caravan when she went on the hajj pilgrimage. As usual, they underestimated the number of people who wanted to come, so we were packed like sausages in the bus as we sung prayers for Fatima, Ali, and all of the other members of the family of the Prophet.

When we arrived, the women were sitting in what seemed to be a gymnasium, on carpets that they had spread out over the floor, and it was extremely crowded. The door to the gymnasium was small, and since there were large numbers of women still arriving, huge crowds of women pushed through the door all at once to enter. Once you stepped forward into the crowd of women wanting to get into the gymnasium, there was no humanly way to turn around and go back—you would be pushed into the gymnasium. I felt my purse smashed against me and feared for the well-being of my digital camera. Meanwhile, someone stepped on the back of my chador, pulling my scarf backwards and the front of my hair came out.

Through the thick crowd of sitting women they had placed long strips of colorful fabric, on which women weren’t allowed to sit. Later I would learn that these were meant to demarcate a path through the crowds that Red Crescent nurses would use to get to women who had fainted after screaming and crying for Hussain. In thick crowds, not much ventilation, and an emotionally-intense atmosphere, it’s no surprise that some would faint.

Mr. Tehrani ended his speech with songs of mourning for all those who died at Karbala, killed, after being besieged for ten days by Yazid, the womanizing, alcohol-addicted caliph to whom Hussain and his followers had refused to swear their allegiance. Yazid’s was an army of thousands, Hussain a group of men, women and children—including his family--numbering 73. Tehrani and the audience would sob loudly after each sad verse of the song.

After the speech, a young poet recited one of his pieces on Karbala, gesturing exuberantly and speaking elegantly—how could any event, in Iran, be without poetry?

Then came the part of the program that I felt that the audience had all been waiting for, where two performers would sing and chant about what happened at Karbala and the audience would sob hysterically. The lights were shut off. A huge screen at the front of the women showed the singers and an audience of crying men, occasionally focusing in on the faces of particular men.

The singers recalled in great detail what happened in Karbala on Ashura, the tenth of Moharram. The killing of Ali Asghar, Hussain’s newborn son, after Hussain brought him near the enemy’s army to ask if the baby could have some water; the gory killing of Abbas, Hussain’s brother, and finally the killing of Hussain, the Prophet’s grandson, whose only crime had been to protest against the corrupt political establishment that had imposed itself on the Muslim world, a tribe-oriented hereditary caliphate that smothered the great ideas that the Prophet had worked so tirelessly to teach the world.

Every time the singers would recall the helplessness of the revered members of the family of the Prophet before Yazid’s powerful army, the sobs of the audience would all at once become exponentially louder. Women screamed. A woman behind me repeated the word “brother, brother” as the singers told the story of Hossain heading towards the enemy’s army, from the point of view of Zainab, his sister, and then switched to repeating the word “daddy, daddy,” as the singers told the story of the killing of Imam Hossain from the point of view of Ali Akbar, his son.

Zainab would survive Karbala and would go on to make it her mission to tell the story of what happened at Karbala to all of the Muslim world.

After the singers finished their songs of mourning, their style changed to a chant. One singer would repeat “Hossain, Hossain,” over and over so that it didn’t sound like “Hossain” anymore. His voice was very deep and on beat with the audience’s beating of their chests. After warning the audience to take care that no one falls, the singers told the audience to begin walking in a huge circle while beating their chests. Many hit their heads with both hands.

This is all to the background of continued screams and cries from thousands of men and women. A woman continuously let out high-pitched screams, and another woman a deep-throated moan.

Screaming, moaning, sobbing—women with black chadors pulled over their faces--thousands of women sitting hunched over with a huge deep-black sheet draped over them--men who looked too tough to cry—the sound of hands pounding on chests, Red Crescent nurses occasionally pulling unconscious women on their shoulders to a nearby room, the sound of the singers crying loudly into their microphones, loud, frantic occasional screams of “Hossain!!”

The next morning, we sat in the alleyways near one of the offices of Ayatollah Khamenei to listen to a speech about Imam Hossain and Ashura. As the speaker was describing the cutting off of Imam Hossain’s hands, a boy sat next to me with his mother, and ironically, he had no hands. His skin was peeling—he had a huge scab on the top of his head where no hair was growing, his feet were much smaller and thinner than normal, and he only stubs for hands—you could see the formation of knuckles, but it was as if his hands were stunted in formation while he was in his mother’s womb, and all that he was left was were two tiny bulbs at the end of his arms, with the beginnings of the formation of knuckles.

If this boy had been born in a richer country, I wondered, would he have the disability that he has today? And if Iran hadn’t had to endure eight years of war with Iraq, supported and funded by Western powers, in which 800,000 were killed (let me repeat that: 800,000, mostly young men), perhaps it would be a richer country today. Or perhaps, going even further back into history, if the shahs of Iran hadn’t given away much of Iran’s wealth to satiate their foreign overlords, perhaps this country would be much richer today. Perhaps if there hadn’t been so much injustice, this little boy would have hands. And perhaps if there hadn’t been so much injustice during Imam Hossain’s life, Imam Hossain, too, would not have been deprived of his hands.

The little boy’s mother cried throughout the speech, as were many others. But in this instance, I felt like I understood better why she was crying. Other people’s cries had seemed extreme, scary in some ways, too frenzied, too out of control. But this woman’s crying made me realize that people aren’t just crying for what happened at Karbala. They cry for injustice, of which the event at Karbala is only one manifestation. Instead of being quick to criticize the traditions of mourning of Shia Muslims in the Middle East, perhaps we should ask why they are crying.

No doubt, Iranians cry because of the Iran-Iraq war. Only a nation that has been through eight years of a gruesome war perhaps an cry so much for a gruesome injustice that took place over a thousand years ago. Imagery of Karbala and imagery of the eight-year war are intermixed—and it can’t quickly be dismissed as cheap propaganda, because there are very clear parallels between the two historical events. Iran, like Hossain and his followers, was materially powerless in the Iran-Iraq war, weak and miniscule compared to those who opposed them, but they bravely faced death—and many tasted death—to save their revolution, their overthrowing of their puppet Shah. Many of Iran’s best were martyred in the Iran-Iraq war, just like many of the best men of the Shias were martyred at Karbala. Zainab lived to tell the tale, just as Iranians now try to teach their tale to their young. If only the world would listen to Iran’s tale.

At Hazrat Maasuma’s shrine, they set up a display on Karbala, describing the events in posters. They also showed video of the Iran-Iraq war. A man, just about the age to have perhaps gone to the war front, stood in front of the TV, tears in his eyes, running his fingers through his rosary.

Why else do Iranians cry? Perhaps because the very injustice that was responsible for Imam Hossain’s murder still is very much alive and present today, especially in Iran. From the Iranian point of view, Iran desires to develop alternative sources of energy in order to keep the country on the progressive trajectory that any country would desire to be on, and to prevent a future in which Iran is dependent on other countries for fuel. Those who have power in the world attempt tirelessly to keep Iran off of this trajectory, just as those who had power in the Muslim world wanted to force Hossain and his followers to be subservient to them. To Iranians, Yazid is still very much alive today. Let’s just hope the two armies don’t meet face to face in Karbala.

Yesterday was the 12th of the Iranian month of Bahman, the day that Imam Khomeini was allowed to return home from exile in France. I watched a historical documentary on TV on the events leading up to Imam Khomeini’s return and, ultimately, the revolution, and it showed a clip of an interview of the Shah by an American reporter. The shah spoke with almost no accent in British English. He spoke of Imam Khomeini, calling him “uneducated” and he said that he was convinced that Imam Khomeini “could not have done it alone.” I was shocked to hear the shah call Imam Khomeini, who dedicated his life to studying Islam, and who was a high-ranking Muslim cleric, proficient in the methods of deriving Islamic law, and at the same time a mystic—uneducated. Imam Khomeini, whom Iranians loved so much and for whom many would ultimately lay down their life. The Shah was so arrogant, and he honestly thought so little of Imam Khomeini, that he couldn’t believe that Imam Khomeini could possibly do it on his own. But Imam Khomeini did do it on his own. If only one day America could come to appreciate and admire the bravery of a man who, much like our own founding fathers, was not afraid to combat tyranny and injustice. And perhaps, too, it would do us some good to cry a bit over the tyranny and injustice of today’s world.

The Ends NOT Justifying the Means, Imam Reza

2006-12-04T03:09:00.000-08:00

December 3, 2006

Today was the birthday of Imam Reza, the eighth of the twelve imams, and by tonight we will have had a total of three parties in celebration. Last night in the dormitory, we watched a play and sang songs together about the imam, while eating a sweet juice (“sharbat”) and pastries, and today we skipped one of our classes to sing more songs about the imam together with all the rest of the international students, also while eating candy and pastries. Girls wore bright scarves today for the occasion. Tonight, there will be another party in the dorm. Shi’as seem to cry a lot, but it also seems that they know how to laugh.

At the party last night, a professor gave a speech on Imam Reza. At one point in the speech, she mentioned, “Insha’Allah (God-willing) I’ll take you all to Mashhad. Mashhad is home to the shrine of Imam Reza. As soon as she did it, everyone screamed “insha’Allah!” I’ve never heard a louder and more exuberant scream. Even when I went on the trip to the north just before the semester started, many students were asking the administrators if they could take us to Mashhad, too, since it was so close, even though it wasn’t in the initial plans. The administrators told the students, that no, they couldn’t, but that if they kept Imam Reza in their hearts, and tried to emulate his deeds, it would be just as good as actually physically getting close to his shrine. At the party last night, after the girls screamed excitedly that they wanted to go to Mashhad, and after many of the girls shouted “do you promise?” “when will you take us?” the professor told them that inshaAllah they’ll get to go, but to always remember that keeping Imam Reza close to their hearts all of the time is just as important. She said that the first time she went to Najaf, in Iraq, to visit the shrine of Imam Ali, she saw the words “Assalamualaikum, ya Ali” written on a wall near the border of Iran and Iraq. Greetings, Imam Ali. Then, days later, when she was leaving, she noticed that on the same wall, but on the other side of it, the same words were written, “Assalamualaikum, ya Ali.” The words on the wall were teaching her that even though she was physically moving away from Imam Ali’s grave, she could still send her greetings to him as if she was moving towards it—the intimacy with the imam would remain unchanged.

I’ve also started attending an informal afternoon class on the “vilayat-al faqih”—Imam Khomeini’s concept of Islamic government, “guardianship by the Muslim jurist.” The professor is a man, and the class is comprised mostly of Iranians. As they sat in their chairs, many of the students used their chadors to cover their mouths and pulled it low enough over their heads so that most of their eyes were covered. Even though much of their faces weren’t seen, this was no impediment to their being active participants in the class. They asked one question after the other, so many that the professor’s attention was drawn from one side of the lecture hall to the other almost constantly. He was attempting to logically prove the need for the vilayat-al faqih. In their questioning they challenged him on his points, talking loudly and confidently. A room full of intelligent, strong-minded girls in black chadors, some covering most of their faces, others wearing it more loosely.

My regular classes are also providing me with essential knowledge of Islam. Recently, in both my history class and Islamic creed class, we discussed the concept of the ends justifying the means. It’s very clear in Islam that the ends should never, ever justify the means. My book on Islamic creed explained that the Prophet always used noble means to reach his noble goals. It described his behavior in warfare; he was never the aggressor, he legislated that the innocent should not be killed, that trees should not be uprooted, that the enemy’s water cannot be contaminated, that prisoners of war should be treated with kindness, as well as many more laws of warfare. Our history book emphasized the same point; once, when the Prophet was teaching Islam to a certain tribe, the leader of the tribe said that he would become Muslim only if the Prophet promised to let him be the Prophet’s successor. The Prophet refused, saying that the decision of who succeeds him is in the hands of God. This proves two things; one, that the noble end of bringing a person to Islam does not justify the ignoble means, and two, that the Prophet’s successor should have been appointed by God, and not by the council that mistakenly chose Abu Bakr.

If the world came to understand the ends never justify the means, a concept spelled out very clearly by Islam in the Quran and by the Prophet in his sayings, perhaps much of the suffering in the world today could have been avoided.

A Commemoration for a Soldier and Back in Tehran

2006-11-22T03:51:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I attended a commemoration of the death of Zain-ad-din, a young commander in the Iran-Iraq war. One of my roommates had put pictures of him up all over our walls when we first moved in. When I asked her why she admires him, and what more he had done in comparison to the many other martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war that had made him become famous, she said that he worked so much for Islam, that he gave everything of himself to Islam. My Iranian friend, Mona, brought me two books of his personal writings, as well as books by another martyr, Shahid Chamran. She got them from the Basij library, the library of the Revolutionary Guards, here at the seminary. I didn’t know the Basij had its own library here until now.

The commemoration took place in an auditorium located next to a cemetery of soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war. In the auditorium, there were pictures of the felled soldiers all over the wall, most of whom looked about my age or younger. In particular, they were the pictures of the 5,200 young men of Qom who died in the war.

The “vazir” –or minister—of the country gave a speech at the commemoration. Among other topics, he spoke of the Holocaust, and the criticism that Ahmadinejad has been facing from many in the West for asking why the Holocaust has become such a taboo subject that the event cannot be researched and be subject to the same academic scrutiny to which any historical phenomenon should be subject. Many in the West, not taking the time to afford him the same respect that any human being should be afforded by truly trying to understand his words without immediately categorizing him as a lunatic or a bigot, believe him to be denying or minimizing the Holocaust. The words of Iran’s vizir convinced me even more that Ahmadinejad and other members of the Iranian government are not Holocaust deniers. At one point in his speech he said, and I quote, “the Holocaust happened in Germany, Austria, and other European countries. All we are asking is why the Palestinians have to suffer for the crimes of that era.” By means of making a greater point, he had implicitly recognized that the Holocaust occurred.

The room was filled with young soldiers, many of whom were crying as the mother of soldier who died in the Iran-Iraq war talked about her son, and as a man sung poetry about the Iran-Iraq war. Outside, there was a poster display on the war. On one was a picture of a powerful bomb which, according to the poster, will kill or wound anyone within an area of ten times the area of a soccer field. Another poster described the chemical and biological weapons used against Iran, showing little droplets of chemicals with American flags drawn within them. It quoted ABC news reporting that Saddam had bought over 500 tons of chemical weapons from an American company and that other companies, with authorization obtained from people in the highest ranks of the American government, shipped samples of strains of deadly microbes used for biological weapons to Saddam.

In other news, I’ve started a class with a professor of political science on the Islamic revolution and Islamic political thought. In the first session, she compared the Islamic revolution in Iran to the American revolution and said that thought the revolutions were similar in many ways, they were also different because the Iranian revolution caused many people to look inward and come to appreciate and practice their religion even more. The revolution was a realization that Islam was integral to their lives, and this Islam was being undermined by the Shah. While the Shah made some reforms, in an effort to modernize, that were economically beneficial to the country, he also tried to do away with religion. For example, he instituted mandatory classes on Islam for Iran’s youth, but the teachers were eighteen-year-olds conscripted into mandatory national service who weren’t very knowledge about Islam and themselves often did not believe in the religion. My professor was herself in one of those classes. The teachers, she said, wore tank tops and short skirts to class as they talked about hejab, or modest dress. This was an attempt, she said, to keep those who had been educated in the howzehs, the seminaries, those who had spent years upon years studying Islam, from having a role in educating the country’s youth and helping to keeping Islam alive and vigorous in Iran.

The class is very intimate—it consists of two of my friends—Narges and Mona—and me. The teacher told us to discuss the subject matter amongst ourselves during the week. This week, as we were discussing the American revolution, Narges and Mona and several others were asking me questions about the revolution and American history. Interestingly, though America has become an intimate (if imposing) part of Iranian history, these college students knew not the least bit about American history. They don’t know why Americans had a revolution, who the first Americans were, what the civil rights movement was. Understanding American history is key to understanding America, and understanding America is key to taking steps towards reconciliation with America. We spent forty-five minutes discussing America and American history, and I promised them I would bring them more information from the internet on the subject.

Rewind time to last week, when my aunt and cousin and I went to a local seamstress. Realizing that I’m not Iranian, she asked my aunt questions about me—where I had grown up, why I had come to Iran, why I had chosen to study in Qom.

She then said suddenly, talking faster and more passionately. “I fully accept every aspect of Islam. It all makes perfect sense to me. Except for hejab (Islamic dress for women). I just can’t come to accept the hejab,” she told my aunt. Then she turned to me and said, “When you arrive at the point that you fully accept the hejab, explain to me the reasons.”

“She’s already accepted hejab,” my aunt told her, “she wears it in America.”

Though she and I may have different opinions on hejab, it was satisfying to me to hear that she really thought deeply about life—she had thought deeply about Islam, and she had thought deeply about hejab, and though she had not yet been convinced of the need for hejab, at least she had recognized the essentialness of genuine reflection and the honest search for truth. In her words, she had also implicitly recognized the need for every individual to become personally convinced of the truth and rightness of an action, instead of following either doctrine or instinct.

Even if everyone in an Islamic republic is not religious, at least religion penetrates into public life just enough so that people don’t become forgetful of the possibility of the existence of a reality beyond the earthly life and the need for us to struggle, with all our humanly resources, including our intellectual resources, to understand this reality and to discover how we can live up to our fullest potential as human beings.

Conversations and Ayatollah Khamenei in Semnan

2006-11-09T23:58:00.001-08:00

One of my roommates, a girl from Tajikistan, put up a less-than-flattering picture of President Bush on the wall, above which was written “Death to the Great Satan.” The Great Satan, of course, refers to America.

We had room meeting and she told us excitedly, “Guys, I have a great idea! Why don’t we laminate the poster that I put on the wall and use it as a doormat! To pay tribute to this great ‘defender of human rights!’” Then she laughed.

Another roommate, also from Tajikistan, smiled politely, but wasn’t so enthusiastic. “I think it’s too violent,” she said. “The Prophet would have never done it.”

“Well, the Prophet is the Prophet,” the other roommate replied. “We’re just us.”

“But we should always try to be like the Prophet,” she responded quickly, smiling confidently, and giving her finger a quick shake and her head a quick nod as a way to imbue the point with definiteness and finality. She is an older roommate, 26 years old and much more mature, calm, and thoughtful. The roommate who put the poster up is 18. And she had nothing to say in response.

“Yeah,” another roommate chimed in, from India. “I don’t like all of this ‘death to America, death to Israel.’ Sometimes it gets too much, I think,” she said, glancing at me as she spoke.

The next day, the poster on the wall mysteriously disappeared, and to this day no one knows where it’s gone.

I was excited to hear that the first Muslim congressman has been elected to office (URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15613050/) . As I watched the news with my Iranian friends, I told them the news excitedly. “A Muslim has been elected to Congress, has become part of the American government!”

“Then, what happened?” One of my friends asked, as if she expected me to say, “But they wouldn’t let him stay.”

“Nothing!” I said, at first not understanding what she meant. “He’s been elected, it’s the first time that a Muslim has been elected!”

Perhaps if Americans understood that Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are represented proportionally in Iranian’s parliament, and Iranians understood that it is fundamental to American principles that anyone, regardless of race or religion, is thoroughly American and be democratically elected into government--maybe, just maybe, we’d be getting somewhere.

I plan to talk more to my Iranian friends about what America is, and what America isn’t.

We also saw footage on the news of Ayatollah Khamenei’s trip to the province of Semnan. Thousands of people swarmed around the car that he rode in, peering inside the car to get a glimpse of him and pressing their hands to the window to give him their greetings. The crowd stretched behind the car, filling the street behind him. Throwing their fists in the air, people also shouted, “developing energy for our livelihood is our lawful right!!”

Their love for the “leader of the Islamic revolution” was just as passionate as their call for independence from the impositions of world superpowers.

He also went to a university in Semnan, and an auditorium full of thousands of college students--some with beards, some with Western hairstyles, some with chadors, some with scarves not completely covering their heads--were holding up posters of him and cheering enthusiastically. Some were holding their heads and crying as they sang a song of greeting and respect to the leader of the Islamic revolution.

Conversations and Ayatollah Khamenei in Semnan

2006-11-09T23:58:00.000-08:00

North Tehran and Determining Iranian-ness

2006-11-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last week for Eid Al-Fitr, the holiday after the month of Ramadhan, I went to Tehran to visit my family. One night I took a drive with my cousins and aunt an uncle through the most northern parts of North Tehran, and I felt like I was in America again. North Tehran is much more Western than any other city I’ve seen in Iran, both because of the way the people look and the way the city looks. I saw a “Persian Fried Chicken,” a donut and coffee shop, a place called “The Coffee Bean,” which, from what I could see through the very modern ceiling-to-floor windows, looked exactly the inside of a coffee shop. Also a Calvin Klein store, and Cornflakes. It was the night before a holiday, and many young men and women were out together, holding hands.

In the center of this fast-paced, stylish excitement of city life, there was a giant golden dome, the top of an “imamzadeh,” the shrine of the brother of one of the imams. People in chadors weaved through girls in skin-tight montos and bright silk scarves about to slip off their heads, heading towards the shrine to pay tribute to this member of the prophet’s family, someone who stood for so much more than fast-paced stylishness.

Contrast this scene with Qom, where one in every hundred girls don’t wear a black chador, where religious clerics are seen every walking the streets, and where shops and restaurants advertising Western products are few and far between. It’s amazing how diverse a single country can be.

My roommate tells me that whenever she leaves Qom, she misses it. She says that most parts of Iran have lost their religious spirit, and whenever she leaves Qom, she feels nostalgic.

Seeing North Tehran at night made me glad I had chosen to spend time in Qom—this is a place that is truly different than what I’m used to and therefore will be an even better learning experience.

I signed up for a library card a few days ago. I couldn’t completely fill out the form since I was unsure of the meaning of a few of the words, and I was hoping to get help from the librarians. When the librarian saw the blank spaces on my form, she asked why I hadn’t finished filling out the form, not realizing that I wasn’t Iranian and didn’t know Farsi perfectly. In one of the blank spaces I was supposed to have written my nationality.

“So here, put Iranian,” she said. I told her that no, I’m actually an international student. “What nationality are you?” she asked.

“American.”

“Then why do you look so much like an Iranian?”

“My dad is Iranian,” I told her.

“Is your mom American?”

“Yes.” I knew there would be quite a few questions from hereon; whenever they find out that I’m half Iranian and half American, they are very interested. And I get the sense it’s something pleasing for them to hear, that an Iranian and American would marry. They always have a slight smile on their face and ask questions eagerly and curiously.

“So you grew up in America?”

“Yes.”

“Where are your parents now, in America?”

“Yes, they’re all in America, all of my family.”

“Why did your dad go to America?”

“He went there for college.”

“Is your mother Muslim?”

“Yes.”

“She was Christian before?”

“She was Catholic, yes.”

“She became Muslim after marrying your dad, since your dad was Muslim?” I always get this question from both Americans and Iranians. There’s an assumption that my mom would change religions for my father.

“No, actually she converted before marrying my dad. She had an interest in studying different religions and eventually chose Islam.”

“Alhamdulilah.” (Praise be to God). A genuine smile.

She then continued. “But you know, you’re Iranian. You’re not American. Since your father is Iranian, you’re an Iranian. The child inherits the ethnicity of the father.” I’ve been told this countless times since I’ve been here. Apparently according to traditional Iranian culture, the child is considered the nationality of the father.

One of the ladies who dish out food at lunch and dinner always calls me “ham vatan” in a half-joking way—"my fellow countryman." When one of her co-workers asked me what nationality I am, and I told her I am American, she corrected me. “No, you are Iranian, my dear. Because your father is Iranian.”

Interesting, the way traditions work. I don’t think I’ll ever understand cultural traditions.

In any case, as a result of my attainment of a library card, I’ve checked out two interesting books in Farsi: _The Islamic Revolution and its Roots_ and _Hadiseh Paymaneh_, which seems to mean “The Measured Discourse,” also about political thought in Iran. I’m not expecting to fully understand the books at this point, though I can understand a whole lot more than I did a few months ago, but it will be exciting when my Farsi is good enough to fully explore the world of Iranian literature (and particularly all of the Islamic literature written in Farsi).

Jerusalem Day

2006-10-27T04:27:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Day

Jerusalem Day in Iran, a day created by Imam Khomeini, was both inspiring and incredibly sad. Inspiring because millions of people chose to take to the streets on that day, marching long distances even while fasting, to demonstrate their support for the Palestinian people and their opposition to all forms of oppression that the strong impose on the weak. Sad because they shouted “death to America” much more than “death to Israel,” even though Palestinians are suffering because of Israel. Our unconditional support of Israel is making us many more enemies in the world than we can handle for much longer.

They said “death to America” like the words tasted like garbage in their mouths, spitting them out with disgust and anger. It made my heart sink. I wish that they wouldn’t say it, I wish that circumstances were such that Iran and America respected each other and were eager to discuss and learn from each other. America, to Iranians, is nothing more than a powerful, muscular arm, an arm which has forced them cruelly into oppression, tried to wipe away their revolution, and which continues to try to grab away their independence by keeping them from developing nuclear energy. In their marches, they are shouting death to the existence of this arm. I wish they would see America as more than just an arm, because it is not simply a powerful arm, although it has, unfortunately, behaved wrongly.

The crowds in all major Iranian cities were tremendous. As I walked, I was squeezed between marchers on both sides of me and in the front and back. On the evening after the march, the TV showed footage of one city after the other, helicopter views of miles’ worth of streets packed with people who had marched for Jerusalem and for justice. The helicopter view of Tehran was particularly amazing.

I was disappointed to find that the Jerusalem Day marches in Iran--and outside of Iran--were not covered very much in the Western media, despite the magnitude of the event. Peaceful protests in the Muslim world seem to be rarely covered, but when a violent protest happens to occur, even it involves perhaps only by a relatively small number of people, the media is all over it, and people are asking, "What's wrong with the Muslim world?"

No one was forced to march. People were not dismissed from work and told by their superiors at work to attend, because it was on a Friday and Fridays are weekend for Iranians. Millions of people in all major Iranian citizens willingly marched long distances, even while fasting, unable to drink a glass of water after the hot and crowded march.

Iranians on Jerusalem Day were obviously not prone to forget the ways in which they themselves have also been oppressed by the powerful. They view attempts by Western powers to prevent them from developing nuclear energy sources as a form of oppression, an attempt keep Iranians technologically behind and to preserve their own powerful position in the world. People chanted—“energy for our livelihood is our right.”

The march was also very Islamic—people chanted “la illaha illah llah”—“there is no God but the God”—and “allahuakbar”—“God is greatest.” They also recited prayers while marching.

The Iranian marchers in Qom were simultaneously both submissive and defiant—submissive to the powerful and just God above as they recited prayers exulting his power, and defiant towards those worldly powers whose behavior they believe are anything but just in their behavior towards weaker members of the world community.

Perhaps their most defiant chant was the following: “We are ready, dear Leader, we are ready.” The leader to which they refer is Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran and the object of much respect by Iranians—very much in opposition to the picture painted by the Western media that Ayatollah Khamenei is despised by most of the country but Iranians are simply too oppressed to be able to say anything.

The Night of Power and a March to Imam Mehdi's Mosque

2006-10-17T03:40:00.000-07:00

It’s the 23rd of Ramadhan, and last night was one of three nights which could be the night referred to in the Quran as Lalaylatul Qadr, or the Night of Power—the night on which the Quran descended from God to the Prophet. It is a mystical night, a night which the Quran describes in an often-repeated verse as “kheirun min alfeh shahr,” “better than a thousand months.” Muslims generally spend all night in worship, reading the Quran, praying—thanking God for all that he has given us and asking him to help us improve ourselves and this human society that we have created. An entire chapter of the Quran is devoted to the Night of Power, describing it as a night in which “come down the angels and the Spirit by God’s permission on every errand: Peace!...this until the rise of Morn.” The translator and commentator of my Quran, Yusuf Ali, describes the Night of Power as a night in which “Revelation comes down to a benighted world—it may be to the wonderful Cosmos of an individual—and transforms the conflict of wrong-doing into Peace and Harmony—through the agency of the angelic host, representing the spiritual powers of the Mercy of God.” This is a night symbolic of the goodness of God breaking through darkness in both the human soul and in society.

I went to the shrine of Maasuma (which I described earlier) for Laylatulqadr. We stayed up until about 3 in the morning listening to speeches, reciting duas (prayers), and reading the Quran. As the night progressed, the speaker’s voice seemed to get less powerful and more soothing. We sat on Persian carpets in an upper room of the mosque, which was filled with women in black chadors. Some were with their children, who were lying asleep on their laps or on the floor beside them. At one point in the night, everyone held their Qurans above their heads and recited a prayer along with the imam, or prayer leader. We prayed for ourselves, for our own spiritual betterment, for our own betterment as human beings. And we prayed for the rest of the world, including for Lebanon, a country now in ruins and covered in unexploded cluster bombs—the finishing touches of Israel’s 33-day bombing campaign. In the last days of bombing, Israel dropped many thousands of unexploded cluster bombs, bombs whose victims are invariably children who think they are toys. A woman behind me sobbed continuously throughout all of the prayers.

And no, the crimes of Israel were not singled out during this night of worship because Iranians or those who have power in Iran have a prejudice against Jews. Just minutes earlier, everyone in the mosque that night read together the following verse from the Quran concerning the People of the Book—those to whom God’s Revelation has been sent—which, of course, includes Jews:

“And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): But say, “We believe in the Revelation which as come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our God and your God is One, and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)” (29:46).

In this context, Islam has a more general meaning—it means “submission.” It is to God that all Believers bow together in submission.

Perhaps if people had a better understanding of Islam, and knew of the existence of this Quranic verse and the many others which communicate an identical message, the world would have a better understanding of the worldview of Muslims, and there would be many fewer accusations of anti-Semitism and prejudice leveled against them. If people had a better understanding of Islam, it would also be much more difficult for those who wish to distort Islam for their own purposes to fool their followers.

Because Laylatul Qadr also coincides with the killing of Imam Ali, there was much crying throughout the night. Iran is definitely a country of tears. Even when it is not the occasion of the martyrdom of one of the heroes of Shi’a Islam, the memory of the horrendousness and the injustice of their murders are called to mind. And everyone—both men and women—are not ashamed to cry, and to cry loudly.

I was with my Iranian friends—Iranian students at the seminary—when I went to the shrine for Laylatulqadr. One of them asked me how I was liking my first Laylatulqadr in Iran. I told her that it was definitely interesting to see everyone outside at three in the morning. The streets were full of traffic and the shrine was packed with so many people that it was difficult to move. My friend replied that Iran is a country of true lovers, people who are willing to do radical things for the sake of that which they love.

A few days before Laylatulqadr we went to Jamkaran Mosque, a mosque said to have been built by the orders of the imam who is to return at the end of time, Imam Mehdi, though some are more hesitant to believe that the mosque was built by his orders. The bus drove right past the mosque and we turned around and walked about fifteen minutes to reach the mosque. I was told that this was done in order to demonstrate our willingness to struggle for Imam Mehdi, to walk to his mosque even in the toughest part of a day of fasting, the last few minutes before sunset, and also as a way of communicating our respect to Imam Mehdi, to arrive humbly to his mosque on foot instead of in a bus.

The sight was amazing—a long strip of seminary students walking at the side of road, perhaps a thousand girls in black chadors, walking with the sight of Jamkaran in the distance, the sun beginning to set behind it. Music was blasted from a car, the same song often played in the dorms, a song asking the Imam Mehdi to please return and restore peace on earth.

The march to Jamkaran Mosque, and me in a chador:

A real traditional education in Islam

2006-10-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

It's overcast here in Iran. It's so weird for me to see Iran overcast. Every time I've come here before, it's been summertime, so the sun has always been incredibly bright.

I thought I'd start writing a bit about what I've been learning in my classes. I tend to always be so political because I love talking about politics. For those of you I haven't told, I've finally decided to apply to PhD programs in political science this year, instead of next. I've asked three of my professors for recommendations, so the decision is pretty much set in stone.

Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts on my blog, or your arguments in response to any arguments that I make.

We just had a test in Islamic history the other day. Until now, we've been studying Saudi Arabian society before the advent of Islam, the era that historians call the "jaheliat," or the age of ignorance. We learned that Islam struggled to change society in five fundamental ways:

1. An obvious one: Doing away with worship of idols; instead, worship of the one and only God

2. Doing away with tribalism. We've been studying the extent to which society was a tribal society, and what sort of society is a tribal society. I'll talk more about this later. It made me realize the extent to which our world continues to be a tribal world, even centuries later. With the appearance of Islam, there was less tribalism and the creation of a united "ummah."

3. Doing away with tribal prejudice. Instead, choosing sides and making decisions based on "human rights" and "justice."

4. Doing away with revenge and murder and plundering. The creation of peace and brotherhood.

5. Freeing women from captivity. Endowing them with status as human beings and in society.

The computer lab is closing, but I'd like to talk more about 7th century Saudi Arabian society in my next post, and the values that Islam sought to bring to that world.

Here you have it, the subject matter of a genuine traditional Islamic education in the Muslim world, the sort of religious education that 99% of Muslims receive. A far cry from the backwards and morally objectionable "madrassa" education you always hear about in the media.

On a related subject, I'd like to share with you a description of the research of a Princeton professor of Islamic studies. I came across with while reading about professors at various schools I'm applying to. I thought it was interesting, funny, and well-written:

John R. WillisProfessor of Near Eastern StudiesI graduated from London University, School of Oriental and African Studies, in 1970 with a Ph.D. in History.I believe that Muslim society is best grasped from the inside -- that in point of fact the reason that Westerners know so little about the East is that they seek to judge before they understand, that they don't take the time to look in the right places and heed the right voices. Hence, I set great store by the use of texts and the interpretations of texts. I prefer to deal with large questions -- questions that cut across the sacred boundaries of established disciplines. I extend the challenge to my students whom I encourage to take on questions of the largest possible import. Much of my earlier work was devoted to an analysis of the Prophetic pattern -- the extent to which Muslims embraced the model and behavior of Muhammad and annexed the course of their journey through life to this single signpost.I like to confront my students intellectually -- the exchange of verbal fire is much encouraged. I don't subscribe to the view that graduate students are to be rounded up like so many slaves in order to advance the reputations of their mentors. If the students are of drinking age, I pretty much give them their own heads and leave them to pick their own positions. Since I require great precision in the articulation of ideas, I press my students very hard to defend those positions (better hell from me than from some ambitious reviewer). I rarely encourage students to engage in a matter of research that is of interest to me particularly, rather I believe that the signal feature of a great teacher is to coax out of every student the potential that resides within. Again, it is my view that the academic profession exists to permit scholars to share knowledge (those who wish to do otherwise might do better to look to Wall Street for their income).The diffusion of Islam and Islamic institutions (especially in West and North Africa) has formed a very large part of my teaching and writing. My students in England (where I taught for five years and studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies as a Marshall Scholar) were, for the most part, students of Islamic diffusion. My students at Berkeley and Princeton have been scholars of diffusion (especially through the agency of religious brotherhoods) and social institutions. Recently, with a small group of colleagues and graduate students, I have begun to look at the institution of the legal opinion (fatwa) as a means of effecting change in Islamic societies, but chiefly as a vehicle for ensuring the persistence of the prophetic model and the pattern of behavior enshrined in all Islamic institutions. But I remain, at bottom, an historian of Islam. My next book, Islam, Africa, and History, sets out to analyze the role and response of Muslims in Africa and elsewhere to some of the great changes that shaped the course of world history before the turn of the century.

The Internet and Worlds Torn Apart

2006-10-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I got a call the other day from a woman who lives in Qom who is trying to learn English. She apparently got my name from the head of the dormitory. She was very specific about her desire to learn _American_ English, not British English. She wanted to meet with me a couple times a week so that we could have conversations.

A few days ago, some Iranian girls from the Iranian side of the dormitory, whom I had previously never met, also asked me if I could spend a bit of time each week teaching them English.

When I asked all of these people--the woman from outside the seminary and the seminary students--why they wanted to learn English, the response was the same: English is the international language, and if we want to communicate with the world, such as by reading websites on the internet, we have to learn English.

Then it struck me--we in America talk so much about the Muslim world, but most people of the Muslim world can't really talk back. And we have become so engrossed in the internet--reading articles from various news sources, passing them on to our friends, writing blogs, perhaps even submitting our own opinion pieces to newspapers. And we talk so much about the Muslim world. But most Muslims don't really understand what we're saying, and they don't have the means to talk back--not only because of the language barrier, but also because many Muslims are poor and don't have good internet access. The Iranian government doesn't block anything but porn--I've been able to read news from all sorts of sites, liberal and conservative, pro-Bush and anti-Bush, since I've gotten here. The problem is not one of censorship. It's one of language, and one of stark differences in material wealth. My seminary, which is one of the two biggest seminaries in Qom, has one computer in the library connected to the internet, and it always seems to be broken. All of the Iranian students use this one computer to connect to the internet. And it costs money if you want to connect.

The international students have three additional computers in the dorm, which were bought so that they could have better contact with their family. That makes four computers connected to the internet in this major Islamic seminary in Qom.

Qom is an important place. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian students come here to study Islam, and scholars discuss the most controversial issues related to Islam and Islamic government. Ideas that come out of Qom inspired the Iranian revolution and continue to influence the Iranian government. Yet all of these people are so cut off from the rest of the world because they don't speak English and they don't easily connect to the internet.

So while my peers at Harvard send thousands of articles over e-mail listserves every day and then have long, heated political debates on these listserves, the people about whom they are speaking--and forming strong opinions--really can't explain their own side. And while my peers at Harvard publish opinion pieces on how there is a need for Islam to evolve, like Christianity has, to be more tolerant of free speech, their Iranian counterparts in Qom, one of the centers of Islamic learning in the world, can't really respond.

Last year, when I told one of my professors--a professor in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department--that I was interested in spending my year after graduation studying Islam in Iran, and I asked if he recommended any particular seminary in Qom, he replied that in Iran women are not allowed to study in seminaries, and that there are absolutely no seminaries for women in Qom. This, of course, turned out to be false. Thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands?) of girls study in seminaries in Qom. Muslim women travel from all over the world to study in seminaries in Qom. And my professor of Islamic history at Harvard had no idea. The extent to which the Islamic world and the West continue to be cut apart from each other, even despite the existence of the internet, is incredible, and, in fact, depressing.

So we in the West have to be careful not to be so quick to put words into Muslims' mouths, or be quick to judge their intentions, or be so quick to trust what others who claim to perfectly understand the Muslim world--such as those in the media--say about Muslims, Islam, and the Muslim world. When Muslims protest about degrading depictions of their Prophet, does this necessarily mean that they, inspired by their religious doctrine, deny freedom of speech? How many students from Qom have you asked for their opinion? How many religious scholars in Qom have you asked? How many opinion pieces written by Muslim religious scholars have you read in the New York Times?

Juma'a Prayer and Wedding Pictures

2006-09-30T05:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Two interesting things to talk about: one, I went to Friday prayers in Qom yesterday, and since it was the first Friday prayer of Ramadhan, there must have been at least 100,000 people there. There was no more room inside of the [gigantic] mosque, so thousands of people sat outside on the street under the hot sun. I was in a black chador (long cloth that covers the whole body except the face; everyone wears it here) and felt like I was baking. I had gone to Friday prayers with an Iranian friend of mine, Narges, and she and I covered our face with a newspaper as we listened to the khutbah (sermon). The interview with Ahmadinejad with Time Magazine happened to be directly under our faces, so we read it together.

Have you ever heard a hundred thousand people shout something at the same time? Whenever the sermon got political, everyone would shout Allahu-Akbar (God is Greatest), and it was incredible to hear so many voices at once.

I went to one of the Iranian girls' houses for iftar (breaking fast meal). She had just gotten married two weeks ago to another seminary student and was showing us wedding/honeymoon pictures. Since there's so little interaction between men and women here (who aren't related), it reminded me that such interaction does exist! There was one picture of him with his hands around her waist that reminded me of pictures of my friends throughout junior high, high school, and even college with their boyfriends/girlfriends. In Iran, there's the same interaction between men and women, but only within the confines of marriage, where there's commitment and therefore less possibility of betrayal, broken hearts, or miscommunicated feelings--in short, where there's less room for disaster. Of course, before marriage there's definitely the chance to get to know the other person, but without his hands around your waist.

Soldiers, Duty, Defending One's Country

2006-09-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I'm having trouble uploading pictures--it takes so long and always gets stuck--but hopefully I'll be able to put some up in the next couple of days.

It’s Hafteyeh Defa Al-Moqaddas Week here in Iran--“The Week of Defending the Holy Land”—meant to commemorate those who fought and died to defend Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. We went to an assembly a couple days ago, and the speaker talked about how the enemy was strong and powerful, equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry and supported by the greatest world powers, but the people of Iran, strengthened by their faith in God and their willingness to become martyrs to the cause, were able to preserve their Islamic Republic. The “martyrs” of the Iran-Iraq war are so respected here; their pictures are painted on the sides of tall skyscrapers in Tehran and hung in the masjeds of small villages. Jami’at Al-Zahra took us to a small village, Elarz, in the north of Iran. It must have been home to less than 50 people (all of whom used one communal shower building) but in the mosque of this small village there were dozens of pictures of young men who had been killed in the Iran-Iraq war. Memory of the war is still fresh in the minds of Iranians. I went to the theatres with my cousins to see a movie called “Beh Nameh Pedar”—“In the Name of the Father”—which (if I understood the movie correctly—my Farsi needs a lot of improvement) was about a young girl who stepped on a mine while digging for artifacts with her archaeology class near the border with Iraq. Her father eventually realizes that he had planted that exact mine years before when he was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war. All of the mines had since been removed, except for that particular one, the one the father had planted. Little did he know that it would end up not maiming an Iraqi, but his own daughter, many years later. At the end of the movie, her leg is amputated. The war still does have a very tangible effect on Iranians—many remain sick from the chemical weapons used by Saddam against them.

At Jami’at Al-Zahra, a small exhibit was set up to commemorate soldiers who died in the Iran-Iraq war. One poster (if I’m translating it correctly) read: “I’m going, Mother, so that I can see through the glasses of Karbala.” Karbala, of course, is where Imam Hossein and his family and allies were martyred while fighting against the caliph Yazid.

The rhetoric of the Iran-Iraq war is not anti-Iraq; it is definitely anti-Saddam, but even more, it’s anti-American government and in general anti- those powers, including America, who are blamed for engineering the war against Iran and supporting Saddam in order to topple the newly-born revolution.

It’s always inspiring to come to another country and to recognize similarities in ideals between nations, even they are literally on opposite sides of the world and between them there is bitter conflict. This week of commemoration of the felled soldiers of the Iran-Iraq war was just like any other Memorial Day in the United States. All nations value those who are willing to give up all the comforts of life—and even life itself—to defend one’s country and to fight for the right cause. While all nations value independence, fulfillment of one’s duty is an action to be remembered and praised throughout the generations.

Stories of war are not new to me—my grandfather was in the US Army for 33 years and for as far back as I can remember, he has always told me stories of experiences he had as a soldier. “I’ve got a million of ‘em,” he always says. Duty and sacrifice are ideals that I value and admire, and I found it comforting to find them commemorated here in Iran, too.

They shout “marg bar Amreeka” –“Death to America”—sometimes in gatherings here. Needless to say, I don’t shout it. One of the students here asked me if I shout it, and I said no, although I would shout something like: “death to any unjust or oppressive actions of the American government.” She said that this is what they mean—and I’ve been told this before. They mean that they want a permanent end to the America government that installed their oppressor, the shah, to the America that supported Saddam in an eight-year, bloody war against them, to the America that they believe continues to try to keep them down by preventing them from developing energy sources for peaceful purposes. But just saying “death to America” doesn’t make this clear enough, and exacerbates misunderstanding between nations, which is why I’m against the phrase. Because I don’t wish for an end to everything that is good about America, and I don’t wish for the efforts of countless Americans throughout the centuries who have struggled for a better America to have been made in vain, and I don’t wish for a death to the ideals that my nation was founded on and is connected with and should always, in all its actions, endeavor to uphold.

When my mom came to Boston for graduation, we did lots of touring historical sites of the revolution. These inspiring words were engraved into a stone statue on the grounds of the first battle of the Revolutionary War:

“Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of mankind!!! The Freedom and Independence of America, sealed and defended with the blood of her sons.

This Monument is erected By the inhabitants of Lexington, under the patronage and at the expense of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to the memory of their Fellow Citizens, Ensign Robert Monroe…[a series of names] of Lexington and....Porter of Woburn, who feel on this field, the first Victims to the Sword of British Tyranny and Oppression, on the morning of the ever memorable Nineteenth of April, An. Dom, 1775.

The Die was cast!!!

The Blood of these Martyrs, in the cause of God and their Country, Was the Cement of the Union of these States, then colonies, and gave the spring to the spirit Firmness and resolution of their Fellow Citizens. They rose as one man to revenge their brethren’s blood and at the point of the sword to assert and defend their native Rights.

They nobly dared to be free!!

The contest was long, bloody, and affecting; Righteous Heaven approved the solemn appeal: victory crowned their arms, and the Peace, Liberty, and Independence of the United States of America was their glorious Reward.

-Built in the year 1799

More About Jami'at Al-Zahra and Qom

2006-09-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I’ve been told that my posting on reactions to the Pope’s comments on Islam was sort of hidden under the last article I posted, so I wanted to let you know that it’s there!

I also wanted to write a bit more about my experience so far here at Jami’at Al-Zahra. I’m enrolled in seven different classes—Islamic Law, Islamic Ethics, Fundamental Islamic Beliefs, The History of Islam (during the lifetime of the Prophet), study methods, and P.E. While I’m here, I’m also hoping to help edit books that have been translated from Farsi to English. Many translations have serious editing errors or are not translated very nicely, unfortunately. And a lot remains untranslated.

People here are very serious about their religion and have a strong belief in God and the morality prescribed by God. They want very much to find out how God wants us to act—that is, what is the best way of acting—and then they want to live up to that standard. Of course, learning how to be a good human being is a life-long endeavor. But it’s commendable that these students are so interested in that goal. They are people who are interested in sticking by their principles, and are not interested in more worldly gains, such as monetary success or acquiring status in society.

Qom is famous for being home to the shrine of Fatima Ma’asuma, a descendant of the Prophet, the sister of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam. Twice a week, Jami’at Al-Zahra takes students to the shrine to recite prayers. The prayers are not, of course, offered to Ma’asuma, but only to God. But they visit the shrine to pay respects to Ma’asuma, who died in Qom when she was on her way to visit her brother, Imam Reza, who had been taken captive by Ma’amun an Abbasid caliph, in Khurasan. She was poisoned after a group that was an enemy to the family of the Prophet ambushed her caravan and killed many or perhaps all of her family members. This was a time period in which the family of the prophet was enduring persecution by a corrupt caliphate that did not wish to cede its own power to the family of the prophet, in whose words and teachings, Shias believe, truth and justice could be found. According to Shia belief, leadership in the Islamic world had been usurped by those who were interested only in maintaining and acquiring power. Ma’asuma was also traveling to see her brother to help him to continue to teach Islam to other Muslims.

People visit the shrine of Ma’asuma to pay tribute to her brave act—her willingness to traverse many miles to be near her captive brother—and to remember the injustice and cruelty of her murder, and that of her family, and the persecution of the Ahlel-Bait (the family of the Prophet) and of all those who, throughout history, have stood up for justice even when opposed by the powerful few who command the obedience of the vast majority of people.

Especially in the summer months, the shine is filled with people from all around the world, and many especially, from the Arab world. You forget you’re in Iran once you enter the courtyard of the shrine. And as people leave through the gates of the shrine, they all turn around, put their hands on their hearts, and bow their head slightly to Ma’asuma. If you stand still and watch the gates of the shrine, you see thousands of men and women, one after the other, turning around and bowing to a woman they believe is worthy of utmost respect.

On her grave are inscribed several chapters of the Quran, as well as several sayings of the Prophet (hadith), which are as follows:

“Whoever guards his tongue from dishonoring the people, on the Day of Judgment, God will forgive his lapses.”

“Whoever causes a separation between a mother and her child, God will cause a separation between him and Heaven.”

“A good question is half of learning.”

“God, Most High, helps His servant so long as the servant helps his brother.”

Ma’asuma died in Qom because she wanted to die in Qom; she asked to be brought there when she had been poisoned and knew she was dying. Even before her death, Qom had been a very Shi’a city. The Shi’a of Qom revolted against the Umayyad caliphs and later against the Abbasids when they gained power in the 8th century A.D.

Since the first Islamic century, Qom has been a center for religious learning. But since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Islamic learning in Qom has been able to thrive even more. The revolution cast of the chains of political pressures that the Shah imposed on the seminaries, and Muslims acquired greater freedom to study and reflect on their religion. If only more of the Muslim world could attain this freedom.

An Article on President Ahmadinejad

2006-09-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Since I was positive about President Ahmadinejad in my last posting, I wanted to share an article which describes why I think he is not the demon that the media makes him out to be:

August 28, 2006

Is Iran's President Really a Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map"?Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth
By VIRGINIA TILLEY
Johannesburg, South AfricaIn this frightening mess in the Middle East, let's get one thing straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over, we hear that Iran is clearly "committed to annihilating Israel" because the "mad" or "reckless" or "hard-line" President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel. But every supposed quote, every supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong. The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime" in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass." But what about his other "threats" against Israel? The blathersphere made great hay from his supposed comment later in the same speech, "There is no doubt: the new wave of assaults in Palestine will erase the stigma in [the] countenance of the Islamic world." "Stigma" was interpreted as "Israel" and "wave of assaults" was ominous. But what he actually said was, "I have no doubt that the new movement taking place in our dear Palestine is a wave of morality which is spanning the entire Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace from the Islamic world." "Wave of morality" is not "wave of assaults." The preceding sentence had made clear that the "stain of disgrace" was the Muslim world's failure to eliminate the "occupying regime". For months, scholars like Cole and journalists like the London Guardian's Jonathan Steele have been pointing out these mistranslations while more and more appear: for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments at the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting on August 3, 2006. Radio Free Europe reported that he said "that the 'main cure' for crisis in the Middle East is the elimination of Israel." "Elimination of Israel" implies physical destruction: bombs, strafing, terror, throwing Jews into the sea. Tony Blair denounced the translated statement as "quite shocking". But Mr. Ahmadinejad never said this. According to al-Jazeera, what he actually said was "The real cure for the conflict is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate ceasefire first." Nefarious agendas are evident in consistently translating "eliminating the occupation regime" as "destruction of Israel". "Regime" refers to governance, not populations or cities. "Zionist regime" is the government of Israel and its system of laws, which have annexed Palestinian land and hold millions of Palestinians under military occupation. Many mainstream human rights activists believe that Israel's "regime" must indeed be transformed, although they disagree how. Some hope that Israel can be redeemed by a change of philosophy and government (regime) that would allow a two-state solution. Others believe that Jewish statehood itself is inherently unjust, as it embeds racist principles into state governance, and call for its transformation into a secular democracy (change of regime). None of these ideas about regime change signifies the expulsion of Jews into the sea or the ravaging of their towns and cities. All signify profound political change, necessary to creating a just peace. Mr. Ahmadinejad made other statements at the Organization of Islamic Countries that clearly indicated his understanding that Israel must be treated within the framework of international law. For instance, he recognized the reality of present borders when he said that "any aggressor should go back to the Lebanese international border". He recognized the authority of Israel and the role of diplomacy in observing, "The circumstances should be prepared for the return of the refugees and displaced people, and prisoners should be exchanged." He also called for a boycott: "We also propose that the Islamic nations immediately cut all their overt and covert political and economic relations with the Zionist regime." A double bushel of major Jewish peace groups, US church groups, and hordes of human rights organizations have said the same things. A final word is due about Mr. Ahmadinejad's "Holocaust denial". Holocaust denial is a very sensitive issue in the West, where it notoriously serves anti-Semitism. Elsewhere in the world, however, fogginess about the Holocaust traces more to a sheer lack of information. One might think there is plenty of information about the Holocaust worldwide, but this is a mistake. (Lest we be snooty, Americans show the same startling insularity from general knowledge when, for example, they live to late adulthood still not grasping that US forces killed at least two million Vietnamese and believing that anyone who says so is anti-American. Most French people have not yet accepted that their army slaughtered a million Arabs in Algeria.) Skepticism about the Holocaust narrative has started to take hold in the Middle East not because people hate Jews but because that narrative is deployed to argue that Israel has a right to "defend itself" by attacking every country in its vicinity. Middle East publics are so used to western canards legitimizing colonial or imperial takeovers that some wonder if the six-million-dead argument is just another myth or exaggerated tale. It is dismal that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to belong to this ill-educated sector, but he has never been known for his higher education. Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not say what the US Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy reported that he said: "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets." He actually said, "In the name of the Holocaust they have created a myth and regard it to be worthier than God, religion and the prophets." This language targets the myth of the Holocaust, not the Holocaust itself - i.e., "myth" as "mystique", or what has been done with the Holocaust. Other writers, including important Jewish theologians, have criticized the "cult" or "ghost" of the Holocaust without denying that it happened. In any case, Mr. Ahmadinejad's main message has been that, if the Holocaust happened as Europe says it did, then Europe, and not the Muslim world, is responsible for it. Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized? Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme. The current fuss about Iran's nuclear enrichment program is playing out so identically to US canards about Iraq's WMD that we must wonder why it is not meeting only roaring international derision. With multiple agendas regarding Iran -- oil, US hegemony, Israel, neocon fantasies of a "new Middle East" -- the Bush administration has raised a great international scare about Iran's nuclear enrichment program. (See Ray Close, Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran.) But, plowing through Iran's facilities and records, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have found no evidence of a weapons program. The US intelligence community hasn't found anything, either. All experts concur that, even if Iran has such a program, it is five to ten years away from having the enriched uranium necessary for an actual weapon, so pre-emptive military action now is hardly necessary. Even the recent report by the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy, which pointed out that the US government lacks the intelligence on Iran's weapons program necessary to thwart it, effectively confirms that the supposed "intelligence" is patchy and inadequate. The Bush administration's casual neglect of North Korea's nuclear program indicates that nuclear weapons are not, in fact, the issue here. The neocons are intent on changing the regime in Iran and so have deployed their propagandists to promote the "nuclear weapons" scare just they promoted the Iraqi WMD scare. Republican rhetoric and right-wing news commentators have fallen into line, obediently repeating baseless assertions that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program," is threatening the world and especially Israel with its "nuclear weapons program," and must not be allowed to complete its "nuclear weapons program." Those who nervously point out that hard evidence is actually lacking about any Iranian "nuclear weapons program" are derided as naïve and spineless patsies. Worse, the Bush administration has brought this snow-job to the UN, wrangling the Security Council into passing a resolution (SC 1696) demanding that Iran cease nuclear enrichment by August 31 and warning of sanctions if it doesn't. Combined with its abysmal performance regarding Israel's assault on Lebanon, the Security Council has crumbled into humiliating obsequious incompetence on this one. Like all phantasms, the nuclear-weapons charge is hard to defeat because it cannot be entirely disproved. Maybe some Iranian scientists, in some remote underground facility, are working on nuclear weapons technology. Maybe feelers to North Korea have explored the possibilities of getting extra components. Maybe an alien spaceship once crashed in the Nevada desert. Normally, just because something can't be disproved does not make it true. But in the neocon world, possibilities are realities, and a craven press is there to click its heels and trumpet the scaremongering headlines. It doesn't take much, through endless repetition of the term "possible nuclear weapons program," for the word "possible" to drop quietly away. Evidence is, in any case, a mere detail to the Bush administration, for which the desire for nuclear weapons is sufficient cause for a pre-emptive attack. In US debates prior to invading Iraq, people sometimes insisted that any real evidence of WMD was sorely lacking. The White House would then insist that, because Saddam Hussein "wanted" such weapons, he was likely to have them sometime in the future. Hence thought crimes, even imaginary thought crimes, are now punishable by military invasion. Will the US really attack Iran? US generals are rightly alarmed that bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would unleash unprecedented attacks on US occupation forces in Iraq, as well as US bases in the Gulf. Iran could even block the Straits of Hormuz, which carries 40 percent of the world's oil. Spin-off terrorist militancy would skyrocket. The potential damage to international security and the world economy would be unfathomably dangerous. The Bush administration's necons seems capable of any insanity, so none of this may matter to them. But even the neocons must be taking pause since Israel failed to knock out Hizbullah using the same onslaught from the air planned for Iran. But Israel can attack Iran, and this may be the plan. Teaming up, the two countries could compensate for each other's strategic limitations. The US has been contributing its superpower clout in the Security Council, setting the stage for sanctions, knowing Iran will not yield on its enrichment program. Having cultivated a (mistaken) international belief that Iran is threatening a direct attack on Israel, the Israeli government could then claim the right of self-defense in taking unilateral pre-emptive action to destroy the nuclear capacity of a state declared in breach of UN directives. Direct retaliation by Iran against Israel is impossible because Israel is a nuclear power (and Iran is not) and because the US security umbrella would protect Israel. Regional reaction against US targets might be curtailed by the (scant) confusion about indirect US complicity. In that case, what we are seeing now is the US creating the international security context for Israel's unilateral strike and preparing to cover Israel's back in the aftermath.Is this really the plan? Some evidence suggests that it is on the table. In recent years, Israel has purchased new "bunker-busting" missiles, a fleet of F-16 jets, and three latest-technology German Dolphin submarines (and ordered two more)- i.e., the appropriate weaponry for striking Iran's nuclear installations. In March 2005, the Times of London reported that Israel had constructed a mock-up of Iran's Natanz facility in the desert and was conducting practice bombing runs. In recent months, Israeli officials have openly stated that if the UN fails to take action, Israel will bomb Iran. But Hizbullah, Iran's ally, still threatens Israel's flank. Hence attacking Hizbullah was more than a "demo" for attacking Iran, as Seymour Hersh reported; it was necessary to attacking Iran. Israel failed to crush Hizbullah, but the outcome may be better for Israel now that Security Council Resolution 1701 has made the entire international community responsible for disarming Hizbullah. If the US-sponsored 1701 effort succeeds, the attack on Iran is a go. As Israel and the US try to make that deeply flawed plan work, we will doubtless continue to read in every forum that Iran's president - a hostile, irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" -- is demonstrably irrational enough to commit national suicide by launching a (nonexistent) nuclear weapon against Israel's mighty nuclear arsenal. The message is being hammered home: against this media-created myth, Israel must truly "defend itself." Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be reached at tilley@hws.edu. www.counterpunch.com

An Assembly About the Pope's comments

2006-09-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

Salam Friends,

Yesterday all of the seminary students went to a speech given by one of the professors here. As I walked in the room, I noticed a huge banner hanging on the wall in the front of the room, which read: “We strongly condemn the insensitive, offensive and irresponsible statements of Pope Benedict the Sixteenth made in regards to our dear Islam.” The speech was themed around the Pope’s recent statements—which were, indeed, highly offensive and, as one of my Iranian friends pointed out, very dangerous, since the Pope has the ability to influence so many people and his words could very well inspire others to act out against the adherents of this “violent” religion. On the news, religious clerics in Qom were quoted as saying that his words showed serious ignorance of Islam. Islam is, once again, attacked, and Iranians are far from considering this an insignificant event.

The professor emphasized that this is not the first time that Islam has been attacked. This has been an ongoing phenomenon. It was only last year, for example, that degrading caricatures of Prophet Mohammed were published over and over and over again in newspapers throughout the West.
And every time Shi’as lament over an act of injustice, they pray that Imameh Zaman, the 12th Imam, Imam Mehdi, now in occultation, will return to establish justice throughout the Earth. Sometimes when my roommates are doing chores, they’ll turn out songs that repeat the words “Agha Biya, Biya, har cheh zoodtar biya”— meaning, “Imam Mehdi, please come, come, as soon as possible, please come.”

After the speech was finished, a woman sang a song about Imam Mehdi, and about the grandson of Prophet Mohammed, Imam Hossain (who was slaughtered, along with his family and all of his followers, by Yazid, the tyrannical caliph), about Prophet Mohammad, and about injustice, and so many girls were crying. Some were crying loudly. It was a moving scene—a room full of girls crying, and it was evident that they were not just crying about the injustices of many centuries past, but also about the injustices we now face. Islam was attacked brutally by Yazid centuries ago, and Islam continues to be attacked today.

The professor also mentioned the energy issue in her speech. As I’ve heard over and over again here—and as President Ahmadinejad told Mike Wallace in last month’s 60 Minutes interview—Iran insists on its right to enrich uranium not because it wants to produce a nuclear bomb, but because energy sources are vital to any country in the 21st century. The professor told the audience, “We have told them that nuclear bombs are forbidden in our religion. And then we are accused of having a violent religion?” The religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has repeatedly emphasized that the acquirement and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islam.

President Ahmadinejad explained all of this to Mike Wallace in the interview, but much of it was edited out of the interview aired on TV. The entire, unedited interview—and without the bias of a narrator—was aired on Iranian television. In the interview, Ahmadinejad described his controversial views on Israel, much of which was cut out in the interviewed aired on American television. A transcript of the entire interview can be found here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14547.htm I thought Ahmadinejad had a calm demeanor and answered questions with just the right combination of politeness and assertiveness. The only time I noticed the slightest trace of frustration in his face was when he was describing the US’ support of the Shah and the Shah’s crimes in Iran (his tortured prisoners, his shootings at protests, his undermining of anything Islamic, his tyranny), and Mike Wallace interrupted him and said, “I want to ask you about something more important. Israel.” When will people ever learn to sympathize with the pain of others?

Next time, inshaAllah (God-willing), I'll talk more about this seminary, Jami'at Al-Zahra!If only I had more internet access! I'm on a mission to connect my laptop to the internet--we'll see if I'm successful.

Family Trip to Hamedan, Kordestan and Zanjan

2006-09-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,
I've been in Iran for slightly more than a month, and I've seen so much and felt so much that it will be difficult to give each and every experience enough attention, but in the future I hope to write in my blog more often so that I can give you more regular and more thorough updates. I also hope to use this blog to post news stories and opinion pieces that I feel have relevance to Iran and Islam. Finally, I hope to type up bits and pieces of interesting reading, also relevant to Islam and Iran, that I come across as I study in Qom.

I haven't had contact with some of you for awhile—I haven't had much chance to spend time on e-mail since I've gotten here and have been settling down and getting used to things—so I hope that you'll e-mail me and tell me all about your post-graduation experiences. And if you haven't graduated, or at least haven't graduated recently, I would love to hear from you!

I am currently in a dormitory at Jami'at Al-Zahra, a major girls' seminary in the city of Qom, a city which is the center of religious learning in the Shi'a world. I hope to tell you all about Qom in these blog entries; there is so much to say. Qom is a very religious city, and the spirit of the revolution is still very much alive here. Living here will be a significantly different experience from living in the very modern and fast-paced Tehran. I am in a program for international students at this seminary, so I'm meeting people from all over the world who have chosen to spend one, two, or even up to seven years of their lives studying Islam in the capitol of Islamic learning. I have four roommates—two are from Saudi Arabia, one from Sri Lanka, and one from Tajikistan.

Before I came to Qom, I stayed with family for about two weeks in Tehran (most of my family lives in Tehran and in Karaj, a city near Tehran). A few days after arriving, my family went on a trip to the provinces of Hamedan, Kordestan, and Zanjan. In Hamedan, we went to a cave called “Ali Sadr,” which was only discovered 30 years ago. We walked through part of the cave and then took a boat ride through the crystal-clear, very cold, and very still water that filled part of the cave. The cave was beautiful. Perhaps to pay tribute to its beauty, a group of Korean tourists sat in the cave and sang Christian religious hymns. They blocked the path of the Iranian tourists, but the Iranians weren't at all upset. Far from it—the Iranians seemed very interested in them. In general, I've observed that Iranians are always so excited to meet foreigners.

After the tourists finished their song, all of the Iranians chanted, “allahuma sali ‘ala Muhammad wa aleh Muhammad,” which means “Peace be upon Prophet Muhammed and his progeny.” This phrase, called the “salawat,” is frequently recited by Shi'a Muslims. It is recited in prayer and more generally is chanted to express approval and acceptance of whatever has come before it. For example, on a camping trip to the Northern Iran (which I'll describe more in detail later), often as soon as our bus started moving, someone would shout, “for the well-being of our driver, salawat!” and all of the girls on the bus would chant salawat. Then another shout: “for the well-being of all the good people in the world, salawat!” and the whole bus would shout, “Allahhuma Sali ‘ala Muhammad, wa aleh Muhammed!”

So the Iranians in that cave chanted the salawat after the Koreans finished singing their hymn, which I found very interesting. It was as if the Iranians had made the Christians' prayer their own as well. The cave had become a center of interfaith praise. Christians and Muslims were together praising the God that had created the beautiful cave in which they were standing.

When we began the boat ride, the Korean Christian group would periodically sing hymns. Every so often on the water trail, a quote from the Quran hung from the roof of the cave, translated into both Farsi and English. The quotes, of which I took pictures, spoke of the beauty of nature, and asked how one could observe the beauty of nature and yet deny the existence of God. The English translations of the Quranic quotes weren't very good, so I've retranslated this one from the Farsi: “God, most exalted, always makes his signs apparent to us (in the sky, on the earth, throughout nature); which one of those signs can you deny?”

The next day, a few of us went to the shrine of Baba Taher, a 10th century Iranian poet. Poetry is an integral part of Iranian culture; Iran wouldn't be Iran without poetry. Poems rich in symbolism and full of passion and undeviating in rhythm are written in Farsi by Iranian poets. And it is impossible to fully internalize the poetry by reading a translation. All Iranians—rich and poor—know famous poems by heart. Poems are recited frequently on television and an interpreter could potentially spend hours interpreting each line. They are often sung. Many speak of love; not only the love that one may feel for another human being, the deeper, more fulfilling and ecstatic love that one may feel for God. Hafez, Sa'adi, Rumi—these are the most famous poets of Iran. Rumi, known in Iran as Molavi, was at one point the most widely read poet in America.

Above is a picture of my family and me standing in front of Baba Taher's shrine. Below is a photo of one of Baba Taher's most widely-known poems, inscribed on the wall of his shrine in the traditional style of handwriting used for poetry, a sort of cursive that can be hard to read.

My translation:
I look into the desert, and all of the desert is You
I look into the sea, and all of the sea is You
Everywhere I look--mountains, fields
I see a sign of your most elegant stature

After Hamadan, we traveled to Sanandaj, a city in Kordestan, which is a province in Western Iran. Kordestan is comprised mostly of Kurds, a separate ethnic group—one of the many different ethnic groups in Iran. They are mostly Sunni, and they speak Farsi with a thick accent, which I heard as we walked through a bazaar in Sanandaj. As we walked through a park, we heard the azan, the Muslim call to prayer, and I noticed that the line “ash hadu an Ali-an wali Allah” (“I bear witness that Ali is the leader appointed by God”) was not recited. It was a Sunni azan.

In Sanandaj, we went to a museum full of mannequins dressed in traditional Kurdish clothing. They were arranged in poses in various settings—in a religious class, making bread in the kitchen, and sitting around a “heating table”—a table which was heated from underneath, and a Kurdish family would tuck their legs under the table for warmth and then eat from the top of the table.

Even on the streets, many people wore the traditional, colorful Kurdish clothing (in Farsi, “lebaseh mahali”). My aunt mentioned that President Ahmadinejad encouraged various ethnic and cultural groups from all throughout Iran to wear their own traditional clothing by passing a law promoting the sale of such clothing. This was the law that an Iranian expatriate in Canada distorted in order to smear Iran, saying that the law required all Christians and Jews in Iran to wear insignia identifying them by their religious affiliation, just as Jews were required to wear insignia identifying themselves as Jews in Nazi Germany. This false story was published widely in many Western newspapers--none, apparently, bothering to check records to see if such a law had actually been passed. Had had they actually made the effort to verify whether this expatriate was telling the truth, they would have found that the law was only meant to make it easier for Kurds and other ethnic groups to buy and wear traditional clothing.

My aunt and uncle also told me that Kordestan was home to many groups who opposed the government after the revolution, such as the Mojahedinneh Khalq, a Marxist-Muslim group which exploded a bomb in the Iranian parliament building immediately after the revolution, killing 73 people. It is widely known that the US funds this terrorist group. Also, my aunt told me that after the revolution, the US secretly supported separatist groups in Kordestan which aimed to make Kordestan a Sunni state. These groups periodically exploded bombs in Kordestan, killing innocent people.

By far, my favorite site in Sanandaj was a beautiful statue in one of the city squares. The statue was of a person standing in a position as if he had just been released from prison, with his arms spread wide open, his chest thrust forward, his legs bent as if he had just run full-speed out of the prison gates and come to a screeching halt, and his face looking upwards towards the sky. It was a gesture of pure exultation. On the grey stone below the statue were written the words, “Esteqlal, Azadi, Jomhuriyeh Islami,”—“Freedom, Independence, Islamic Republic.” I found the statue just as inspiring as the Statue of Liberty. It captured perfectly what Iranians must have felt when they achieved the independence and freedom deserved by any human being, and lacking in so many parts of the world. They overthrew the tyrannical shah, directed, supported and installed by America, and established the sort of government that they desired to live under—an Islamic republic. Ninety-nine percent of Iranians voted in favor of Islamic government after the revolution.

It is the most fundamental of human desires to be free, to be able to use one's mind and hands to materialize the desires in one's heart without hindrance, and this statue perfectly expressed the feeling of euphoria one might feel after being captive and suppressed for so long. By talking to other students here at the seminary, to my family, by observing billboards and paintings on the sides of buildings, by watching TV programs, all of which express anger towards the shah and towards the powers that imposed him on them, I can tell that Iranians will never forget the many long years they spent under the indirect rule of America, and will never relinquish the independence they achieved in the 1979 revolution, just as we Americans will never forget the oppression of the British and will never abandon the ideals which drove us to declare our independence.

I hope to write more about the experiences I've had over the past month in my next blog entry, and hopefully these entries will soon be completely up-to-date!

I hope to hear from you all very soon,

Nura

Testing...

2006-09-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! I hope that my blog will bring you to a better understanding of the often misunderstood and deeply complex country of Iran.