As that was sinking in, I added that such a real portrayal of Iran reveals to us how bizarre the representation of Iran is in the popular media and by demagogues, who project Iran as some kind of a primitive country, where people have lots of kids so that they can send quite a few over to the US as suicide bombers.
Linking the thoughts to an article we had discussed on the liberation of women, I noted that Iran is a country where a higher percentage of women go to college compared to their counterparts here in the US. I shared with them the recent news item about Iranian colleges curbing female students from a few disciplines because they want more men in those fields.
It in unfortunate, I told them, that we have been even prevented from getting to know Iran. I told them they can get more on these kinds of topics in advanced courses.
That is where my Iran spiel ended.
I wish I weren't that square and professional in the classroom. I wish I could have told them in plainer, simpler words: fuck all those politicians and the media who are hell bent making sure that the average American would view Iranians only as monsters.
Fuck them all, is what I should have said.
But, I walk around with some old-fashioned sense of professionalism and decorum in the classroom!
It is one thing, and correctly so, to view Iran's president as a nutcase. But, President Ahmadinutjob is not what every Iranian is. The mullahs and ayatollahs are certainly trying their best to screw up the country, yes, but that does not mean every Iranian is so.
However, listening to the fucked up politicians and pundits, not merely now but ever since 1979, the average American knows only one thing: Iranians are out to destroy the US and we have to be on the alert.
We should tell those politicians and pundits to fuck off.
I wish I had taken up class time to share with them even the little bit I know about Iran. Its glorious history. Its contributions to art and literature. About Rumi. About how much the Indian art and culture, even Bollywood, became influenced by the Persians.
Instead, I wore an academic straitjacket, stuck to what the course was about, and merely hoped that students would figure things on their own. Fuck me too, I suppose!
There is so much of an insane word association game being played by the fucked up politicians and pundits: Iran = Muslims = terrorists. That is it.
Like how Newsweek equated the riots by a few hooligans to "Muslim Rage." Fuck Newsweek.
The good thing is that I have an hour-plus driving time when I debrief within myself.
Sometimes, I switch the radio on during those drives. Yesterday, I am so glad that I turned the radio on at the correct time: Orhan Pamuk's interview on NPR. In that, Pamuk said:
When I said that or when I wrote that, I meant people like Hassan, the radical angry person in my novel who cannot see a bright future waiting for him. There's no job possibilities, and his sense of himself is low. The anger is the anger of a person who sees that history is being unfolded in some other place. But on the other hand, I also want to underline the fact that all these provocations, these little uprisings, flag-burnings, a small minority of manipulated protesters does not represent the wealth and variety of Islamic cultures and people.Thus, sanity restored!
We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing or provocative films, I'm worried not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We're very sorry for that. But I'm worried about, you know, for the last 35 years, I mean, stone by stone, word by word, I'm trying to build an effective word in which readers both from Turkey and from all over the world understand the nuances, shades, colors of where I belong. You may say Islamic civilization or Turkey between east and west, but once a major thing like bombing and killing happened, headlines only talk about Islam and terrorism, and I should refuse to connect that.
If only I could force the fucked up politicians and pundits to listen to Orhan Pamuk, or to read Rumi!
Here is a wonderful verse by Rumi:
Inside the Great Mystery that is,Why this competition?
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?
2 comments:
Beautiful post. Of course Iran is a rich culture and has a great history and the current nut cases ruling that country certainly do not represent it.
I have a different take on the Islam front. I believe lumping together all Muslims is inappropriate. The Muslims of Indonesia are a million miles from the Muslims of Saudi Arabia. The fact that they share a common religion is neither here nor there. They are culturally extremely different and behave differently when situations arise.
When we talk of Islam and extremism, we largely talk of the Middle East, or the Arab world. There, there is some cause for such association because there is a large (although not majority) support for such behaviour. Religious intolerance, and violence is most pronounced there - much more than any other part of the world. Historically this has been so - over history much of the religious intolerance there has been practiced by Christians and it was the Muslims that were the more liberally minded. There is something about that region that breeds extremism - witness some of the extremism in Israel's behaviour.
That region cannot escape the fact that most of the terrorism in the world has bred there. It is, but natural, that the rest of the world views it with a biased lens. For that bias to go, the governments and the society should do more to isolate the extremists. When there is an atrocity perpetrated, there should be more condemnation, more signs of sympathy to the victims, more action to strike against the terrorists. A good example is Saudi Arabia which took no action against the violent elements operating from within the country until they started attacking Saudis themselves. After that the iron hand came upon them, but they did precious little when that lot was simply exporting violence.
I am not saying Islamophobia is right, but the Arab societies must do much more to prove that such feelings are outrageous.
Intolerance and political mileage going hand in hand - the common man gets crushed in the grind.
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