The War is Over

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has declared today that the new Administration in Washington will no longer use the term ‘War on Terrorism’. I have Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988) in mind using the disbelieving voice of an American Jew for his masterpiece in modern music.

 

So, the war is over.

 

 

Pope Benedict

Pope Bededict’s remark on his first Apostolic Journey to Africa (Cameroon and Angola) that the continent’s fight against HIV/AIDS is a problem that “cannot be solved by the distribution of condoms: on the contrary, it will increase it”, has led to a fierce editorial in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Irrespective of whether the Pope’s error was due to ignorance or because of a deliberate attempt to exact Catholic ideology, it had led to sharp criticism among several European governments and international health organizations. Now the scientific community condemns disastrous remarks as well, in particular as the Vatican is not withdrawing the devastating message but maneuvers with different versions and interpretations.

 

What can be found on the web site of the Holy See looks, in fact, a bit different than what had been reported at first:

 

Q. – Your Holiness, among the many ills that beset Africa, one of the most pressing is the spread of Aids. The position of the Catholic Church on the way to fight it is often considered unrealistic and ineffective. Will you address this theme during the journey? Holy Father, would you be able to respond in French to this question?

 

A. – I would say the opposite. I think that the most efficient, most truly present player in the fight against Aids is the Catholic Church herself, with her movements and her various organizations. I think of the Sant’Egidio community that does so much, visibly and also behind the scenes, in the struggle against Aids, I think of the Camillians, and so much more besides, I think of all the Sisters who take care of the sick. I would say that this problem of Aids cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it. The solution must have two elements: firstly, bringing out the human dimension of sexuality, that is to say a spiritual and human renewal that would bring with it a new way of behaving towards others, and secondly, true friendship offered above all to those who are suffering, a willingness to make sacrifices and to practice self-denial, to be alongside the suffering. And so these are the factors that help and that lead to real progress: our twofold effort to renew humanity inwardly, to give spiritual and human strength for proper conduct towards our bodies and those of others, and this capacity to suffer with those who are suffering, to remain present in situations of trial. It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so. (Emphasis added.)

 

Did the Pope talk about condoms or what is meant by prophylactics? Does he weaken his first condemnation of condoms or is he rather worsening the message by referring now to ‘prophylactics’? Difficult to tell, indeed. The script on the web page of the Holy See of his infamous lecture in Regensburg in September 2006 now contains also numerous rectifying footnotes diluting the rude and insulting first remarks on Islam and its Prophet which has led to outrageous reactions in the Muslim world and the death of at least one nun in Somalia.

 

It is a pity that the 81-year-old Pope, a professor of Catholic Theology with an immense reputation, has proved again and again that he had not effectively changed since the times of Joseph Ratzinger: a merciless exponent of the former Roman Inquisition. As a matter of fact his pontificate has been a series of scandalous speeches, remarks and deeds; a rather recent and especially incomprehensible example being his pardon (later withdrawn upon international pressure) of Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

 

The Lancet’s condemnation today will not lead to a change in the Vatican’s policies. Life is shed with and without an organization which might vanish in due time anyway.

 

 

See also on this blog

 

Out of Control.  Pope Benedict’s scandalous pardon of Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

 

 

 

No Peer Review

Earlier this month, Scientific American reported on a serious case of scientific fraud in the field of pain therapy. Scott Reuben, a fifty-year old Professor in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, has fabricated the data in 21 studies. If that has not yet been accomplished, they have to be retracted, so that practitioners who heavily rely on medical information transfer through databases are not further misled. An unidentified number of patients might have been died from adverse effects of certain potentially dangerous COX2 inhibitors such as Merck’s Vioxx (rofecoxib), and Pfizer’s Bextra (valdexocib) and Celebrex (celecoxib), some having been pulled from the market in 2004 since independent research has reported on greater risks than expected.

 

Another case of scientific misconduct which had been widely discussed in the media only a couple of months ago is that of the Egyptian ‘mathematician’ Mohamed El Naschie, former Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Chaos, Solition and Fractals [1]. The Editor had published in ‘his’ journal more than 300 own papers since 1993 [2] and it was assumed that at least those did not undergo the usual peer review process. In The n-Category Café  physician John Baez made the point that much of this has to be considered complete nonsense [3]. Why did nobody point to that earlier? The ‘Journal’ enjoys a rather high scientific impact factor of 3.025, which is in fact higher than those of other periodicals in Mathematics [4].

 

The dependence of journals, editors, authors, and academic hopefuls on Thomson Reuter’s Impact Factor [5] has certainly excited greed among most scientists. Is it possible that the currently observed so-called information explosion in Science and Medicine is based, at least in part, on the publication of plenty of nonsense or even undiscovered, wide-spread fraud?

 

Having been observing this ‘business’ for almost 30 years, in a small clinical discipline though, the evolution from publishing definitive results of exciting, frequently ‘ground breaking’, research toward an obvious trend of publishing whatever had been done in the laboratory is obvious. Whether the, in theory, highly efficient peer review process still works in practice, in particular in the more hidden scientific habitats, might in fact be questioned [6].

 

The world has seen, during the past half a year or so, the credit crunch in the U.S. developing into a global financial and economic crisis which will keep us concerned and busy for the next couple of years. It might not be too far-fetched when comparing the recent annoying scandals in Science and Medicine with the burst of the bubble in the financial markets. Both, at first sight annoying, incidents may have positive effects on the systems in the long run.

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Publisher’s note in the latest issue: “The Founding Editor for Chaos, Solitons and Fractals Dr El Naschie has retired as Editor-in-Chief. The publisher will work with the editorial board and other advisors to identify a new editor. This is likely to also lead to revision of the aims and scope of the journal, as well as the editorial policies and submission arrangements. Prospective authors can keep informed of the progress on this through the journal’s homepage.”

 

[2] Whenever editors publish their works in their ‘own’ journal there should be suspicion regarding considerable bias: an orderly peer review process may not have been achieved. As an example, in a prestigious journal in my rather small field within Medicine, 1368 articles had been published (according to PubMed, accessed March 26) since 1990. The founding editor-in-chief, who kept this position for now more than 20 years, is authoring/co-authoring 12.7% of these, an estimate of 25% of all of his publications since 1970.

 

[3] It might be revealing that the link to the original posting is now broken. Baez’s arguments can still be found here.

 

[4] Since the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations in a year given to those papers in a journal that were published during the two preceding years, it is likely that El Naschie has manipulated, i.e., unduly inflated, it as well, simply by citing his own ‘work’.

 

[5] The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) had been founded already in 1960 by Eugene Garfield. The offered bibliographic databases enabled calculating measures such as a journal’s Impact Factor. Their publication in the Journal Citation Report in June is heavily awaited for by most members of the academic community.

 

[6] Editors and reviewers should be aware of attempts of fraud due to the ever increasing pressure of ‘publish or perish’. The former should encourage that all authors declare their contributions to the paper. Long traditions of adding department chairs automatically to the list of authors should of course be scrutinized. Conflicts of interest are most probably present whenever company sponsoring had been sought for; etc., pp.

 

 

 

Shimon Peres

The Israeli President [1] has joint the felicitators around Barack Obama sending the people of Iran New Year greetings. In an audio message, the 1994 Nobel laureate (with PLO leader Yasser Arafat) doesn’t conceal, however, his deep antipathy for the current administration. He urges the Iranian people to shake off the rule of “an oppressive and fanatical regime” and return to relations of peace and harmony with Israel, which the two countries enjoyed when the Shah was in power, as the Jerusalem Post writes.

 

Peres’ initiative has been criticized in the meantime by European diplomats as diluting Obama’s endeavor.

 

In their respective addresses, neither Peres nor Obama mention, by the way, the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict where most probably more than one thousand Palestinian civilians lost their lives. It took place during the so-called transition period when the outgoing U.S. President Bush was still in office and Barack Obama was President-elect. Israeli soldiers have, in the meantime, confessed war crimes [2].

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The Israeli technician Mordechai Vanunu has compared Shimon Peres with the Pakistani dealer of nuclear equipment Abdul Qadeer Khan. Vanunu, who has spent 18 years in prison in Israel for revealing details of Israel’s covert nuclear weapons program, has recently asked the Peace Nobel Committee in Oslo to remove him from the list of nominees.

 

[2] Why do they (the Iranians, the Arabs) hate us? A question, many naïve Americans still ask. The video by mead2000 with text and music by Brian Eno (from Another Day on Earth, Opal Ltd. 2005) may in fact be revealing. The monologue by Aylie Cooke is, as Eno states “emotionally brutal”. The movie is congenial.

 

 

 

Good Timing?

President Barack Obama’s video message to the Iranian people has surprised everybody in the West as well. It was launched on Nowruz, as New Year greetings. So far, reactions in Tehran were not really enthusiastic though, rather precautious instead. Was it the right time and tone? At least, it showed some of the President’s naivety or that of his close advisors. A country which is soaked by so-called ta’arouf [1], will consider kindlinesses on the occasion of the nation’s most important, albeit profoundly secular, holiday as such, not more than ta’arouf [2].

 

The Iranians are fully aware, for instance, that deeds do not necessarily follow the words at the moment. Obama has confirmed last week that trade sanctions will be imposed on Iran for another year. His motivation for extending the sanctions, which have been imposed by former President Clinton in 1995 and which would have expired later this year if not renewed, was a continued “unusual and extraordinary threat to the U.S. national security” despite lack of evidence that Iran has illicitly diverted its current nuclear program which is officially declared as solely peaceful [3].

 

While the Obama administration was preparing the video message, it was aired that in late February, an Iranian drone aircraft had been shot down about 10 km beyond the Iraqi border by an American fighter jet. According to Iraqi officials, its entrance was most probably “a mistake”. But what are ferrets for? Timely launching the news about the incident to the public is the interesting issue here. It is usually not mentioned, however, that the U.S. has been flying surveillance drones over Iran at least since 2004 to seek evidence for an illicit nuclear weapons program and “detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to U.S. officials” as the Washington Post (WP) wrote in February 2005 [4]. According to the WP, “[t]he surveillance has been conducted as the Bush administration sharpens its anti-Iran rhetoric and the U.S. intelligence community searches for information to support President Bush’s assertion that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons.” It is conceivable that the results of these surveillance flight have been incorporated in the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that, “with high confidence”, Iran has halted its in fact existing nuclear weapons program in 2003.

 

Yesterday’s accident in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s lifeline when it comes to oil supply, might illustrate the still acute threat the U.S. is imposing on Iran. The strait is only 54 km wide [5]. A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine collided with a Navy warship, a so-called amphibious assault ship.

 

Iran is considering Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s invitation to the upcoming international Afghanistan conference under UN auspices later this month in The Hague, but has not finally decided to participate. As to the U.S. State Department, Clinton has no plans to meet separately with an Iranian delegation there.

 

The new Obama Administration’s pace of change in attitude towards Iran with its rather mixed messages might in fact be highly demanding for Iran’s theocracy with its complicated structures within the administration. The country is preparing for presidential elections as well. The incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has so far not declared whether he will run another time. The previous ‘reform’ president Mohammad Khatami [6] has just withdrawn. The country is torn in an economical downturn for the entire duration of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, with exploding inflation rates, high rates of unemployment, and increasing depression and hopelessness especially among the youngsters, which make up the vast majority of the population.

 

It may in fact be that Obama’s timing might even prevent positive implications of the good news he tries to convey to the people of Iran.

                                        

                         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A form of exaggerated politeness, almost self-humiliation, a sort of white lies in order to get things done in the way one wants them to proceed. As a brief example, when you are offered tea in a carpet shop in the bazaar, you better decline three times before you accept the offer. Everything else would be considered rather impolite.

 

[2] Another quite typical example for ta’arouf was, of course, the so far unanswered letter, the Iranian President has sent to Barack Obama immediately after he had won the November 4 election. Being fully aware of its ta’arouf, the letter had been heavily criticized by Iran’s majlis, or parliament. Writer Hooman Majd had tried, in his recent book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, to explain some of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s more bizarre performances in the West as ta’arouf. You may read more about his book here.

 

[3] The current concern about Iran’s nuclear program is largely due to its refusal to ratify the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. It is interesting and even surprising that former U.S. President George W. Bush had, in one of his last actions, signed an Additional Protocol on December 30, 2008. It was largely considered a symbolic gesture, though.

 

[4] The drones were even visible from the ground and considered by many people as UFOs.

 

[5] Five Iranian speedboats were said to have approached U.S. Navy warships in January 2008. What really happened is still unclear. Iran’s Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards, say a video aired by the U.S. Navy had been fabricated. President Bush described the incident as “provocative” and that it was a “dangerous situation” which should not have happened.

 

[6] One should not forget that, at least according to the NIE, Iran had a nuclear weapons program under President Khatami “with high confidence”. Khatami’s administration also further established Iran’s sponsorship of international terrorism. Consequently, former U.S. President Bush put Iran on the infamous ‘axis of evil’, together with North Korea and Iraq.

 

 

Peer Review

In a recent article on AntiWar.com by Muhammad Sahimi an apparent information leakage of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and David Albright’s Institute of Science and International Security (ISIS) was linked to Olli Heinonen, IAEA’s deputy director for safeguards. Albright’s analysis of the February 19 IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program has led to much speculation. In the original IAEA report it was stated that Iran does not possess so far any uranium with an enrichment level suitable for use in nuclear weapons. ISIS, on the other hand, speculated that ‘breakout capability’ has been achieved already. Such speculations in a more and more confused public may in fact lead to irresponsible responses. There was, for a couple of days, even evidence that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and both his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair would disagree over the issue whether Iran has exceeded the limits or not. 

 

A further analysis of the latest IAEA report with a clear statement on Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon was done earlier this month by R. Scott Kemp and Alexander Glaser at Princeton University who concluded that “[u]nless Iran makes significant modifications to its centrifuge cascades, the claims being made overestimate the amount of weapon-usable uranium that could be produced from Iran’s low-enriched uranium stocks by a factor of three.” They estimate that it would take Iran roughly a year to make a “significant quantity” of weapon-grade uranium and that a more realistic estimate is three years”. In contrast, ISIS assumes when criticizing the statement that Iran is most probably running further, covert, uranium enrichment facilities in addition to the well-known Natanz plant. But that would make any reliable estimates impossible. They are mere speculations and should be regarded as such. So far, there is no evidence for this assumption. As a matter of fact, a respective discovery would most likely lead to an immediate attack by Israel and possibly the US. Scott and Glaser point to that but when reading both their response and Albright’s comment on their original paper, one might ask, whose opinions will finally prevail in the public?

 

Peer review is essential on such a sensitive issue but some reviewers (in fact opinion leaders) are frequently heavily biased, which has especially become true in case of the respected David Albright.

 

 

See also on this blog

 

No New Concern? The February 19, 2009 IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program. 

 

Shut Down for Maintenance. ISIS on Iran’s uranium hexafluoride conversion.

 

Joe Biden in Munich.

 

Not Inevitable. ISIS’s reasoning on Iran’s nuclear program.

 

In a Timely Manner. ISIS report on Iran’s nuclear program during the presidential transition period.

 

 

 

Expected Withdrawal

Five weeks after having announced running for another presidency after 1997-2005, the former ‘reformist’ president of the Islamic Republic Mohammad Khatami yesterday left the campaign. He might in fact endorse another moderate candidate, Iran’s last prime minister (1980-1988) Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who announced last week his bid to run. Another candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, could still significantly weaken the ‘reformist’ camp. It is not clear, however, whether endorsers of one moderate candidate would inevitably also support another. The have-nots, who are the vast majority in the country, won’t vote for any of them. Their hero was and still is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

Apart from a supposed attempt to prevent splitting ‘reformists’ votes’ Khatami might even have perceived signals that he certainly won’t receive the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s support. In any case, his not unexpected move might make a great day for current President and ‘principlist’ (as he is now called semi-officially) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had recently been criticized in the country for his undiplomatic rhetoric against the West which has led to a continuous dispute about Iran’s allegedly peaceful nuclear program. Despite a major economical turn-down also in Iran and galloping inflation Khatami’s decision might in fact largely boost the chances for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

 

 

Najasat-e Ahl-e Kitab

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Tsadik. Between Foreigners and Shi’is. Nineteenth-Century Iran and its Jewish Minority. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 2007, 295 pages.

 

When Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian Captivity in 539 BCE, some of them did not return to Jeruslaem but eventually settled on the banks of the Zayandeh Rud in Central Iran, possibly founding the city of Esfahan [1]. This is the beginning of Jewish life in Iran which thus started two-and-a-half-thousand years ago. While Cyrus is betoken as ‘the anointed’ [2] in the Book of Isaiah, Jews seem to have lived for centuries in peace with the indigenous Persian populace. Persian religious tolerance was legendary as long as Zoroastrianism was the state religion. The alarming rhetoric in particular of the current President of Iran, who had openly questioned the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazi’s terror regime in the early 1940s and the very right of Israel to exist, has caused considerable new concern about the safety of the Jews in the Islamic Republic. It raises again the question, what do we actually know about the relationship of Shi’a Muslims and other ‘people of the book’, or Ahl al-Kitab?

 

Daniel Tsadik is an Assistant Professor at Yeshiva University, New York. He has earned a PhD from the History Department at Yale University. Apparently, Tsadik’s family is still living in Iran. In his new book he tries to illuminate the more than difficult situation of the Jews under the rule of the Shahs of the Qajar-Dynasty, in particular the second half of the 19^th century. Iran has seen the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), the reign of the Pahlavis afterwards and, most significant, the Islamic Republic with its determined Shi’a fundamentalism as state doctrine. Is it possible to draw a parallel between, as Tsadik describes it, religiously motivated anti-Semitic inhumanity and present days’ threats and persecution [3]? On several occasions in the mid-19^th century, so Tsadik, international Jewish organization such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Anglo-Jewish Association or the Jewish Board of Deputies tried to put pressure on the Shah to improve the situation of their brethren in Iran and demanded equal rights as citizens, with fragile, rather transient success, though. Thus, Tsadik traces the debate about the status of religious minorities in Iran, including the Jews, back to the 19^th century interplay between intervening foreigners, the Shah, the Shi’a majority and especially the Ulema, or religious jurists, and local non-Muslim minorities.

 

Tsadik claims that, “[b]eginning with the end of the reign of Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) the condition of the Jews generally deteriorated. This trend became more pronounced under Shah Abbas II (r. 1642-66) and continued in subsequent years.” Abbas the Great, who made Shi’a Islam the Iranian state religion, had even encouraged Jews (and Armenians as well) to settle in his new capital Esfahan. Tsadik stresses that it was largely the legal attitudes of the Shi’i toward the Jews, in particular, considering them (and Christians as well) as impure (najasat-e ahl-e kitab) and inferior as compared to Muslims. It is interesting to see that under the Sunni Muslim Nadir Shah (r. 1736-47) who abolished Shi’a Islam in Iran, Jews experienced a short period of relative tolerance. They were then even allowed to settle in the holy city of Mashhad in Khorasan [4]. But new persecutions emerged with the advent of the Shi’a Qajar dynasty of Shahs (1794-1925).

 

Precise estimates are actually missing but it is clear that the Jewish populace in Iran underwent considerable changes over the past few centuries. At the beginning of the 20^th century, there might have been 40’000 Jews in Iran, roughly 0.4% of the total population [5]. Clearly, with some exceptions, for example traders and physicians, Jews comprised the lowest social status in Iran’s society. They were frequently peddlers or more or less forced to choose vocations usually forbidden to Muslims, such as dyeing, scavenger work, cleaning excrement pits, etc. According to Tsadik, “[S]hi’i (and Muslim, in general) polemic contentions regarded contemporary Judaism as consisting of negative innovations and the Jews as obstinate deviators from their own Torah”.

 

In the 19^th century, afraid of completely loosing its independence, Iran addressed the demands of foreign powers such as Britain, French and Russia, even those regarding minorities in the society. During Shah Nasir al-Din Qajar’s lengthy reign (1848-96) Western powers (particularly British and French) intervened on behalf of the Iranian Jews but his overall positive response (in 1873 the Shah granted the Jews in his country equal civil rights as the Muslims, soon after the 1871-72 Great Famine in Iran which had elicited a growing European Jewish concern for Iranian Jews) was not implemented in full by the government, and a Jew was in fact never treated as an equal private citizen but always a member of the Jewish community. It is revealing for the weakness of the Shah’s order that Jews, as most other non-Muslims, had to remit the jizyah, the annual extra tax imposed on members of the Dhimmah, even after 1873, when Nasir al-Din visited several European states and was directly addressed by Jewish organizations. Tsadik argues that, in the latter half of the 19^th century, the Muslim (i.e., Imami Shi’a) majority in the country and, in particular, the Ulema, by and large prevented the Shah’s intentions of improving the situation of the Jews in Iran. “Portions of Muslim society strongly resisted the bestowal of a new status on the Jews. They fought for the application and reinforcement of the dhimmah laws.”

 

Tsadik’s book is an excellent study shedding light on a so far largely unknown relationship between the fundamentalist Imami Shi’a branch of Islam and religious minorities in Iran. It raises concerns that even the currently valid fatwa by the late Ayatollah Khomeini who, after his return from exile in Paris, declared Jews (and Christians and Zoroastrians as well) of being protected under the Dhimmah, might not be implemented in full. In particular the unacceptable rhetoric of the current President of Iran and irresponsible acts such as the so-called ‘International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust’ in 2006 in Tehran might remind us that even fatwas might be abrogated.

 

Outside of Israel, most holy sites for Jews are found in Iran, for instance Daniel’s tomb in Shush, the ancient Susa, or sites related to Esther and Mordecai in Hamadan, the ancient Achaemenid capital Ecbatana [6]. Self-evidently Jews in Iran consider themselves as Iranians. They regard offers of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to emigrate to the US an unreasonable demand. Presently, the Jewish population in Iran seems to be safe. It is hoped that their 2500-year-old history in Iran will continue.

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In fact, settlements in what is now called Esfahan are essentially older and may well have their origins in the 5^th or 6^th millennia BCE, the so-called Zayandeh Rud River Culture with a strong link to Kashan’s Tappeh Sialk, an ancient ziggurat some 200 km north of the modern city of Esfahan.

 

[2] Cyrus might have been regarded by Jews as the (or one) Messiah. According to (Deutero-)Isaiah (Isa 45:1-8), God would anoint the Persian king Cyrus who would then destroy Babylon and liberate the Jews.

 

[3] Tsadik does not mention the term ‘anti-Semitism’ in his book a single time. It is obvious that he based anti-Jewish sentiments of Iran’s Muslims entirely on the religious doctrine which is, according to his arguments, especially characteristic for Imami Shi’a Islam.

 

[4] According to Tsadik, the central government of the Shah in Tehran was in essence not able or willing to prevent persecutions in the impassable countryside which were mainly due to the zeal of the Ulema, who were implementing stricter Shi’a laws dooming Jews and other minorities as impure and inferior. How could the new Sunni leader Nadir Shah reverse deeply rooted resentments of his people?  

 

[5] Although generally a tiny minority in a large Muslim country, due to the severe restrictions implemented by the Shi’a laws on the Dhimmah, or people of protection, Jews concentrated in the greater urban centers such as Shiraz, Esfahan, Hamadan, Urumiyah, Tehran etc. where they were more visible and could make up even 5-10% of the inhabitants. At the time of the foundation of the State of Israel, more than 100’000 Jews lived in Iran, but since then, their numbers have dropped, especially after the Islamic Revolution. Presently, 20’000 to 25’000 have stayed there, still (as ever) the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel. According to Iran’s Constitution, they are equal to Muslim. Jews have a representative in the Iranian Majlis, or parliament. Currently seen emigrations to, for instance, the USA are due to economical strain rather than persecution.

 

[6] One major pilgrimage site is the huge Jewish cemetery in Lanjan, 20 km south of Esfahan. The small synagogue contains the shrine of Sarah bat Asher, son of the Patriarch Jacob. Tzadik writes that “[a]ccording to the midrash […]Sarah never died, and popular Iranian Jewish tradition held that she arrived in Isfahan with the exiled Jews from the tribe of Judah. Miraculous stories and legends surrounding this figure were common in Jewish circles. Although her veneration site drew pilgrims every month, it constituted a pilgrimage center for Jews mainly during the month of Elul and in the days preceding Day of Atonement, in the following month of Tishrey. Near the Jewish site there was also a Muslim tomb, Pir Bakran, named after a religious figure who was believed to be buried there. A stream that flowed from the Zayandih Rud River separated the two shrines. The Islamic tomb also functioned as a school for the children of the nearby village, similarly named Pir Bakran.” Some recent pictures taken at the sites mentioned above may be found here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also on this blog

 

Begs to Differ. Hooman Majd’s explanations of the Iranian soul.

 

From Aradan. How the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran came into power.

Nuclear Non-proliferation

Mordechai Vanunu has asked the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo to remove his name from this year’s list of nominees. “[I] cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres. He is the man who was behind all the Israeli atomic policy.”

 

Like Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan did in Pakistan, he writes, Peres was behind the atomic weapon proliferation to South Africa, including the 1978 nuclear weapon test, and other states.

 

Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, had revealed to the British press details of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. He had been kidnapped in Italy by Israeli agents in 1988 and spent 18 years in prison, 11 years in solitary confinement. He was released in 2004, but had been arrested since then several times. Between 1988 and 2004, Vanunu had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Price each year.

 

Vanunu had received an honorary doctorate by the University of Tromsø, which is currently my employer.

 

 

 

Begs to Differ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hooman Majd. The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Doubleday, New York 2008, 271 pages.

 

Pointing every now and then at THE DIFFERENCE in our cultures and civilizations is a necessity. Realizing the differences is a first and necessary step in trying to understand. Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American, who has lived for most of his life in the US, makes another attempt to explain us Westerners the Iranian soul. He has been engaged in very diverse fields including the movie and rock music business, and serving as an advisor and translator for the two Iranian presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His new book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ which, according to its subtitle, wants to tell about the paradox of modern Iran is regarded a rare and most welcome insider’s report which might explain the still asked question of surprised Americans: “Why do they hate us?” (over 34 million hits in Google, Feb. 27, 2009); and, at the same time, adore Western lifestyle, one might add.

 

It is a lot about the Iranian custom of ta’arouf. For those who don’t know, this is a form of exaggerated politeness, almost self-humiliation, a sort of white lies in order to get things done in the way one wants them to proceed. Even the book’s title is ta’arouf, playing down the malicious clerical system in Iran. For foreigners, ta’arouf may be a minefield with a high potential of getting completely confused. One of Majd’s central theses is that President Ahmadinejad’s more bizarre public performances in the West might in fact have been ta’arouf. Impossible to comprehend and therefore considered more or less insane. But can or should we forgive him for his frank threats and remarks on Israel, Jews, the Holocaust, not mentioning his scandalous conference about the latter? Or his letters to G. W. Bush, A. Merkel, to whoever? Because of the Iranian custom of ta’arouf (“Don’t get me wrong, but …”)? Certainly not! That this country with its very long history is now ruled by authorities with an incredibly irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable rhetoric [1] should be a shame for any Iranian. Belittling these constant embarrassments, even threats, as cultural peculiarity (ta’arouf) is one of the more negative aspects of Majd’s book. 

 

Majd has or had more or less immediate access to the complicated central administration in Tehran; to both clerics (a grandson of an eminent Ayatollah himself) and politicians. But even he describes (as a writer or sort of journalist) the ever-present, culture-immanent, enormous obstacles with fruitless discussions and endless ta’aroufs of getting some useful information. Anybody visiting the country may have experienced that as well [2].

 

Another extensively outlined concept is that of haqq, Iranians’ preoccupation with what is considered their natural rights. I cannot follow exactly Majd’s claims that haqq is not pure nationalism [3]. In times when the Iranian nuclear program (for peaceful electricity generating fuel production it seems to be too limited, for producing a nuclear bomb its breakout capability might have been reached already) is becoming again more than obscure, an offered explanation such as haqq, i.e., Iran’s rights, might again be trivializing rather than enlightening.

 

Majd tells us again some fairy tales about Jamkaran near Qom where the Mahdi had allegedly appeared in 984 CE, and about President Ahmadinejad’s great sympathy for the 12th Imam. Jamkaran, which is visited by crowds of tens of thousands every Tuesday night (the Mahdi’s return is expected on a Tuesday) when the faithful are throwing letters to the Mahdi into two wells, one for men and one for women [4]. Majd is not afraid to hawk that he “was told by one person present at his inauguration that Ahmadinejad told several people there that he was only temporary president, and that the Messiah would relieve him of the burdensome responsibility in a ‘few’ years, at most.” In fact, most of this is known for some time. But Majd retains an inappropriate, ironic tone when describing, for instance, Ashura ceremonies of the masses [5], opium smoking in Qom (shir’e) not to mention joints and Johnny Walker at the more fancy parties of upper class bohemians in Northern Tehran; even indiscreet, albeit serious, official questions by an unmarried female nurse about when having had sex the last time when actually planning donating blood on the occasion of Ashura [6]. But, much worse is Majd’s almost mocking when referring to increasing numbers of scandalous public hangings of delinquents at cranes since 2007 [7].

 

The lack of critical distance here and in his closeness to the former president of the country, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami [8], is obvious, and I am afraid that Majd, both an insider and outsider here, is perfectly taking advantage of an inhumane system which is not really criticized in the book in its monstrous perversion of religion.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For instance, the chairman if Iran’s Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, hand-picked by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called for ‘shooting’ Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in his Friday prayers last week. “Every time the picture of this woman is shown, I really wish that somebody would expend a bullet on her,” he dared to say according to Associated Press, conveying an unmistakably message to his Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran. Ta’arouf?

 

[2] Interesting to note that, in order to get access to the inner circle, growing a beard (he has listed mentioning his beard on 8 pages even in the Index of his book), or showing carelessness in having a working class dress or outfit, had been helpful for Majd. At least he was disguising that he was living in the West, in the United States even.

 

[3] True, Iranians have, in their millennia-old, at times glorious, history suffered a lot from invasions, manslaughter, wars and revolutions. The ever-made, even by young people, remarks that they are Aryans such as the Germans , constantly embarrasses the visitor, though, who knows that nationalism in its extreme form, namely racism, has caused the holocaust of 6 million Jews and others.

 

[4] I had visited Jamkaran, actually on a Tuesday, in 2006 before traveling further to Shiraz. The site had already at that time attracted considerable attention in western media when it became known that President Ahmadinejad would support the complex with huge amounts of money. It might in fact differ from other holy sites (tombs or mausoleums) in Iran as it relates to a specific belief in Shi’a Islam, the return of the Messiah at the end of times (who is, according to Twelver Shi’a, the hidden 12th Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi). It may render, according to some western appraisals, the whole branch as irrational. Many of my rather religious friends and colleagues in Iran have admitted that they had never visited the site.

 

[5] One would in fact rather like to know whether these rites and ceremonies on the occasion of Tasua and Ashura experience a revival under the present Islamic regime with its hardliner president, or whether they have in fact been conducted for centuries. It would also be informative to read whether the Pahlavis had effectively banned Ashura ceremonies. I have been impressed by the diligent preparations of Ashura processions and the enthusiasm of especially young people when recently visiting Iran on the first days of Muharram. I have also noticed that public gatherings and husseiniyyas were largely organized by hardliners, with Basij and chador-wearing women outnumbering other participants by far.

 

[6] The most explosive power which finally might bring this regime to an end is hopelessness of the youth. Those who have been born after the Islamic Revolution (in fact, the majority of the population) do not see any opportunities any more of getting married. Unemployment is extremely high among young people and marriage became unaffordable in recent years. When visiting Iran last month, I was told by several youngsters that young people have to find ways of having ‘illicit sex’, a ‘crime’ which has relentlessly been prosecuted in the Islamic Republic, I have thought at least.

 

[7] Iran is, sad to say, second on the list of execution frequencies, only after China, which has 18 times more people and other problems. Majd is certainly wrong when mentioning that the slow strangulation of the convicts in Iran is due to the hangmen’s incompetence in facing “mathematical challenges” in order to quickly break the neck of the delinquent. He is annoyingly wrong when mentioning that Shari’a “deems that death must come to the condemned quickly and painlessly.” He frivolously even compares executions with “halal regulations [mandating] the same for animals destined for the dinner table.” In fact, suffering is expected and desired by the crowd. A typical example is, of course, lapidation (stoning to death) for ‘crimes’ such as adultery which, by intention, should exert as much as pain as possible before the person dies. Besides the sheer number of executions, the way victims are executed, in particular in Iran or Saudi Arabia is an endless scandal.

 

[8] The former ‘reformer’ Mohammad Khatami (Majd calls him ‘President’ even when describing his private New York visit in 2006 when he accompanied him), who is supposed to run in June for presidency again, is not the ‘redeemer’ as some of the western media want to stylize him right now. Apart from largely failing to pursue more liberty in the country, a promise he had made in the 1997 campaign and which had granted him a landslide victory, under his presidency (1997-2005) Iran had, according to US American intelligence, a military nuclear program ‘with high confidence’. That the country had been put on the infamous ‘axis of evil’ together with North Korea and Iraq by President G. W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 was a direct consequence of the Israeli navy interception of the Karine-A in the Red Sea earlier that month, exposing Iran’s illicit support of Palestine via Lebanese Hisbollah. That the president is in fact ultimately powerless and all final decisions are made by the Supreme Leader, or Rahbar-e Enqelab, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is one of Majd’s numerous omissions when describing the paradox of modern Iran.

 

 

See also on this blog

 

From Aradan. How the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran came into power.