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September 28, 2006
What the...!
Is this for real???? Forget about the whole idea of "creative questioning" and "tools to fight enemies". I am most surprised about the former champion of prisoner's rights, Sen. McCain's statement about the bill:
"and I am convinced that because of this legislation certain, quote, techniques, unquote, such as water boarding, prolonged stress positions, long, extreme sleep deprivation, will not be allowed."
What the hell! Now we are debating which methods of torture are okay? Prolonged stress positions are not alright, but who determines how long is prolonged? Long, extreme sleep deprivation is bad, but short, extreme one is okay? How about pulling nails?
Posted by Khodadad at 10:11 PM | Comments (3)
September 23, 2006
My Uncle Osman, again
About a year ago, I wrote an introduction to a series of short stories I was working on as a tribute to Rolad Dahl. I called it My Uncle Osman, and since then, I have written five more, although for many reasons I decided not to post them on this blog, rather to colelct them for publishing somewhere else.
Of course, the uncle was not called Osman and he was not a goofball as I made him sound. He, however, was based on a real character, my mother's uncle who lived in Iran and was a bit of a recluse. Well, I said he lived in Iran because he just passed away from a heart-attack, and now I realise how much I liked him and what a great part of my childhood and youth he was. I am a bit ashamed of making fun of him, but it was not mean fun and maybe now I should start posting the stories in his memory.
Goodbye Daii Mohammad...
Posted by Khodadad at 05:31 PM | Comments (2)
September 10, 2006
The Rabbi and the Mulla
In one of his talks in the US, Khatami, the former president of Iran, has said that "our first duty [as Muslims] is to be good citizens of the countries we live in".
This reminded me of the Rabbinic writings in Asurestan (Mesopotamia) at the end of the Parthian times (ca. secon century CE), preserved in the Babylonian Talmud. Apart from the political considerations, what Khatami has said is quite interesting.
In the first few centuries CE, the Jewish community of Mesopotamia was faced with many discrepencies between the laws of the Torah and the social and economic laws of the Arsacid/Parthian government under whose rule they lived. Consequently, the Jewish community was quite marginalised and was concentrated only in a few cities (such as Dura Europus), isolated from the main-stream of the Arsacid social life and the economic prosperity of Asurestan. To solve this problem, Rabbis taught that for a Jew, following the laws of the Arsacid government was as important as following the laws of the Torah. In this way, they managed to initiated the entry of the Jews into the society, so that by the end of the Arsacid era and the beginning of the Sasanian dynasty, Jews had gained prominent places in the society. Important land-owners, businessmen, and officials, as well as the mother of Narse, the seventh Sasanian king, were members of the Jewish community. This also gave much prominence to Jewish learning itself and initiated what has been called "The Rabbinic Era", resulting in much cultural achievements, most importantly the "Babylonian Talmud" itself, now a great source of much scholarship, including information about the Arsacid laws.
This effort of the Rabbis thus normalised the position of the Jews and helped their immersion in the society. In light of the fact that today, many Muslims in America and Europe find it hard to follow both the Islamic laws and the laws of their host countries, this suggestion of Khatami and its echoing of ancient Rabbinic teaching is quite interesting (I wonder if he knows of this similarity himself).
Posted by Khodadad at 10:38 AM | Comments (4)
September 07, 2006
Bigger things to come?
In light of Mr. Bush's recent casual admitance about the existence of CIA secret prisons and keeping of the suspects in other countries (why? no one picked up on that last detail...), I think we have to look for bigger things to come.
The G. W. Bush and Partners Corporation seems to have a very easy time doing and saying anything it wants (see this excellent angry comment by a journalist) without regards for any criticims. I would thus tend to think that they have even bigger things for us in the store, stuff that we can probably not even imagine today. I just wonder what they are...
Posted by Khodadad at 01:15 PM | Comments (2)
September 04, 2006
Internalization
I encountered something quite interesting recently which I thought might be worth sharing here. It is called “internalization” and it consists of the process through which a person or a society internalizes a disaster or foreign violation. In the personal sense, I am not qualified to make any judgments, but as far as the social and particularly historical examples, there are a few I can think of. The most interesting of these is the story of Alexander.
Anyone who has read one of the Arabic or Persian stories of Alexander notices an interesting phenomenon. In these stories, Alexander is not a purely Macedonian conqueror who has come and defeated the Achaemenid king and captured the throne, instead, he has been transformed as the legitimate son of the king, claiming his rightful inheritance. The story goes that Alexander’s mother was a slave of the king of Iran who was given as a gift to Philip of Macedon, while pregnant with Alexander from the Iranian king. He is born in Macedonia and grows up there, determined to claim the throne of his father (the Iranian king). As such, his attack on Iran and the killing of the king (his half brother, Darius III, the usurper in this story) is justified, since he is the rightful king.
It is noticeable, however, that the official histories of the Sasanian Empire and even the Avesta call Alexander with the titles of “the damned” and “the monster” which is more aligned with what we might think of him today, as a conqueror. It would be worth a research to see if the folk stories were formed as a reaction to these official tales and as a way of justifying the Iranian populations’ inaction during the conquests of Alexander.
In any case, the modern case I have found is even more interesting and regards the internalisation of the Mongol attack in Afghanistan. In this story, Timujin is the leader of a small band of Mongols who is not a major conqueror before coming to Khorasan (here meaning Afghanistan). However, upon his arrival in Afghanistan, he allies himself with the Pashtun tribes and conquers Kabul and Herat. Consequently, the Pashtun tribes in a Loya Jirga meeting, give him the title of Chingiz Khan and he likes it so much that he even “calls” his son Khan (here obviously the modern tradition of treating the title of Khan “lord” as a surname in Afghanistan and Pakistan is extended to the Mongol times). This is against the historical reality of the title being an old Turko-Mongoloid title and Chingiz Khan being Timujin’s title given to him in the Quriltai of Mongolia.
In this way, several ends are met: first, the Mongol attacks are internalised as a locally supported series of conquests to unite the region. Second, a local tribe, the Pashtuns, shares the “honour” of the invasions and thus localised the activities and gains historical recognition. Third, the territorial boundaries of Afhghanistan (in fact a mid-19th century formation) are given historical depth and tribal (Pashtun) identities.
It would be worth studying the role of the Hezara tribe (a remnant of one of the Mongol tribes in Afghanistan, today Persian speakers) in the formation of this myth and also their image in the story. Also, I would be very interested in whether the same process is in formation about the American invasion of Afghanistan and whether that is already in the process of being internalised.
Posted by Khodadad at 12:43 AM | Comments (1)