#secular ayatollahs
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From Ali Karimi, one of the greatest Iranian footballers of all time. Be like Ali.
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By: Christopher Hitchens
Published: Jun 6, 2011
Driving down through the desert, from Tehran to the holy city of Qom, I am following the path of so many who have made the pilgrimage before me. They either were seeking an audience with, or a glimpse of, Ayatollah Khomeini or, if they were journalistic pilgrims, were trying to test the temperature of Iran’s clerical capital. As I arrive, darkness is gently settling over the domes and spires of the mosque and the Shia theological seminary, the latter of which is demarcated by a kind of empty moat which doubles as a market. But I am not headed for these centers of spiritual and temporal power. My objective is an ill-paved backstreet where, after one confirming cell-phone call, a black-turbaned cleric is waiting outside his modest quarters. This is Hossein Khomeini. The black turban proclaims him a sayyid, or descendant of the prophet Muhammad. But it’s his more immediate ancestry that interests me. This man’s grandfather once shook the whole world. He tore down the throne of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and humiliated the United States. His supporters seized the American Embassy and kept 52 members of its staff prisoner for 444 days. The seismic repercussions of this event led to the fall of Carter, the rise of Reagan, the invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein, and quite possibly the occupation of Afghanistan by the Red Army. It moved us from the age of the Red Menace to the epoch of Holy War. It was, at one and the same time, a genuine revolution and an authentic counterrevolution. I have become almost averse to shaking hands in Iran by now, because it isn’t permitted for a man to shake a woman’s hand in public in this nerve-racked country, and if you unlearn the conditioned reflex in one way, you unlearn it in another. But as I feel young Khomeini’s polite grip, I fancifully experience a slight crackle from history.
Iranian hospitality is one of the most warming and embarrassing things it is possible to encounter. Before any conversation can begin on these grand questions, there must be fragrant tea, a plate of sohan, the addictive pistachio-and-saffron brittle that is the Qom specialty, and a pressing invitation to stay for dinner, and indeed for the night. The pressure is re-doubled on this occasion because the last time we met and talked I was the host.
Young Khomeini has been spending a good deal of his time in Iraq, where he has many friends among the Shia. He is a strong supporter of the United States intervention in that country, and takes a political line not dissimilar to that of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. In practice, this means the traditional Shia belief that clerics should not occupy posts of political power. In Iranian terms, what it means is that Khomeini (his father and elder brother died some years ago, so he is the most immediate descendant) favors the removal of the regime established by his grandfather. “I stand,” he tells me calmly, “for the complete separation of religion and the state.” In terms that would make the heart of a neocon soar like a hawk, he goes on to praise President Bush’s State of the Union speech, to warn that the mullahs cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, and to use the term “Free World” without irony: “Only the Free World, led by America, can bring democracy to Iran.”
Anyone visiting Iran today will quickly become used to hearing this version of street opinion, but there is something striking about hearing it from the lips of a turbaned Khomeini. Changing the emphasis slightly, he asks my opinion of the referendum movement. This is an initiative, by Iranians inside the country and outside it, to gather signatures calling for a U.N.-supervised vote on a new Iranian Constitution. One of the recent overseas signatories is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the fallen Shah. Khomeini surprises me even more by speaking warmly of this young man. “I have heard well of him. I would be happy to meet him and to cooperate with him, but on one condition. He must abandon any claim to the throne.”
(The opportunity of delivering a message from the grandson of Khomeini to the son of the Shah seemed irresistible, and the first thing I did upon my return to Washington was to seek out Reza Pahlavi, who lives in Maryland, and put the question to him. We actually met in a basement kitchen in the nation’s capital, where he was being careful to be as unmonarchical as it is feasible to be. His line on the restoration of kingship is one of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” He doesn’t claim the throne—though he did at one point in our chat refer bizarrely to his father as “my predecessor”—nor does he renounce it. All he will say, and he says it with admirable persistence, is that the next Iran must be both secular and democratic. So, even if they remain at arm’s length, it can be said at last that a Khomeini and a Pahlavi agree.)
Iran today exists in a state of dual power and split personality. The huge billboards and murals proclaim it an Islamic republic, under the eternal guidance of the immortal memory of Ayatollah Khomeini. A large force of Revolutionary Guards and a pervasive religious police stand ready to make good on this grim pledge. But directly underneath these forbidding posters and right under the noses of the morals enforcers, Iranians are buying and selling videos, making and consuming alcohol, tuning in to satellite TV stations, producing subversive films and plays and books, and defying the dress code. All women are supposed to cover all their hair at all times, and to wear a long jacket, or manteau, that covers them from neck to knee. But it’s amazing how enticing the compulsory scarf can be when worn practically on the back of the head and held in place only by hair spray. As for the obligatory manteau, any woman with any fashion sense can cut it to mold an enviable silhouette. I found a bootlegger on my arrival at Tehran airport and was offered alcohol on principle in every home I entered—Khomeini’s excepted—even by people who did not drink. Almost every Iranian has a relative overseas and is in regular touch with foreign news and trends. The country is an “as if” society. People live as if they were free, as if they were in the West, as if they had the right to an opinion, or a private life. And they don’t do too badly at it. I have now visited all three of the states that make up the so-called axis of evil. Rough as their regime can certainly be, the citizens of Iran live on a different planet from the wretched, frightened serfs of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.
Tehran is in fact more or less uncontrollable by anybody. It’s the Mexico City or Calcutta of the region: a vast, unplanned, overpopulated nightmare of all-day traffic jams and eye-wringing pollution, tissue-paper building codes, and an earthquake coming like Christmas. It’s also the original uptown-downtown city, built on the steep slopes of the snowy Elburz Mountains, which, on a good day, one can sometimes actually see. In the northern quarter, there are the discreet villas where the members of the upper crust keep their heads down and their wealth unostentatious. At the bottom of the hill, you can lose yourself in the vast bazaar, whose tough stall owners were the shock troops of the 1979 revolution. “Beware of north Tehran,” one is invariably told. “Don’t take its Westernized opinions at face value.” So I didn’t. Indeed, at one party, where the women by the interior swimming pool didn’t have a scarf or a manteau among them, and where the butler handed me a card printed in English that advertised special caviar supplies, and where the bar went on for a furlong, I met a sleek banker who, full of loathing for the regime as he was, defended Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons. In fact, his was the most vociferous defense that I heard. (Like all the others who ask so plaintively why Israel and Pakistan can have nukes and not Iran, he temporarily chose to forget that the mullahs keep denying that they have such weapons, or even seek them.)
Never mind Qom, which is an easy four-hour drive. I went as far from the north-Tehran suburbs as I could reasonably be expected to go. In the city of Mashhad, way up toward the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan border, the air is clearer and the traffic lighter. The place wears an aspect of prosperity and contentment, as befits the home of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. This is the shrine of Imam Reza, the only one of the 12 Shia imams who is actually buried in Iran. The gold dome—not gold-leafed but gold—is at the center of a series of spacious courtyards and squares into which the Iraqi mosques of Karbala and Najaf could both easily fit. The main door is a continuously busy portal for groups of men bearing coffins either inward or outward, since all the devout dead must be taken as near as is feasible to the tomb of Imam Reza himself. I have to slightly muffle my next sentences, to protect some friends, but I had an introduction to a man who was a guardian of this holy place. Presenting myself, I was led wordlessly to what looked like a tapestry on an interior wall. This curtain was drawn aside to reveal an elevator door, and I was then, like some intruding raider of a lost ark, whisked upward. At the top level, I had a heart-stopping perspective on the gold dome: a view that I think few if any infidels have ever shared. I was as near as I could hope to be to an inner sanctum (to use the word properly for once) and also to something that I can only guess about: the pulsing and enduring and patient heart of Shiite Islam. Offered a cushion on the floor, and some tea and segmented oranges, I was, as usual, made more welcome than was easy for me. My host was a very serious man. Not by any means skipping the traditional questions about my health and my journey and my needs, he soon drove to the point. “Do you suppose,” he inquired, “that the West will ever come to our aid? Or is it all hypocrisy?” I asked him in return how he would know, or how he would define, success. An invasion? He seemed to think it a fair question and gravely replied, “The minimum would be to have an American Embassy back in Tehran.”
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This answer might strike you as rather oblique. (Welcome to Iran, in that case.) But it was also admirably straightforward. In September 2002, an editor and columnist in Tehran named Abbas Abdi was among those who helped conduct a Gallup poll that had been commissioned by the foreign-affairs committee of the Iranian parliament, or Majlis. The finding of the poll was that nearly 75 percent of all Iranians were in favor of “dialogue” at the very least with the United States. The chairman of the relevant Majlis committee was named Mohsen Mirdamadi. Abbas Abdi was imprisoned simply for publishing those findings. Mohsen Mirdamadi has since been disqualified by the mullahs from running again for elected office, and in December 2003 was beaten and clubbed by state-spon.sored Hezbollah goons while giving a speech in the provincial city of Yazd. You may not know the names of A.A. or M.M., but you might like to know that both of them were among the student group that vandalized the American Embassy in November 1979 and violated the diplomatic immunity of its staff. And A.A. had probably marked himself for even more trouble with the authorities for having a reconciliation meeting, in Paris in 1998, with his former American hostage Barry Rosen. Both were acting “as if” a decent relationship between the two peoples were already extant.
The Islamic republic actually counts all of its subjects as infants, and all of its bosses as their parents. It is based, in theory and in practice, on a Muslim concept known as velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the jurist.” In its original phrasing, this can mean that the clergy assumes responsibility for orphans, for the insane, and for (aha!) abandoned or untenanted property. Here is the reason Ayatollah Khomeini became world-famous: in a treatise written while he was in exile in Najaf, in Iraq, in 1970, he argued that the velayat could and should be extended to the whole of society. A supreme religious authority should act as proxy father for everyone. His own charisma and bravery later convinced many people that Khomeini was entitled to claim the role of supreme leader (faqih) for himself.
But the theory has an obvious and lethal flaw, built into itself like a trapdoor. What if some lamebrained mediocrity assumes or inherits the title of supreme leader, with its god-given mantle? You might as well accept the slobbering and gibbering firstborn of some hereditary monarch who claims divine right. For this reason, several ayatollahs in Najaf and Qom and other spiritual centers rejected the Khomeini interpretation as soon as it was proposed. Among other things, they doubted that any human was fit for the post of supreme leader or guardian, at least until the 12th and last of the Shia imams reveals himself again and concludes the long period of mourning and grief that is everyday human life. And this division between mullahs, dear reader, is why you have to concentrate with breathless interest on the difference between an Iranian-born mullah who lives in Iraq (al-Sistani) and an Iranian mullah who went into exile in Iraq and came home (Khomeini). It is also the reason why several senior Iranian mullahs are in prison or have been in prison under what claims to be an Islamic republic. Get used to learning these names, too, while there is time. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Ayatollah Shabestari. These men, and their courageous disciples, say that Khomeini’s version of the velayat has no Koranic justification. Hence my welcome in that small house in Qom. Hence, also, the present dictatorship by Ayatollah Khamenei: a semi-literate megalomaniac who presumes to regard his subjects as his pupils and his charges.
One almost wishes the “orphan” part of the theory were truer than it is. But Iran’s problem is not a surplus of orphans. It is, rather, that the country is afflicted with a vast population of grieving parents and relatives, whose sons and daughters and nephews and nieces were thrown away in the ghastly eight-year war with Saddam Hussein, and who were forced to applaud the evil “human wave” tactics of shady clergymen who promised heaven to the credulous but never cared to risk martyrdom themselves.
The word “martyr,” or shahid, is another expression that has become cheapened by overuse in Iran. Every ugly building and intersection seem to be named for one, and people are increasingly bored and sickened by the term. Still, I am bound to say that I was struck almost mute by the cemetery to the south of Tehran. I have made visits to the memorials of the Western Front, where headstones and arches bear the names of the unidentified dead of the First World War, and I have also been to the mass graves of Bosnia and Iraq. But this awful necropolis is of a different order. I don’t think I met a family in Iran that didn’t have a missing or “martyred” or mutilated relative from that era. The total butcher bill for the war was close to a million. Thus, even though the cemetery is placed right next to the hideous memorial to Ayatollah Khomeini (and “why the fuck,” said the guard at the subway station when I asked directions, “would you want to go to that bastard’s grave?”), I approached it with due respect. The Iranian expression for the war with Iraq is “the imposed war.” The odd phrasing reflects the belief that Saddam Hussein was an ally of the West when he launched his aggression, and this time I knew that there was more truth than propaganda to the accusation. (Iranian physicians are the world’s experts in treating those whose lungs have been corroded by poison gas, or whose skin has been agonizingly scalded by chemical bombardment. They have whole hospitals full of ruined patients.)
Despite the terrifying culling of its youth in the 1980s, Iran is once again a young country. Indeed, more than half of its population is under 25. The mullahs, in an effort to make up the war deficit, provided large material incentives for women to bear great numbers of children. The consequence of this is a vast layer of frustrated young people who generally detest the clerics. You might call it a baby-boomerang. I am thinking of Jamshid, a clever young hustler whom I part-employed as a driver and fixer. Bright but only partially educated, energetic but effectively unemployed, he had been made to waste a lot of his time on compulsory military service and was continuing to waste time until he could think of a way of quitting the country. “When I was a baby, my mother took me to have my head patted by Khomeini. My fucking hair has been falling out ever since,” he said. You want crack cocaine, hookers, pornography, hooch? This is the downside of the “as if” option. There are thousands of even younger Jamshids lining the polluted boulevards and intersections, trafficking in everything known to man and paying off the riffraff of the morals police. Everybody knows that the mullahs live in luxury, stash money overseas, deny themselves nothing, and indulge in the most blatant hypocrisy. Cynicism about the clergy is universal, but it is especially among the young that one encounters it. It’s also among the young that one most often hears calls for American troops to arrive and bring goodies with them. Yet, after a while, this repeated note began to strike me as childish also. It’s a confession of powerlessness, an avoidance of responsibility, a demand that change come from somewhere else.
A whole range of sincere Shia believers, from Grand Ayatollah Montazeri to the relatively lesser clerics such as the junior Khomeini, worry about this because they know that a whole generation is being alienated from religion. But I don’t think the regime much cares that so many of its talented young people have left or are leaving. The Iranian diaspora now runs into millions, from California to Canada and all across Western Europe. Let the smart ones go: all the easier for us to run a stultified and stalled society. And every now and then they make a move to show who is in charge. Last August, in the city of Neka, a 16-year-old girl named Atefeh Rajabi was hauled into a court for having had sex with a man. She might possibly have gotten away with one of the lesser punishments for offenses against chastity, such as a hundred lashes with a whip. (That’s what her partner received.) But from the dock she protested that she had been the object of advances from an older man, and she went as far as to tear off her hijab, or headscarf. The judge announced that she would hang for that, and that he would personally place the noose around her neck. And so, in the main square of Neka, after the Iranian Supreme Court had duly confirmed the ruling, poor Miss Rajabi was hanged from a crane for all to see.
Every now and then you can sit in on late-night discussions where young people wonder when the eruption will come. Perhaps the police or the Revolutionary Guards will make an irrevocable mistake and fire into a crowd? Perhaps, at a given hour, a million women will simply remove their hijabs and defy the authorities? (This discussion gets more intense every year as the summer approaches and women face the irritation and humiliation of wearing it in heat and dust.) But nobody wants to be the first to be blinded by acid, or to have their face lovingly slashed by some Hezbollah enthusiast. The student activists of the Tehran “spring” of 1999, and of the elections which seemed to bring a reformist promise, have been picked off one by one, their papers closed and their leadership jailed and beaten. What else to do, then, except tune in to the new Iranian underground “grunge” scene, or kick back in front of the Italian soft-porn channel or one of the sports and fashion and anti-clerical channels beamed in by satellite from exiles in Los Angeles? As if …
For what was Persian culture famous? For poetry, for philosophy, for backgammon, for chess, for architecture, for polo, for gardens, and for wine. (The southern city of Shiraz, once a vineyard town, may have a better claim to the invention of sherry than the Spanish city of Jerez.) The special figure of all this ancient civilization was Omar Khayyám, whose name means “maker of tents” but who flourished as a scholar and poet in the city of Neyshabur in the 11th and 12th centuries. He is best known for his long, languorous poem Rubáiyát: a collection of quatrains, exquisitely rendered into English by Edward FitzGerald, among others. Khayyám was an astronomer and mathematician and was among those commissioned to reform the calendar. In his four-line stanzas, he praised wine, women, and song, found speculation on afterlife pointless, and ridiculed the mullahs of his day. He lived and wrote “as if” they didn’t count. I made a special journey to Neyshabur to see the tomb of this man, who had somewhat cheered up my boyhood. The study of his poetry is not exactly encouraged by members of the theocracy, but they know better than to denounce anything that touches on national pride, and you can visit the site without hindrance. My escort, a quiet man who was slow to commit himself, could quote several quatrains in Farsi, and I was delighted to hear that they sounded exactly the same way as their rhythm fell on an English ear. As we compared notes and recitations, he began to melt a little and accepted a swig from my bootleg flask, and soon I was hearing a familiar story: no prospects, a depraved government, the school friends thrown away in hysterical warfare.
The museum of Omar Khayyám stands a little way from the tomb and contains some beautiful scientific instruments, including an intricate astrolabe, from medieval times. At last, a public place that was not dominated by black-draped and forbidding superstition, and that cared for learning and for reason. Deciding to make a stab at the visitors’ book, I wrote out my fa­vorite quatrain, from the Richard Le Gal­lienne translation, in which the poet speaks of the arrogance of the faithful:
And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave a secret, and denied it me—
Well, well, what matters it? Believe that too.
A few visitors did look over my shoulder, but nobody seemed to mind.
Mashhad and Neyshabur are supremely worth seeing, and also well worth going to see, but nobody can claim to have tasted Iran without having seen Esfahan. It is well inland, so idle comparisons with Venice or Dubrovnik don’t quite work. It is small and modest, so it is not Rome or Prague either. It is a thing unto itself: an imposing miniature and a miracle of proportion. Many fine bridges span its river, one with 33 arches in which slits have been carved through three walls. When you stand back and view them from the right angle, they give the perfect outline of a candle, while allowing you to see through to the other side. This miracle of perspective—such ingenuity for such a slight but pleasing effect—is seconded, if you like, by the tower which will convey the merest whisper from one stone corner to another.
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As for the symmetry of the azure Sheikh Lotfollah mosque on the grand but modest main square: the masons and decorators must have finished the job quite speechless with what they had achieved.
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It is a few miles from this triumph of civilization and culture that the Islamic republic, hostile to every form of modernity except advanced weapons and surveillance techniques, has decided to dig a huge, ugly tunnel into a hillside, the better to conceal its ambitions to become a nuclear state. The tunnel, along with some other “facilities” at Natanz and Bushehr, has been laboriously exposed in the course of a long, dreary inspection that has caught the re­gime lying without conscience, and also lying without fear of reprisal. The Bushehr reactor was actually begun in the time of the Shah, and it’s a good thing that he slightly outlived his mad kingly ambitions, because if he’d completed the work then the mullahs would have inherited a nuclear capacity ready-made.
And it is unlikely that sanctions will be lifted while the regime also continues to harbor so many wanted criminals, not just on its territory but among its leadership. Consider the repellent figure of Ali Fallahian, a former minister of “intelligence,” who faces an arrest warrant from a court in Berlin for sending a death squad to murder Iranian Kurds in the Mykonos restaurant in 1992. We also have the names of those Iranian officials who are wanted for blowing up a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996.
All of these crimes were committed, without conscience and (so far) without reprisal, during the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was also the local star of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages racket, the last time that an Ira­ni­an connection threatened to bring down an American president.
On the first occasion when I managed to breathe the same air as Rafsanjani, he was addressing a conference of Iranian women, who were made to sit swaddled in heavy clothing while he took his sweet time making some tedious observations about females and the Koran. One of the women’s magazines in Tehran is run by his daughter, but then, there is hardly an enterprise in the country, from the ­pistachio-nut monopoly to airlines and oil, in which Rafsanjani doesn’t hold an interest. The second time I was able to drink in his words was at “Friday prayers” at the university, the weekly grandstand from which the mullahs address the masses.
On this occasion, Rafsanjani was bursting with sound and fury and insult about imperialist threats to Iran, and swelling like a turkey-cock. (He’s a short guy, and is regularly lampooned on the street for his inability to grow a proper beard. In 2002, the last time he ran for election in Tehran, he came in below the bottom of the already fixed “list,” and some deft work was required to show him registering in the poll at all.) Demagogy aside, everybody knows that if a deal is to be done with Europe and the Americans, then it will probably be Rafsanjani who brokers it. He’s been on both sides of everything, all of his life, through war and revolution. He supported Khomeini in prolonging the war with Iraq, and then persuaded him to accept the U.N. resolution that ended it (and that may have killed the older man). He railed against the Great Satan, yet welcomed Reagan’s shamed envoys when they brought the cake and the Bible and offered to deal arms for hostages. He’s what our lazy press means when it describes some opportunist torturer and murderer as a “moderate,” or a “survivor.” I even met Iranians, completely sickened and disillusioned and ready to boycott any sham vote, who wearily said that Rafsanjani would be an improvement.
In Esfahan I met a woman, one of the few I saw who wore the whole black chador. She was devout, and she listened for a long time while the family who hosted me exhausted all its frustration and argued about the best way of overthrowing or outliving the mullahs. After a pause, she broke in softly, even wistfully. “Do you think,” she inquired, “that the West could come here and remove the rulers but only stay for a week and then leave?” I put out my hand reflexively, not to take her palm but just to touch it, as if to reassure her that what she said was not childish or naïve. As if … And if only. And now I know that, until this is over, and until Iran recovers some of its Persian soul, I will never be able to see her, or Esfahan, again. Meanwhile, the trunk of the tree of the country simply rots, and millions of lives are being lived pointlessly while the state of suspended animation persists.
[ Via: https://archive.ph/zDlH3 ]
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“Every now and then you can sit in on late-night discussions where young people wonder when the eruption will come. Perhaps the police or the Revolutionary Guards will make an irrevocable mistake and fire into a crowd? Perhaps, at a given hour, a million women will simply remove their hijabs and defy the authorities?“
Written in 2011.
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fromchaostocosmos · 6 months ago
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In the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been far too many casualties­—thousands of innocent civilians have died, primarily in Gaza. But this war has another less visible casualty: the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa known as Mizrahi, whose history is being erased from the popular narrative about Israel. My community is among them.
When angry protesters hurl charges of apartheid and colonialism at Israel, they are, knowingly or not, repudiating the truth about Israel's origin and the vast racial and ethnic diversity of its nation.
I was born and raised in Iran in a family of Jewish educators. I came of age during the tumultuous years of the Iranian revolution, just as Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in 1979, and soon thereafter, annihilated his opposition­—feminists, leftists, even the Islamic Marxists who had long revered him as their spiritual leader. Until 1979, if anyone had told my observant Jewish family that we would someday leave Iran, we would have laughed. In fact, at our Passover seders, the words "next year in Jerusalem," were always followed by chuckles and quips, "oh, yeah, sure, Watch me pack!" all underlining our collective belief that we were exactly where we intended to remain. We loved Israel, but Israel was a Nirvana­—a place we revered but never expected to reach.
The 30 years preceding the Islamic revolution had led the Jewish community to believe that the dark days of bigotry were behind them. And for good reason! When my father was a schoolboy in the late 1930s, he was not allowed to attend school on rainy days. In the highly conservative town where he grew up, in Khonsar, his Shiite neighbors considered Jews "unclean," or Najes. They barred them, among other things, from leaving their homes on rainy days, lest the rainwater splashed off the bodies of the Jews and onto the Muslim passersby, thus making them "unclean," too. Yet, that same boy grew up, left the insular town, attended college in Tehran, earned a master's degree, and served in the royal army as a second lieutenant. (To his last day, my father's photo in military uniform was among his most prized possessions.) After service, he became the principal of a school, purchased a home in what was then a relatively upscale neighborhood of Tehran. The distance between my father's childhood and adulthood far surpassed two decades. It was the distance between two eras­—between incivility and civility, bigotry and tolerance.
Yet, as if on cue, the demon of antisemitism was unleashed again. The 1979 Islamic revolution summoned all the prejudices my father thought had been irretrievably buried. One day, on the wall across our home, graffiti appeared, "Jews gets lost!" Soon thereafter, the residence and fabric store my aunt and her extended family owned in my father's childhood town were set on fire after a mob of protesters looted it. Within days, she and her family, whose entire life's savings had burned in that fire, left for Israel. As young as I was, I could see that the regime was indiscriminately brutal to all those it deemed a threat to its reign, especially secular Muslims. But the new laws were specifically designed so that non-Muslims, and women, all but became second-class citizens. Members of religious minorities, especially the Baha'i, could no longer eye top jobs in academia, government, the military, etc. Restaurateurs had to display signs in their windows making clear that "the establishment was operated by a non-Muslim." In a court of law, members of religious minorities could offer testimony in criminal trials, but theirs would only count as half that of a Muslim witness. Jews were once again reduced to Dhimmis­—tax-paying citizens who were allowed to live, but not thrive. Then came a handful of executions of prominent Jewish leaders in the early months after the revolution, which sent shockwaves through the community. Jewish schools were allowed to operate, but under the headmastership of Muslims who were officially appointed.
Within a few years after the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the Jewish population of Iran, which once stood at 100,000, shrank to a fraction of its size. Today, of the ancient community whose presence in Iran predates that of Muslims, only 8,000 remain. For centuries, Iran has been home to the most sacred Jewish sites in the Middle East outside of Israel. But those monuments have either fallen into disrepair or are targets of regular attacks by antisemitic mobs. Only last week, the tomb of Esther and Mordecai­—the memorial to the heroine and hero from the Book of Esther who saved the Jews from being massacred in ancient Persia, was set on fire.
How is it that the 90,000-plus who left Iran, many for Israel, are now deemed as occupiers? How do Iranian refugees fleeing persecution become "colonizers" upon arrival in Israel? These families, my aunt among them, were not emissaries of any standing empire, nor were they returning to a place where they had no history. For them, Israel was not a home away from their real homeland. It was their only homeland. The vitriolic slogan that appeared across my home in 1979 demanded that we "get lost!" In 2024, once again, the same Jews are being called upon to leave, this time Israel. Where, then, are Jews allowed to live?
Iranian Jews were not alone. Jews from Iraq, especially in the aftermath of the 1941 pogrom called Farhood, similarly fled their homeland. So did the Jews of Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. All, destitute and dejected, they took refuge in Israel. Today, they make up nearly 50 percent of Israel's population. To call such a nation colonial GRAVELY misrepresents the facts about Jews and Israel.
In his timeless essay, Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell said that in the Spain of 1937, he "saw history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines.'" With the alarming rise of antisemitism around the world, and in light of the bloody attacks on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, the greatest massacre of Jews since World War II, 2024 bears an uncanny resemblance to Orwell's 1937. But perhaps in no way more ominously than the way truth has been upended to serve an ideological narrative­—one in which Jews, who have lived uninterruptedly in that land for more than two millennia, are cast as white non-indigenous interlopers, with no roots in what has always been their ancient homeland.
A public scholar at the Moynihan Center (CCNY), Roya Hakakian is the author of several books including, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown, 2005).
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good-old-gossip · 5 months ago
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“The similarities between that epic venture of medieval Christendom and Zion’s of today are inescapable; not only in their essential natures, objectives and means of achieving them, but in the ways that their conflicts with the states and peoples of the region actually unfolded.”
It was an ethnocracy, long embarked on a form of apartheid that - as visitors from South Africa, such as the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid champion, who called the “parallels to my own beloved South Africa … painfully stark indeed”, always testified - was as bad, if not worse than what used to be their own.
It was gradually taking on the attributes of a theocracy, with rabbis, often of the most bigoted and reactionary kind, gaining such influence in the nation’s affairs that, in the eyes of anxious secularists, who now habitually refer to this process as the “Iranisation” of Israel, it was beginning to look like a Jewish version of the ayatollahs’ realm.
It was a state and a society held hostage by a golem of its own creation, its religious settlers - wild and weird embodiments of a fusion between the 19th-century “blood-and-soil” nationalism in which their secular predecessors were steeped, and the newfangled, militant Judaic messianism of their own, whom it would probably require a civil war to rein in.
And, yes, in its deepening religiosity, the state really was looking more and more like the Crusaders themselves, taking after them not merely in method - perpetual war - but in aspirations too, with one in particular that exemplified the resemblance above all others.
For those antique "warriors of God”, the supreme, most sacrosanct of tasks had been to save the Holy Sepulchre - the site, Christians believe, of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection - from the “pollution” and derelictions of Islam.
Similarly, for an unknown, but growing number of their Israeli successors - and not just religious ones - the return to Zion will not be complete until the Third Temple arises, alongside Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, or in their stead, on this, the third-most holy place of Islam; similarly indeed - but, of course, if that ever actually came to pass, apocalyptically, too.
So will the world, upon finally waking up to all that their protege has wrought upon the land and peoples of the region in the three-quarters of a century since Weizmann forecast that it would “judge” Israel for this - will it forsake or repudiate the state, leaving it to whatever fate might expose it? By the light of modern "values", the US and the West would have much stronger grounds for doing so than the papacy and medieval Christendom once had for abandoning the Crusaders by the light of theirs.
Improbable, no doubt. But the more Israel "delegitimises" itself in the eyes of the world - and it is making one helluva of job of that in Gaza right now - the less improbable it becomes, and with it the possibility, and nightmare scenario of Ohana, the Crusaders scholar, that its fate will come to resemble that of the Crusaders themselves.
Not driven into the sea, of course, but in some way or another strategically/militarily/diplomatically overcome.
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dyke-terra · 3 months ago
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“Support” could mean anything from “not wanting everyone there to be brutally murdered from the safety of your room in a different country” to “moving into the West Bank to be an illegal settler because you’re a religious extremist who wants to expand the state’s boundaries into Jordan”.
It’s not just in this conflict either! I “support” Ukraine in the sense that I don’t want it to be taken over by Russia and would rather the Ukrainians not face genocide, but I’m not going to go over there and take up arms to defend Ukraine myself, not to mention there’s a lot of revanchism and revisionism among people who “support” Ukraine that I 100% do not agree with. I would’ve “supported” Vietnam by being against the US invasion back in the 60s, but I wouldn’t have whitewashed what the Viet Cong did to prisoners of war. I “support” Iran in the sense that I think a lot of the sanctions do more harm than good for the people who live there and think it’s hypocritical as hell for the US to treat them like a pariah state while being buddies with Saudi Arabia, but I sure as fuck hate the ayatollah and want the people of Iran to have non corrupt and secular leadership!
Condemn is similarly bullshit, but that’s a different post.
"Do you support Israel?"
I don't know - what do you mean by "support Israel"?
Do I support Israel's current war in Gaza? No.
Do I support Israel's right to get its citizens back? Yes.
Do I support Israel's settlements in the West Bank? No.
Do I support Israel's right to exist? Yes.
Do I support Israel's current government and leaders? No.
Do I support Israel's right to defend itself? Yes.
So I dunno, do I "support" Israel or not? What about Palestine?
Do I support reparations for Palestinians in the West Bank? Yes.
Do I support Hamas? No.
Do I support Palestinians in Gaza being free from war? Yes.
Do I support Hamas' violence against Israeli citizens? No.
Do I support Palestine's right to exist? Yes.
And then there's this...
Do I support the destruction of Israel? No.
Do I support the destruction of Palestine? No.
Do I support a world where Israelis don't fear death? Yes.
Do I support a world where Palestinians don't fear death? Yes.
The only way to achieve actual peace in the region is to support peace between Israel and Palestine. You cannot get this if you destroy Israel OR Palestine.
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adrl-pt · 3 months ago
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Should we expect changes from the new Iranian president? Russian attack on children on IV drips.
You are watching news from the weekly rally at the Russian Embassy in Lisbon. Today is July 13, 2:30 PM.
On July 6, Masoud Pezeshkian, a representative of the reformist wing, was elected as the new president of Iran. The BBC News Russian Service reports that he criticized Iran's morality police, promised to ease internet restrictions, and called for nuclear deal negotiations. Turnout in this election was the lowest in 45 years. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remarked that "if anyone thinks that those who did not vote are against the establishment, they are clearly mistaken." Sounds familiar. https://www.bbc.com/russian/articles/c2v0l123y9wo
In a CNN World article, Iran analyst Sina Toossi suggested that Pezeshkian was allowed to run to boost turnout. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/29/middleeast/iran-presidential-election-runoff-inconclusive-first-round-intl/index.html
Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order, stated on DW in Russian that reformists had not pursued change in recent decades and suggested that Pezeshkian was allowed to be elected to create a misleading positive image for the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMIEA9vmOr0
X social network user "Tired Kitten" posted a translation of a video by physician and mathematician Kaveh Mozafari, who revealed fraud in vote counts and turnout. https://x.com/psychotic_bat/status/1810336414241853883
In November 2022, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change presented a study showing that over 60% of Iranians want to live in a secular state rather than an Islamic republic. https://www.institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/protests-and-polling-insights-streets-iran-how-removal-hijab-became-symbol-regime-change
Based on information provided by Iranians people from inside Iran, there is evidence that many election centers have been empty. In the circus election, we have seen Pezeshkian was the only reformist among other hardliner candidates. Just a few days ago, Pezeshkian acknowledged the support for terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah So, Pezeshkian is just a fake mask to continue the policy of the regime with a new face. Please stop flirting with the mullahs' regime in Iran. Wishing that the Iranian people regain their freedom, and wishing freedom for all humanity. https://youtu.be/3GVNys5K-lU
On Monday, July 8, during rush hour, the Russian military launched about 40 missiles of various types into Ukraine. https://www.moscowtimes.nl/2024/07/08/glava-mid-italii-obvinil-rossiyu-vvoennom-prestuplenii-posle-udara-pobolnitse-vkieve-a136165
The missile attacks killed 42 people, including four children. https://ru.interfax.com.ua/news/general/999023.html
One rocket hit the dialysis building of the Okhmatdet children's hospital in Kyiv. There were 627 patients on the hospital premises at the time of the attack. https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/v-ohmatditi-zavershili-ryatuvalni-roboti-shcho-vidomo-pro-paciyentiv-ta-pracivnikiv-302568/
Bellingcat analysts proved that the strike was carried out by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, refuting the Russian Ministry of Defense's claim that it was a Ukrainian air defense missile. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/07/09/russian-missile-identified-in-kyiv-childrens-hospital-attack/?utm_source=twitter
This attack was condemned by the majority of UN Security Council members and many European politicians. https://www.dw.com/ru/bolsinstvo-clenov-sovbeza-oon-osudilo-udar-rf-po-detskoj-bolnice-kieva/a-69609634
Attacks on residential buildings and shopping centers in Ukraine occur constantly. On June 22, blogger Anna Gin told the Dozhd TV channel that Kharkiv residents live under constant air raid sirens. https://www.youtube.com/live/OCGXT_1S648?t=353s
According to the Financial Times, Russian companies were purchasing Swiss and American-made parts for missile production and importing them through China. https://meduza.io/news/2024/07/10/financial-times-rossiya-sobiraet-rakety-h-101-odna-iz-kotoryh-popala-v-detskuyu-bolnitsu-v-kieve-iz-zapadnyh-komponentov
We call on the international community to completely close Ukraine's skies from Russian missiles and ensure the enforcement of sanctions against Russia.
The Deceived Russian on his YouTube channel reported that Putin spent 1 billion rubles on the missile that destroyed the Okhmatdet hospital, comparable to the cost of a new hospital, and showed another collapsing Russian clinic. https://youtu.be/B2DzfMK3z1A?feature=shared&t=93
Victoria Nuland, former US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, addressed the Russians on the Dozhd TV channel: “Think about what this military adventure of Putin has done for you? What has he done for you over the past 20 years? It would be much better if we could cooperate with you." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYDxzsAvtYE
Proofs and links are in the description. Subscribe and help!
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longwindedbore · 8 months ago
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Atomization is the inevitable outcome of allowing the white separatist movement into a political Party or Church.
CHURCH OUTCOME
Church parishes in smaller branches of 60-80 major denominations are closing across the country but more individual parishes are opening as ever smaller break off denominations.
Purity of dogma and doctrinal beliefs are a necessity for the 50-100 members of the new parish.
I’ve written before of living amongst atomized churches in a small town in Souther Oregon.
More Churches than places to buy food. Any sense of community gone as the Churches try to poach each others members. Signs in the yards as ‘Proud member of ______ Church’.
Similar outcome for the new GOP.
PARTY OUTCOME
Embracing white separatism with the Nixonian ‘Southern Strategey’ which was then extended to the country’s other Bible Belts has resulted in nut groups within nut groups within MAGA which itself is a nut group which mbrella of less than half of the GOP base.
But MAGA nutters are 100% of those convicted in J6. 100% of those threatening Less-nutty RepubliKKKlan elected officials if they don’t lick Trump’s sneakers.
If we were to look more closely would we see that the school shooters are mostly/all from this demographic?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My reading of the historical spoor is that after the 1995 Oklahoma City baby-killing bombing by White separatist fled from public outrage and recrimination.
The secular movement ‘found Jesus’.
Or at least found a welcome mat when they followed the similar Separatist/Gun-hugging/anti-Federales variation that was also Book of Revelation Apocalypse Preppers within the Evangelical Denominations.
Just in time to swell the voter rolls of those Evangelicals who were already using anti-abortion as a lever to gain the political Theocracy that the Ayatollah had accomplished in Iran.
A marriage made in Hell.
Then the n 2008, we, the Damned Libertards, ‘pretended’ to elect a [half-] black President…just to ‘disrespect’ the Separatists & Evangelical Ayatollahs God-given sacred whiteness.
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deborahdeshoftim5779 · 27 days ago
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Anti-Zionists are appropriators and con artists par excellence. While insisting that the Jews have no legitimate claim to Israel, they beg, borrow, and steal every vestige of Jewish identity they can in order to whitewash their anti-historical and anti-Jewish invective.
The most pathetic aspect of anti-Zionism is its falsification of Judaism, while simultaneously accusing Zionist Jews of misusing said faith. It's even more pathetic when they resort to citing extremist and fascist Jews like the Neturei Karta, a sect rejected by almost all other Jews. (The Neturei Karta laundered the Jew-hatred of Iran's Ayatollah, visiting him in spite of Iran holding a cartoon contest that mocked the Holocaust.)
The fact that the Jewish religion centres around the fulfillment of religious promises in the Land of Israel obviously decimates anti-Zionist canards, but that doesn't stop these posers from attempting feats of mental gymnastics that would astonish the KGB. Perhaps they just cross out any references to Israel in their prayer books.
Notice that anti-Zionists, including anti-Zionist Jews would never dare to appropriate any feast day from Islam and make it political. Despite the overwhelming number of crimes against humanity committed by extremist Muslims inside and outside of the Middle East, we never hear anti-Zionists inventing an Eid for the sole purpose of condemning Muslim nations.
Nor do they ever decide-- or would ever dare to decide-- that Arab nationalism is invalid on account of the violent history and continued violent and genocidal behaviour of Arab nations such as Syria. This despite the glaring fact that the number of people killed by extremist Arab nationalism and Islamic terrorism far outweighs the number of people killed by Israeli wars and Jewish extremists.
It is this last fact that leads me (and probably others) to believe the hysteria against Israel displayed by Arabs and by Westerners is a concerted effort to deflect attention away from Arab and Muslim terrorism. Because after considering all of Israel's wrongdoing, any objective review of the Middle East could only ever conclude that Islamic terrorism is by far the biggest threat to peace and civilisation. Yet the effort to defeat said terrorism is puerile, while the effort to destroy Israel is monumental.
I suggest that this is all deliberate, and anti-Zionists are the poltroons hired to provide intellectual-sounding justification for Arab and Islamic terror against the Jews. If all the upheaval in the Middle East can be blamed on the Jews for daring to have a homeland and defend it, then everyone can convince themselves that Islamic terrorism is just "cause and effect", rather than a uniquely evil phenomenon that threatens civilisation. Therefore, all one has to do is allow the terrorists to murder the Jews, and the problem all goes away.
To their consternation, millions of Jews have the temerity to refuse to be murdered, and, even more audaciously, to exact punishment upon anyone who does murder them. And whenever Jews are being harassed and abused, anti-Zionists are nowhere to be seen-- unless of course you're looking at a pro-Hamas mob celebrating the slaughter of Jews on October 7, 2023.
Remember that a key pillar of anti-Zionism is that the Jews were living comfortably in other countries, and so had no need to resurrect a Jewish state in British Mandate Palestine. In fact, many Jews in the late 19th century were indeed conflicted about the Zionist movement, with some feeling that resettlement would undermine the rights they had recently obtained in European nations; still others had religious conflicts with the largely secular and atheist advocates of Zionism.
But when almost all Jews in Yemen were expelled by the Houthi terrorist group (with one remaining Jew reportedly in prison), not a single anti-Zionist raised the alarm. Not a single anti-Zionist helped any of those Yemenite Jews, whose presence in Yemen is only around 1000 years younger than the Jewish presence in Israel. Where were they all, exactly?
The same for the persecution of Ethiopian Jews; it was Israel, id est Zionist Jews, that did the rescuing. The anti-Zionists-- who love claiming that they represent "real", or as one Substack user told me, "right-thinking" Jews-- did nothing.
The fact that numerous Yemenite Jews fled to Israel utterly destroys anti-Zionism, and is a point that I have yet to hear any anti-Zionist address.
This may because another pillar within the anti-Zionist movement is their hallucinatory belief that Zionism is a "white colonial settler project". The fact that the Mayor of Jerusalem, Youseff al-Khalidi, acknowledged in 1896 (so long before the British Mandate was established) that nobody could contest the rights of the Jews in Palestine because it was 'your country', has to be ignored. The fact that leader of the Arab Revolt Emir Feisal acknowledged the Zionist movement as not only justified, but beneficial to Arab emancipation from colonialism, has to be ignored.
The fact that Jewish attempts to resettle Palestine date back to at least the 16th century also has to be ignored.
The fact that Jews in Europe reserved Hebrew as the language of liturgy, has to be ignored. Many Jews are of European descent, yes. But Hebrew is not a European language. It is a Semitic language, related to Arabic, thus proving that the Jews are Middle Eastern in origin.
Even more devastating to anti-Zionist canards is the fact that for a while, Jews and Syrians spoke the same language, Aramaic. There is a Syrian variety of Aramaic, which, if I am not mistaken, is still spoken today. Meanwhile, Jewish religious texts, including the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and the current Jewish prayer book, all contain portions in Aramaic. This similarity could only be possible if the Jewish connection to Israel exceeds around 2000 years.
Between 50-51% of Israelis today are descendants of immigrants and refugees from neighbouring Middle Eastern and North African nations. Israeli Hebrew favours the Sephardic pronunciation used by Jews in Spain, Portugal, and North Africa for centuries. Israel also favours many Yemenite Jewish traditions, as the Yemenite Jewish community has to be one of the oldest outside of the Jewish State.
Meanwhile, the Ashkenazi Jews that anti-Zionists pelt with racial slurs such as 'European coloniser' actually share up to 80% of their DNA with... Arabs. I remember one Ashkenazi Jew from Hungary telling me that when he looked into his family history, he noticed several of his ancestors were quite brown-skinned with thick, dark brown hair. Yet Hungarians are white-skinned. This obviously suggests the migration patterns of Jews from the Middle East and into Europe, where, though marriage and acclimatisation, they gained European ethnicity in addition to being Jewish.
However, you will notice that a large number of Arabs are also white-skinned, especially in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. (Also in Saudi Arabia. Islamic texts praise Islam's founder Muhammad for his white skin.) Many Egyptians also have European ancestors. I remember reading an article from an Egyptian who was refuting Netflix's suggestion that Cleopatra might have been black African, in which he noted (with disapproval) that Egyptians often express pride about having French ancestry.
Yet mysteriously, we never hear these Arabs being accused of being "white European colonisers" or conducting "settler colonial projects", despite their collaboration with the British Empire in order to topple the Ottoman Turk Empire. Anyone who bothers to read real history will find that the Arabs were actually keen on collaborating with colonial powers when it was beneficial; when the German Nazis occupied Iraq, they met with widespread support from the Arab Muslims.
But these facts hardly get a fair mention, if at all. Meanwhile, anti-Zionists love to carp on about the Zionist collaboration with the British Empire. Curiously, they also love pointing out and condemning terrorist attacks committed by Zionists.
Well, I think it's important for Zionists not to be afraid of acknowledging the negative aspects of the movement during the violent 1940s. The case for Israel stands firm; it is based on inalienable rights of national self-determination for the Jewish people, backed with piles of unchallengeable, and often unacknowledged, historical evidence. It is that the same rights be accorded to the Jewish people as are accorded to other nations. If we are now going by the standard that the wrongdoing of Zionists would render that right invalid, then it should be applied to any other national movement, including the 1917 Arab movement for a nation in Syria.
Since the anti-Zionists won't apply those same standards to the Arab movement for national independence (or any other national independence movement), then I don't take any of their ostensible moral outrage over Zionist wrongdoing seriously. Nor do I have any respect for their false conclusion that Israel's foundation is therefore immoral.
But notice that many of those terror attacks were committed against the British, which would mean they were "anti-colonial" in nature. In fact, the violence was undoubtedly triggered by the British White Paper of 1937, which arbitrarily banned Jewish home ownership beyond designated lines. This despite the provision of a Jewish Palestine in 1922, and the formal British approval of a Jewish homeland in 1917.
Be that as it may, I am not an anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian, which is why I do not excuse terrorist attacks. (Anti-Zionists conveniently fail to point out that the Haganah condemned the terror tactics used by the Irgun and Lehi. David Ben-Gurion acknowledged that it was both necessary to support the British during World War Two, while also opposing the British because of the White Paper.)
I just find it curious how the anti-Zionist loves to pick and choose a position without even bothering to check its consistency.
I also find it even more curious-- nay, morally repugnant-- how the supposed anti-Zionist condemnation of terrorism vanishes whenever confronted with the far more egregious and despicable terrorist attacks committed by the Arabs since before the reconstitution of Israel in 1948. As far as October 7, 2023 is concerned, the anti-Zionists have proved themselves to be morally bankrupt cowards and enablers of evil.
It's one standard for the Arabs, another for the Jews.
According to the anti-Zionist universe, the Arabs are brown-skinned, which automatically has to mean that they are downtrodden and axiomatically correct; the Jews are white-skinned, which automatically has to mean they are the oppressors and axiomatically wrong. This profound display of myopia is the shaky foundation upon which anti-Zionism builds its creed, including its pick-and-choose mentality about terrorism.
It is high time that more Zionists stood up to the campaign of distortion, falsification, and useful idiocy of the anti-Zionist movement. This is especially necessary when the anti-Zionists love trotting out Jewish friends and supporters, as if this proved that anti-Zionism were true. That people find this convincing only shows the ruinous effect of identity politics on people's reasoning skills.
There are Jews who say wrong things. There are Jews who have repugnant beliefs. Identity is not proof that one is correct. I laugh at the puerile cliché of "As a Jew..." that is always trotted out whenever it comes to defending the Palestinian "cause". As far as I am concerned, hiding behind one's identity to back an opinion only suggests the weakness of that opinion by itself. I would feel ridiculous if I always prefaced my support of Zionism by saying, "As a British Zionist..."
Defy the intimidation, mental gymnastics, mob mentality, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and speak up. Don't allow lies and fraud to go unchallenged. Anti-Zionism is just another department at the Faculty of Antisemitism. Don't be fooled by the pseudo-intellectual language.
antizionist jews stop making every jewish holy day about palestine and how evil you think other jews are for NOT making it about palestine when it has literally nothing to do with the holy day challenge
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radar-of-the-stars · 10 months ago
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My Solution to every current geopolical conflict
I got the list from CFR, a Foreign Relations thinktank, so there might be some conflicts missing, and for that I apologize
Criminal Violence in Mexico: This one is quite simple, as Mexico gets wealthier, the concept of joining a cartel makes less and less since, and they will mostly become a minor issue like the mafia is in the US today, so I say improve Mexican labor rights and impose more taxes on illegal businesses.
Instability in Haiti: the Haitian Government is on the right track calling in foreign militaries to occupy the country to stop the violence in Haiti's cities, but the coalition of countries should probably include the US, because we are used to occupying nations and are quite good at it.
Conflict Between Venezuela and Guyana: Venezuela's claim to Esquibo is basically illegitimate and obviously a nationalist ploy to stop people from paying attentions to internal issues within Venezuela, I recommend they stop doing that and use soccer to stoke nationalism like every other Latin American country.
War in Ukraine: I suggest Putin stop doing War in Ukraine, this would stop War in Ukraine.
Conflict Between Turkey and Armed Kurdish Groups: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria should recognize the autonomy and independence of Kurdistan and stop massacring Kurdish people.
Instability in Lebanon: Iran should stop sending in troops, and the Lebanese government should make a new constitution that guarantees religious freedom to prevent the religious conflict that has defined the nation since its independence.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: the US should occupy the region and rebuild the Gaza strip, enforce a clear border in the West Bank and ban any further settlers, and hold a free and fair election in a united Palestine. Build a commercial airline in both parts of Palestine and make sure that Israel is forced to allow people and materials to cross between the two sections of the country. Also the top brass of the IDF and the Israeli government should be tried for their war crimes in an international court.
Nongoro-Karabakh Conflict: the last remaining Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh should be given safe passage into Armenia and Azerbaijan should be sanctioned by the rest of the world until they are forced to stop repressing ethnic minorities.
Instability in Iraq: Honestly this feels like it will sort itself out with time, keep training the Iraqi military on counter-terrorism and keep secularizing the government to prevent religious tension.
Conflict in Syria: This one is harder, "win the war on terror" is basically impossible to do, but if you secularize the government, stop Israel from bombing Syria, and push some wealth onto the average Syrian, then the terrorism in the region would probably go away on its own.
War in Yemen: The US and China are both ready to precision strike every single Houthi in Yemen for endangering international trade, so maybe instead have the US and Chinese Militaries train the Yemeni Military on how to stop the Houthis themselves while the US and China defend the Red Sea.
US Confrontation with Iran: The Ayatollah needs to be overthrown, but it needs to be done by the people of Iran, and not by the US. I suggest revolution, and the new government eventually engages in peace talks with America.
Civil Conflict in Libya: Easily the most complicated conflict on the list, I don't have any suggestion other than maybe try and compromise with the rebels, and failing that try to get other countries to fight them.
Civil War in Sudan: This, on the other hand is the easiest conflict on the list, just cede the territory, neither side wants to build a government with the other, so they probably shouldn't.
Instability in South Sudan: The South Sudanese really need infrastructure designed for peacetime, so I suggest having the US or China build the infrastructure for you. Being a neocolonial state is definitely not the best ending, but it's the only ending that stops the violence that is even remotely realistic
Violent Extremism in the Sahel: Violent Extremism is caused by poverty in most cases, including this one. It's not exactly easy to solve poverty, strong democratic governments with functional social safety nets and worker's rights tend to go a long ways.
Conflict in the Central African Republic: the Central African Republic needs military and economic support from a more stable country, one that is willing and able to push back the rebels, probably the US or China, I would go with the US.
Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Do the Election again, this time with armed guards at every polling place to make sure no shenanigans went down, probably need to compromise with rebel forces to prevent civil war.
Conflict in Ethiopia: Ethiopia needs to stop messing with the Nile if it doesn't want war with Egypt and Sudan, and my next solution will solve its need for a safe port for trade.
Conflict between Somalia and Somaliland: Somalia needs to recognize Somaliland's independence and stop threatening war. And Somaliland needs to keep their deal with Ethiopia for safe access to Berbera for trade.
Conflict with Al-Shabaab in Somalia: Somalia needs a stronger central government that doesn't let terrorists take over its capital city and attack foreign countries, Somalia also needs to continue training with the US.
Instability in Afganistan: I prescribe revolution, freedom for women and gays, secularization, and you know what, some worker's rights couldn't hurt.
Instability in Pakistan: How many times and I going to type some version of the word "secularize" stop oppression regional, religious, or ethnic minorities and they would stop trying to take over your country.
Conflict between India and Pakistan: India needs to stop doing Hindu Nationalism and both sides need to stop pointing nukes at each other, this might actually be the simplest issue on this list.
Civil War in Myanmar: The rebels need to win the Civil War, and then not ethnically cleanse Muslims when they are in power.
Territorial Disputes in the South China Sea: China needs to follow international maritime law and stop stealing territory from its neighbors.
Confrontation over Taiwan: China needs to recognize Taiwanese independence and stop threatening them with war.
North Korea Crisis: I would also advocate for revolution here, but the extreme poverty in the region means a revolution would not be successful, so maybe they should be invaded by China and become a part of China.
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infinitysisters · 2 years ago
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secular-jew · 7 months ago
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The Islamic regime of Iran has ordered the execution of rapper Toomaj Salehi, a hip hop star with over 2 million followers. He is already in jail on a 6 yr sentence, now he's going to be executed.
Because Islam. I wonder how many protests on American campuses will ensue?
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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months ago
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By: Andrew Doyle
Published: Dec 12, 2023
Towards the end of Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine Part Two, our marauding anti-hero burns a copy of the Quran, along with other Islamic books, as a kind of audacious test. “Now, Mahomet,” he cries, “if thou have any power, come down thyself and work a miracle.” Two scenes later, he is dead.
We might see this as a cautionary tale for our times. After all, it isn’t only Turco-Mongol conquerors who find themselves punished for Quran-burning. Last week, the Danish parliament voted to ban the desecration of all religious texts following a spate of protests in which copies of the Qur’an had been destroyed. Inevitably, the new law has been couched as a safety measure. This burning of the book, claims justice minister Peter Hummelgaard, “harms Denmark and Danish interests, and risks harming the security of Danes abroad and here at home”.
He has a point. Even unconfirmed accusations of Quran-burning can be sufficient to prompt extremist violence. In 2015, being accused of defiling the holy book, Farkhunda Malikzada was beaten to death by a ferocious mob in Afghanistan while bystanders, including police officers, did nothing to intervene. Many filmed the brutal murder on their phones and the footage was widely shared on social media. In 2022, a mentally unstable man called Mushtaq Rajput was similarly accused and tied to a tree and stoned to death in Pakistan. Earlier this year in Iran, it was reported that Javad Rouhi was tortured so severely that he could no longer speak or walk. He was sentenced to death for apostasy and later died in prison under suspicious circumstances.
But while we might anticipate that the desecration of the Quran would be proscribed in Islamic theocracies, it is troubling to see similar laws being passed in secular nations such as Denmark. The government had not been so faint-hearted when faced with similar problems in 2005. After cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed were published in Jyllands-Posten, a global campaign from Indonesia to Bosnia demanded that the Danish authorities take action. The government stood firm and the judicial complaint against the newspaper was dismissed.
In a free society this is the only justifiable response, albeit one that takes considerable courage. And the climate of intimidation that has descended since is a product of our collective failure to defend freedom of speech against the demands of militants. When the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced his fatwa on Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, one would have hoped for a unified front on behalf of one of our finest writers. Instead, much of the literary and political establishment abandoned or even censured him. In the Australian television show Hypotheticals, the singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, implied that he would have no objections to Rushdie being burned alive.
That a work of fiction such as The Satanic Verses could not even be published today gives us some indication of the extent to which we have forsaken the principle of free speech. If we are so squeamish about the burning of Qurans, why were so many of us indifferent to the burning of Rushdie’s book on the streets of Bolton and Bradford? Yusuf Islam’s remark about the author’s immolation might have been flippant but, as Heinrich Heine famously wrote: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people too.”
The ceremonial burning of books in Germany and Austria in the Thirties has ensured that the act will always have a unique charge, and a disquieting, visceral effect. It is why, for instance, the most memorable scene in Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan is when the villain Steerpike sets fire to his master’s library. It is a gesture designed to repudiate the very heights of human achievement, to hurl his victim into a spiral of despair. When Rushdie saw his own novel publicly incinerated, he confessed to feeling that “now the victory of the Enlightenment was looking temporary, reversible”.
The burning of the Quran leaves many of us similarly troubled. We do not need to approve of the contents to sense that the destruction of a book is symbolic of a desire to limit the scope of human thought. When activists post footage of themselves gleefully setting fire to copies of Harry Potter, one cannot shake the similar suspicion that they would happily substitute the books with the author herself.
But while many of us find the burning of books instinctively rebarbative, to outlaw this form of protest is essentially authoritarian. And to reinstate blasphemy laws by specifying that only religious books are to be protected is fundamentally retrograde. Of course, such laws already exist in most Western countries in an unwritten form. In March, a 14-year-old autistic boy was suspended from his school in Wakefield, reported to the police, and received death threats after he accidentally dropped a copy of the Quran on the floor, causing some of the pages to be scuffed. He may not have committed a crime, but many people behaved as though he had.
And the same unwritten laws are in force in the fact that few would be brave enough to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed after the massacre at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Five years later, the schoolteacher Samuel Paty was beheaded on the streets of Paris simply for showing the offending images during a lesson on free speech. Closer to home, a teacher at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire is still in hiding after showing the images to his pupils and stirring the ire of a righteous mob.
The failure of the school’s headmaster, as well as the teaching unions, to support this man against the demands of religious fundamentalists is revealing. Why must those who claim to be defending the dignity of Muslims treat them as irascible children? At the same time, as Sam Harris recently pointed out, there is an oddity in the fact that so many Muslims do not appear to be alarmed that “their community is so uniquely combustible”.
The bitter reality is that terrorism works, particularly when so many governments across the Western world are seemingly willing to fritter away our bedrock of liberal values. This has been actuated, in part, by an alliance of two very different forms of authoritarianism: ultra-conservative Islamic dogma and the safetyist ideology of “wokeness”. The latter has always claimed that causing offence is a form of violence, and the former has been quick to adopt the same tactics. This is why protesters outside Batley Grammar School asserted that the display of offensive cartoons was a “safeguarding” issue, and the Muslim Council of Britain criticised the school for not maintaining an “inclusive space”. The same censorious instincts have been updated, and are now cloaked in a more modish language.
In a civilised and pluralistic society, the burning of a holy book might provoke a variety of responses — anger, disbelief, or just a shrug of the shoulders — but it should never lead to violence. Back when The Onion still had some bite, the website satirised this “unique combustibility” through the depiction of a graphic sexual foursome between Moses, Jesus, Ganesha and Buddha. The headline said it all: “No One Murdered Because Of This Image”.
Freedom of speech and expression still matters, and if that means a few hotheads and mini-Tamburlaines might burn their copies of the Quran then so be it. It is unfortunate that we have reached the point where Islam must be ring-fenced from ridicule or criticism, whether due to fear of violent repercussions or a misguided and patronising effort to promote social justice. But for this state of affairs we ultimately have only ourselves to blame, and in particular our tendency to capitulate to religious zealots when they seek exemption from the liberal consensus.
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iraniraqcrisiscommittee · 1 year ago
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Ending on a Bombshell
The Prophecy Realized
A weird broadcast over took Syrian televisions and proclaiming to carry a message from the Mesopotamian God Ea with references to Al-Assad.
Additionally, a huge earthquake lends itself to the line ..."The danger of the gods will shake the earth itself, revealing the divine leader to the mortals who believe." A prophecy is coming to life.
Unified Democratic Central Asian State
New propaganda has appeared in Uzbekistan, Kazakistan, Tajikistan, Kurjistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan promoting a unified, democratic, and secular state. Multiple movies starring Reagan have appeared in the region pushing this message.
There are small demonstrations in support.
What the H-E-double hockey stick is going on in Kurdistan?
There has been a distribution of weapons from Kurdish Iranian to Kurds in Iraq and Syria. These Iraqi Kurds are actively preventing Iraqi government forces (who were trying o persuade them to peace) from entering the region. Iran is actively backing the independent Kurdish state.
A new group named the Kurdish Popular Front in Kirkuk is establishing a base but have unknown intentions. The region is mess.
The New Found Gospel
Televangelist Jerry Fallwell, has started preaching on the greatness of the Reagan administration and the spiritual necessity of oil (which lies deep in every American's heart).
Rafsanjani is in the Red
Recent propaganda cycles in Iran have surprisingly shown that Rafsanjani is losing popularity ...
A New Pakistan
A new Iranian task force, along with Chinese and Kurdish help, helped establish an Islamic Pakistan State and now has its first official ally. The first action of this new state? To hire the Golden Army from the House of the Dragon.
Part of the new Pakistan includes the beginning to nuclear power plants that are not nuclear-grade provided by no other than the House of the Dragon who the committee can find no information on. They found one member but he managed to mysteriously disappear before they could get him to talk.
Another Dictator
As panic reached an all time high, Khalid Bin Abdulalaziz Al-Saud, proclaims that his Kingdom was blessed Allah, cementing his absolute power as he returned the stone. Saudi Arabia has left the petroleum pool which has decimated the Iranian and Iraqi economy under his rule. Although Iran has been receiving humanitarian aid, it is of utmost important that Iraq begin receiving help from these corridors as well.
In other news, his Versace Line is now available. As a show of his good grace, he is distributing the line to all refugees. He hopes that this will encourage people to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
To infinity and why?
Margaret Thatcher sent British citizens to space. Seems weird ... what are you doing girlie? We have problems down here to solve.
A Kidnapping
Ayatollah Khomeini has been kidnapped. There have been no demands for his return ... updates will come.
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almaqead · 1 year ago
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"Shahad and Hudud." From Surah 2, Al Baqarah, "the Heifer."
Most people think Allah looks like the Ayatollah Khomenei, like some kind of Furious George:
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This is because of a grossly misunderstood Quran. A few verses will help straighten out how Allah is and where the errors have come from. First there are a few binding declarations within something called Al Shahada, the "statement of faith used in Islam to create a portrait of Allah 100% of Muslims agree upon:
What is the Shahada?
The Shahada (shahadah) is the Arabic term for the declaration of faith in one God (Allah) and His messenger. Shah means the Lord, had means "to possess, to reign, to submit to."
What does the Shahada mean?
Transliteration: “Ash-hadu an la ilaha illa Allah, Wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulu-Allah.”
Translation:  “I bear witness that there is no God but God (Allah – i.e. there is none worthy of worship but Allah), and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
It is the most sacred statement in Islam, and must be recited with full understanding and mindfulness of it’s meaning.
The tone in the Quran towards Allah's sole single supremacy gets hot under the collar readily, and quite suddenly the Most Merciful sounds much more like the Most Merciless.
There are very specific instructions in Baqarah that shape how one is to know the mind of Allah and whether or not there is an Allah (a) or an Allah (b), one that is kind and one that loses its temper.
To qualify and quantify which Allah is the right one, I added Hudud "the Boundaries" to the Pillars of Islam. One must observe the rules of society and the obligations named in the Quran in order to be enthroned with Allah.
One who claims strict monotheistic loyalty to Allah but behaves like a fiend or a demoniac must be punished as this is, by default the creation of an alternate Allah that competes with the Real Allah and that is a sin. It must be punished severely so the Names of Allah remain pure.
The Quran addresses this with great clarity:
2:163-166:
And your god is one God. There is no deity [worthy of worship] except Him, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.
Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the night and the day, and the [great] ships which sail through the sea with that which benefits people, and what Allah has sent down from the heavens of rain, giving life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness and dispersing therein every [kind of] moving creature, and [His] directing of the winds and the clouds controlled between the heaven and the earth are signs for a people who use reason.
And [yet], among the people are those who take other than Allah as equals [to Him]. They love them as they [should] love Allah. But those who believe are stronger in love for Allah . And if only they who have wronged would consider [that] when they see the punishment, [they will be certain] that all power belongs to Allah and that Allah is severe in punishment.
[And they should consider that] when those who have been followed disassociate themselves from those who followed [them], and they [all] see the punishment, and cut off from them are the ties [of relationship],
And if only they who have wronged would consider [that] when they see the punishment, [they will be certain] that all power belongs to Allah and that Allah is severe in punishment. And they should consider that] when those who have been followed disassociate themselves from those who followed [them], and they [all] see the punishment, and cut off
Crimes must be punished according to secular laws. This allows us to see the saint and the sinner out in the open. Failure to observe secular laws, which are approximately the same all around the world permit madmen and thieves to oppress, conquer, steal, rape, and destroy without recompense. Men who do these things and claim the Shahada are committing blasphemy and they cannot be tolerated.
Through the Fatihah, Hajj, Qiblah, Zakah, Sawm, Salat, Sadaq, Haram. etc. we come to know the real Allah such as He resides within the Quran. These should be performed at the level of one's very best.
Secular laws, however, according to the Pillar of Hudud must be perfectly enforced. This is the only way to protect the Shahada from blasphemy and protect the faithful while they perform Qiblah, Tawaf, etc. and actually illustrate Allah, AKA those Seated First.
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beardedmrbean · 2 years ago
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Unprecedented scenes are emerging from the Islamic Republic of Iran: Schoolgirls across the country are flouting the law, some uncovering their hair, and many chanting, "We don't want the Islamic Republic!" and even, "Khamenei is a murderer!"
It is a rare and highly risky direct criticism of Iran's 83-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Monday accused the United States and Israel of plotting the protests that have swept across the nation.
"They have sat down and planned this," Khamenei claimed in his first public comments since the demonstrations began 18 days ago. "Those who take their salaries, some being traitorous Iranians abroad, have helped them."
His words did nothing to quell the calls for freedom spreading from school to school and university to university across Iran. The protests were sparked by the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran's "morality police." She was accused of wearing an improper hijab, which covers the hair and body, as required under the country's draconian interpretation of Islamic law.
Since Saturday, when the academic year officially began in Iran, college students have been protesting daily, shouting slogans such as "The mullahs must get lost!" and "Iran is drowning in blood, our professors are drowning in silence."
People under the age of 25, most of them women, have continued to drive the protests despite a harsh crackdown by the regime.
The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group says at least 133 people across Iran have been killed by the authorities since the protests began. That figure includes more than 40 people reportedly killed in the southeast city of Zahedan last Friday. Thousands more have been arrested, according to activists.
"Everyone is out on the streets," one college student said in a video message. "We have to keep going. They can't arrest all of us."
On Sunday, security forces besieged Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology — often referred to as the MIT of Iran — where students had been protesting peacefully. The student union said armed plainclothes agents beat demonstrators with batons, fired at them with plastic bullets and shotguns at short range, chased students down into a parking garage, and brutally arrested hundreds of them — though many were later released.
"The ground was full of blood," one woman said on condition of anonymity, adding that the authorities started scrubbing it clean the next day. "Nobody was chanting anything bad. We just want freedom. Why do I have to be afraid? We are human beings. We want to live like the rest of the world."
The Iranian authorities "think that by using force, brutal force, they can be in power forever," Maziar Bahari, the London-based editor of IranWire news, told CBS News. "But of course, they're wrong." 
Bahari said Iran's younger generations have simply had enough.
"My generation and the generation after me, we gave the government the chance to reform itself," said Bahari, who was jailed in Iran in 2009 while living and working there as a journalist for Newsweek. "But this generation can see that… the Islamic Republic cannot be reformed, so this government has to be ended."
Modern Iran emerged with the overthrow of a secular government in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Now, 43 years later, many young Iranians in the Islamic Republic are fed up with what they see as repressive rules, global isolation and severe Western sanctions imposed on their country.
"Young people are becoming poorer," Bahari said. "They are being humiliated at school. They're being humiliated on the streets by the morality police… their country is being humiliated by the world because of their kind of government. So, imagine living in that country. You want change. You want the change today."
Iran's Gen Z — those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s — are also the first generation to have grown up immersed in social media and the Internet, much like their counterparts in the West, explains Holly Dagres, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
"While it is heavily censored and has to be accessed through circumvention tools, Iranian Gen Z can see, in real-time, how the rest of the world lives," Dagres told CBS News. "Iranian youth look inwards and see how isolated their country is and that a corrupt and hypocritical clerical establishment rules it. Naturally, they want more - things we take for granted in the West."
Dagres said the violent tactics Iranian authorities used against students at Sharif University on Sunday were symbolic, because the university is known for having the best and the brightest, many of whom end up living and working in the West.
"Viral videos of the crackdown on the country's brilliant minds signals to youth everywhere two choices: Take down the Islamic Republic, or leave Iran," said Dagres. 
On Tuesday, President Ebrahim Raisi called for national unity and acknowledged that Iran had "weaknesses or shortcomings."
But Omid Memarian, senior Iran analyst at the Democracy for the Arab World Now group, said the president's remarks only further highlighted the regime's disconnect from reality.
"Protesters are chanting, 'Down with the dictator…' and he is talking about national unity," Memarian told CBS News. "It's obvious the authorities have not understood that the anger and dissatisfaction are much bigger than the recent death of Mahsa Amini." 
Iran has had many other Mahsas - women who have been killed - whose stories were never told, said the college student.
"Our problem is not with Islam or religion," she said. "We just want… people to live as they like in Iran and not be jailed for it."
"Please hear our voices," she added. "Help us in any way you can."
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