>On Jun 22, 2009, at 12:40 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
>>Isn't holocaust denial taught in Saudi schools, along with the
>>Protocols?
>
>Maybe so, but so what? Iran is to some degree a democracy and Saudia
>Arabia is a repressive hellhole. What does this have to do with the
>fact that many many Iranians are embarrassed by their clown of a
>president?
>
>Doug
and, btw1, about Iranian paranoia re the West. It has a long tradition (that isn't unfounded but is something that you'll find in all walks of life) partly because, Moevani says, of the influence of _My Uncle Napolean_.
btw2, Iran has the region's largest Jewish minority -- 30k and dwindling, iirc. This means that Jewish people are a part of Iranian's daily lives in a way they are not elsewhere in the region. This is a source of pride for a lot of people, who want a more religiously tolerant society -- and for which they compare themselves favorably to places like Saudi Arabia.
She notes that you do not find the same anti-Semitic bigotry as you do in other regions. People are disgusted with Imadickinajar also because, as people who see themselves as Persians, they do not identify the Palestinian struggle as their own. They see Imadickinajar's behavior as pandering to people outside Iran, not to Iranians. They see his behavior has having nothing to do with their current daily problems -- the cost of living, the lack of decent jobs, etc. -- and as, in fact, making things worse -- and for no reason that actually appeals to some sense Judaism is the problem -- though they recent the Zionist state.
Some Iranians approve of Imadickinajar's rhetoric, and she interviews and writes about them (including a cousin), but they are fundamentalists.
It seems to me, from reading this book, it's this Persian heritage that is crucial to understanding a lot of what's going on in Iran --though not necessarily directly related to current events. Rather, it's related in the broader sense. The Persian heritage is reviled by the clerics -- it is competition to their theocratic rule. It is, in Anderson's framework, a n alternative imagining of society that could form the basis of a nationalism that would compete with that offered by the clerics.
For instance, the third grade reader Moasevi examines follows the life of a pious government bureaucrat and his family who spend their time visiting religious tourist sites.
"When (the father too his family_ to the city Shiraz, he showed them many minor tourist sites but neglected to stop at Persepolis. This was something like going to Rome but skipping the Forum and Colosseum. The task of Koorish's grandmother was to teach him that Mr. Mahmoud Hashemi, the character at the center of his education, was a raging fool."
(Koorosh's family, unable to afford private school, enlists the help of a grandmother, who'd taught school for three decades before the revolution. His grandmother offsets the crappy arts education for example where he's expected to do color by numbers as his homework in the 3rd grade. Koroosh regularly comes home to inform his mother that she is immoral according to the school's teaching because she does not wear a full black chador. At the annual school protest rally, they chant death to America. Later, his classmates, being kids and not necessarily reflecting official opinion, tell him that because he has family born in America, even though living in Iran, they must all die too, including him. This is akin to the way Catholics when I was growing up would taunt my best friend, Jewish, saying that her people killed Jesus. Nothing the pope would endorse, but what children pick up in their sometimes cruel ways. Because the kid cannot believe his family is as bad as he's learning in school, and because he receives no religious instruction at home, he has come to believe that the explanation for his family's "immorality" is that they are Christian. something the mother learns one day when the kid thinks they should visit a local church. What ensues in the book is a discussion of how you have to teach your kid how to lie from an early age in order to honor your own private beliefs while appearing to adhere to the public demands as to what your beliefs are supposed to be. fun times. alas, I know, horribly horribly frivolous concerns!)