A Tale of One/Two People

I have to admit that it is increasingly difficult for me to write about the recent disparities of my Iranian society since I understand that I have no right to “inject the poison of disappointment to the society,” as a dear person once reminded me. But writing in this English-language blog who has less than fifteen subscribers, it is easier for me to speak of parts of my concerns over the direction of the Iranian society that we (most of us, probably) tend to not speak of, to save face somehow.

After the bloody months of post-election revolts and the increasing distrust people have towards the governmental structures of the society I feel more and more that a situation of internal hostility (and not usual conflicts and disagreements) is becoming more and more definitive to the period of Iranian history we are beginning to approach. A society divided in half, an unbridged binary opposition between two groups of society each considering the other as literally the ontological Other,  and the corrupt structure of a political establishment glorifying one section of the society and demonizing and humiliating the Other (following a standard colonial policy) are more and more encouraging this society to depart from the ideal unity, or sociopolitical Tawhid, the ideologues of the Islamic Revolutionary such as Sharia’ti had in mind.

For me, nothing is more symbolizing of such an internal hostility than the burning of the figure of Ghirtii (the Gucci) in the Qods Day demonstrations in Tehran along with the flags of the U.S. and Israel and such symbols typically considered external.

P.S.

More than thirty years after his martyrdom, Sharia’ti’s theo-mystic approach still provides us with a decent explanation of the dynamics of such a social partitioning: when the divinely-inspired consciousness of Man (not Man in the Western humanist sense but Man in the Islamic-Iranian mystic context as the true heir to the divine) is forgotten, Sharia’ti points out, then “earthly” identities such as race, religion, gender, etc.- “based” identities gain prominence.  Is the same true of a society in which “the faith of the people have disappeared beneath the high towers,” as Haj Rouzbeh used to say in ” One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest?”

On Obama, Iranian People, and the “Good Father” Discourse

President Barack Obama’s “Nowroz” celebration video should not really be taken as a “groundbreaking” effort made by the new U.S. administration in terms of its message, but rather in terms of the language it uses. Here, I shall argue why and on what basis do I believe that Obama’s speech is in fact very much in accordance to one of the many “modes of discourse” used by American leaders to address the Iranian people and the issues surrounding the question of Iran for the U.S. (in this speech, Obama has refused to make real distinction between Iranian leaders and their people, which is unique in its own way).

I remember when last year the Presian Voice of American television interviewed the then-President George Bush on the eve of Norowz, his message was regardless of its language very close to the framework of Obama’s speech. Unlike the speeches in which the Presidents are addressing the threats posed by Iran on them and the options to confront these threats, upon talking directly to the Iranians, the Presidents have over the time tended to use what I shall call the “good father” discourse.

The good father discourse confronts the Iranian people with openness towards their culture, friendliness towards their values, and urging them to put aside the “poitns of conflict” between them and the Iranians. The same mode of discourse can undoubtedly be found with Obama’s speech. Elements of appreciation for Iranian culture and also urging Iran to put aside “terror” in reaching its “rightful position in the international communtiy” can, thus, clearly be found in the interview.

Confronting the video and its possible innovating aspects requires adopting such theorietical approaches as I have incorporated in this article. Thus, by putting aside the elements of suprise and emotion we can hopefully reach more rational conclusions and analysis on political events with a successful dismissal of elements of propoganda and diverting public attention.

On Islamophobia

I do not know of any scholarly works done on the psychological and/or sociological aspects of the dangerous phenomenon of “Isalmophobia,” or the discrimination towards Muslim people and their believes, not because there are not any scholarships done on the question (I bet there are many for sure), but mainly because I have not perused the scholarly debate on the topic. However, the signs of the phenomenon and the talks I recently had with a severe Islamophobic friend of mine, gave me the incentive to write my uninformed comment on the nature of the phenomenon.

Dariush Dajjali, a Political Scientist and a worldly-respected expert on the issue of torture notes the basis of his research on torture as such: in torture, we have three main factors involved: the torturer, the victim, and the technology. The same is definitely true of discrimination (one form of which is the mentioned Islamophobia). I want to here specify my area research on the torturer and leave the guessingly largely forgotten debate on the effect of the discrimination on the Muslims temporarily aside. What is it that motivates Islamophobia from the standpoint of its actual “doers?”

The friend of mine already mentioned earlier is from religious minority persecuted under the Muslim law (or at least one interpretation of the Muslim law). He criticizes Islam and holds severe and dangerous racist views on Muslims not based on his ties to CIA, MOSSAD, or any anti-Islamic group, but simply because of his “experience.”

This is one side of Islamophobia one should not miss. A lot of us hearing the word Islamophobia tend to think immediately about neoconservatives like Irshad Manji, the regular host of Bill O’riely’s hate-spreading show on Fox News. But that is not exactly what Islamophobia is all about. Islamophobia for some is neither a political goal nor a source of income, “it is simply a reaction.”

Here I take the case of some Iranian dissidents both inside and outside Iran known for their right-wing views to explore my thesis. The Monarchists are a good example, although similar views can be found in inside reformists too. In the case of the Monarchists, the key to understand their rising anti-Middle Eastern and Islamophobic views is not just political but cultural and identity-based “exile.” By the (I shall assume) self-made term “identity-based exile” I am referring to the largely-forgotten problem of failing to adhere to the defined both revolutionary and post-revolutionary identity of their mother society (Iranian society). The Monarchists come from a pro-Modern and pro-American nationalistic background has clear contradictions with the Khomeinist ideology popular inside Iran at the time, and then still contrary to the Liberal ideology of the Khatami Reform Movement.

Their Islamophobia, thus, comes from the unablity this group faced in conforming with their society. Infact, not only did not they become “conformed” with the political disscourse of the mother Iranian society, but also they became abandoned by their compatriots who regarded them as “traitors” and “spies.” They, thus, came up with this new identity which was greatly hostile to the Iranian-Islamic identity, and that is where the seeds of the rising Islamophobia was created.

On Starting a Blog

I took the idea of starting a blog from the blog the respected scholar Juan Cole writes more frequently on Middle Eastern politics called “Informed Comment.” In an interview the Berkley University TV’s program “Conversations with History,” Cole mentions that he came up with the idea of writing blog partly due to the difficulties he faced in publishing his political analysis on the Middle East in newspapers and popular journals which, as he points out, always consider works done by scholars journalisticly too complicated and thus less worthy than a work done by a journalist.

Not probably too suprising, I,a Political Science student with a great focus on Middle East as my main area of research interest, face the same problem as Juan Cole does especially with the rising tendency begining to appear in me in writing more and more in English. The Raison d’être for this blog, thus, is really to reflect my occassional thoughts on Middle East politics.

Most of the posts are going to be essentially in the form of op-ed articles. They include my commentary on Middle East politics. In later-on posts, I shall further explain my theories in analyzing the dynamics of International relations as well as comparative politics in the Middle East. As my style of writing shall make more and more clear, this blog is more probably going to be a scholarly blog, and that is really what I am intending for in this blog.