سلفي ردا على مهاجمتهم السياحة الايرانية وليس الاسرائيلية : الاسرائليين كلهم بيسكنوا طابا ودي بلدهم اصلا

يرتعب السلفي ويحذر ويهدد من قدوم الشيعة مصرا ويرفض السياحة الايرانية الى مصر تحت مسمى منع المد الشيعي ... ولكن حين يسأل المتحجرة عقولهم منهم عن موقفهم من السياحة الايرانية والسياحة الاسرائيلية في مصر --- هكذا تكون حجتهم: "ديه مش حاجة جديدة وبعدين الاسرائيليين بيقعدوا في طابا وديه بلدهم اصلا"

يا عيب الشوم والبلغ عليك يا سيدنا الاهبل! يا خسارة العمامة الازهرية اللي انت لابسها ... يا ضيعان دم الشهداء اللي قتلوا لاسترداد كل شبر من ارض الوطن عشان ييجي اليوم اللي تقول لنا انت فيه ان "طابا بلد اليهود اصلا"!

Ultraconservative Salafi protesters shouted anti-Iran slogans and waved a Syrian
rebel flag during a protest at the residence of Iran's top diplomat on April 5, 2013.
Protesters criticise the Egyptian government's attempts to improve ties with Tehran.

ويمضي سيدنا الشيخ موضحا "ان الشيعة اخطر على الاسلام والمسلمين من اليهود" وذلك لان الشيعة "يضطدهون اهل السنة في سوريا" ... طيب يا عم الحاج. يمكن. واضطهاد العقيدة والمخطط الصهيوني للاسلام والمسلمين دون تمييز طائفي او مذهبي ... ده ايه؟ بما لا يخالف شرع الله؟ ولا ده اوكي لما يمارسوا في بلاد المسلمين عموما ومصر خصوصا لأن "ديه بلدهم اصلا"؟

اطالب الازهر باصلاح التعليم الديني الازهري! ازاي يكون شيخ معمم بهذا الجهل والهبل والعبط! اما انه فيديوا مفتري وما هو بشيخ ازهري معمم وعليه يحاسب صاحب الفيديو واما ان الازهر مهترئ في اعداد الائمة والعلماء!

واليكم بعض الصور والبراهين التي تظهر بعض عملاء الروافض والنصيرية الذين سمح لهم بزيارة مصر مؤخرا وما يمثلوه من تهديد على الاسلام والمسلمين وهوية وامن مصر ولا حول ولا قوة الا بالله:

Iranian tourists visit the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor on April 2, 2013 (AFP Photo) 

Iranian tourists in Luxor on the first visit by Iranian tourists to Egypt for over thirty years 

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Jordanian-Iranian relations: Wikileaks and the making of diplomacy in the Middle East

"Jordanian-Iranian rapprochement is a result of Wikileaks and their revelation of Jordan's mild positions towards the Iranian dossier in contrast to the Saudis and the Egyptians".

From the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi

Monday, December 13, 2010

الاردنيون يستعدون للقاء قمة نادر بين الملك عبدالله الثاني والرئيس احمدي نجاد بسام البدارين

عمان ـ 'القدس العربي'لا يمكن اعتبار تسريبات ويكيليكس كلها ضارة بالحكومات العربية فقد ساهمت في تقارب نادر جدا خلال الساعات الـ 48 الماضية بين عمان وطهران، لم يكن ليحصل وفقا للمراقبين لولا الوثائق المسربة التي تظهر فرقا كبيرا في الموقف من الملف الايراني ما بين الحكومة الاردنية ونظيراتها العربية وتحديدا المصرية والسعودية وحصة الاردن حتى الآن من وثائق ويكيليكس انحسرت عمليا بورقتين الاولى تتحدث عن الموقف الاردني من الضربة العسكرية لايران، والثانية تتحدث عن انطباعات بعد مباراة بين فريقي الفيصلي والوحدات بالحالتين تأثرت عمان، فقد نقلت التسريبات عن الموقف الاردني معارضته الشديدة لاي عمل عسكري ضد ايران وتحذيره من ان ذلك سيقود لتعقيدات كبيرة تطال الجميع في المنطقة طهران فيما يبدو، لم تفوت الفرصة فسارعت لارسال مبعوث رفيع المستوى للقصر الملكي الاردني هو رحيم مشائي المدير الخاص لمكتب الرئيس الايراني احمدي نجادي، وهو عمليا اول مسؤول ابراني بارز يزور عمان منذ سنوات طويلة جدا مشائي استقبل بحفاوة بمكتب الملك عبد الله الثاني ورتبت معه جولة مباحثات رسمية وكانت المفاجأة بتبادل حديث ايجابي بينه وبين العاهل الاردني عبد الله الثاني حسب بعض المصادر المفاجأة الاهم احضرها معه مشائي وهي دعوة شخصية ورسمية للملك الاردني لزيارة طهران من الرئيس نجاد، وهي اول دعوة من نوعها بين بلدين ربطتهما دوما خلافات سياسية جذرية وعلاقات باردة للغاية وعمان ردت على الخطوة الانفتاحية بأفضل منها فقد نقلت وكالة الانباء الرسمية بترا عن الملك ترحيبه بعقد قمة اردنية - ايرانية ستكون لو حصلت قريبا نادرة جدا، والمثير ان الملك رحب بالقمة سواء اعقدت في عمان او طهران، مما يعني ضمنيا قبول الدعوة والاستعداد لتوجيه مثلها هذا التسارع الهائل في التواصل بين البلدين برأي المراقبين، لم يكن ليحصل لولا الوقائع التي سربتها ويكيليكس عن تحذيرات عمان في اللقاءات المغلقة من ضرب ايران، ومن الواضح انه تواصل يحاول احتواء تردي العلاقات وتدهورها منذ اقترحت عمان التحذير من الهلال الشيعي، خصوصا وان السفير الاردني في طهران الشيخ نوح القضاة قضى سنوات في ايران وهو يحاول كشخصية دينية ابقاء مستوى التوتر الدبلوماسي والسياسي عند مستواه القائم ومنع اي تدهور اضافي وهناك ثمة فضيلة اضافية، فمستوى الاهتمام السياسي والاعلامي الذي تعيشه البلاد لليوم الرابع على التوالي بقصة الوحدة الوطنية بعد الاحداث الاخيرة اثر مباراة الفيصلي والوحدات يمكن ايضا رده لتسريبات ويكيليكس، وفقا للمحلل والحقوقي نضال منصور، الذي قرأ كغيره الوثيقة الثانية التي تخص الاردن بالتسريبات وتتمثل في انطباعات السفير الامريكي قبل سنوات عن مباراة بين نفس الفريقين حسب التسريبات تحدث السفير الامريكي عن 'بلطجة' تستهدف الاردنيين من اصل فلسطيني خلال المباريات، لكن السلطات اهتمت جدا بما حصل بعد المباراة الاخيرة الجمعة الماضية في محاولة واضحة لنفي تهمة التواطؤ ضمنيا او اظهار الجدية في التعاطي مع مشكلات كرة القدم التي تهدد الوحدة الوطنية وبالنتيجة انتهى الامر بأول لجنة تحقيق رفيعة تشكل لدراسة مشكلات المدرجات خصوصا خلال مباريات الفيصلي والوحدات

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Your daily dose of chauvinism - Aryanism, from Iran with Love.

This article appeared in my inbox a couple of days ago and made me recall my deeply entrenched cause: fighting closed-minded isolationism, racism and self-mystification. Once again, the Iranian "intelligentsia" provides food for my thought and prey for my anti-isolationism. More than a year ago, I blogged about the chauvinistic history lesson offered on a menu at an "Iranian" restaurant off of Leicester Square, London. Today, Reza Zia-Ebrahimi writes from London about Iranian intellectuals' wanna-be Aryanism.

The remarks and comments left by many commentators on this article are all the more entertaining. They dwarf the article itself, albeit proving its argument. Many of the Iranian commentators slammed Zia-Ebrahimi for attempting to distance Iranians from Aryanism and suggest they might share more with Arabs than they'd like to admit. Commentators bearing non-Iranian-sounding names and/or academic titles/language seem to concur or at least admire Zia-Ebrahimi's remarks.

Needless to say, much of this jargon can be found in the political discourse of Lebanon's wannabe-Phonetician Maronite elite and their entrenched belief in their Europeaness, vis-à-vis their Arabness. Early 20th century Egyptian nationalists (or isolationists) were not much different in their articulation of what they believed to be "the deeply-connected histories and fates of Egyptian and European antiquities" and how that will forever differentiate between Egypt and its Arabo-Islamic neighbours and history.

**SIGH**

In any case, Iranians seem to top it all - at least for now. Here's a taste of Iranian chauvisinism - Aryanism.

Read, (try to) enjoy and reflect.

Iranian Identity, the 'Aryan Race,' and Jake Gyllenhaal

by REZA ZIA-EBRAHIMI in London

06 AUG 2010 13:3449 Comments

Troubling echoes in adherence to Hollywood vision of the past.

Everybody has heard about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the recent Walt Disney blockbuster featuring Jake Gyllenhaal in the role of...a prince of Persia. That a rather fair actor with Swedish and Ashkenazi heritage plays the lead role in a story set in ancient Iran caused a minor controversy. Some enlightened people believe that Hollywood missed an opportunity to transcend its stereotypical depictions of non-Europeans, particularly Middle Easterners, by offering the part to a brownish hero. Of course, in private discussions, many Iranians, always prompt to portray themselves as "Aryans," concurred that Gyllenhaal accurately embodies how their ancestors must have looked, before Arabs invaded and imposed both their religion and complexion at the point of the sword.

So far, nothing unusual. What is surprising and alarming, however, is that serious intellectuals condoned these views. Asked to comment on producer Jerry Bruckheimer's declaration to The Times of London that many Iranians were "blond and blue-eyed" until "the Turks kinda changed everything," American-Iranian author Reza Aslan asserted that, indeed, Iranians were Aryans. "If we went back in time 1,700 years to the mythological era," Aslan said, "all Iranians would look like Jake Gyllenhaal." This pronouncement highlights the resilience of what I call the "Aryan syndrome" in modern Iran. A historical detour is necessary to show why it is so problematic.

Aryanism is a system of thought born in early-nineteenth-century Europe that divides mankind into different "races." It deems the Aryan race to be "superior," more creative and morally upright than "inferior" races. Those Semites, "Negroes," and others were believed to be characterized by vicious simplicity, cupidity, treacherousness, and an incapacity to grasp metaphysics. It all started soon after Sir William Jones discovered in 1786 that Sanskrit and Persian were related to Latin and Greek, within what later came to be called the Indo-European family of languages.

The term "Aryan" itself is a neologism coined by a French Orientalist of the era, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron. It is synonymous with "Indo-European," although the latter has a more geographic connotation. In a Zeitgeist where nations and national cultures were given shape, where myths of genealogy were particularly appealing to intellectuals, and where some were grappling with the moral dilemma of colonizing people in far-off lands, Jones's linguistic theory was swiftly manipulated into a racial one -- linguistic similarity was assumed to denote racial kinship.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Aryanism was wrapped into the discourse of science. Racial anthropology came into being as a discipline claiming to classify humans into different racial categories with immutable psychological features by measuring noses, skulls, and ears. As we know all too well, Aryanists, in particular one Adolf Hitler, became increasingly obsessed with racial purity and elevated the opposition between Aryan and Semite to the level of paradigmatic antagonism. This opened the way for the next stage: extermination. Aryanism provided the ideological backbone for Nazi atrocities.

Today, talk of the "Aryan race" in the West is restricted to white supremacist circles in North America and neo-Nazi militants in Europe. The very concept of "race," although it is still used in political discourses, especially in the United States, is scientifically bankrupt. Leading scientific associations assert that genetic variations between human groups are so gradual that drawing lines is inevitably an arbitrary and subjective exercise. "Indo-European" today refers to languages, not to people, let alone people supposed to assume inherent characteristics. Even its now limited use has been questioned. According to prominent linguists such as Merritt Ruhlen and the late Joseph Greenberg, the theory which holds that Indo-European languages are unrelated to other language groups such as the "Semitic" is overstated, if not outright fictitious.

Despite the rather inglorious legacy of Aryanism, many Iranians still nonchalantly seize every opportunity to emphasize their "Aryanness." But how did Aryanism reach Iran in the first place? Iranian Aryanists would have us believe that we have referred to ourselves as ariya since time immemorial, and that this epithet is a racial one, used to distinguish those who are ariya from those who are not. The claim is fallacious. The term occurs only a handful of times in ancient inscriptions in the Avesta, and on the bas-reliefs of Naqsh-e Rostam and Bisotun. Absolutely no consistent meaning can be derived from these occurrences.

In spite of many attempts to force ariya into Aryanist assumptions, recent scholarship -- in particular the work of Gherardo Gnoli -- has shown that ariya was not quite a racial category. According to Gnoli, in Achaemenid times, ariya was a cultural and religious term to evoke the kings' origin, like a title of particular nobility. In its very restricted, exclusivist nature, that is quite different from a racial category. Moreover, as already mentioned, the term "Aryan" was coined by Anquetil-Duperron. The neologism is charged with modern and romantic European conceptions of "race" that did not exist in Eastern antiquity. Even more importantly, in the entire corpus of Persian literature, verse and prose, there is no reference to an Aryan race until the twentieth century.

A related myth is the one according to which "Iran" means the "land of Aryans." This myth was propagated by Max Müller, who claimed in 1862 that the term airyanem vaejah found in the Avesta is the ancestor of "Iran" and means the "Aryan expanse." This myth became so widespread that serious scholars propagate it even to this day. Suffice it to look at a dictionary.

By contrast, Gnoli contends that airyanem vaejah is not a historical land, but a legendary, cosmogonic concept in Zoroastrianism. Additionally, the "land of Aryans" would suppose that the inhabitants of the Achaemenid or Sasanian empires were racially conscious in a manner similar to nineteenth-century Europeans. This is of course highly unlikely, particularly given that the Iranian plateau already -- as it has ever since -- featured a complex mix of populations. Out of 30,000 tablets excavated in Persepolis, not one was written in Persian (most are in Elamite, and a few are in Aramean). In fact, the empire was a melting pot. To imagine that its inhabitants believed that a territory must belong to one people is an anachronistic projection of modern ideas onto the distant past. The presence of Arabs on the Iranian plateau and Iranians in the Arabian Peninsula is also attested, but somehow ignored by the prophets of Aryanism.

The now ubiquitous concept of the "Aryan race" first appeared in Iran in the 1890s. Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, one of the ideologues of a particularly bigoted version of Iranian nationalism, was the first to ever refer to it in writing. Interestingly, he spelled it àriyàn (آریان), a transliteration of the French aryen. Later, Sadegh Rezazadeh Shafagh came up with àriyàyi, the term now usually used in Persian. Hasan Priniya dwelt upon Aryans and the "science of race" in the textbooks he wrote for the first cohort of children to be mass schooled by the Pahlavi state in the 1930s.

By that point, the strange idea of Iranian-German racial brotherhood had already appeared in various writings, such as a poem dedicated to "Germania" by Vahid Dastgerdi during World War I. After the Nazis took power, the notion was actively disseminated by the German propaganda machine. The hugely popular journal Nàmeh-ye Iràn Bàstàn, the Persian-language broadcasts of Radio Berlin, the publications and lecture tours of the Deutsch-Persische Gesellschaft, and the holdings of the German Scientific Library all promoted the idea of Aryan brotherhood, as Germany sought to convince Iranians to supporting her cause against the "ugly fox" (Great Britain) and "deceitful bear" (the Soviet Union). It all worked very well. Observe how the German football team is even now welcomed in Iran, occasionally with enthusiastic collective Nazi salutes.

Why is Aryanism in Iran so resilient? Why has it never been questioned, criticized, or reevaluated? In my view, late-nineteenth-century Iran was a receptive environment for Aryanism, which came to play a crucial role in the definition of modern Iranian identity. In the nineteenth century, Qajar Iran had come into contact with Europe. This was no smooth encounter, as it first came through the defeats of the Russo-Persian wars. The Qajar elites were profoundly traumatized by the discovery of Europe's advances and Iran's backwardness. Iranian intellectuals spent decades attempting to make sense of the nation's decay.

Around the 1860s, a few intellectuals such as Mirza Fath'ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Agha Khan Kermani pioneered a digestible and reassuring narrative, staggering in its simplicity: pre-Islamic Iran was a utopia of glory, power, refinement, and prosperity. The causes of the end of this magnificent past were to be laid entirely at the doorstep of the Arabs and their religion, Islam. Since the advent of Islam, Iranians had been miserable. If only Arabs had not brought Islam to Iran, the country would be as advanced, if not more, than France and England. The solution? Uprooting anything perceived to be "Arabic" or "Islamic" in Iranian customs and beliefs, including the alphabet, loanwords, and all religious practices. Such a project, which these intellectuals sincerely believed to be achievable, would overnight return Iran to its ancient glories. They entirely overlooked Iran's recent achievements -- of which there were more than a few -- but all this was, of course, designed to avoid examination of the nation's own shortcomings. Nationalism always needs scapegoats to protect the pristine nature of the "homeland" and its "true" people.

This was the context in which Iranian intellectuals heard, or rather read in Orientalist literature, that Iranians were members of that same superior race as Europeans. Aryanism was for them manna from heaven. It suddenly -- and, it should be added, unexpectedly -- provided them an attractive means to consolidate their fanciful theories. It is fascinating how deeply compatible Aryanism was with the emerging nationalist discourse: the opposition between Iranian and Arab fit squarely into the Aryan vs. Semite paradigm. It also came from Europe. How could the celebrated, emulated Europeans be wrong? Iranians' pride, seriously wounded by the encounter with Europe, could be assuaged with the conviction that they shared in the Europeans' racial superiority. No surprise that they adhered so tightly to the myth of the Aryan race.

Two strategies are served by this adherence. I call the first one self-Orientalization. This is a commitment to all European prejudices that regard Muslims, or generally the people of the East, as backward. The Iranian Aryan espouses these prejudices (which, in fact, also target him) and simply considers himself to be the Aryan exception. Self-Orientalization always involves an element of shame over traditional Iranian customs and features. This is patent in the justification that Reza Shah Pahlavi provided when he rendered the European chapeau(bowler hat) compulsory in 1935: "All I am trying to do is for us to look like [the Europeans], so they would not laugh at us."

The second strategy is that of dislocation, the attempt to dislodge Iran from its Eastern and Islamic reality and force it into a European one, under the claim that Iranians are members of the European family gone astray in the backward Middle East. The dislocation mentality has very deep roots in the Iranian psyche, as it was incessantly promoted by the Pahlavi state through every vehicle of education and propaganda. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi himself was a militant of "dislocationism." He once told a journalist, for instance, "We are an Asian Aryan power whose mentality and philosophy are close to those of the European states, above all France." He confided to British Ambassador Anthony Parson that it was "an accident of history" that Iran found itself in the Middle East, a startling negation of the country's empirical reality.

Not only is Aryanism a relic of nineteenth-century European thought with an ignominious legacy, but its Iranian variety is a symptom of an entrenched complex of inferiority, a desperate attempt to be something other than a "mere Iranian." This complex is rooted in a traumatic encounter with Europe that took place two centuries ago. It thus alarms me that to this very day, serious Iranian intellectuals tell a wide audience that "Iranians are Aryans." Moreover, the belief that Aryans are supposed to be "fair" is rooted in a hypothesis fashionable in the 1930s according to which the cradle of the Aryan race, its Urheimat, was the Scandinavian Peninsula. It was this "Northern Hypothesis" that was at work in Nazi Germany's depictions of Aryans as a glorious blond, blue-eyed race. It is unfortunate that when people claim that we once all looked like Jake Gyllenhaal, they do not realize that they are referring to relics of the sort of thought at work in the minds of Nazi ideologues. This only highlights the urgent need for Iranians to question their identity myths and get rid of the distortional, racialist, bigoted view of their identity that they have inherited from Old Europe.

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi teaches history and politics at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. This article is a condensed version of his study "Self-Orientalisation and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the Aryan Discourse in Iran," to be published in the Journal of Iranian Studies in early 2011. Please refer to this publication for thorough referencing of quotations and documents.

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Qaddafi extends patronage to Egyptians from the Qaddafi tribe while Ismaïli Shi'ites dig up the remains of Fatimid heritage in Cairo's Citadel

Just a few random yet interesting bits and bobs from Cairo over the past few days. These two pieces of news, carried by independent newspapers are perhaps telling of Egyptians' paranoia at their country's vulnerability as the Egyptian state's legitimacy and the country's prestige quickly erode regionally and internationally.

The first article appeared on June 30, carried by the independent Al-Jarida daily. The report by Imad Fawwaz claimed that “prominent security sides in Egypt presented an urgent and confidential report about the activities of what has come to be known of “Al-Gaddafi’s Union” which is exercising its work in the Fayoum and Marsa Matrouh provinces next to the border with Libya. The report featured Egyptian security fears over the rise of the Union’s role, which according to estimations includes around one million Egyptians belonging to the Al-Gaddafi tribe in Egypt, as well as its in-laws from the tribes and families spread throughout the rural and desert regions in the two aforementioned provinces.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's tribe expanded into Egypt in 1860

Al-Gaddafi Union was founded in Fayoum in 1996 and included at the time the members of the Egyptian Al-Gaddafi family which was affiliated with the greater family in Libya. The latter had come to Egypt in 1860 and now includes around 5,000 Egyptian citizens, in addition to around 10,000 Egyptian citizens belonging to families enjoying familial ties with Al-Gaddafi. The security sources indicated to Al-Jarida that the security apparatuses started paying attention to the Union’s activities in 1998, when the founder of the Union Sheikh Mujahid al-Gaddafi started introducing the families of Marsa Matrouh and Saloum following a meeting they held with President Muammar al-Gaddafi in the city. The Sheikh was thus able to secure the accession of the leaders of ten Bedouin tribes, whereas the leader of the Libyan revolution Muammar al-Gaddafi visited the Union’s headquarters in 2000…”

On the same day, the independent Al-Mesryoon daily carried a report by Hamad al-Hajar: “Al-Mesryoon registered digging and excavation works conducted by groups of Shi’is inside the Salahuddin al-Ayoubi Fort, under claims of searching for what is believed to be the remains of Isma’ili religious references under the Fatimid state. The Shi’is say among them are people who were killed and buried under the walls of the fort by the Islamic leader after he annihilated the Shi’i state which governed Egypt from 969 until 1171. These works are being conducted with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture based on alleged information promoted by an official at the Ministry adopting Shi’i beliefs.

It strikes me as rather weird the author found it necessary to accuse the Ministry of Culture official as "adopting Shi'i belief" and placing the incident within the region-wide conflict with Iran which has often undertaken a Sunni-Shi'i sectarian undertone. What's most interesting is the divergence between Iran's brand of Shi'ism as well as the entire sect (Ithna `Ashri / Twelver Shi'ites) on the one hand, and the Ismaïli (Sevener) Shi'ism of both the Bohra and Aga Khani descendants of the Fatimids under whose patronage this archaeological dig is taking place.

Ismaïli Shi'ites flock to Al-Hakim Mosque in Cairo through Bab-ul-Futuh

one of the three remaining Fatimid gates to the Old City (by Sally Zohney)

It's worth mentioning that unlike Ithna `Ashri (Twelver) Shi'ites often accused of loyalty to Iran and receiving patronage from the Islamic Republic, Ismaïli Shi'ites have been welcome by the Egyptian state under King Fouad I, King Farouk I and the three republican presidents. Ismaïli Shi'ites of both the Aga Khani and Bohra branches have often patronised artwork, restoration of the Old City, refurbishment of the sacred shrines of saints and Ahlul Bayt in Cairo as well as the royal monuments and cemeteries of the Fatimid and post-Fatimid Ismaïli Imams. This was brought to the forefront with the restoration of Ismaïli worship in the Al-Hakim Bi-'Amrillah Mosque in Fatimid Cairo under the patronage and Imamate of the Bohra Sultan in India as well as the massive restoration and gentrification projects of Al-Azhar Park, El-Bard El-Ahmar and elsewhere under the patronage of His Highness Aga Khan IV Prince Karim Al-Husseini. The Ministry of Culture and its director, Mr. Farouk Hosni, have often co-sponsored and oversaw the projects funded and orchestrated by the Aga Khan Foundation.

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Azeri identity and Iranian nationalism: Azeri activists and intellectuals address the Green Movement

Iranian nationalism, since its inception, always hit against the hard rock of ethnic identities within the borders of both imperial and modern Iran. Azeri, Turkish and Turkic identities in Iran are perhaps the biggest debate in Iran vis-à-vis Iranian nationalism - perhaps owing to the mere number of Azeris, Turks and Turkomen in modern Iran. However, numbers and demography aren't the only challenge. The existence of social networks and transnational ethnic narratives, worldviews and mythologies in neighbouring Turkey and post-Soviet Azerbaijan challenge Iranian nationalism within the Azeri and Turkish communities in Iran. Iranian nationalism is often accused of being an exclusive nationalist project which only develops in contrast and against other identities and nationalisms - be it Arab, Turkish or Sunni.

Interestingly, this ever-lasting debate over Iranian nationalism and transnational ethnic and religious identities finds fertile ground in almost every political, social or even cultural opportunity. The outbreak of the so-called "Green Revolution" and the emergence of a vocal "Green Movement" is no exception. Although both Moussavi, the figurehead of the Green Movement, and the supreme leader of the Iranian revolution, Ali Khamenaei are both ethnic Azeris, the question of ethnic identities vis-à-vis exclusive Iranian nationalism has once again risen.

The Tehran Bureau published a translation of a message directed to the Green Movement by a group of Azeri activists and intellectuals. In their message, they claim that "although this new, rising [Green] movement has been able to take advantage of means such as the Internet and satellites to introduce itself to the world at large, it has not been able to establish itself as a nationwide movement inside Iran. Thus, so far, the burden of this movement has fallen on the backs of the urban middle class in central Iran."

Amongst their grievances, Azeri activists and intellectuals pointed out the shortcomings of the Green Movement in its call for freedom of expression and the free flow of information while remaining silent about "the freedom to speak one's language" - in reference to the enforcement of Farsi as the one and only official language of all educational, media and administrative language in Iran disregarding its sizeable Turkish population.

Another interesting point to which Azeri activists and intellectuals draw attention is "the use of a literature promoting ancient [Persia] and totalitarianism, a literature rooted in tendencies opposed to human rights and democracy" (I can already see the angry comments about this very point coming from tens of totalitarian, isolationist and "half-brained" people who will express outrage at this arguing that it was ancient Persia's Darius who introduced the notion of human rights to humanity!)

The statement concludes expressing its welcoming stance towards the Green Movement while expressing disdain and disappointment in its failure to address the question of minorities' rights. For them, the recognition of the existence of a non-Persian cultural component in Iran and its constitutionalisation is instrumental in any reform process in Iran.

Also noteworthy, the statement calls for the "safeguarding [of] the participation of Iranian nationalities in the central government, commensurate with their population size." Are Iranian Azeri activists and intellectuals calling for a Lebanonisation of the Iranian regime? Are they finding Azeri national interest in a quota system in which the state, the military and civil service are divided into quotas divided amongst the various ethnic communities?

Has the Islamic regime failed to include non-Persian nationalities as its predecessors had done? Has the resurgence of Iranian nationalism in its post-1979 religious garb failed to curb exclusive and chauvinist tendencies in imperial Pahlavi Iranian-ness?

Readers' comments on the Tehran bureau translation of the statement can perhaps indicate what many Internet-using Iranians in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora think about some of these questions.

The statement originally appeared in Farsi.

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When the virtual meets the real world

FlickR reported yesterday on its blog that a Turkish FlickR-based group, dostr, organised an exhibition in Istanbul in March 2010. The blog entry briefly introduced the exhibition to FlickR members.

The exhibition - "Ruya", or "Dream" - exhibited the work of member photographers - photos that portray faces, people, scenery and architecture. Further information on the exhibition can be found in this article (in Turkish) along with some photographs of and from the exhibition.

I can't comment much on the content of the exhibition, nor can I say much about the group since everything is provided in Turkish. However, it caught my attention as yet another major step in taking the networks constructed in the "virtual world" to the "real" one.

This comes almost 15 months after YouTube took the major step of organising a symphony of musicians from around the world through online, YouTube-based auditions hosted by YouTube, the London Symphony Orchestra and several other worldwide partners.

The call for auditions extended from December 1, 2008 to January 28, 2009. Winners, mostly amateur musicians (including three children), were announced on March 2, 2009. The musicians travelled to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas in April of the same year.

Having been internet-based, auditions were watched by some 15 million viewers worldwide. The concert itself was made available on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel on YouTube.

I'm sure there are many other examples of networking on the art, research and other scenes developed from online internet-based networks to physical networks and events in "real life" bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds and giving hope that boundaries and physical/geographical space can be trespassed by the revolution in information technology.

Similarly, the development ushers an era where repressing artistic creativity, opinion and collaborative work is increasingly hard. This, if translated politically, has promised many social movements a much-needed space of freedom of expression and association in the "virtual realm" where they lack in the "real world" due to social or political pressures.

Regardless of political opinion and/or representativeness of these movements, Iran's twitter-based Green Revolution in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections and Egypt's Facebook-borne strike on April 9, 2009.

Question remains, how inclusive are internet-borne networks in countries where access to information technologies remain low? Do they represent a space of freedom and liberty for a people lacking it? Or do they represent a space of freedom of expression and association for a select few who are now capable of developing networks and social movements arguably detached from a much wider public? Once again, the Iranian and Egyptian cases come to mind.

I recently posted an IDSC-produced report which gives an insight into access to information technology and the internet amongst Egyptians - which could perhaps be an indicator to the phenomenon in the developing world in general.

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BBC World Service: Citizen journalism - democracy or chaos?

In this two-part series Michael Buerk analyses the potential and dangers of citizen journalism. In the first part of the series, Buerk talks to bloggers and critics from Sri Lanka, Iran, Burma, and Iraq. In the second part, Buerk will talk to bloggers and citizen journalists from Egypt including my friend Wael Abbas, a prominent Cairene blogger who is often harassed by the authorities and has recently been stopped and harassed at Cairo International Airport more than once. The last time I met Abbas, he told me of how how he was harassed last time he arrived back in Cairo after a workshop in Beirut and had his laptop confiscated from him.

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Citizen journalism is a fast-growing worldwide phenomenon.

‘We are all journalists now,’ boast the twitters and bloggers who – thanks to the internet – can talk to the world as reporter, broadcaster, publisher, and editor.

In two programmes for the BBC World Service, Michael Buerk goes to the heart of the phenomenon, discovering the best and the worst, analysing the potential and the dangers, and focusing on issues of truth and trust.

‘Authenticity’ is what citizen journalists believe they are about, seeing themselves as Davids fighting against Goliaths. But critics point to problems of fakery, manipulation, partisanship, bias, and lack of accountability. Why it should be assumed that ‘the little man’ is necessarily morally superior to ‘the big organisation’?

Yet in countries where freedom of expression is repressed, it is bloggers who are challenging authoritarian regimes in ways traditional journalists cannot. Citizen journalists are enabling the rest of us to read stories and to see pictures that repressive regimes would rather stayed secret.

The critics remain vocal. What has really been achieved? Small victories, perhaps, but no Watergates as yet. And will this phenomenon extend democracy or end in chaos?

Part one - Citizen Journalism [click here]

In the first episode Michael Buerk talks to bloggers and critics from Sri Lanka, Iran, Burma, and Iraq.

‘What is going on,’ he reports, ‘is a struggle between old power and new technology for the control of cyberspace itself.’

First broadcast on Wednesday 02 September 2009.

Part two - Egyptian bloggers [click here]

In the second episode Michael Buerk visits Cairo and explores how bloggers - arguably among the most hounded anywhere in the world - are talking on the Egyptian governmnent.

First broadcast on Wednesday 02 September 2009.

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Egyptian Youth for Change protest in solidarity with the Iranian opposition and in memory of Neda Soltan

The Coalition of pan-Middle Eastern Youth for Change Initiative invited its supporters in Egypt to a second round of protests in support of the Iranian opposition to alleged vote rigging.

The invite I got (in Arabic) read:

The Egyptian "Baseejis" short-circuited a symbolic solidarity protest by Egyptian youths in support of their counterparts craving change in Iran proving that the Egyptian "Baseej" is wholly in support of its Iranian counterpart which brutally supressed Iranian protestors demanding democracy and change.

In the memory of the Angel of Tehran, Neda Soltan, we invite you to another solidarity protest backed by Hezb el Ghad and its leader Dr. Ayman Nour to commemorate a week on Neda soltan's martyrdom in the name of freedom.

Place: Midan Talaat Harb, in front of the El Ghad Party HQ, Downtown Cairo
Time: 7pm Cairo Local Time

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It's perhaps noteworthy to mention that Dr. Ayman Nour ran in the first Egyptian elections after the constitutional ammendments of 2005. He was the first runner up to incumbent President Mubarak earning almost a quarter of the votes in a highly-contested election back then. Dr. Nour was later sentenced to prison on charges of party fraud and was only released recently upon Presidential pardon.

Midan Talaat Harb in the heart of Khedival Cairo has been the scene of protests calling for reform for the past few years in Egypt and has featured highly in the activism of youth movements and bloggers.

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Televangelist Muhammad Al-Zughbi Calls on Mubarak to "annihilate Iranians and Bahais in Our Country"

Another Wahhabi disgrace empowerd by, and given a voice, through modern technology. In this episode, televangelist Al-Zughbi combines a bit of international/regional animosity, anti-Shiite sectarianism and anti-Jewish racism in a horrible assault against Bahaism.

Ironically, aired on Ar-Rahma TV (Mercy TV), this Wahhabi televangelist asks Allah that Egypt and Iran never restore diplomatic relations because "they [the Shiites] are evil", for "they [the Shiites] are behind the Bahai heresy" which, according to him, "was funded generously by Jews" seeking to destroy Islam. He then calls for the

Never have I seen the anti-Shi'a, anti-Jewish, anti-Bahai and pro-dictatorship, pro-radicalist sentiment so stereo-typical to Wahhabi preachers put together so eleqountly in ONE speech.

Video (Arabic with English subtitles) is made available by MEMRI TV. A full transcript is also available.

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Wishful thinking from Tehran, writes Abbas Barzegar

Abbas Barzegar wrote an op-ed today in the Guardian explaining his experience reporting from Iran during the Presidential elections and the unrest that pursued. For him "the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists", BUT the societal impulses and the social ideals he reports from the streets of Iran and the analysis he builds on them suggests there might be other reasons why the "impossible" happened - Mousavi lost and Ahmedinejad was re-elected.

Click here for source. Readers' comments on the article are also interesting and indicative of the on-going debate in Iranian communities in Iran and abroad.

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Wishful thinking from Tehran

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Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better...

I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.

As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.

On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister's supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava.

But the failure to properly gauge Iran's affairs is hardly a new phenomenon. When the 1979 revolution shattered the military dictatorship of America's strongest ally in the region few experts outside of the country suspected that the Islamic current would emerge as the leading party.

But in Iran, even the secular intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad, author of the infamous Occidentosis predicted the collapse of the regime at the hands of Islamic movement well over a decade before the fateful events of 1979. The maverick French philosopher, Michel Foucault, also made the right bet as he reported the events from the street – an insight that his many admirers still shy from. Since the revolution, academics, intellectuals and pundits have predicted the imminent collapse of the regime. As of today, they have done no better.

Such anomalies can only be explained by a longue duree. Iran is a deeply religious society. Of the Shah's mistakes nepotism, autocracy, and repression were fought by communists and liberals for decades with no success, but it was his attack on the religious establishment that led to his almost overnight demise.

Since then common Iranians have applied their ideals through the ballot box. In 1997 as the ashes of the Iran-Iraq war settled and the country saw a decade relative stability, voters came out in mass to support the former president-cleric Khatami against his rival, Natiq Nouri, a senior member of the establishment. Western reporters saw this in terms of a grand generational divide: young freedom loving liberals against elder conservative clerics. But it was really a vote for the ideal of honesty and piety against allegations of entrenched corruption. Many of those same Khatami supporters voted for Ahmedinejad yesterday, despite the fact that Khatami's face was on every one of Mousavi's campaign posters.

For over a week the same social impulses of anti-corruption, populism, and religious piety that led to the revolution have been on the streets available to anyone who wanted to report on them. Ahmedinejad, for most in the country, embodies those ideals. Since he came into office he has refused to wear a suit, refused to move out of the home he inherited from his father, and has refused to tone down the rhetoric he uses against those he accuses of betraying the nation. When he openly accused his towering rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanji, a lion of the revolution himself, of parasitical corruption and compared his betrayal to the alleged deception against the Prophet Muhammad that led to the Sunni-Shia split 1,400 years ago, he unleashed a popular impulse that has held the imagination of the masses here for generations. That Rafsanji defended himself through Mousavi's newspaper meant the end for the reformists.

In the last week Ahmedinejad turned the election into a referendum on the very project of Iran's Islamic revolution. Their street chants yelled "Death to all those against the Supreme Leader" followed by traditional Shia rituals and elegies. It was no match for the high-spirited fun-loving youth of northern Tehran who sang "Ahmedi-bye-bye, Ahmedi-bye-bye" or "ye hafte-do hafte, Mahmud hamum na-rafte" (One week, two weeks, Mahmoud hasn't taken a shower).

Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.

In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability. It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad – four years ago, and the same yesterday.

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