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The Partial Axis of Evil
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Dear Niki
Sorry for taking so much time before responding to your post
I think we should start giving u more space to write, without waiting for my lazy replies
:*)
I am not reading anything these days,,
And I am really losing my interest in that chalabi story,
He doesn’t worth even bothering ourselves thinking about him..
I was watching this program at Al-Arabia giving a very insightful perspective about Iran, the program has an interesting title too: “Iran: one revolution, three republics”
Does that make any sense for you?
I mean, I know that, unexpectedly, I am the one with the pro-IRI position, and that maybe u wouldn’t be very happy in discussing such a topic… so let’s consider that as an optional question
Haha
So, the other question would be, did u hear about the Iraqi-Iraqi clashes happening at An-Najaf today between the Iraqi police on one hand and Al-Mahdia Army and the Islamic labor Party on the other hand?
And, hmmm, another side question…
Can I say that I miss u in public?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 2:22 PM
Friday, June 04, 2004
hi ra'ed-
thanks for telling me about the first female mayor in iran since the 1979 revolution. You know what, I know that some of the news outlets were reporting that she is the mayor of tehran, but that didn't sound right to me. they would have made a way bigger deal if the capital of iran--which has some crazy history and drama surrounding its various mayors--had gotten its first post-revolution female mayor. so i did more research and found out that she has been elected as mayor of the town of Saveh.
Saveh is an ancient town in the province of Markazi (if you look at the map above my desk, it is the province that borders Qom on the east and is south east of the province of tehran). When i was trying to find more information on their new mayor, I saw this tourist-type informational page about saveh and the province of markazi. there seem to be lots of ruins and interesting architectural landmarks that you might like. I hope we can go visit it someday soon.
anyway, i think i am starting to believe some parts of this iran-chalabi spy story. i mean clearly it is a shallow and all-too convenient cop-out to try and blame both iran and chalabi for the mess that the bush administration has gotten itself into. but now i am getting re-interested in the whole thing because i think the way that the whole thing is playing itself out has bigger implications for how iran-iraq-U.S. relations are configuring themselves.
or do you think i am reading too much into this? maybe i am.
for the last few months i have been occasionally suffering from some weird chalabi obsession. you know he photographs so poorly, and sometimes i just find myself looking at picture after pictureafter picture, and i think to myself: "how can anyone believe anything this guy says?
so far, the only thing i have found in the iranian media about their alleged chalabi spy connections have been official denials. i'll see if i can find any analysis/commentary in the iranian press on the issue and report back if anyone else shares my admittedly odd fascination with chalabi's wheelings and dealings.
i wont drag you down into my chalabi fixation, but if you could say something about what the Arabic language press is saying about the latest details of the the spy connection i would be happy to know.
Posted by: The Letter N / 2:26 AM
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
grrrrrrrr…
Niki!
You are destroying my public image!!
:*)
I don’t have a shy smile!!!!
I am … hmmmm… a tough lion
(right?)
this secular muslim thing is taking to much time
my brain can’t stop think about it
and I am interested in hearing your ideas about that too
how can we prove that we are secular muslims, not secular middle-easterns?
How can we prove that this culture that we belong to, can be called a muslim one?
And, a side question,
Did u hear about the first female mayor for Tehran?
Interesting, right?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 6:57 PM
Thank goodness at least one of us is getting thesis work done. Whatever ideas i may have had sit around, rotting, on pieces of paper and stored away in files, waiting for me to formulate them into something, anything.
I'm already anticipating certain kinds of emailed responses to some of what you wrote below, but i wont make a preemptive strike here and will wait until i hear from people (besides, we all know how misguided and stupid so-called preemptive attacks can be, don't we?)
let me just say for the record, however, that between the two of us, you are the one with the shy smile.
anyway, i think there are obviously a lot of parallels between what you and i say about being secular muslims, but as you know, we've also arrived at these ideas from two very different places. you situated in the east, and i in the west (sorry to use the cliche east-west thing which i happen to hate, actually).
well, i'm going to learn from you and try to get something done on my thesis, if not some writing, then at least some reading.
Posted by: The Letter N / 3:34 AM
Monday, May 31, 2004
I’m writing my thesis
That’s why I can’t blog daily now
This secular Muslim thing is annoying so many people,
And because annoying people is one of my bad habits, that I really enjoy
I must write more about my secular Muslim cult
Islam for me, as a secular leftist, is more than a mere religion
Islam is my cultural heritage that I will protect and maintain until the last moment of my existence.
Islam is the small ornaments in my architecture, the small details of the doors of Al-Mustansiryya school in Baghdad, the arches of the Abbasi palace, the domes of Al-Kathum shrine and the wooden windows of my grandfathers’ courtyard house.
Islam is the small kids playing in the narrow streets of the crowded neighborhoods in Baghdad and Cairo, it is the charming smell of the mosques of Najaf and Karbala, the spicy taste of the Iraqi Dolma, the colorful pigeons flying at the time of dawn in Al-Hamedyyah market in Damascus, the warm palm trees surrounding Shatt Al-Arab in Basra.
Islam is the genius poetry of Quran every morning, the strong voice of Um-Kalthum every evening, the soft sound of Athan every sunrise.
Islam is the shy smile of my woman.
Neither neo-conservatives like bush nor long-bearded right-winged fundamentalists like Bin Ladin can hijack my life and history from me.
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 9:34 PM
Saturday, May 29, 2004
dear ra'ed-
ok, i'm going to stop off-topic, meaning i have to mostly defer your question about the relationship of SCIRI and iran since if i were to answer that question, it would just be a lot of Niki-speculation on how iran is trying to play a careful game of keeping somewhat of a relationship with all shi'a factions so that they can be on good terms with whoever ends up in power.
instead, i want to say something very quickly about the label secular muslim.
your comments here and in your main blog about being a secular muslim (something i remember you explicitly labeled yourself even when you were blogging with Salam Pax), has really thrown people off.
all these readers emailing you (yes, i've been reading your emails again while you were sleeping) and asking "what is a secular muslim?", "How can one be secular AND a muslim?", etc.
people seem so puzzled, as though the notion is a contradiction in terms, which to some extent i can understand, particularly since muslims are almost exclusively portrayed in the western media as fanatical, or, if the media are feeling generous, as extremely devout.
so, do you want to answer the question or should i take a stab at it?
let me say this, there is no singular way to define what a secular muslim is, since people arrive at that label from various experiences of what they consider secular as well as what kind of muslim background, society, experiences, etc. have gone into making them identify as a "muslim".
for me, being secular means what it means to most people: i dont adhere to any religious practices and i firmly believe that religion is a personal matter that (ideally) must not seep into politics or public policy.
but what makes me a muslim, and a twelver shi'a muslim specifically, is that despite the fact that i grew up in a secular and mostly anti-religious family, there were rich cultural and historical markers that have been woven through my experiences.
Some of these things are banal, some are profound, some are explicit, others very subtle, but here are some examples:
*The Qu'ran that sits on the Persian New year table
*The sufi poetry of Hafez and Mollana (aka Rumi)
*The breathtaking architecture of iranian cities like Isfahan, Mashad, and even Qom and the graceful calligraphy that adorns much of this architecture
*The "Ya ali", "Ya hossein", "ya abolfazl", etc. that are uttered as exclamations in various situations of distress
*The passion plays about hossein death at karbala
*The enchanting and catchy devotionals sung for Ali, Hossein, Zeynab, Fatemeh, the prophet Mohammad, etc.
These are but a few random examples, but the point is that there are cultural and artistic phenomena that are either directly derivative of or produced in relation to islam, and people like ra'ed and i refuse to shed the label muslim just because a bunch of religious fanatics have been pushing their narrow and extremist interpretations on everybody else.
Anyway, i went on a bit longer than i wanted to and didn't say half of what i had hoped to say. but hopefully this gives people some idea of what we meant. i know i got a bit boring here, but i felt like i had to say something on the secular muslim thing given all the inquiring emails.
and, guess what, Ra'ed, i don't have a question at the moment (always breaking the rules!). maybe you can add something on this secular muslim thing.
now i am going to go wake you up.
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:31 AM
Friday, May 28, 2004
Habeebti!
Of course you can ask any kind of questions you want to
(ahhh… I won’t mind answering nasty questions too)
:*)
so, yeah
I hope u liked the new “look” of the blog…
I will try to work more on that soon, just to add more personal touches.
Today’s earthquake in Iran was really strong, news are speaking about 80 distroyed villages, and I saw some reports saying that Iranians in Tehran are planning to spend the night outside their houses, after the government advised them not to go back home, expecting a big earthquake in the night.
I am watching a funny interview with As-Sadr on Al-Jazeera channel, and the poor journalist was asking him: “as a leader of Al-Mahdi Army, what do you expect to…”, and As-Sadr interrupted him by saying: “Who said I am the leader!! I never said that. The only leader is the Imam Mahdi himself”
What am I supposed to do here?
Cry? Laugh?
Sistani is a social and spiritual leader, that used to live in Iraq even in the time of the Iraqi government and Saddam, and he didn’t have any kind of influence or political ideas.
When the bush administration occupied the country, I think some of their consultants advised them to be more “culturally sensitive” and they decided to start sucking up for Sistani, the thing that bumped him like a balloon.
I don’t believe, at all, that Sistani have a real influence or power on the ground, and I prefer, as a secular Muslim, not to give him more weight.
The Shia-Shia clashes happening now between SCIRI and Al-Mahdi Army, like the today’s assassination attempt for Qubbanji, the spokesman of SCIRI. SCIRI officially accused the Al-Mahdi Army for trying to kill their spokesman, and this is a real huge crisis that Shia need Sistani to say something and solve the problem, but he won’t because this is against the American interest.
The best scenario, from the bush administration point of view, is to start this Shia-Shia small clashes that can reduce the pressure on the American Army; the thing that will start another disaster for the Iraqi people.
Don’t you think that the Irani-SCIRI relationship is going through a critical point?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 10:14 PM
Monday, May 24, 2004
Habibi Ra'ed-
About the Irani Chalabis, you know, when i first saw this smashed portrait of Chalabi, I wanted to upload it to my anonymous blog and leave a nasty note for all the Iranian Chalabis to the effect of "let this serve as a warning" or some such thing.
sadly, us iranians don't have just one or two wannabe-Chalabis, there are loads of them. fortunately, they spend half their time fighting amongst themselves, which means that they are unable to devote their entire energies to the task of convincing the U.S. that it must bomb Iran immediately.
one wannabi-Chalabi is called Hamid Reza Zakeri, who would be utterly laughable if it weren't for the fact that his dubious claims about what Iran is up to weren't cropping up as "evidence" in various media. My friend Pedram wrote a short, informative piece on Zakeri that is worth looking at.
perhaps our best known wannabe-Chalabi is the "Crown prince" Reza Pahlavi, the son of the popularly overthrown Shah. For the past 24 years, Reza has been living comfortably off of money that belongs to the people of Iran and that his parents smuggled out when they fled Iran during the iranian revolution. When Reza is not peddling his book on fox news or when he is taking a break from meeting with neo-cons to push for a U.S. invasion of iran, he comes up with catchy slogans like Emrooz faghat etehad, farda enteghad ("today only unity, tomorrow criticism"), which are supposed to somehow at once encapsulate his political philosophy and motivate iranians to action against the Iranian regime.
well, anyway, as usual i could go on forever about this, and there is plenty i want to say about our minor-Chalabis, the self-styled intellectuals who fancy themselves to be the future ministers of culture or something, but i don't feel like naming names now, i've probably pissed off enough people as it is.
ok, so, i haven't been keeping up with the news, but one way people are framing the recent events in Karbala is to say that Sistani asked that Sadr's people and that the Americans retreat, and that both of them listened to Sistani. This is over-stating the influence of Sistani, no? Nonetheless, the fact that it is being framed as such makes me think that something is up. What do you think? Also, a tangential question about the "rules" of the questions themselves: do i have to stick to the political?
PS- by the way, if that dream i had comes true and i end up going to karbala, in iran they would call me kablaee. that is what they used to call the men that made the pilgrimage anyway, i dont know if it is in use anymore. anyway, i like the idea of being called kablaee, it sounds so funny.
last thing, can we change the look of this blog? i like the green you had when you first started your own blog. it looked nice.
Posted by: The Letter N / 4:24 AM
Friday, May 21, 2004well... habeebti... i'm not sure what to say
from one point, chalabi is a stupid loser that must have been dumped many years ago, but i dont really believe the US adminstration really can/want to do such a thing
maybe it is just another trick to put chalabi in the position of "iraq opposition",
whatever..
you told me once, while we were having lunch at the dead sea, that the irani opposition have their small copies of chalabi
do u think u can tell me more about it?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:57 PM
Thursday, May 20, 2004
When I first saw your question, I was ready to conclude that the protests were not spontaneous and then i was going to give some long boring lecture on how the regime coordinates all kinds of demonstrations to keep its so-called revolutionary image intact.
but i checked myself. for two reasons. for one, i hate to sound like the broken-record reactionaries in the iranian opposition who have the same foregone conclusion about everything that happens in iran (and i know how much you hate it when i begin my discussions with conclusions!). but more importantly, i saw some of the pictures from the protest in front of the UK embassy, with the riot police and other security dudes out in full force, and it made me doubt my initial instinct about the whole thing. but i'll look into it.
hey, what do you make of Chalabi's place being raided and the pentagon taking him off of their payroll? I mean, what do you think he was up to behind the scenes to make the U.S. so unceremoniously drop him?
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:14 PM
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Demonstrations in Tehran, with people throwing stones on the British embassy, do u think this is spontaneous?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 9:14 PM
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Sorry, Ra'ed, that it is taking me so long to respond to what you asked:
"My question is: do u really think the Irani government is committing crimes against Iranis and humanity in their political prisons?"
The short answer is a resounding YES!
I promise to give the details later, and I'll also talk about the most recent developments relating to this issue, the most puzzling of which is the Iranian Judiciary's recent ban on torture. I don't know what they are trying to pull with this act, I have to do some research and hear some conspiracy theories before I get back to you on that. They also just let out 7 well known political dissidents on vacation from jail . This is a really strange practice, I think, and it is something they do every now and again, though this particular instance is the only one I can think of where so many well known people have been out on break at the same time. The final recent development is one that you already know about, and that is the renewed death sentence for Hashem Aghajari, who has refused, like he did before, to appeal the sentence.
Ok, so I didn't answer your question and I didnt pose one for you either. I'm breaking all the rules.
But you'll forgive me, right? I am, after all, getting ready to go see a very very important person.
Posted by: The Letter N / 4:10 PM
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Ra'ed! I like the rules you've set up very much.
I'm afraid, however, that I will have to break them in this post because i can't stay silent about your "enemy" comment.
I mean really, i'm quite shocked.
i know both our governments spent tons of money and energy on propaganda during the Iran-Iraq war, but as far as i remember, the target of the rhetoric was never the iraqis as a people. Instead, it seemed that all the energy was spent on demonizing one person: Saddam hossein, the contemporary Yazid and the personification of evil. Khomeini was fond of calling him "saddam-e Tikriti" (Saddam from Tikrit) instead of merely Saddam, so it was always "Saddam-e Tikriti this" and "Saddam-e Tikriti that".
it was only in my adult life that i learned that Saddam had sold his war on iran as another Qaddissiya, that he had expelled up to 100,000 iraqis that had lived in iraq for generations but that he had identified as being of iranian heritage, and that he ordered that iranian arabs who were captured as POWs be tortured extra brutally (for betraying the "arab nation" and siding with the persians).
but still, it never would have occurred to me that any of this propaganda stuck with the iraqis. this is not to say that iranis are free from this kind of prejudice, not by a long shot. i mean, iranis have an embarrassing amount of anti-arab tendencies, but i really dont think it played a big huge part for us in the Iran-Iraq war. those who were pro-khomeini saw saddam as the devil, and the rest of us saw it as a war of crazy (saddam) vs. crazy (khomeini), with a whole lot of innocent people dying.
ok, that is all for now. I'll follow your rules (for the most part) from here on out.
anyway, it looks like we have a lot to do in our personal version of arab-irani reconciliation to make up for all this other crap!
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:37 AM
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
ok…
my fist attack…
I never thought about this before, but it just came to the surface today when Khatami was speaking about political prisoners. Khatami said “Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs”.
My question is: do u really think the Irani government is committing crimes against Iranis and humanity in their political prisons?
*smile*
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:08 PM
When I first met you, I had this feeling that you are my “enemy” in a way or another. I mean… I just had the same feeling when I met the first Israeli person in my life.
Our governments spent years and billions of Dinars to let us believe that anyone coming from Iran is an “evil Persian”…
Well… you are kind of evil, but in a sweet way :*)
Dear N,
Please let me launch our ping-pong discussion.
Here are the rules…
*one theme per-post, which is clear and accountable.
*each post must have the answer of the previous post question, and a question to be answered in the next post.
*we can swear and curse… (feel free to express yourself habeebti)
*the one with stronger logic wins more points.
*and, u are allowed to correct my spelling mistakes, (I know that my English language isn’t that perfect)
so…
let’s rock’n’roll
:*)
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:07 PM
Friday, April 23, 2004
Ok, i'm just going to start. I didn't really want to have my first piece here be some agitated rambling, but i guess this is how it is going to be.
The official Iranian Student News Agency is reporting today that the Iranian foreign ministry is putting together their case against Saddam.
Nothing will come of it, of course, because acknowledgment of the worst of Saddam's crimes against the Iranians would implicate the U.S. and everyone else who happily armed him to his teeth and turned a blind eye to the chemical weapons he was dousing on Iranian soldiers and civilians.
At best, Iranian accusations that their POWs were tortured in Saddam's jails will be confirmed. After all, that fits in very well with seems to be the new semi-official narrative of why Iraq was illegally attacked: because Saddam was a sadist and a murderer.
It's funny, though, to see the mainstream media grapple with these sorts of things. They vouyeristically devour stories about the evil deeds of Saddam, but how to deal when the victims are Iranians? Why, it's a classic moral dilemma. You don't want to show too much sympathy to the Iranians, because well, they are a) also evil and b) the next in line.
after years and years of coughing up their lungs in bits and pieces, bodies covered in frothing boils, those iranian soldiers who have managed to survive Saddam's chemical weapons were finally paid visits last year by western media who were scampering to help put together a case for the war against iraq.
I was so angry to see these men, used yet again for someone else's propaganda war, that i couldn't sit through a single one of those news segments. But you should have seen these phony reporters feign utter shock at what had happened in the course of the Iran-Iraq war. My god, some of these reporters looked like they were more stressed out from having to deal with these Iranians as humans then they were from witnessing the on-going horrific results of the war.
I know I am being unfair here to the reporters, and i don't mean to impart the worst of intentions to all those who went to cover these stories. but the timing of these reports is questionable at best as is the condescending attitudes of some who file them.
Posted by: The Letter N / 6:02 AM
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I am back, habibi Ra'ed, but you know that already.
hm, well, what are we going to blog about?
Posted by: The Letter N / 6:06 PM
Sunday, April 18, 2004
here we go...
N joon, where are you?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 6:18 PM
Dear Niki
Sorry for taking so much time before responding to your post
I think we should start giving u more space to write, without waiting for my lazy replies
:*)
I am not reading anything these days,,
And I am really losing my interest in that chalabi story,
He doesn’t worth even bothering ourselves thinking about him..
I was watching this program at Al-Arabia giving a very insightful perspective about Iran, the program has an interesting title too: “Iran: one revolution, three republics”
Does that make any sense for you?
I mean, I know that, unexpectedly, I am the one with the pro-IRI position, and that maybe u wouldn’t be very happy in discussing such a topic… so let’s consider that as an optional question
Haha
So, the other question would be, did u hear about the Iraqi-Iraqi clashes happening at An-Najaf today between the Iraqi police on one hand and Al-Mahdia Army and the Islamic labor Party on the other hand?
And, hmmm, another side question…
Can I say that I miss u in public?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 2:22 PM
Friday, June 04, 2004
hi ra'ed-
thanks for telling me about the first female mayor in iran since the 1979 revolution. You know what, I know that some of the news outlets were reporting that she is the mayor of tehran, but that didn't sound right to me. they would have made a way bigger deal if the capital of iran--which has some crazy history and drama surrounding its various mayors--had gotten its first post-revolution female mayor. so i did more research and found out that she has been elected as mayor of the town of Saveh.
Saveh is an ancient town in the province of Markazi (if you look at the map above my desk, it is the province that borders Qom on the east and is south east of the province of tehran). When i was trying to find more information on their new mayor, I saw this tourist-type informational page about saveh and the province of markazi. there seem to be lots of ruins and interesting architectural landmarks that you might like. I hope we can go visit it someday soon.
anyway, i think i am starting to believe some parts of this iran-chalabi spy story. i mean clearly it is a shallow and all-too convenient cop-out to try and blame both iran and chalabi for the mess that the bush administration has gotten itself into. but now i am getting re-interested in the whole thing because i think the way that the whole thing is playing itself out has bigger implications for how iran-iraq-U.S. relations are configuring themselves.
or do you think i am reading too much into this? maybe i am.
for the last few months i have been occasionally suffering from some weird chalabi obsession. you know he photographs so poorly, and sometimes i just find myself looking at picture after pictureafter picture, and i think to myself: "how can anyone believe anything this guy says?
so far, the only thing i have found in the iranian media about their alleged chalabi spy connections have been official denials. i'll see if i can find any analysis/commentary in the iranian press on the issue and report back if anyone else shares my admittedly odd fascination with chalabi's wheelings and dealings.
i wont drag you down into my chalabi fixation, but if you could say something about what the Arabic language press is saying about the latest details of the the spy connection i would be happy to know.
Posted by: The Letter N / 2:26 AM
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
grrrrrrrr…
Niki!
You are destroying my public image!!
:*)
I don’t have a shy smile!!!!
I am … hmmmm… a tough lion
(right?)
this secular muslim thing is taking to much time
my brain can’t stop think about it
and I am interested in hearing your ideas about that too
how can we prove that we are secular muslims, not secular middle-easterns?
How can we prove that this culture that we belong to, can be called a muslim one?
And, a side question,
Did u hear about the first female mayor for Tehran?
Interesting, right?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 6:57 PM
Thank goodness at least one of us is getting thesis work done. Whatever ideas i may have had sit around, rotting, on pieces of paper and stored away in files, waiting for me to formulate them into something, anything.
I'm already anticipating certain kinds of emailed responses to some of what you wrote below, but i wont make a preemptive strike here and will wait until i hear from people (besides, we all know how misguided and stupid so-called preemptive attacks can be, don't we?)
let me just say for the record, however, that between the two of us, you are the one with the shy smile.
anyway, i think there are obviously a lot of parallels between what you and i say about being secular muslims, but as you know, we've also arrived at these ideas from two very different places. you situated in the east, and i in the west (sorry to use the cliche east-west thing which i happen to hate, actually).
well, i'm going to learn from you and try to get something done on my thesis, if not some writing, then at least some reading.
Posted by: The Letter N / 3:34 AM
Monday, May 31, 2004
I’m writing my thesis
That’s why I can’t blog daily now
This secular Muslim thing is annoying so many people,
And because annoying people is one of my bad habits, that I really enjoy
I must write more about my secular Muslim cult
Islam for me, as a secular leftist, is more than a mere religion
Islam is my cultural heritage that I will protect and maintain until the last moment of my existence.
Islam is the small ornaments in my architecture, the small details of the doors of Al-Mustansiryya school in Baghdad, the arches of the Abbasi palace, the domes of Al-Kathum shrine and the wooden windows of my grandfathers’ courtyard house.
Islam is the small kids playing in the narrow streets of the crowded neighborhoods in Baghdad and Cairo, it is the charming smell of the mosques of Najaf and Karbala, the spicy taste of the Iraqi Dolma, the colorful pigeons flying at the time of dawn in Al-Hamedyyah market in Damascus, the warm palm trees surrounding Shatt Al-Arab in Basra.
Islam is the genius poetry of Quran every morning, the strong voice of Um-Kalthum every evening, the soft sound of Athan every sunrise.
Islam is the shy smile of my woman.
Neither neo-conservatives like bush nor long-bearded right-winged fundamentalists like Bin Ladin can hijack my life and history from me.
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 9:34 PM
Saturday, May 29, 2004
dear ra'ed-
ok, i'm going to stop off-topic, meaning i have to mostly defer your question about the relationship of SCIRI and iran since if i were to answer that question, it would just be a lot of Niki-speculation on how iran is trying to play a careful game of keeping somewhat of a relationship with all shi'a factions so that they can be on good terms with whoever ends up in power.
instead, i want to say something very quickly about the label secular muslim.
your comments here and in your main blog about being a secular muslim (something i remember you explicitly labeled yourself even when you were blogging with Salam Pax), has really thrown people off.
all these readers emailing you (yes, i've been reading your emails again while you were sleeping) and asking "what is a secular muslim?", "How can one be secular AND a muslim?", etc.
people seem so puzzled, as though the notion is a contradiction in terms, which to some extent i can understand, particularly since muslims are almost exclusively portrayed in the western media as fanatical, or, if the media are feeling generous, as extremely devout.
so, do you want to answer the question or should i take a stab at it?
let me say this, there is no singular way to define what a secular muslim is, since people arrive at that label from various experiences of what they consider secular as well as what kind of muslim background, society, experiences, etc. have gone into making them identify as a "muslim".
for me, being secular means what it means to most people: i dont adhere to any religious practices and i firmly believe that religion is a personal matter that (ideally) must not seep into politics or public policy.
but what makes me a muslim, and a twelver shi'a muslim specifically, is that despite the fact that i grew up in a secular and mostly anti-religious family, there were rich cultural and historical markers that have been woven through my experiences.
Some of these things are banal, some are profound, some are explicit, others very subtle, but here are some examples:
*The Qu'ran that sits on the Persian New year table
*The sufi poetry of Hafez and Mollana (aka Rumi)
*The breathtaking architecture of iranian cities like Isfahan, Mashad, and even Qom and the graceful calligraphy that adorns much of this architecture
*The "Ya ali", "Ya hossein", "ya abolfazl", etc. that are uttered as exclamations in various situations of distress
*The passion plays about hossein death at karbala
*The enchanting and catchy devotionals sung for Ali, Hossein, Zeynab, Fatemeh, the prophet Mohammad, etc.
These are but a few random examples, but the point is that there are cultural and artistic phenomena that are either directly derivative of or produced in relation to islam, and people like ra'ed and i refuse to shed the label muslim just because a bunch of religious fanatics have been pushing their narrow and extremist interpretations on everybody else.
Anyway, i went on a bit longer than i wanted to and didn't say half of what i had hoped to say. but hopefully this gives people some idea of what we meant. i know i got a bit boring here, but i felt like i had to say something on the secular muslim thing given all the inquiring emails.
and, guess what, Ra'ed, i don't have a question at the moment (always breaking the rules!). maybe you can add something on this secular muslim thing.
now i am going to go wake you up.
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:31 AM
Friday, May 28, 2004
Habeebti!
Of course you can ask any kind of questions you want to
(ahhh… I won’t mind answering nasty questions too)
:*)
so, yeah
I hope u liked the new “look” of the blog…
I will try to work more on that soon, just to add more personal touches.
Today’s earthquake in Iran was really strong, news are speaking about 80 distroyed villages, and I saw some reports saying that Iranians in Tehran are planning to spend the night outside their houses, after the government advised them not to go back home, expecting a big earthquake in the night.
I am watching a funny interview with As-Sadr on Al-Jazeera channel, and the poor journalist was asking him: “as a leader of Al-Mahdi Army, what do you expect to…”, and As-Sadr interrupted him by saying: “Who said I am the leader!! I never said that. The only leader is the Imam Mahdi himself”
What am I supposed to do here?
Cry? Laugh?
Sistani is a social and spiritual leader, that used to live in Iraq even in the time of the Iraqi government and Saddam, and he didn’t have any kind of influence or political ideas.
When the bush administration occupied the country, I think some of their consultants advised them to be more “culturally sensitive” and they decided to start sucking up for Sistani, the thing that bumped him like a balloon.
I don’t believe, at all, that Sistani have a real influence or power on the ground, and I prefer, as a secular Muslim, not to give him more weight.
The Shia-Shia clashes happening now between SCIRI and Al-Mahdi Army, like the today’s assassination attempt for Qubbanji, the spokesman of SCIRI. SCIRI officially accused the Al-Mahdi Army for trying to kill their spokesman, and this is a real huge crisis that Shia need Sistani to say something and solve the problem, but he won’t because this is against the American interest.
The best scenario, from the bush administration point of view, is to start this Shia-Shia small clashes that can reduce the pressure on the American Army; the thing that will start another disaster for the Iraqi people.
Don’t you think that the Irani-SCIRI relationship is going through a critical point?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 10:14 PM
Monday, May 24, 2004
Habibi Ra'ed-
About the Irani Chalabis, you know, when i first saw this smashed portrait of Chalabi, I wanted to upload it to my anonymous blog and leave a nasty note for all the Iranian Chalabis to the effect of "let this serve as a warning" or some such thing.
sadly, us iranians don't have just one or two wannabe-Chalabis, there are loads of them. fortunately, they spend half their time fighting amongst themselves, which means that they are unable to devote their entire energies to the task of convincing the U.S. that it must bomb Iran immediately.
one wannabi-Chalabi is called Hamid Reza Zakeri, who would be utterly laughable if it weren't for the fact that his dubious claims about what Iran is up to weren't cropping up as "evidence" in various media. My friend Pedram wrote a short, informative piece on Zakeri that is worth looking at.
perhaps our best known wannabe-Chalabi is the "Crown prince" Reza Pahlavi, the son of the popularly overthrown Shah. For the past 24 years, Reza has been living comfortably off of money that belongs to the people of Iran and that his parents smuggled out when they fled Iran during the iranian revolution. When Reza is not peddling his book on fox news or when he is taking a break from meeting with neo-cons to push for a U.S. invasion of iran, he comes up with catchy slogans like Emrooz faghat etehad, farda enteghad ("today only unity, tomorrow criticism"), which are supposed to somehow at once encapsulate his political philosophy and motivate iranians to action against the Iranian regime.
well, anyway, as usual i could go on forever about this, and there is plenty i want to say about our minor-Chalabis, the self-styled intellectuals who fancy themselves to be the future ministers of culture or something, but i don't feel like naming names now, i've probably pissed off enough people as it is.
ok, so, i haven't been keeping up with the news, but one way people are framing the recent events in Karbala is to say that Sistani asked that Sadr's people and that the Americans retreat, and that both of them listened to Sistani. This is over-stating the influence of Sistani, no? Nonetheless, the fact that it is being framed as such makes me think that something is up. What do you think? Also, a tangential question about the "rules" of the questions themselves: do i have to stick to the political?
PS- by the way, if that dream i had comes true and i end up going to karbala, in iran they would call me kablaee. that is what they used to call the men that made the pilgrimage anyway, i dont know if it is in use anymore. anyway, i like the idea of being called kablaee, it sounds so funny.
last thing, can we change the look of this blog? i like the green you had when you first started your own blog. it looked nice.
Posted by: The Letter N / 4:24 AM
Friday, May 21, 2004well... habeebti... i'm not sure what to say
from one point, chalabi is a stupid loser that must have been dumped many years ago, but i dont really believe the US adminstration really can/want to do such a thing
maybe it is just another trick to put chalabi in the position of "iraq opposition",
whatever..
you told me once, while we were having lunch at the dead sea, that the irani opposition have their small copies of chalabi
do u think u can tell me more about it?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:57 PM
Thursday, May 20, 2004
When I first saw your question, I was ready to conclude that the protests were not spontaneous and then i was going to give some long boring lecture on how the regime coordinates all kinds of demonstrations to keep its so-called revolutionary image intact.
but i checked myself. for two reasons. for one, i hate to sound like the broken-record reactionaries in the iranian opposition who have the same foregone conclusion about everything that happens in iran (and i know how much you hate it when i begin my discussions with conclusions!). but more importantly, i saw some of the pictures from the protest in front of the UK embassy, with the riot police and other security dudes out in full force, and it made me doubt my initial instinct about the whole thing. but i'll look into it.
hey, what do you make of Chalabi's place being raided and the pentagon taking him off of their payroll? I mean, what do you think he was up to behind the scenes to make the U.S. so unceremoniously drop him?
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:14 PM
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Demonstrations in Tehran, with people throwing stones on the British embassy, do u think this is spontaneous?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 9:14 PM
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Sorry, Ra'ed, that it is taking me so long to respond to what you asked:
"My question is: do u really think the Irani government is committing crimes against Iranis and humanity in their political prisons?"
The short answer is a resounding YES!
I promise to give the details later, and I'll also talk about the most recent developments relating to this issue, the most puzzling of which is the Iranian Judiciary's recent ban on torture. I don't know what they are trying to pull with this act, I have to do some research and hear some conspiracy theories before I get back to you on that. They also just let out 7 well known political dissidents on vacation from jail . This is a really strange practice, I think, and it is something they do every now and again, though this particular instance is the only one I can think of where so many well known people have been out on break at the same time. The final recent development is one that you already know about, and that is the renewed death sentence for Hashem Aghajari, who has refused, like he did before, to appeal the sentence.
Ok, so I didn't answer your question and I didnt pose one for you either. I'm breaking all the rules.
But you'll forgive me, right? I am, after all, getting ready to go see a very very important person.
Posted by: The Letter N / 4:10 PM
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Ra'ed! I like the rules you've set up very much.
I'm afraid, however, that I will have to break them in this post because i can't stay silent about your "enemy" comment.
I mean really, i'm quite shocked.
i know both our governments spent tons of money and energy on propaganda during the Iran-Iraq war, but as far as i remember, the target of the rhetoric was never the iraqis as a people. Instead, it seemed that all the energy was spent on demonizing one person: Saddam hossein, the contemporary Yazid and the personification of evil. Khomeini was fond of calling him "saddam-e Tikriti" (Saddam from Tikrit) instead of merely Saddam, so it was always "Saddam-e Tikriti this" and "Saddam-e Tikriti that".
it was only in my adult life that i learned that Saddam had sold his war on iran as another Qaddissiya, that he had expelled up to 100,000 iraqis that had lived in iraq for generations but that he had identified as being of iranian heritage, and that he ordered that iranian arabs who were captured as POWs be tortured extra brutally (for betraying the "arab nation" and siding with the persians).
but still, it never would have occurred to me that any of this propaganda stuck with the iraqis. this is not to say that iranis are free from this kind of prejudice, not by a long shot. i mean, iranis have an embarrassing amount of anti-arab tendencies, but i really dont think it played a big huge part for us in the Iran-Iraq war. those who were pro-khomeini saw saddam as the devil, and the rest of us saw it as a war of crazy (saddam) vs. crazy (khomeini), with a whole lot of innocent people dying.
ok, that is all for now. I'll follow your rules (for the most part) from here on out.
anyway, it looks like we have a lot to do in our personal version of arab-irani reconciliation to make up for all this other crap!
Posted by: The Letter N / 5:37 AM
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
ok…
my fist attack…
I never thought about this before, but it just came to the surface today when Khatami was speaking about political prisoners. Khatami said “Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs”.
My question is: do u really think the Irani government is committing crimes against Iranis and humanity in their political prisons?
*smile*
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:08 PM
When I first met you, I had this feeling that you are my “enemy” in a way or another. I mean… I just had the same feeling when I met the first Israeli person in my life.
Our governments spent years and billions of Dinars to let us believe that anyone coming from Iran is an “evil Persian”…
Well… you are kind of evil, but in a sweet way :*)
Dear N,
Please let me launch our ping-pong discussion.
Here are the rules…
*one theme per-post, which is clear and accountable.
*each post must have the answer of the previous post question, and a question to be answered in the next post.
*we can swear and curse… (feel free to express yourself habeebti)
*the one with stronger logic wins more points.
*and, u are allowed to correct my spelling mistakes, (I know that my English language isn’t that perfect)
so…
let’s rock’n’roll
:*)
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 3:07 PM
Friday, April 23, 2004
Ok, i'm just going to start. I didn't really want to have my first piece here be some agitated rambling, but i guess this is how it is going to be.
The official Iranian Student News Agency is reporting today that the Iranian foreign ministry is putting together their case against Saddam.
Nothing will come of it, of course, because acknowledgment of the worst of Saddam's crimes against the Iranians would implicate the U.S. and everyone else who happily armed him to his teeth and turned a blind eye to the chemical weapons he was dousing on Iranian soldiers and civilians.
At best, Iranian accusations that their POWs were tortured in Saddam's jails will be confirmed. After all, that fits in very well with seems to be the new semi-official narrative of why Iraq was illegally attacked: because Saddam was a sadist and a murderer.
It's funny, though, to see the mainstream media grapple with these sorts of things. They vouyeristically devour stories about the evil deeds of Saddam, but how to deal when the victims are Iranians? Why, it's a classic moral dilemma. You don't want to show too much sympathy to the Iranians, because well, they are a) also evil and b) the next in line.
after years and years of coughing up their lungs in bits and pieces, bodies covered in frothing boils, those iranian soldiers who have managed to survive Saddam's chemical weapons were finally paid visits last year by western media who were scampering to help put together a case for the war against iraq.
I was so angry to see these men, used yet again for someone else's propaganda war, that i couldn't sit through a single one of those news segments. But you should have seen these phony reporters feign utter shock at what had happened in the course of the Iran-Iraq war. My god, some of these reporters looked like they were more stressed out from having to deal with these Iranians as humans then they were from witnessing the on-going horrific results of the war.
I know I am being unfair here to the reporters, and i don't mean to impart the worst of intentions to all those who went to cover these stories. but the timing of these reports is questionable at best as is the condescending attitudes of some who file them.
Posted by: The Letter N / 6:02 AM
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I am back, habibi Ra'ed, but you know that already.
hm, well, what are we going to blog about?
Posted by: The Letter N / 6:06 PM
Sunday, April 18, 2004
here we go...
N joon, where are you?
Posted by: Raed Jarrar / 6:18 PM
