Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

C-Span has a weekly show where authors talk at length about their books. Last year I happened on one program with Reza Aslan as the guest and he talked about his book �No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam� Random House, 2005. Last week I saw his book for sale at WhattheBook and then saw him on Anderson Cooper yesterday on the program about the Pope�s visit to Turkey. If you don�t know who he is, he�s a young, articulate Iranian-American Moslem.

As a way of avoiding the boring chore of sending out job applications this morning I decided to google up what I could find about him. He�s even cooler than I had thought. He has his own website (http://www.rezaaslan.com/ ) with links to several articles he�s written. I think this guy is well worth a look at for people who are wanting a more balanced view of what is going on in Iran specifically and the Moslem world in general.

Here are a few excerpts, just to give you a flavor of what he has to say:

*Iranians as a people are not exceptionally religious, certainly no more than Americans�indeed, I would argue even less so. There is no politician in Iran's parliament who can be considered more of a religious fundamentalist than, for instance, Sen. Rick Santorum or Attorney General John Ashcroft. Iran's President Khatami has never once claimed that God picked him to be president of Iran, as America's George Bush so often has. I would even bet there are more churches per capita in the United States than mosques in Iran. And few if any countries could beat the United States when it comes to using religious rhetoric in political arguments. (from �Diary of a Writer in Tehran�)

*The truth is that most Iranians fall somewhere between these broad categories. My Aunt Kobra, for example, is a pious Muslim, spiritually bound to the worldwide Muslim community yet fiercely proud of her Iranian heritage; nostalgic for pre-revolutionary Iran yet bitter at the memory of the shah's tyranny and corruption; infatuated with American culture yet suspicious of American moral values and unforgiving of the United States for its role in supporting the shah; desperate for democratic change in Iran, yet unsure of American intentions and horrified by the staggering cost of democracy in Iraq.
In all her contradictions, Kobra represents the vast majority of Muslims striving for religious and political reform in the Middle East, who are neither secularists nor theocrats but who are convinced that if democracy is truly going to take hold, it cannot be imported from the West. Rather, it must be reared from within, framed in recognizable terms, based on familiar ideologies, and rooted in indigenous values and traditions: in short, it must be built on their terms. (from �Aunt Kobra�s Islamic Democracy�)

� After all, Muslims now have access through the Internet (an invention whose role in the Islamic reformation parallels that of the printing press in the Christian Reformation) to the religious opinions of myriad Islamic activists, academics, self-styled preachers, militants and cult leaders throughout the world who are, for better or worse, reshaping the faith.

Not surprisingly, as religious authority passes from traditional institutions to individuals, there may arise those whose reinterpretation of religion will be fueled by extreme social and political agendas. It is in this context that Bin Laden�s militantly individualistic, anti-institutional movement harks back to some of the most infamous aspects of the Christian Reformation. Martin Luther, for example, in pursuit of theological dominance over his fellow Protestants, justified their massacre during the German Peasant�s Revolt in 1525�Indeed, contrary to perception in the West, Bin Laden�s primary target is neither Christians nor Jews�, but rather those Muslims who do not share his puritanical view of Islam and who, as a consequence, make up the overwhelming majority of Al Qaeda�s victims.

Bin Laden has also deliberately placed himself in direct opposition to the institutional authorities of his religion by repeatedly issuing fatwas and making judgments on Islamic law�things that, according to Islamic tradition, only a cleric affiliated with one of Islam�s recognized schools of law has the authority to do.

Even more striking is his fundamental reinterpretation of jihad: What was once considered a collective duty to be carried out solely at the behest of a qualified cleric has become a radically individualistic obligation totally divorced from institutional authority. It is precisely this conscious recasting of religious authority that has made Bin Laden so appealing to Muslims whose sense of social, economic or religious alienation from their own communities make them yearn for alternative sources of leadership.

Reformation, as we know from Christian history, can be a long, bloody affair, and the Islamic reformation has some distance to go before it resolves itself.


Anyway, I think this guy is worth checking out. Where else can you hear that Islam in having a reformation right now? I think the guy has some provocative ideas worth thinking about.

[Gopher]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[mithridates]

Here's a nice picture of Iran:

[ddeubel]

Thanks Ya-ta and I will look at his blog and article tomorrow.

I really do think that Americans have to wake up and smell the pistacios....meaning, they have to see Iranians in a much brighter light. They drink, dance and smile. They study hard and are avid individualists. They want for a better tomorrow and are not ardent Islamic fundamentalists.

Still, as in Russia where everyone (say 70s) clamoured for levis , they are stuck in a time warp. They are and can't afford not to be, other than where they've come from. Understandable and there is no need of Islamic reformation but only understanding, patience and intelligence from those who would want to label and fight and war against, a people, only a people wishing to have food on the table and love and sleep in peace --- not rule the world.

I think America needs rewiring on this issue. I say this honestly. Most Americans I've talked to over the past number of year, have NO understanding at all of Iranian society and just label them all as Ayattolah cheering, beard wearing, hate America, ravenous beasts....terrible.

Even the high HIGH quality of Iranian cinema has not made a dent into the Jim Careyway consciousness of America. Great cinema, of the highest order in Iran, and films about modern Iran and the conflicts between past and present abound. Of course they are mostly couched in allegory, not American realism. They demand internal interpretation. Like Panahi's White Balloon or one I especially love of how an individual gets pulled in all the idealogy, "skin of the city"... The damn best films of this and last century.....

I'd ask others, to not view Iranians through the visor of their head of state, as I would others to not view Americans as through the lens of Georgie Bush. I never drank or danced more than in Tehran...

DD

Ashgar Fahadi just won a Hugo for his film, Fireworks Wednesday" (will it see wide release? NOT!) he says,


"The people of Iran and the people of the United States need to know each other, and it's much better if this understanding is not through our politicians but through our artists," ... "The best way to avoid a crisis is to get to know each other [via cinema], because then the politicians have no power to do anything."

Here's another acknowledgement from Herzog ( I just watched or rather rewatched his Fitzgeraldo...a masteriece.)

Werner Herzog made the following statement: "What I say tonight will be a banality in the future. The greatest films of the world today are being made in Iran." This utterance may have taken some aback. After all, in the popular mind of Americans the image of Iran was indelibly linked to hostage-takers and U.S. flag-burning zealots.

While his encounter with Iranian films in the early 1990s was something of a discovery for Herzog, decades prior, as early as the 1950s, another luminary of the world of cinema, the French filmmaker Chris Marker, had already come across Iranian cinema. He writes of stopovers in Tehran on his way to or from the Far East.

"Tehran with its sky that always looked ten times more vast than the skies of the Occident. The moment of dusk when daylight still hangs, bluish, and when brass lamps are being lit already � and the best vodka-limes West of Hong Kong. All those I came to know there Ghaffari, Faroughi � Golestan � were charming and extraordinary but Forough� was the most extraordinary of them all."

[Gopher]

More whitewashing, downplaying, apologia, and obvious one-sidedness. Here is the other side...

[Woland]

[Gopher]

[ddeubel]

Gopher,

Said was talking of the middle east in general . In regards to Iran I am sure he would side with the statement that Iranians for the most part are very proAmerican and informed about America. There is a lot less virulence against America in Iran than elsewhere in the middle east. What you see on TV and the media is a lopsided account. yes, the relationship is a bit schizophrenic but I would say that it is so because there is a lot that both cultures, citizens admire about each other.

Iran has serious problems with its legislative branch and human rights in general. No doubt. But it is not romancing anything to say that Iranian society is much more pro western and open then Americans believe. It can't be seen in black or white or even grey. For my money, I'd take Iranian science over American any day....they are leaps and bounds ahead in many areas. As well as cinema as I suggested and also entrepreneurship, creativity in general.........

I do have experience regarding Iran and what Iranians think. I worked teaching Iranian students (grade 8 esl) and came into contact with many Iranian parents. Also, taught for years for immigration in an area where a large number of my students were American.

You can't say iranians are anti America. yes, their govt is (on the surface, in dress and plummage) but the people aren't .

DD

[Gopher]

Ddeubel: no one forces you to accept American technology or science. But I know for a fact that many Iranians prefer American technology and science. They, indeed, vote on this issue with their feet...

[ddeubel]

I am clear eyed and throw it back in your court, that you are blackwashing and just feeding the characatures. Please start listening to those who have traveled to Iran, lived there and know what is going on....not the state dept. and its misinformation campaign. We already showed a little of these colours in our discussions about Taheri, the pseudo, give me a big check and I'll write anything, journalist sell out.

Please read an insightful, recent article in the Walrus about Iran. The author says and I agree.....

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/international-affairs-irans-quiet-revolution/

[Gopher]

Ddeubel: I have no problem seeing Iran as complex and resistant to reductionism or essentialism. I can easily state this because I sincerely believe it.

On the other hand, the problems I identify above remain real -- just as I can say that while Korea is a complex country, resistant to reductionism or essentialism, its people still tend to be excessively nationalistic and hateful of Japan.

And, in any case, you are still employing the language of blame when you talk about America, as if not only is it all our fault, but it is all only in our heads. I disagree. I am sorry you dislike America so much that you remain irrevokably inclined to arrogantly lecture and see only fault in us, while, conversely, you constantly praise and see only good in others -- especially people and groups like Hezbollah and Iran, their underwriters, even to the point where you forcefully state and restate your opinion that Iranian technology, science, and medicine are highly advanced over American technology, science, and medicine, and that you would rather see an Iranian doctor over an American doctor, etc., etc.

You fail to acknowledge that Iranians indeed come to the United States, and in vast numbers, for their education, and not the other way around. It is not merely the economy -- and when, by the way, did "the economy" become such an absolutely negative non-technological, non-scientific, non-medical thing? I grow tired of people using/denouncing "the economy" to disparage the United States and make their own case for absolute moral (and other) superiority vis-a-vis America -- be it Mexican immigrants or you and your explanation for the Iranians who come here -- that is, who desperately come here.

"We come to this backward, terrible, immoral country, a country with worthless art, literature, education, technology, science, and medicine, because we need jobs. So we leave our own highly advanced, beautiful, environmentally-friendly, morally good (indeed guileless and non-corrupt), fine arts-centered, Third-World countries with their superior educational, scientific, and healtcare systems to put up with this, the furthest outpost from the center of world development..."

Does that really make sense to you, Ddeubel? That is what you imply. I suggest you think it over before repeating it.

Here, by the way, for comparison, is how a Chilean colleague once phrased it...

"Everyone knows that Chilean education is superior to American education. The reason so many Chileans want to get educated in the United States is just so they can say that they were educated in the United States..."

Makes perfect sense, does it not?

You seek to humanize your clients at the expense of dehumanizing and devaluing America. Herein lies your central problem. You go about achieving your objective all wrong. It is not a zero-sum-game where we must take from one in order to give to another.

Try singing Iranian praises without so relentlessly disparaging the United States. You sound a little like Octavius Hite talking about Canada in this regard.

Also, the apology that we unfairly took Ahmadinejad out of context on his Holocaust denials, calls for a conference to prove it, and his undeniable calls for the destruction of Israel while he was merely quoting Khomeini at an annual anti-Zionist conference does not fly; and it is laughably absurd. And even Annan felt it necessary to reaffirm that the Holocaust occurred; just as even Paris felt it necessary to warn Tehran that if it used nuclear weapons against Israel or anyone else, France would retaliate against Iran.

I also disagree where you allege that Ahmadinejad's worldviews are atypical with respect to Iranians' worldviews. He was born and raised in Iran, to an Iranian family, and educated in Iranian schools. Like it or not, I do not make the same claim with respect to W. Bush. Unfortunately, although not all of us, enough of us indeed share enough of his worldviews to side with him and elect him twice.

So if you care to step down from the lecture podium and want to see new perspectives, let me know. Otherwise, I am afraid that this conversation can only go in the usual direction and it would be pointless to continue.

[Nowhere Man]

[Gopher]

Nowehere Man: "Jews" and "Israel" are not at all the same thing. Not only that, but I was citing the Iranian-American views with which I have come into contact. And it is interesting to note that Iran treats its Jewish population not unlike the U.S. treats Puerto Rico.

So no, I do not care to rephrase what I said, as your article restates my own point about Israel. But thanks for sharing anyway.

[Nowhere Man]

Well, that's very interesting that "every single one of them" despises Israel, yet some of them are Jewish.

Care to substantiate that claim?

No, I didn't think so.

Why?

Because you can't.

Does every single Iraqi depise Israel?

Someone posts about Iranians and their contradictory nature, and you label it "whitewashing".

Then you go on to make a perfectly ridiculous blanket statement: