Working Class and Female in Iran
March 10, 2010 by Mandana
Filed under Featured, People on the Move
Read this article by Setareh Sabety, an Iranian-American writer and poet, who has been featured on touchIRAN in previous articles as well.
To mark International Women’s Day, I decided I should write about three Iranian women whom I came to know well when living in Iran just before Ahmadinejad’s first term. The three of them worked for me as housekeepers or babysitters and my knowledge of their lives is limited to our employer-employee relationship and class differences. But we spent a lot of time together and often our talks and interactions were more intimate than those I had with women I knew socially. For whatever it is worth I thought that I should expose the lives of three very ordinary Iranian women from different backgrounds and different sensibilities. This is for them.
Shahin khanoom was a portly and feisty woman in her 40s who loved to eat and talk. She lived in Karaj with her husband and two children. Her husband, who used to be employed in a factory, was now too old and sick to work. Shahin khanoom was a good cook and experienced housekeeper. She was literate and looked forward to her Koran classes. She wore a black chador which was always dirty, was an active member of her mosque and was devoted to the Mahdi whom she swore to every other sentence. Shahin khanoom was not overly devout, at least around us, never really proselytizing and more concerned about making a living than the nuances of Shiite Islam. She was very friendly and managed to charm any guest in our house into giving her a good tip. Shahin khanoom knew everyone in our neighborhood of high rise apartments and was the one everyone came to when looking for help. She found jobs for many of her friends and relatives. She feigned love for my children the way only Iranian nannies do with shameless conspicuousness that may be partially fake but is comforting nonetheless.
Shahin khanoom came to me in tears one day. Her daughter had just finished her high school and was taking English and a computer literacy course. She had found a good suitor, a rich boy from the neighborhood but did not have enough money for a dowry and could not possibly agree to the match for fear of losing face that the lack of a proper dowry would surely cause. So, I set out to collect money from friends and family to add to my own contribution and gave it to her. She told me she would buy a fridge and other household musts for her beloved daughter. I told her I would love to attend the ceremony. She promised to invite us all, to the delight of my own eight year old daughter.
When several weeks passed, I asked Shahin khanoom about her daughter’s wedding plans and was told that the suitor had reneged. I was very upset for the poor girl and assured Shahin khanoom that another prospective husband would soon surface. A few days later her daughter came to pick her up and I ran into her in the lobby and noticed that she had had a nose job! I soon realized that the dowry money was really meant to be used for a nose job. I was going to bring it up to let her know that I had discovered her lie but decided not to when the next day Shahin khanoom came to me crying. Her husband had become angry when she, coming home from work, had cooked a dish that he hated and her son loved. He had thrown the dish at her and hit their son before storming off. Whether or not the story was meant to deter my anger at her or not I decided to comfort her and forgive her the lie about the dowry. A nose job, after all, was fast becoming as important prerequisite for marriage as a dowry in Iran.
Shahin achieved her dream of opening a hairdressing salon after two years of working for us. Only to close the salon just six months later because she was losing money. When she left to open her salon Shahin khanoom introduced her sister-in-law to replace her.
Fatemeh was in her early thirties, illiterate with the accent of her native Kerman. Her husband, Shahin khanoom’s brother, was an opium addict who ate opium because it was cheaper than smoking it. He worked in a shoe store belonging to another relative but did not make enough to support his habit far less his four year old son and wife. So they had decided that he should stay home and take care of their four year old son who was still too young to attend public school. Fatemeh khanoom had no experience as a house keeper but was hard working and proud. She lived in the outskirts of Karaj further from the capital than Shahin khanoom in a rented house whose toilet was a shack at the bottom of the yard. She left her home early in the morning walking down an often muddy road and taking two buses to get to our house. She never missed a single day’s work and was, unlike Shahin khanoom, very honest with a work ethic that seemed to belong more to New England than Kerman.
One day she came to work with her young and incredibly precocious son. She told me that her husband had been unable to score opium the day before because she had refused to give him money. Going through withdrawal the addict husband, one of many thousands in Iran, had taken it out on the boy and beaten him. I told Fatemeh Khanoom she could bring the boy to work every day if she wanted. Once a month I would ask the husband, who was skinny and frail, to come and wash windows or do some other job so that I could pay him something too. Fatemeh khanoom never again refused to pay for his opium. He was not a bad man, we had come to agree, but he was an addict who like many could not quit. When I asked Fatemeh khanoom why she did not divorce him for he was useless and abusive to boot, she told me that she would lose face in her village if she went back for her yearly Nowrouz (Iranian New Year) visit without her husband. When I asked her was it better to have an addict for a husband than none at all she told me the men in her family all smoked opium (Kerman produces the best quality of opium in the world and Kermanis are known to have a penchant for smoking it). But even if her relatives where not opium smokers it was better to keep one’s husband even if he was a murderer than walk around with the stigma of divorce. When I told her then I should probably never visit her village she told me having money changed everything and I would quickly be forgiven and have many suitors! While in Iran I often saw how money could dissolve the most rigid of religious and traditional strictures.
Roya was the first woman I employed when I returned to Iran after twenty some years in 2002. Roya khanoom was in her early twenties, a student in the last year of accounting at Tehran Azad University. Her father had been the driver of a friend’s dad before the revolution. A pretty, energetic and smart girl, she was the eldest of four sisters. She performed her prayers and fasted during Ramadan but did not believe in the hijab, which she took off the minute she got inside the house regardless of the presence of unrelated men. Her father who was a fast-talking north Tehrani from Gholhak was a kind of jack of all trades who broke his fast with a shot of iced vodka that I would give him when he came around sometimes for iftar (breaking of fast after sun down). Her sister was studying English at the University in Rasht and was in love with a boy that she was secretly dating but whom she could not marry, according to tradition, until her older sister, Roya, had married.
Roya and I became very close since I was going through a difficult second marriage and she was always having boyfriend problems. She was very open-minded and hated the mullahs in power. She was, like the rest of us, very disappointed with Khatami and watched satellite Iranian television broadcasts from Los Angeles and Dubai. Like most young people I met when I lived in Iran her biggest dream was to leave. She loved clothes and makeup and spent the part of her salary which she did not give to her father on grooming. She was hard working and dedicated, a veritable manager who was running my household the second week on the job. Roya was extremely articulate and a great debater making me joke that she should study Fegh (religious law) in Qom.
She had a fiancee whom she loved. They had been dating for two years. He was a college graduate and worked for the Ministry of Commerce. It was important for Roya that her husband be at least as well educated as her. She had turned down a rich bazaari suitor for that very reason. She argued with me that a husband who is not as educated as his wife would end up resenting her. A husband feeling intellectually inferior to a wife was fatal to a marriage according to the wise beyond her years Roya. The pragmatism of women that I met in Iran, young and old, never ceased to shock me.
Finally a date had been set for her wedding after much bickering between the two families regarding the number of guests and responsibility for costs. A wedding in Iran is a serious business transaction. The price of the Mehr (or bride price) is of utmost importance. As Roya’s dad explained to me, “I have to ask for a high Mehr because if the boy turns out to be rotten who do I go to get my daughter’s reputation back?” The Mehr, (which can be cashed any time after the wedding) which I initially abhorred as putting a price tag on the woman in a marriage, actually saved Roya from the fate of Fatemeh khanoom.
The morning of the wedding Roya and her family went to the notary to sign the wedding contract but her fiancé did not show up. A few days later a distraught Roya came to me in tears. The fiancee who had managed to hide his heroin addiction had had an overdose and had been taken to the hospital a few days before. The boy’s father, afraid that the marriage would not last long and that the high bride-price would be demanded once the bride and her family found out, forced him to leave Roya waiting. If it had not been for the Mehr she would have been married to an addict which was surely worse than the pain and humiliation she had to endure for being stood up.
When Ahmadinejad got elected I moved from Iran leaving behind my own bad marriage. I have tried to keep in touch with the three women. Fatemeh works for my mother now and her husband is still at home although her son goes to school and gets straight A’s. Since I have moved she has been forced out of her rented houses five times. With the high price of rent she still does not have a place with a bathe or shower. With the high price of goods she can only feed her family as much meat as my mom buys for her. Her husband still eats opium and sleeps most of the day. Shahin khanoom’s husband passed away, she married a rich Haji, and is an active supporter of Ahmadinejad at her mosque according to her sister in law. Roya went on to get a job at a company after she graduated. She makes half of what she made as a babysitter and housekeeper but it was better position to have for her reputation and for finding a husband. More than seven years on she is still not married. On the phone recently Roya told me that she had never recuperated from being stood up. In her neighborhood, amongst family and friends she had lost face. She asked me if I could get her a visa and help her to leave “this hell.”
Follow Setareh Sabety on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SetarehSabety
Setareh’s article was originally posted here.
Former Member of the Basij Speaks of the Injustice Inside Iran
Today, I came across an interview that was conducted with a former member of the Iranian Militia, the Basij. He was arrested for not cooperating with the orders of the hardliners and refusing to assault Iranian protesters. The content of this interview is distressing and hard to read…for me, it was a little to graphic, but it’s the reality of what is going on inside Iran and we can’t turn blind eyes to the oppression and the struggle that Iranians inside Iran are enduring. We must stop sitting comfortably and begin to think of ways to make a tangible difference.
“On that day it was one of the major protest days on which many people were arrested. There were people of all ages. Then we organised them by age, taking down all their details, names, addresses. They were then held in containers for up to 24 hours before being taken to prisons.
“I encountered 13 and 14-year-olds and upwards.
“With the connections that I had, I had requested a different post. With the history of my activities with them and their familiarity with me and the trust they had in me, they gave me a role there. Because I had good handwriting and office experience I was put in charge of writing down the particulars of all the detainees.
“All those who were brought there were terrified and bewildered. It was a very particular atmosphere. Things proceeded stage by stage.
“The atmosphere was truly difficult.
“With the utmost disrespect and the utmost violence the detainees were thrown into containers.
‘Kids naked outside’
“That night after dinner one of the guys and I went outside to smoke a cigarette. Four of us went out the back. We took a torch with us. As we got outside we heard strange noises. The sound of screams and shouting.
“We set off towards the noise to see what had happened. We saw the door of one of the containers was open. A few of the officers were standing outside.
“We moved towards the containers. We saw one of the kids naked outside. I cast my torch into the open door of the container, I saw a group… this was the container with the underage children that they had arrested. All those under 14 were in there. With my torch I saw that there were others naked and I saw that the floor was wet.
“As I saw all this with my torch, one of the guards insulted me and told me to switch off the torch. He grabbed my torch and threw it across the yard and hit me. I thought I’d done wrong and didn’t say anything
“Another of us was talking to the officer who was harassing the naked boy outside. He said ‘What do you want with this poor boy, this servant of God? How can he defend himself in his condition? Don’t you know God, aren’t you scared of God?, Why are you doing these things?’
“I somehow became involved in defence of this child who they were crushing, who they’d stripped naked.
“Things became heated and we were all involved and they summoned us to the commander. X was openly critical, he was very brave. I didn’t say anything. He was particularly brave. The discussion continued there, that what was this path that we’d taken, that is it an Islamic directive that people’s wives and children are being raped?
Torture and beating
“They arrested me that night and the next day put me in an individual cell, in solitary confinement. It was there that the torture and beating began.
“When they took me for interrogation they asked which group we were in, for whom we were spying saying ‘Who had directed your mission that night?’
“They even accused us of setting out to free the detainees, of setting out to disrupt everything. I couldn’t believe all this. I couldn’t believe what was happening, what they were saying. I couldn’t believe the insults, the beatings…
“When you see everything, hear the screamS and shouts, people crying out for help. Why wasn’t this happening in other containers holding people who were older? Why was the floor of the container wet? We didn’t have a hose there. All this together. It wasn’t blood. All this together…
‘I thought I had gone blind’
“During the interrogation I told the truth, explaining that it wasn’t as they said. But they told me their version. After a few days I realised… following pressure… after the beatings, after the torture, that they what they were after was my confirmation of their version.
“They told me that if I confirmed their story and confirmed that I was spying, that I had joined the Basij with the intention of undertaking such activities and harming the order, that if I confessed and went along with them and signed, that I would be freed. Unfortunately, my personal endurance was not more than this, I couldn’t take any more.
“Their treatment of me… even though I was high-ranking in the Basij and had a long history of activity… I never expected to be spoken to in such a way, let alone insulted and sworn at, hit, kicked.
“The first time they took me for interrogation they struck me so hard in my left eye that I couldn’t see for a while. After the second day I could see a little, I thought I’d gone blind in my left eye. I still have problems with it, it’s never returned to normal. Those who torture you are well built. They have strong hands and strong bodies.
Execution scenarios
“They created execution scenarios. They said we’re going to kill you and we’ll link your death to the protests. We’ll say that you were killed during a protest.
“There was a table on which I stood for some hours with my hands tied and a rope around my 
neck. They came a few times and said they’d come to execute me now, or in an hour. I was very worried.
“Then they came and pulled the table away. I fell. I thought I was saying goodbye to this world.
“It was as if I was fading. When they pulled the table, the rope wasn’t attached to anything. I fell backwards, and fainted. When I came to I was wet. They had thrown water over me. I vomited. They took my confession then and I signed. I can scarcely believe all this now.
“This all happened in the first week.
100 day detention
“I was held for around 100 days. My family didn’t know where I was but then through the people we knew they found me and put up bail and I was released. [They put up [a bond] the deeds of the house.
“I was in an individual cell but they later took me to a larger cell that I shared with my friend.
“I still feel responsible. It was me who recommended him to this Basij operation.
“He is someone whose family for generations had served honestly in the mosque. An excellent guy, a pure, humble person. I thought we could trust him and introduced him so that we would have good people among us. They were giving us 150,000 tomans to 500,000 tomans. I encouraged him.
“He had a wife, he had a child. He changed so much. All the torture, so many beatings.
“I wanted to help him, because I liked him. I wanted to give him a leg up. This was my intention, but unfortunately he became involved and was very disturbed by what he witnessed.
‘Very far from Islam’
“We’re Muslims. Our religion is Islam. We recognise God. When you consider everything, in the end it was very different to all that they said. Those things were very far from Islam.
“Islam had become a curtain for them, from behind which they could do whatever they wanted.
“Directives were presented as the Islamic directives. Everything we say is Islam. You mustn’t question Islam. Disagreement with our directives is disagreement with Islam, in other words disagreement with God. We became like machines. They took away our personal control.
“I grew up in a religious family. As I child I was religious, it wasn’t just since before the elections or during the elections. These are our beliefs. I grew up in a religious family and reached the age that I could understand what was going on during the month of Moharram, the rituals at the mosque. When it came to Ramadan, I fasted. So I wanted to join the Basij.
“During Moharram, Ramadan, in these religious months they carried out responsibilities. When I saw these things it made me want to have Basij responsibilities. I loved Islam, I loved the supreme jurisprudence.
‘People’s organization’
“It’s a people’s organization, a civil organization. I mean I think it was, although now I think part of it may have been the agenda of a particular group. You see it’s ordinary people who join the Basij.
“They enter the organisation of their own free will, because as I said it’s an organisation of the people, people join of their own will and their activities with the Basij are driven by their own desire, out of love.
“In Iran today it’s genuinely hard to find work, it’s hard to get into university. It’s every young person’s wish to enter university and continue his education to have a good life, to find a good job, to have wife, a house, a car. These were all things that they gave us with various methods.
“We felt good, we had a certain satisfaction. We noticed the differences. When I looked at my friends, they didn’t have the car I had, the job I had, the further education I had, that had come to me so easily. All through the Basij. That’s not why I joined. It was out of interest and love, but these were a support. They gave us hope. They were bonuses that encouraged us.
“I think these were things that they wanted to give us to trap us. So that we would be under their thumb. I think that’s exactly it. We would do whatever they told us.
“We grew up with this idea. I joined the Basij at an age that I was like putty that could be moulded. We grew up with these ideas. They gave us character.
Good intentions
“I believe that I didn’t join the organisation with bad intentions. Not just me, others too. Their intentions were good, to provide a service for people, rather than to get a bonus or perform their commander’s orders.
“I believe that there are people who are now full of regret, who are not able to express this regret and they are not able to leave the organisation. They [the guards] called me an outsider. I want to say that all those in the Basij are not bad people. We too are victims.
“I didn’t know the people who tortured me in prison. They were unfamiliar to me. I had come from outside the city. The people in my own town would have been familiar to me. I didn’t know the people who tortured me in that prison. Sometimes they would come with their face covered.
Sexual violence
“I didn’t know night from day when I was in solitary confinement. I was so disturbed that I couldn’t sleep at night from the pain. the pressure and stress.
“My friend who shared my cell created havoc. He’d never seen anything like this. Well, nor had I. He was in shock. He was confused. He lost control. He screamed and shouted, threw himself against the walls. The guards warned him that if he continued with this behaviour they would make things worse for him.
“He was under a lot of pressure. I haven’t experienced having a wife, but he was very close to his wife and he had a small child too.
“On the one hand the deception, on the other the torture he was subjected to, as well as his dependence on his family, all this caused him to lose control.
“He began screaming and shouting and swearing. No matter how I tried I couldn’t calm him. The guards came. One of the guards beat him. His face was bleeding… his clothes were torn off… The guard had a baton… he was sexually violated with it.
‘Ashamed before God’
“One guard was outside, one inside the cell. I wanted to protest, to shout, to help him, but I had seen how they dealt with protesters and I couldn’t protest.
“I am thoroughly ashamed. I’m ashamed before God, ashamed of my youth, ashamed in front of my friend, ashamed in front of the people. I only thank God that during these arrests I never harassed anyone.
“There’s the poem that says ‘Human beings are members of a whole’. My friend, the people, myself, you, others, we are all one. Any one person’s pain can affect everyone, can disrupt calm.
“I have this terrible feeling of pain, that I spent the best years of my life unaware. They used this. I was a tool for them to reach their objectives. I unwittingly got involved in their plans. I was unknowingly led by them.
“Their slogan was that we were the force of the people, the eminent ones, that we must lead. We were unaware of what they brought on us. Our thoughts were not our own.
‘I hate their philosophy’
“Our religion is Islam, others may have other faiths but we are all of one God and that’s what’s important to me. I hate their philosophy, their organisation, their mobilisation, their way of thinking, their mode of management.
“I’m Muslim and I know myself, I believe in myself. I know that they took advantage of Islam.
“I am certain that when the Revolution took place and people lost their lives for it, that their aim wasn’t for a group of people to come to power to govern by manipulating people’s thoughts.
“When the revolution happened… the way I see it, we wanted to eradicate all oppression, we wanted to manage our own military, we wanted to govern ourselves.
“We wanted a government of the people, risen from the people, a product of the people, for it to recognise the people, to understand them and know what they had suffered. Not for their own interests. Not for them to put their own interests above those of the public.
‘I want Iran to be free’
“Life is a right that God has given us all. There must be a system in place for everyone to enjoy life and achieve God’s will. Not just to follow something blindly, but to be free, to have freedom.
“The system should be a people’s system, for it to care about people. All this in a great land, an extremely rich land, for it to have good standing in the world. To be proud to say Iran.
“To be acknowledged if I go somewhere and I say I’m Iranian, to be proud, not hide behind a curtain, not hate my Iranian identity. Not to say I’m Iranian and people respond saying ‘We saw your elections’, or if I say I’m Iranian, they say ‘You must be a member of Basij’, or if I say I’m Iranian, they say ‘You must be Muslim.’
“I want our Iran to be a free Iran. Here it’s a safe environment, but I’ve been torn from the arms of my family. That’s a basic right but it’s been taken away.
“I had been active in the Basij unit in the province, people knew me and believed in me.
“The way things happened, it was as though I had disappeared, no-one had news from me, so they came look for me. They set out to find what had happened to me and this eventually led to where I was held, and they negotiated my release.
“When I got out, I was in my mother’s care.
“I went to see someone for advice. He said there were two options. I could take the legal route and report all that had happened to me, to consult those already active and involved in the post-election rape cases, that they could pursue my case. This in itself was a risk.
“The very people I would consult were under surveillance. If I went to them there was the possibility of betrayal. You have to stand strong and fight to achieve your rights. Or I could go somewhere safe, to save my life for now and return once…
“I couldn’t tolerate any more. One prison experience was difficult enough for me.
“One of the human rights activists gave me an address of someone in Europe who could help me. I got in touch via the internet.
‘I was truly terrified’
“When I was released, they’d told me that I mustn’t contact anyone or tell anyone anything of what they had done to me. And after all their threats I had seen for myself that they meant it. I was truly terrified.
“I had seen that they carry out their threats to the end. I didn’t even go to a doctor because I wouldn’t have been able to explain what had happened, why I was at the doctor, what my ailment was.
“I would have had to have explained what was wrong.
“During this period I had to register with the local Basij unit once a week, to announce myself, that I was present in the area.
“I even lost my job, and all the bonuses they had given me over my years with the Basij, all the letters of recommendation that they’d written.
“They’d said that as soon as we know that you’re no longer active with us we will take away all these benefits. That’s one of the things that I’ve lost this year. Part of me says ’so what, they can keep it’ but then I think I had to leave my country, be estranged from my family and far from my fiancee.”
Source: Channel 4 News
Internet, Blogging, Journalism and What It Means for IRAN
Iran has topped the list, along with China, released by the Committee to Protect Journalists’ of countries that have the most reporters in their jails. 2009 was proven to be the most deadly and dangerous year for journalists, reporters and bloggers worldwide. Things are only getting worse. How can we help? See how touchIRAN is helping free Political Prisoners.
Here’s an article by Jean Francois Julliard about the current situation in Iran and what it means for internet users, reporters and bloggers.
Paris, France (CNN) — Early last week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini reportedly said Iran’s celebrations commemorating the Islamic revolution would stun the world. It is difficult to believe anything Iran could do at this point could surprise the world.
The protests after the June election led to an unprecedented campaign of intimidation and arrests. Freedom of expression had been seriously undermined by the regime even before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. Journalists and bloggers were regularly arrested and harassed for discussing topics like women’s rights or issues involving ethnic minorities.
News organizations with ties to the reformist movement were fined, suspended or even shut down for criticizing government policies. But in spite of these measures, there remained a functioning press. If reformist publications were limited in their criticism of the government, conservative outlets were rarely the target of censorship or harassment.
This is no longer the case. Any criticism of the government, regardless of its ideological line, is met with repression.
The prospect of Ahmadinejad’s speech last Thursday being interrupted by opposition protesters was viewed as potentially damaging to the Iranian regime’s already fragile claims to legitimacy.
This is why in the weeks before the event, Reporters Without Borders has learned, there was an increase in arrests of journalists and bloggers. The Reporters Without Borders research desk was able to confirm that at least 40 journalists and bloggers were arrested between January 6 and February 12.
Iran has now become the largest prison for journalists and bloggers in the world, with more than 80 Iranian journalists and bloggers behind bars — more than the number of reporters being held in Cuba and China combined.
The international community must now go beyond publicly condemning Iran. As the United Nations Human Rights Council reviews the Iranian situation, member states must make a firm decision to censure the Iranian government for its human rights abuses and send U.N. special rapporteurs to conduct investigations into the abuses.
Hundreds of other journalists are under constant surveillance by the security apparatus and many have had to flee the country because of the threat of being arrested.
Iran no longer even bothers to respect its own judicial standards or procedures. People — journalists and a broad array of those judged to oppose the government — are detained in undisclosed facilities, where reports of physical and sexual abuse are common. These prisoners have no access to lawyers or even information about the charges against them.
One report, from The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, puts the number of arrests in the past two months at 1,000, with people often detained without a reason given under a detention order instituted after the elections last June.
They are often forced to make confessions or take part in what amounts to Stalinist show trials before being sentenced to long prison terms or even death on such charges as being “enemies of God,” “receiving professional training abroad in the preparation of a velvet revolution,” “disturbing public order” and “collaborating with foreign governments.”
The government saw last week’s anniversary festivities as an opportunity to prove it had the support of the population.
So the new wave of arrests was coupled with other measures to prevent Iranian citizens from communicating with each other and the rest of world. Last week, several mobile phone companies stopped allowing users to send or receive text messages. The aim was obvious: to prevent possible protesters from coordinating with each other during the planned celebrations.
Hundreds of Web sites remain inaccessible within the country and Internet connections have been entirely suspended in certain areas. YouTube and Google Mail are two sites most recently blocked. Other Iranian Web sites have also been the target of cyberattacks thought to be linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s powerful military, political and economic organization.
If the international community hopes to address issues like human rights and the Iranian nuclear program, it must take a strong stand and ensure that all of Iranian society is part of the debate. We cannot afford to exclude or forget those who have been silenced by the regime.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jean Francois Julliard.
Read More Here.
So, Is Your “Life Persian?” MLiP.
It was a morning like any other. I sat at my desk, turned on my computer and not too long after everything had started running properly- I was checking out my Facebook newsfeed. I was overwhelmed, confused, perplexed and humored by all of the hilarious scenarios posted that ended with “MLiP”. After a little bit of investigation, it became clear to me…some brilliant Iranian out there had come up with a spin on some of there other sites out there and came up with MLiP, which appropriately stands for “My Life is Persian”.
MyLifeIsPersian.Net allows Iranians from around the globe to submit anecdotes that other Iranians can relate to or would find absolutely hillarious.
Some of my personal favorites are:
Today when ordering a soda, I asked for an eh-Sprite. I grew up in America. It was not a Persian restaurant. MLIP.
My own sister (in her late 20’s) was seeing a guy for 3 years before I even knew about him because my mom made her keep it a secret “Chon mardom harf dar meyaran!” MLIP.
Today, I was having an intense conversation with my teacher about the economy. I tried making a point and I subconsciously used the word “khob” in the beginning of my sentences, and “digeh” in between. MLIP.
My parents have all my friends phone numbers on their refrigerator… I’m 22. MLIP.
Today i came home from school and my mom said “clean your room” and I asked her “why are we having guests over?” and she said no, the cleaning lady is coming and you should make sure your room is clean before she comes. MLIP.
It only gets better from there. The best part? Submit your own and there’s a good chance they’ll post it. It’s awfully entertaining and addicting to read people someone’s anecdote & realize you’re not the only one who’s shared this experience before.
Check it out! www.MyLifeIsPersian.net & get prepared to LAUGH and reminisce of all the times your life was “too Persian”.
Comment here and share your favorite MLiP’s with us!
Bail Set at $30,000 for Ardavan Tarakameh
-50 days after his was arrested, author and film critic, Ardavan Tarakameh’s family announced that he has been granted release on $30,000 bail. Ardavan’s sister, Bahar, remains in prison.
According to CHRR, Ardavan, whose father, Yunes Tarakameh is one of Iran’s most prominent authors, was arrested on December 27th, 2009 at Mahin Fahimi’s house along with his host and a number of other guests. Mahin Fahimi is a member of the Mothers for Peace. The agents then, accompanied Tarakameh to his house and seized his computer and other items after searching the house.
Tarakameh’s sister, Bahar, was arrested on February 5th, 2010 and is currently detained at Evin Prison. She was among the group of 70 authors, poets, translators and journalists who asked for Ardavan’s release in a letter addressed to the head of the Judiciary.
Source: RAHANA
Iranian President Surprises The World With Nontraditional Behavior
In a country where obedience to the ayatollahs is expected, Iran’s president is finding another way.
Even as hundreds of thousands gathered across Iran on Thursday to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, it’s worth noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t the religious fanatic he is portrayed as in the West. In fact, in a country where overt allegiance to fundamentalist Shiism and obedience to the ayatollahs is expected of senior state officials, Ahmadinejad and his supporters are increasing their independence from the theocrats in both domestic and foreign affairs. The root cause is a struggle within the government itself, as Ahmadinejad and his cronies undermine the increasingly unpopular religious establishment to gain a larger share of power. Even the anti-government protesters help the president when they chant “traitor [Supreme] Leader” and “death to Khamenei.”
The president, his ministers, and staff no longer attend meetings of the Expediency Discernment Council appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to mediate between the branches of Iran’s Islamic government. That council, headed by former presidential rival Mohsen Rezai (who reports to the office of the Supreme Leader), had served to oversee the president and his appointees. Hardline clerics and parliamentarians grumble that Ahmadinejad and his ministers regularly defy the Supreme Leader. But having validated last June’s election in Ahmadinejad’s favor, their reactions are limited to blocking certain executive actions like a nuclear deal with the West.
In response, Ahmadinejad has publicly chastised his rivals in the government for “running to Qum for every instruction,” adding that “administering the country should not be left to the [Supreme] Leader, the religious scholars, and other [clerics].” His chief of staff, and relative through marriage, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, echoes those views: “An Islamic government is not capable of running a vast and populous country like Iran. Running a country is like a horse race, but the problem is that [the clergy] are not horse racers.” Mashaei further riled the mullahs by criticizing prophets like Noah and Moses as ineffective administrators akin to the contemporary clergymen who wield power in Iran.
In his efforts to undercut the religious basis of the clerics’ political authority, Ahmadinejad has begun emphasizing “pragmatic values” in governance. When addressing an Iranian university in November, Mashaei took the attack on the mullahs’ authority much further: “God does not unify humans…[because] each person’s [notion of] God varies from the God of others based on individual understanding.” His words, it was quickly noted by aghast ayatollahs, are blasphemous under Islamic law and therefore punishable by death. Rebukes by Shiite leaders fell on deaf ears in the executive branch.
Realizing that antigovernment sentiments are fueled in part by years of behavioral restrictions, Minster of Science Kamran Daneshjou is encouraging attendees at funerals and memorial services to observe a moment of silence instead of reciting the first chapter of the Quran, as has been obligatory. Likewise, the government’s cultural adviser, Javad Shamaghdari, is recommending that the hijab, or veil, not be mandatory—much to the horror of mullahs and orthodox laymen. Powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari even averred publicly in October that preserving the government “is more vital than performing daily prayers.” Being denounced as “heretics” and “infidels” has not swayed the president and his bureaucratic and military cohorts from their increasingly secular politics.
Ahmadinejad’s close ties to the ultraorthodox Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi also haven’t dampened the president’s drive to consolidate power by abjuring beliefs and practices central to the theocracy. Recently Ahmadinejad has even begun rephrasing his oft-repeated statements about the end of the world—in strictly religious terms. In an interview with U.S. news media in September, he commented: “The [Mahdi, or 12th] imam will come with logic, with culture, with science…The stories that have been disseminated around the world about extensive war, apocalyptic wars…are false.” So even Ahmadinejad’s representation of a nonviolent apocalypse serves to distinguish members of the executive office from the mainstream mullahs in power.
Despite strenuous objections on religious grounds from clerics and parliamentarians, Ahmadinejad separated himself further from the mullahs by nominating three women for cabinet portfolios. Ahmadinejad ridiculed his opponents, demanding to know: “Why shouldn’t women be in the cabinet?” In the end, only Marzieh Dastjerdi was confirmed as health minister. Dastjerdi herself provoked the clergy’s opposition for declaring, contrary to Islamic tradition, that women’s rights should be independent from their fathers and husbands. Ahmadinejad subsequently appointed other women to senior administrative posts. “What’s wrong with a woman becoming a governor?” he rhetorically asked an irate gathering in late October, apparently caring little that fundamentalist Muslims everywhere would be incensed.
The president’s example was quickly followed yet again by his subordinates and some family members. Science Minster Daneshjou in-augurated an international conference for women in the sciences in Tehran in January. Azamossadat Farahi, who is Ahmadinejad’s wife, defied both tradition and clerical wish by delivering the keynote speech there on women, knowledge, and science as “cornerstones” of Allah’s creation. Since the recent elections, Farahi has entered public politics very visibly by participating in a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement and by publicly raising the issue of women’s lack of rights. Not to be outdone, chief of staff Mashaei has been snubbing conservatives by providing state funding to female artists.
Likewise, through on-and-off offers to reach a nuclear deal with the West, Ahmadinejad keeps his internal opponents worried—for such an agreement would ease tensions with the West, open Iran to greater interaction with the international community, and thereby consolidate his authority at the expense of the Supreme Leader and the parliamentarians. The latter vigorously oppose any accommodation with the U.S. on nuclear issues, but realize that the executive branch—which is increasingly beyond their control—oversees foreign affairs. Simultaneously, by authorizing development of enrichment facilities and missile-based nuclear-warhead delivery systems, the Iranian president keeps his international critics in a constant state of angst while partially mollifying hardline critics at home.
What does all this mean for the Islamic Republic? Supreme Leader Khamenei originally had endorsed both Ahmadinejad’s reelection and the IRGC’s influence as means of reinforcing clerical power in the wake of last June’s electoral dispute. But then the Green Movement’s challenge to the political legitimacy of rule by Muslim jurists weakened the status quo. As the people seek a more representative government, the secularist factions of Iran’s administration and military are finding common cause in ensuring not only their own survival, but a firmer grasp on power—minus the clergy who have become the central focus of protest.
As a result, together with the IRGC and Basij (a volunteer paramilitary group that has attacked opposition protesters), Ahmadinejad and his ilk are turning to totalitarianism, rather than the fundamentalism of Shiite clerics, to suppress the steadily growing democratic aspira-tions of the Green Movement. Yet the mullahs have strong allies too, not only in the legislature, led by Ali Larijani (who hails from a family of well-known clerics), but even among the president’s own clan, whose members remain divided on abjuring theocracy.
The Green Movement is most open to rapprochement with the West; the clerics, the least flexible. Ahmadinejad, his ministers, and their secular bureaucracy shift back and forth—knowing foreign engagement is essential but not yet completely free of the theocrats’ yoke. Perhaps the squabbling factions in power eventually will render themselves too ineffective to stand in the way of the Green Movement’s reforms. For now, it’s a three-way struggle for the future of freedom, faith, and internationalism.
Choksy is professor of Iranian, Islamic, and international studies and former director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Indiana University. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed are his own.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/233423
Iran Revolution’s End Will Be Heard Around World
Here’s an interesting article from an outsiders perspective on the efforts of Iranians inside Iran who are trying to start a revolution…
Anti-government demonstrators showed up as scheduled on Iran’s streets Thursday, commemorating in their own defiant way the 31st anniversary of the nation’s Islamic revolution. Government forces, meanwhile, worked overtime, and apparently with some success, to clamp down on the protesters.
Important as the day’s efforts by the dissidents may be, though, their significance transcends one day, or one anniversary. It is simply this:
The Iranian revolution in 1979 was the biggest event of the last generation in the Middle East, spawning wars and radicalization that have reshaped the region and, to some extent, the world. If we’re now watching the slow unwinding of that revolution, the consequences will be equally momentous.
To be sure, this is a long-term question, not a short-term one. Iran’s Islamic government in its current form is well-entrenched, and the Revolutionary Guards that sustain it are by far the country’s most powerful force. The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown that it possesses the most important attribute of any imperiled regime, which is the willingness to use brute force to quell rebellion.
So it may take years rather than months to know the end result of today’s grass-roots opposition to the Ahmadinejad government, and there is a distinct limit to what the U.S., or any outside force, can do to affect the course of opposition within Iran.
Yet slowly, things appear to be changing. For one thing, the world increasingly views Iran’s mistreatment of its own 
dissidents as a problem on a par with its nuclear program. One small sign of this came Thursday in the U.S. Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill that would compel the Obama administration to target economic sanctions on Iran at officials who abuse their citizens’ human rights, not just at those involved in the country’s nuclear program.
“The scheme of the bill is straightforward: targeted sanctions against human-rights abusers in Iran,” said one Senate aide involved in drafting the legislation.
Without doubt, the stakes are enormous. The best way to grasp the consequences of a potential unwinding of the Islamic revolution in Iran is to consider how fundamentally that revolution altered the course of history in the first place.
The 1979 revolution was the event that, more than any other, inspired a rise of Islamic fundamentalist sentiment across the Middle East and the larger Islamic world. That rise has shaken governments across the region, prompting them to alternately accommodate fundamentalists, giving them new power, or to suppress them, generating a backlash of sympathy among the populace.
Most notably, the government of Saudi Arabia, in response to both the forces unleashed in Iran in 1979 and to an uprising by Islamic radicals at the Grand Mosque in Mecca that same year, granted new power, money and freedom to the kingdom’s conservative clerical establishment. That allowed the most conservative elements of the Saudi theocracy to better spread their fundamentalist philosophy not just within the country, but to places such as Pakistan and Yemen as well, sowing the seeds for troubles that continue to erupt.
The rise of Islamic power in Iran also led both the U.S. and rich Arab states to bulk up Saddam Hussein in next-door Iraq as a bulwark against the spread of Iranian-style revolution. This empowering of Iraq led to the massively destructive and expensive eight-year Iran-Iraq war—and also to the cultivation of a monster in Saddam Hussein that took two more wars to eliminate.
Further abroad, the Iranian revolution led directly to t
he creation of the Hezbollah armed Islamic movement in Lebanon, which has become a military threat to Israel more real than that posed by any surrounding Arab state. Iran’s revolutionary government also has provided at least inspiration, and some funding, over the years to Hamas, which has undermined the secular Palestinian movement in the Gaza Strip and threatened it in the West Bank.
More broadly, it’s not a stretch to say that the rise of Iranian-inspired fundamentalist sentiment in the region led to the growth of the al Qaeda extremist movement. Direct relations between Iran and al Qaeda have ranged from distant to hostile over the years, because the former is a Shiite Muslim state and the latter a Sunni Muslim-dominated Islamic movement. Still, the U.S. government’s official commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks reported at least some minor Iranian assistance to various players in the plot.
The point is this: Imagine a world in which an unwinding of Iran’s regime produced an unwinding of all those ripple effects.
Of course, even the leaders of the Iranian opposition don’t want to actually undo the Islamic revolution, but rather to reform and democratize it, raising questions about how much would really change if they succeed.
Yet the question for U.S. policy makers increasingly will be whether it is realistic or mere wishful thinking to suppose Iran’s opposition can persist and grow. Put another way, what matters most right now isn’t precisely how many demonstrators turned out in the streets of Tehran on Thursday, but whether the tide of history has turned against the Islamic government of Iran, at least in the form it has taken for the past 31 years.
—Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.comPrinted in The Wall Street Journal, page A2
Original Article Here
Iran Crushes Opposition Protests With Violence
Iran’s regime thwarted the opposition’s hopes of turning the 31st anniversary celebrations of the Islamic revolution into another massive protest today.
It out-manoeuvred the so-called Green movement by swamping the official proceedings with huge numbers of its own supporters, preventing the media from covering anything else and blanketing the rest of the capital with security forces who forcefully suppressed the opposition’s relatively muted demonstrations.
President Ahmadinejad also sought to grab the headlines and divert attention from the protests by announcing that Iran had produced its first stock of 20 per cent-enriched uranium. He declared that Iran was now a “nuclear state”.
Opposition websites claimed a young woman named Leila Zareii, was killed and many others were wounded or arrested. The opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammed Khatami – a former president – were attacked, as was Zahra Rahnavard, wife of the Green Movement’s other leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Even Zahra Eshraghi, granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution, was briefly arrested. She and her brother, Hassan, are both opposition sympathisers and she is married to Mr Khatami’s brother.
“It’s pretty clear that Greens everywhere will feel demoralised… The overall feeling is one of disappointment,” one well-placed source in Tehran told The Times last night. “The opposition miscalculated,” said another.
The regime was determined to prevent the so-called Green Movement from hijacking the biggest day in Iran’s calendar and largely succeeded.
It filled Azadi Square with tens of thousands of flag-waving supporters for the main event – Mr Ahmadinejad’s speech which was broadcast live on state television. Opposition websites posted pictures of the fleets of buses that had brought in the huge crowd and said it was given free food and drinks.
Most foreign journalists are banned from Iran. Those that remain, and their Iranian counterparts, were bussed to and from Azadi Square and barred from reporting on anything else, meaning only the patchiest information emerged from the rest of the city.
Opposition websites said Revolutionary Guards and basiji militiamen were stationed everywhere and that they moved swiftly and violently to break up opposition demonstrations.
They claimed the security forces used live ammunition, knives, teargas and paintballs that would enable them to identify protesters later and that they were beating and arresting women as well as men. They were backed up by water canon, new Chinese anti-riot vehicles and helicopters. Some, wearing plain clothes, infiltrated the protesters. The mobile telephone, internet and text messaging systems were seriously disrupted.
Mr Karroubi’s son, Hussein, said his father had to get out of his car and walk towards Sadeghieh Square, where thousands of supporters had gathered, because the roads were blocked. He was joined by other protestors, but they found their way blocked by plainclothes security forces who attacked them with knives, batons and tear gas.
Mr Karroubi’s bodyguards had to bundle him into a passing car which managed to drive him away, but not before the security forces smashed its windscreen. One of the bodyguards was seriously injured. Mr Karroubi’s other son, Ali, was arrested.
Film clips taken with mobile telephones showed opposition supporters chanting “Death to the dictator” on streets and in subway trains and ripping down a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini. Unrest was also reported in Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashad and other Iranian cities, but it was impossible to verify the reports.
It was also impossible to calculate how many opposition supporters turned out as their demonstrations were scattered. However the numbers appeared to be significantly smaller than on December 27, the holy day of Ashura, even though the Green movement’s three leaders had, unusually, urged their supporters to protest.
One protester insisted the opposition had come out in significant numbers, but “the problem was that we were not able to gather in one place because (the security forces) were very violent”.
Another said: “It means they won and we lost. They defeated us. They were able to gather so many people. But this doesn’t mean we have been defeated for good. It’s a defeat for now, today. We need time to regroup.”
Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid, deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, was quoted as saying: “The massive turnout of the nation shocked the central command of the arrogant front, including the US, England and the Zionist regime.”
Source: TIMESONLINE
Iran Obstructs All Links To The Outside World As 22 Bahman Approaches
Iranian authorities have imposed a virtual information blockade after opposition leaders issued a call for supporters to take to the streets during an important government anniversary on Thursday, people inside the country are saying.
Residents of the Iranian capital said Wednesday that text messages on many messaging services have been blocked and Internet speeds have slowed to a crawl.
The Internet “comes on only a few minutes each day, but you never know when,” one Iranian wrote in an e-mail to CNN, which he said took seven hours to send. “This has been going on for more than four days now. I contacted my Internet provider and they said it is out of their control.”
More ominously, human rights groups and opposition Web sites have reported widespread arrests targeting journalists.
According to the Paris-based journalism watchdog Reporters Without Borders, at least eight journalists were arrested Sunday and Monday, bringing the total number of reporters now in prison to at least 65.
“They have arrested everybody,” said Nooshabeh Amiri, a journalist who fled Iran five years ago and now writes for the Persian Web site Rooz online from exile in Paris. Amiri said some of her former colleagues are trying to flee Iran.
“Just this morning I helped somebody leave through Iraq,” she said.
Meanwhile, Iranian security officers have put out a steady drumbeat of warnings, announcing they will not tolerate opposition protesters during state-sponsored celebrations Thursday, the 31st anniversary of the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“People’s massive participation in 22 Bahman (February 11) rallies will thwart the plots hatched by the enemies to disturb the national ceremony, and enemies will have no opportunity for maneuvering and presenting themselves,” Police Chief Brig. Gen. Ahmadi Moqaddam said, according to the state-backed Fars News Agency.
On January 28, authorities executed two opposition activists after convicting them of being “mohareb,” or enemies of God.
On Tuesday, a court sentenced another activist to death. At least 10 opposition members now await execution.
“Our phones are strictly followed and controlled,” said one young Iranian who participated in past protests, during a phone conversation from Tehran. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Iranian said that for the first time the satellite television signals in his neighborhood had been jammed.
Read the original article here
Preparing For 1979 Anniversary: Internet Disruption & New Dumpsters
Iran observers say you can tell the Islamic republic is getting ready for more street protests when the Internet is disrupted and the text-messaging system is down. And dozens of activists and intellectuals are being arrested preemptively.
And that’s what has been going on in Iran recently, ahead of one of the most important dates of the Islamic republic — the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Internet disruption is reportedly so bad that even a television moderator complained about it during a live program on the state-controlled broadcaster. The moderator, who said that since last Monday the Internet has been down in Iran, seemed to be questioning the officially stated reason for the disruption.
Iran’s communications minister, Reza Taghipour, has said that the reason for the reduced Internet speed in recent days is the damaging of an undersea optic-fiber cable across the Persian Gulf between the Iranian port of Jask and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates due to shipping traffic and anchoring.
The Internet in Iran — just a temporary outage?
“I don’t understand why our Internet cables are just lying in the Persian Gulf and whoever is around kicks them, cuts them, and goes away,” the television moderator said, adding that “this is what we imagine from the statement by the Telecommunications Ministry.”
On Sunday, Taghipour said Internet connections will remain slow this week and that the breakage will be repaired by next week and that Internet speed will be back to normal.
Cleaning The Streets
Other measures also being reported that are apparently aimed at preventing protests by the opposition include warnings to opposition members not to take to the streets on February 11, and new trash dumpsters.
A video has been posted on opposition websites that shows how in central Tehran plastic dumpsters are being replaced by tougher metal ones. During the street protests of recent months, protesters were seen setting dumpsters on fire and using them as shields between themselves and security forces.
The replacement of the dumpsters could be an attempt to counter street protests and prevent protesters from setting them on fire.
Another video posted on opposition websites shows loudspeakers being installed on Vali Street, where demonstrations are expected, apparently in order to dampen the voices of the opposition protesters.
The government is also reportedly deploying over 10 000 security forces to confront opposition activists.
Threats And Warnings
Since last week dozens of student activists and journalists have been arrested in what seems to be a move to create fear among the people and prevent antigovernment protests.
Can the security forces now see through protesters’ masks?
On February 7, the head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Hamedani, warned that the Basij militia forces will not allow any group “to confiscate” the February 11 state demonstration for the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.
Last week the commander of the police forces, Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam, also warned “lawbreakers” and said that the police will confront anyone threatening national security, crossing red lines, and insulting that which is sacred.
Hard-line blogs have also been issuing warning to the Green opposition movement.
Here, a revolution anniversary poster on a hard-line blog that seem to warn the opposition that it will be crushed. “On February 11 we will be waiting for you,” it says, adding that the “Iranian nation” will deal with “the rioters” in the streets.
Citing “reliable sources,” another blog reported that government programmers have designed a new computer program that allows the identification of the faces of people who attempt to hide them with masks, as some opposition protesters have done during the street protests.
The blog claims that modern cameras that have entered Iran “suspiciously” and are being distributed among the Basij forces, who plan to use them on February 11.
Meanwhile, the hard-line Fars news agency reported today that a petition with 1 million signatures calling for the arrest and trial of the leaders of the “sedition” was delivered to judiciary officials. The move seem to be part of measures aimed at creating fear among Green movement supporters.
Despite all the threats, warnings, and ongoing crackdown members of the opposition have vowed to take to the streets on February 11.
Last week, opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi said defiantly that the 1979 revolution has failed to achieve most of its goals, including eradicating the “roots of tyranny and dictatorship.” Musavi also said that “rallies and nonviolent demonstrations” are the people’s right and that the Green movement will not abandon its peaceful struggle.
– Golnaz Esfandiari
Source: RFE/RL
