Arid Land
10% arable land
SOURCE: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:uvury3Leg0MJ:earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/agr_cou_364.pdf+iran+arable+land+pasture&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
Gas Rationing
As one critic put it: "Iran is blowing its oil profits on petrol subsidies, so that people end up spending hours a day in traffic jams. ... At this rate, Iran will burn through its oil wealth in a generation"
SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/11/iran?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
Julian Borger, “High-octane politics,” ''Guardian'', March 11, 2008
Since the rationing started you only get 26/gallons a month per car at that price. If you want more, it’s a buck and a half a gallon, or at least it was in May.
SOURCE: http://www.payvand.com/news/08/may/1181.html ]
[ http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=165&Itemid=2 “Gas Subsidies and Iran” Written by Dave Cohen, 05 July 2007 ]
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.3 - Officials
Here’s the head of the government organization that organized our tour in Iran
He was the Director of the Center for Interreligious Dialogue, which was part of the Organization of Islamic Culture and Relations. You may remember him from the Question on Sunnis in Iran in Part 2.
Protect the young people from post-modernism with religious media – as though Iranian TV wasn’t force-feeding all the religious programming they could already.
Iranian TV (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting http://www.irib.ir/English/) is dominated by conservatives. SOURCE: Soul of Iran by Afshin Molavi, Norton, 2005, (for example Molavi credits their favorable coverage with of Ahmadinejad with helping him beat Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential race)
Since the advent of satellite TV it has had to compete with popular commercial television and is reputed to be more entertaining than it was during Khomeini's time.
Dr. Mahdi Mostafavi, was the head of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation of Iran.
... who’s been described in the Western press as a member of President Ahmadinejad’s inner circle
SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/2061633/Pope-avoids-Iran
MY QUESTION ON SHARIAH INNOVATION
The fatwa declared that the interests of Islamic Republic have precedence over "secondary ordinances" of Islam.
An example of critics maintaining the fatwa meant Khomeini's Islamic state was an ideological failure:
SOURCE: http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_promises_kept.html#Laws_in_Islam
The fatwa was highlighted by the regime's critics because the raison d'etre for the overthrow of the Shah, according to Khomeini, was the Shah's failure to strictly adhere to the laws of Islam.
Khomeini had proclaimed before the revolution that
"No one has the right to legislate and no law may be executed except the law of God ... The law of Islam, divine command, has absolute authority over all individuals AND the Islamic government."
SOURCE: Khomeini in exile January-February 1970, Islamic Government by Ayatollah Khomenei, 1970 p.55 of Islam and Revolution : Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini
Some details on the labor law that provoked the fatwa and the reasoning behind the fatwa by a blogger unsympatheic to Khomeini:
http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_promises_kept.html#footnote_72a
A interpretation of the issue by an academic sympathetic to the regime:
http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=5978
(scroll down to: iv) Al-Hukm al-Awaly and al-Hukm al-Sanavy )
He was the Director of the Center for Interreligious Dialogue, which was part of the Organization of Islamic Culture and Relations. You may remember him from the Question on Sunnis in Iran in Part 2.
Protect the young people from post-modernism with religious media – as though Iranian TV wasn’t force-feeding all the religious programming they could already.
Iranian TV (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting http://www.irib.ir/English/) is dominated by conservatives. SOURCE: Soul of Iran by Afshin Molavi, Norton, 2005, (for example Molavi credits their favorable coverage with of Ahmadinejad with helping him beat Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential race)
Since the advent of satellite TV it has had to compete with popular commercial television and is reputed to be more entertaining than it was during Khomeini's time.
Dr. Mahdi Mostafavi, was the head of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation of Iran.
... who’s been described in the Western press as a member of President Ahmadinejad’s inner circle
SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/2061633/Pope-avoids-Iran
MY QUESTION ON SHARIAH INNOVATION
The fatwa declared that the interests of Islamic Republic have precedence over "secondary ordinances" of Islam.
An example of critics maintaining the fatwa meant Khomeini's Islamic state was an ideological failure:
SOURCE: http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_promises_kept.html#Laws_in_Islam
The fatwa was highlighted by the regime's critics because the raison d'etre for the overthrow of the Shah, according to Khomeini, was the Shah's failure to strictly adhere to the laws of Islam.
Khomeini had proclaimed before the revolution that
"No one has the right to legislate and no law may be executed except the law of God ... The law of Islam, divine command, has absolute authority over all individuals AND the Islamic government."
SOURCE: Khomeini in exile January-February 1970, Islamic Government by Ayatollah Khomenei, 1970 p.55 of Islam and Revolution : Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini
Some details on the labor law that provoked the fatwa and the reasoning behind the fatwa by a blogger unsympatheic to Khomeini:
http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_promises_kept.html#footnote_72a
A interpretation of the issue by an academic sympathetic to the regime:
http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=5978
(scroll down to: iv) Al-Hukm al-Awaly and al-Hukm al-Sanavy )
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.2 - Bahai
And one last religious minority – the Bahais – the one religion officially not tolerated in the Islamic Republic.
This is their leadership, all of whom were recently busted and imprisoned by the Ministry of Intelligence.
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/16/iran.bahais/
About 200 Bahais, mostly leaders have been killed since the revolution.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%ADs
The regime says they are conspiring with foreign enemies. The Bahais say they are being persecuted because they are considered apostates.
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/22/iran.bahais/index.html
Unlike Jundallah, no one besides the Islamic regime has accused them of involvement in violence.
COMMENT: At least I have never found anything saying so.
This is their leadership, all of whom were recently busted and imprisoned by the Ministry of Intelligence.
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/16/iran.bahais/
About 200 Bahais, mostly leaders have been killed since the revolution.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%ADs
The regime says they are conspiring with foreign enemies. The Bahais say they are being persecuted because they are considered apostates.
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/22/iran.bahais/index.html
Unlike Jundallah, no one besides the Islamic regime has accused them of involvement in violence.
COMMENT: At least I have never found anything saying so.
SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.2 - Sunnis
It is true that most of the Sunnis are ethnic minorities living near Iran’s borders, but Tehran’s boom town job market has attracted some of them, one million according to that International Religious Freedom Report.
SOURCE: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35497.htm
Even allowing for exaggeration there must be enough for a mosque. 10%, 15% of the population of Tehran being well over a million people.
SOURCE: Population of greater Tehran is estimated at 14 million
But the issue of Shia Sunni relations in Iran is super sensitive. It’s not just the carnage in Iraq. A Sunni fundamentalist insurgent group in eastern Iran - Jundallah - claims to have killed 400 Iranian soldiers.
SOURCE: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB24Ak01.html
And it appears they’re getting aid from the US government. It’s not just the Islamist regime that says so. Seymor Hersh a US journalist with good ties to the US military wrote about it in the New Yorker magazine.
SOURCE: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
SOURCE: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35497.htm
Even allowing for exaggeration there must be enough for a mosque. 10%, 15% of the population of Tehran being well over a million people.
SOURCE: Population of greater Tehran is estimated at 14 million
But the issue of Shia Sunni relations in Iran is super sensitive. It’s not just the carnage in Iraq. A Sunni fundamentalist insurgent group in eastern Iran - Jundallah - claims to have killed 400 Iranian soldiers.
SOURCE: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB24Ak01.html
And it appears they’re getting aid from the US government. It’s not just the Islamist regime that says so. Seymor Hersh a US journalist with good ties to the US military wrote about it in the New Yorker magazine.
SOURCE: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.2 - Jews
Jews of Persia
An even older religious minority in Iran are Jews.
The Persian Jewish community stretches back nearly 3000 years when Jews were freed from Babylonian captivity by Persia's King Cyrus the Great.
Mufti of Jerusalem
In the West we hear of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visiting Hitler, Arab soldier helping out the Fuehrer in Serbia and the popularity of the anti-Semitic classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Muslim world. 20sIn Iran the MP told us a story of how Nazi’s called Jews “Muslims” - the idea being the Nazis didn’t know or care what the difference was between the two Semitic groups.
SOURCE: “From his appointment in 1921 by the British as the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini was a major figure, and during the 1930s and 1940s he was the recognized leader--recognized, that is, by the British Mandate authorities and the Zionist leadership and, not least, by the leaders of the surrounding Arab societies and states--of the Palestinian Arab national movement, much as Yasser Arafat was the leader of the movement from the late 1960s until his death in 2004. And like Arafat, Husseini basked in the support of the Palestinian multitudes,
“… the story published in Joseph Schechtman's The Mufti and the Fuhrer (1965),
Zvi Elpeleg's The Grand Mufti (1993), or Jennie Lebel's Haj Amin and Berlin (1996).
To be sure, Haj Amin was an anti-Semite. ... His anti-Semitism was certainly reinforced by what he picked up during his years in Germany, between 1941 and 1945, when he was employed by the Third Reich to broadcast jihadist anti-Allied propaganda to the Arab world and to recruit Muslims for the Wehrmacht in Bosnia, while the Nazis, as they described it, were battling "international Jewry" and its agents in London, Washington, and Moscow. Husseini seems to have accepted the Nazi view of the Jews' world-embracing powers--something that is entirely lacking in Qur'anic and early Islamic anti-Semitism, which, if anything, belittled the Jew.
From: The New Republic
September 10, 2008
“The Darker Side” by Benny Morris
http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=701916b5-4f75-4a2b-8fa2-535badfb4ffe&p=5
An even older religious minority in Iran are Jews.
The Persian Jewish community stretches back nearly 3000 years when Jews were freed from Babylonian captivity by Persia's King Cyrus the Great.
Mufti of Jerusalem
In the West we hear of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visiting Hitler, Arab soldier helping out the Fuehrer in Serbia and the popularity of the anti-Semitic classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Muslim world. 20sIn Iran the MP told us a story of how Nazi’s called Jews “Muslims” - the idea being the Nazis didn’t know or care what the difference was between the two Semitic groups.
SOURCE: “From his appointment in 1921 by the British as the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini was a major figure, and during the 1930s and 1940s he was the recognized leader--recognized, that is, by the British Mandate authorities and the Zionist leadership and, not least, by the leaders of the surrounding Arab societies and states--of the Palestinian Arab national movement, much as Yasser Arafat was the leader of the movement from the late 1960s until his death in 2004. And like Arafat, Husseini basked in the support of the Palestinian multitudes,
“… the story published in Joseph Schechtman's The Mufti and the Fuhrer (1965),
Zvi Elpeleg's The Grand Mufti (1993), or Jennie Lebel's Haj Amin and Berlin (1996).
To be sure, Haj Amin was an anti-Semite. ... His anti-Semitism was certainly reinforced by what he picked up during his years in Germany, between 1941 and 1945, when he was employed by the Third Reich to broadcast jihadist anti-Allied propaganda to the Arab world and to recruit Muslims for the Wehrmacht in Bosnia, while the Nazis, as they described it, were battling "international Jewry" and its agents in London, Washington, and Moscow. Husseini seems to have accepted the Nazi view of the Jews' world-embracing powers--something that is entirely lacking in Qur'anic and early Islamic anti-Semitism, which, if anything, belittled the Jew.
From: The New Republic
September 10, 2008
“The Darker Side” by Benny Morris
http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=701916b5-4f75-4a2b-8fa2-535badfb4ffe&p=5
SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.2 - Armenians
Our group was mostly Christian, including four ministers, and two different Armenian Christian patriarchs took time to meet with us. Armenians are the largest and least problematic Christian group in Iran.
SOURCE: "least problematic" I'm pretty sure it was Robin Wright who said the Armenians have the easiest time of all the minorities in Iran. (see: Wright, Robin, The Last Great Revolution : Turmoil And Transformation In Iran, New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2000. p.206-216)
COMMENT: Jews are associated with Israel and there are some verses in the Quran that can be interpreted against them. The very small protestant community is associated with British and American influence and with conversion from Islam. Armenians are an ethnic group, and so not exactly passionate about converting non-Armenians to the Armenian Orthodox Church.
They have three dioceses here and the constitution grants them two seats in parliament.
SOURCE: http://www.servat.unibe.ch/law/icl/ir00000_.html article 64 of the constitution
Somewhere between one and one and a half million Armenians were killed in the Armenian Genocide in neighboring Turkey during World War I.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
They have not suffered so in Iran. Maybe their biggest concern here is emigration. A couple million Iranians have left the Islamic Republic for North America, Europe or other prosperous places since the revolution, but the rate is much higher for non-Muslims. Most of them have left Iran and of the estimated 50,000 Armenians in the Tehran area about 2 or 3 thousand leave each year.
SOURCE: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_12_125/ai_n27497054/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1
COMMENT: Actually, I was guessing. The article above says there are 50,000 Armenians in Iran but its more like 300,000, so I think the author misheard the Bishop and meant 50,000 in Tehran.
Tehran Patriarch
On the subject of interfaith dialogue - dear to the heart of the delegation - he made an interesting point. ... how do you talk to another faith when both of you believe yours is the one true faith to which everyone should and eventually will, join? Particularly when your church is outnumbered a several hundred to one in the land you live in and the outnumbering religion enforces the placing of pictures of its supreme leader in your very own rectory. ... Instead of preaching at the others, we show our faith by what we do, we preach by example not by lecture. ... A nice finesse I thought in a part of the world where ... there's too much religion and not enough Christianity ..."
COMMENT: The Islamic regime has zero tolerance for Christian proselytizing but isn’t very worried about Armenians doing this because, as I said above, their church is tied to an ethnic group and language. Still Christianity, like Islam, is an evangelizing faith. Proselytizing is out of favor among Liberal Christians of the West as insensitive - after all it implies there's something wrong with the proselytizee’s religion. But in the Islamic world and the parts of Christianity that are growing - evangelizing is not just acceptable, it's central.
As to how sensitive the issue of proselytizing is, consider this off hand comment: One of the delegates asked the Bishop what the Armenians did for charity. Visit the community members and see they're doing OK, he said. What about helping the Muslims? she asked. (A good christian doesn't just confine himself to good works among his own!) Not an option, he said. It might be construed as missionary work.
Armenian Cultural Center
The outdoor lounge and dining is near the club’s two pools. The pool has separate hours for males and females "in accordance with” the laws of the Islamic Republic. In addition the women bathers are protected from view by these very high panels. This way people living in apartment buildings a across the freeway won’t see them. The Armenian women didn’t insist on it. Some pious non-Armenian people in the apartment buildings did.
I found this out talking to a guide at the center. The pious, complaining neighbors were quite a ways a way from the pool, so their complaint seems pretty ridiculous.
They were not Armenians (I assume they were Muslims but the guide didn't say that in so many words).
Esfahan Patriarch
According to the 2004 International Religious Freedom Report: “With few exceptions”, the private schools of the minority Jews and Christians in Iran must have Muslim directors. The Ministry of Education must approve all their textbooks, including religious texts. Christians and Jews and other minorities may provide religious instruction in their own languages, but if they do they must translate the books into Persian to get them approved, which costs a bundle.
SOURCE: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35497.htm
Not very informative, but indiscretion could get them in trouble not me.
COMMENT: The Islamic government's caution/paranoia about minorities is reflected in his qualification to its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and promise "to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights."
"This principle applies to all who refrain from engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran." http://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/iran/Iran-04.htm
SOURCE: "least problematic" I'm pretty sure it was Robin Wright who said the Armenians have the easiest time of all the minorities in Iran. (see: Wright, Robin, The Last Great Revolution : Turmoil And Transformation In Iran, New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2000. p.206-216)
COMMENT: Jews are associated with Israel and there are some verses in the Quran that can be interpreted against them. The very small protestant community is associated with British and American influence and with conversion from Islam. Armenians are an ethnic group, and so not exactly passionate about converting non-Armenians to the Armenian Orthodox Church.
They have three dioceses here and the constitution grants them two seats in parliament.
SOURCE: http://www.servat.unibe.ch/law/icl/ir00000_.html article 64 of the constitution
Somewhere between one and one and a half million Armenians were killed in the Armenian Genocide in neighboring Turkey during World War I.
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
They have not suffered so in Iran. Maybe their biggest concern here is emigration. A couple million Iranians have left the Islamic Republic for North America, Europe or other prosperous places since the revolution, but the rate is much higher for non-Muslims. Most of them have left Iran and of the estimated 50,000 Armenians in the Tehran area about 2 or 3 thousand leave each year.
SOURCE: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_12_125/ai_n27497054/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1
COMMENT: Actually, I was guessing. The article above says there are 50,000 Armenians in Iran but its more like 300,000, so I think the author misheard the Bishop and meant 50,000 in Tehran.
Tehran Patriarch
On the subject of interfaith dialogue - dear to the heart of the delegation - he made an interesting point. ... how do you talk to another faith when both of you believe yours is the one true faith to which everyone should and eventually will, join? Particularly when your church is outnumbered a several hundred to one in the land you live in and the outnumbering religion enforces the placing of pictures of its supreme leader in your very own rectory. ... Instead of preaching at the others, we show our faith by what we do, we preach by example not by lecture. ... A nice finesse I thought in a part of the world where ... there's too much religion and not enough Christianity ..."
COMMENT: The Islamic regime has zero tolerance for Christian proselytizing but isn’t very worried about Armenians doing this because, as I said above, their church is tied to an ethnic group and language. Still Christianity, like Islam, is an evangelizing faith. Proselytizing is out of favor among Liberal Christians of the West as insensitive - after all it implies there's something wrong with the proselytizee’s religion. But in the Islamic world and the parts of Christianity that are growing - evangelizing is not just acceptable, it's central.
As to how sensitive the issue of proselytizing is, consider this off hand comment: One of the delegates asked the Bishop what the Armenians did for charity. Visit the community members and see they're doing OK, he said. What about helping the Muslims? she asked. (A good christian doesn't just confine himself to good works among his own!) Not an option, he said. It might be construed as missionary work.
Armenian Cultural Center
The outdoor lounge and dining is near the club’s two pools. The pool has separate hours for males and females "in accordance with” the laws of the Islamic Republic. In addition the women bathers are protected from view by these very high panels. This way people living in apartment buildings a across the freeway won’t see them. The Armenian women didn’t insist on it. Some pious non-Armenian people in the apartment buildings did.
I found this out talking to a guide at the center. The pious, complaining neighbors were quite a ways a way from the pool, so their complaint seems pretty ridiculous.
They were not Armenians (I assume they were Muslims but the guide didn't say that in so many words).
Esfahan Patriarch
According to the 2004 International Religious Freedom Report: “With few exceptions”, the private schools of the minority Jews and Christians in Iran must have Muslim directors. The Ministry of Education must approve all their textbooks, including religious texts. Christians and Jews and other minorities may provide religious instruction in their own languages, but if they do they must translate the books into Persian to get them approved, which costs a bundle.
SOURCE: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35497.htm
Not very informative, but indiscretion could get them in trouble not me.
COMMENT: The Islamic government's caution/paranoia about minorities is reflected in his qualification to its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and promise "to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights."
"This principle applies to all who refrain from engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran." http://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/iran/Iran-04.htm
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