OBITUARY: Iranian revolutionary leaves a complicated legacy

The guy was the wiliest of wily politicians who co-authored the constitution that created the revolutionary government.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani casts his ballot for the parliamentary elections in front of a portrait of late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini 

It was 1979. I was in year 4 at Ryde East Primary School. Something terrible happened. It was called a “revolution” and was all over the TV news, which, back in those days, I only watched because I was forced to. It took place in Iran, a country next door to my dad’s country and one whose name I always remembered because it sounded so much like my own.

Before this, Iran had been a really good place where everyone liked America, drank alcohol and dressed all modern and stuff. They had a nice handsome-looking king, but they overthrew him in favour of a bearded man named Ruhollah Khomeini with big nasty beady eyes whose colleagues also sported beards and wore black coats with black turbans. These guys rarely smiled, and their young followers used to scream death to America and death to Israel.

I wouldn’t have known it at the time, but one of the nasty black-cloaked dudes standing with Khomeini and whispering advice into his ear was a pistachio farmer named Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He died on Sunday, and his legacy will remain for decades o come.

Five years later, as my interest in political Islam grew, there weren’t too many religious books available in English. We didn’t have the internet, and media sources were also limited. Yet whether you watched Eyewitness News on Channel Ten or read the three-in-one rice paper weekly consisting of The Guardian, Le Monde and The Washington Post, the news on Iran was never nice. Our local mosques and imams also didn’t have nice things to say about Iran, despite being all cheery about the Afghan jihadists battling the nasty communists. And the only Iranian voices we ever heard were from those who were fleeing the Shah and the Islamic regime.

But any kid interested in political Islam had to learn about the Iranian Revolution. For these early years, the voice of relative sanity among the Iranian regime was Rafsanjani. Whether American diplomats were being taken hostage by Iranian students or American journalists kidnapped for seven years by pro-Iranian militias in Beirut or the same militias engaging in suicide attacks against Israeli troops, Rafsanjani was always being presented as the good guy. Yet the reality was that such violent excesses were unlikely to have happened without Rafsanjani’s acquiescence or at least knowledge. 

The guy was the wiliest of wily politicians and co-authored the constitution that created the revolutionary government before holding just about every major leadership position. Among the positions he held was commander in chief of the armed forces during the 1980-88 war with Iraq. Perhaps the best (and funniest) account of the effects of the war on Iranians living near the Iraqi border can be found in Good Muslim Boy, the memoir of Iranian-Iraqi-Australian actor and author Osamah Sami.

Rafsanjani wasn’t terribly liked by ethnic and religious minorities, including those of the same faith. He also is believed to have played a role in having Iranian dissidents in Europe assassinated, and also was involved in an attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. At the same time, while speaker of the Iranian parliament, Rafsanjani oversaw a system in which Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had seats reserved for them.

After the war, Rafsanjani was elected president. He held that position twice before losing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s very own version of Donald Trump, in 2005. Hopefully for the world, we won’t be seeing an Iranian Trump win the 2017 Iranian presidential elections.

Rafsanjani went onto hold other influential positions. He also founded a university and wrote a 20-volume commentary of the Koran.

How will he be remembered? Iraqis, including devout Iraqi Shia, will recall him as the man who led a war effort against their country even as they resented Saddam Hussein. Lebanese and Israelis will remember Rafsanjani as the man who gave them Hezbollah. Militias claiming to represent Syria’s Sunni majority will remember Rafsanjani as wavering over Iran’s support for the Syrian regime.

And young Iranians? For them, Rafsanjani was a key leader of Iran’s self-styled Islamic Revolution. This remains at heart an ideological revolution even if most people it rules over have never seen the ideological and political struggles of the revolution’s founders. They have never seen the repression of the Shah, but experience on a daily basis arguably lesser repression of the theocrats. These young people never saw Rafsanjani imprisoned and tortured by Iran’s US-backed Shah and his vicious Israeli-trained SAVAK secret police. They are young people who don’t resent Western culture in the manner of Rafsanjani’s generation. And they are unlikely to share in the millions, which Rafsanjani and his family amassed during his time holding various positions in the revolutionary regime.

First published in Crikey on 12 January 2017.

OPINION: Bishop's mission to Iran raises more questions than it answers

What a crazy few weeks leading up to Anzac Day period it's been. We've had Reclaim Australia holding rallies in most major cities calling for jihad against halal vegemite. We've had hundreds of police swoop on a bunch of kids accused of plotting to kill more police, giving The Daily Telegraph an opportunity to report of "a devastating new terror threat planned for its most revered day", with one columnist reminding us: 

Oh, Islam. How the left so cravenly folds when that particular grievance card hits the table.

By now we should be convinced the Diggers went to Gallipoli to fight 100 per cent  halal-certified terrorists and their leftist allies, who are now threatening our Prime Minister's right to down a pint of beer in one go. Surely it's time to ban the burqa.

Which raises the question. What on earth was our Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, doing dressed in what looked like an Emirates uniform? Why did she have to wear that thing on her head? And why, of all places, in the home of beady-eyed mad mullahs and ayatollahs that is Tehran? Couldn't she have appeared bare-headed, in solidarity with millions of Iranian women who hate being forced to wear it? True, our Julie would prefer not to be labelled a feminist, but what about human rights?

Yes? What about it? Julie's mission wasn't to lecture the bearded, turbaned President Rouhani about human rights. Or about trade or halal meat. The mission, as far as the Abbott government was concerned, was dealing with nasty not-so-white Iranian asylum seekers and quite-often-white foreign fighters. Ms Bishop was in Tehran - almost completely covered - to talk about Iran taking back refugee fish that her colleague Peter Dutton rejects.

The Iranians must be scratching their heads wondering what took her so long. It has been three months since a man Tehran insisted was a fraudulent travel agent posing as a Shiite cleric walked into the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place and murdered two Australians in cold blood. Iranian prosecutors wanted Monis on charges of defrauding his customers. Australia granted Monis asylum.
Liberal pollsters will be disappointed Iran refuses to be involved in forced repatriation of failed asylum seekers, many of whom are found to be economic refugees. Perhaps they might be less hesitant to return if sanctions are lifted and Iran's economy opens up to the rest of the world. We can then sell Tehran 100 per cent halal certified coal.

What surely must surprise anyone born around 1970 or earlier is how quickly all this has happened. Not long ago Iran was regarded by many in Australia as the Great Satan. The 1979 Islamic Revolution removed a pro-Western monarch from power. The first Islamic Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, was regarded as a supporter of terrorist groups in Lebanon who engaged in suicide bombings and kidnappings of Westerners. He established strong relations with more radical Arab leaders including Syria's Hafez al-Assaad.

It wasn't long ago that Israel's embarrassingly hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Pro-Israel lobby groups worked overtime to convince politicians (including our own) that Iran is evil. Iran's holocaust cartoon competitions weren't helping the cause. And a few days before Ms Bishop's arrival, an Army Day military parade in Tehran featured a truck with a huge sign loudly proclaiming "Death to Israel".

But thanks to the moronic antics of the "Coalition of the Willing" (which included Australia) in invading Iraq and overthrowing the brutal Saddam Hussein, and thanks to an incompetent sectarian government we are propping up, Iran is now the most powerful non-Arab player in Iraq. We need Iran more than Iran needs us. It is surely George W. Bush's greatest nightmare that the United States' Deputy Sheriff is now looking to one part of the Axis of Evil for help.

So what's in it for Iran? Increased international respectability. Access to more Iranian dissidents perhaps. And for Australia? A willing partner in solving our asylum woes. Intelligence to fight Islamic State of perhaps better quality than the intelligence used to invade Iraq in the first place. Even more Iranian students.

At this stage, Iran has been a trading partner but not exactly our best friend. Perhaps that status can be gained by Mr Abbott turning up to Tehran sporting a turban. Either way, both Iran and Australia can be well pleased with diplomacy well done.

Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, at Deakin University. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Tuesdau 21 April 2015.

OPINION: Rising trend of fearmongering on refugees and passports ...

Coalition rhetoric now appears to slipping back to the worst practices of the Howard era, IRFAN YUSUF writes ...

Tony Abbott wasn’t exactly born into the Liberal establishment. His political mentor was none other than Bob Santamaria, the ultraconservative Catholic activist who founded the National Civic Council and who was more concerned with ridding trade unions of communism than supporting what he described as Menzies’ "party of capital".

In his book Battlelines, published shortly before his accession to the Liberal leadership, Abbott affectionately refers to his mentor as "Santa". He admits that Santamaria (who died in 1998) had some concerns about the young Abbott joining the Liberals. Santamaria apparently had a

... prejudice that serious Catholics couldn’t advance in the Liberal Party.

In recent times, followers of other non-Protestant faiths must be wondering whether the same applies to them. Recent comments about asylum seekers, burqas and passport forgeries must surely make us wonder whether the Australian electorate would be ready for "Captain Catholic" to rule over a country where Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam are the fastest growing faiths.

Many wondered during the mid-1990s whether John Howard, the man who suggested that Asian migrants may not make a neat cultural fit, could one day become prime minister of a country located closer to Kuala Lumpur than London.

Coalition rhetoric on these issues today seems a mere continuation of the worst of the Howard era. Former Liberal prime minister (and now former party member) Malcolm Fraser described the party as being more about"fear and reaction".

The recent "real action" advertisement shows the origin of illegal immigrants to Australia. Five red arrows are shown emerging from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia respectively. The words "Stop illegals now" are shown in the top left corner of the screen.



No red arrow was shown emerging from Britain, even though it provides one of the largest proportions of illegal immigrants in Australia, certainly larger than any of the five Asian and Middle Eastern nations shown in the Liberal advertisement.

Presumably the Coalition strategists regard white-skinned English-speaking Brits as less scary than dark-skinned English-speaking Tamils or olive-complexioned Iraqi Christians.

The Coalition has also announced a return to some form of Pacific solution. This will involve the offshore processing of any asylum seekers arriving “illegally”. We will also see a return to Temporary Protection Visas under a future Coalition government. Yet, as Bernard Keane notes in Crikey, there was "a 50 per cent surge in asylum seekers coming by boat after TPVs were introduced in 1999" by the Howard government.

Furthermore, most TPV holders were eventually granted refugee status. The TPV regime is hardly incentive for “illegals” to avoid boats altogether. Hence the Liberals could once again become the people smugglers’ best friends.

Yet the irony is that so much of the fear-mongering runs directly contrary to Australia’s best interests, let alone liberal and/or conservative fundamentals and common sense. At times, the Howard government showed a complete disdain for Australian citizenship, all the while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns encouraging permanent residents to take up citizenship.

The complete disdain Howard and his ministers showed to Australian citizens David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, unlawfully detained by the United States, was just one example of how fear-mongering was used to evade the government’s responsibilities to its own citizens.

Recent comments by Julie Bishop show an even greater disdain for the rights of Australian citizens whose passports have been fraudulently used to carry out a terrorist act. Some may baulk at the suggestion that the murder of a Hamas leader could be deemed a terrorist act given that the deceased was himself responsible for acts of terror. Hamas, they will say, was a murderous organisation with a history of bloody retaliation.

And now Hamas will have a large number of Australian passport holders on their retaliation list.

To make matters worse, Bishop indicated (and hastily retracted) that Australian governments had forged other countries’ passports for use by our intelligence services.

One wonders whether Bishop was part of such a government and privy to such a decision, or, if such forgeries existed, whether they were used in assassinations or other forms of terrorism.

Indeed, can Abbott promise that a future Coalition government will not forge overseas passports, including those of permanent residents and citizens? Will he be prepared to put this in writing?

The Coalition has again been caught out placing the interests of foreign countries (albeit allies) above the safety and security of Australian citizens. In government they allowed two Australian citizens to languish in an illegal US prison camp in Cuba at the insistence of the US. Now, in Opposition, the Coalition is showing effective disdain to the security of Australian citizens to protect the sentiments of a nuclear-powered Middle Eastern government that used Australian passports to carry out an assassination.

And to think Bishop was accusing her opponents of appeasing an overseas lobby.

■ Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer, a former federal Liberal candidate and author of Once Were Radicals. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 28 May 2010.

UPDATE I: Neil James of the self-styled Australian Defence Association wrote this delightful letter to the newspaper.

In what again seems to skate closely to an apologia for Islamist terrorism, and among other polemical claims too numerous to refute, Irfan Yusuf ("Rising trend of fear-mongering on refugees and passports," May 28, p13) incorrectly claims that David Hicks was "unlawfully detained by the United States'' in an "illegal prison camp".

Under the Geneva Convention, as a Taliban combatant captured by the opposite side in a war he chose to fight in, David Hicks was not detained illegally for a single minute at least, perhaps, until his later separate criminal trial and prison sentence by US Military Commission. He was only detained by the US for so long because the war continued, and our then inadequate treachery laws meant he could not be released on prison of war-type parole for criminal trial in Australia (as the US was willing to do).

Fortunately this long-standing and disgraceful legal loophole has been closed so a future Wilfred Burchett or David Hicks can have his day in court. Rightly, since the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world now commits treason if he or she (among other things):

*intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth;

*intentionally assists, by ''any means whatsoever'', another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or

*forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

In a liberal democracy ruled by law we owe no less to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. Irfan Yusuf should be prepared to acknowledge this.

Neil James, executive director, Australia Defence Association

What can I say? Unlike you, Mr James, I don't consider myself an expert in public international law. But I find your suggestion that our men and women overseas are fighting and dying so that our liberties can be curtailed by draconian laws you and the small minority of similar mind boast of to be utterly ridiculous and an insult to our armed forces.

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COMMENT: The columnist who wants to bomb Iranians accuses his opponents of not doing enough for them ...

Back in January 2007, Greg Sheridan praised former US President George W Bush for defying conventional wisdom and popular sentiment in his foreign policy adventures. His column of 11 January began with these words:

A US military strike against Iran must now be considered formally on the international agenda, following George W. Bush’s sombre, calm, but in substance extraordinarily bold address on Iraq . Bush accused Iran of providing material assistance for attacks on US troops in Iraq . It is hard to imagine a more serious accusation. What’s more, Bush promised to stop such Iranian actions. Whatever you think of Bush, he has a very high level of credibility when it comes to carrying out any threat he makes of military action.

Given Sheridan ’s near-obsessive grovelling of all things Bush, I have little doubt that Sheridan would have supported a full scale invasion of Iran . Forced regime change was good enough for the Iraqi goose, and in Sheridan ’s eyes would be just as good for the Iranian gander. Heck, what’s a few hundred thousand dead Iranian civilians?

Yet the other day Sheridan has the gall to claim that the so-called “Western human rights lobby” has been doing bugger-all to support Iranian protesters Sheridan would have been quite happy to see the Yanks and/or Israelis bomb the crap out of. Heck, just a week earlier Sheridan was happy to consider the utility of “a limited military strike” against Iran.

Now Sheridan claims that ...

[a]part from ethnic Iranians, there has hardly been a single demonstration in any Western capital in support of the Iranian democrats. Yet isn't there a class, in Australia and in the rest of the West, of people deeply concerned about human rights?

He then has a go at Louise Adler for criticising Israel and Michael Leunig for having a cartoon in an Iranian competition which he didn’t actually submit and had no idea was being submitted anyway. And what does all this prove?

[T]hat many Western human rights organisations, and many of the most self-congratulatory and morally vain posturers, are not interested in human rights at all. They are interested in advancing a soft Left sectarian agenda.

Actually, what it proves is that Sheridan doesn't know what he's talking about. He should name just one of his critics who has called upon Iran to be bombed and invaded in the manner he has. But then on Planet Sheridan, if you don’t draw a cartoon for Iranian protestors or you don’t march through the streets, you clearly don’t like Iranian democrats as much as if you’re happy to see them and their families blown up by American and/or Israeli bombs. Go figure.

BOOKS: Robert Baer on the Iranian superpower ...

I’ve just finished reading a ripper-of-a-book by former CIA operative Robert Baer about Iran. The book is entitled The Devil We Know: Dealing With The New Iranian Superpower and was published in 2009.

I kept detailed notes of the book for the prologue which I’d like to share if for no other reason than that I’d like to throw them out and return the book to my shelf. So here goes:

[01] Iran’s war with the United States was undeclared on Iran’s part and largely ignored on the US’s part. The US at one stage was too busy fighting the Cold War.

[02] Iran and its proxy Hezbollah found ways of fighting an unconventional war against the US with precision-guided rockets, roadside bombs and human suicide bombs.

[03] The Gulf has 55% of the world’s oil reserves which Iran is now close to controlling.

[04] The cult of martyrdom plays a central role in Iran’s political ideology. Iranians say that no army can come in the way of martyrdom.

[05] Iran believes it has enough military power to challenge US interests in the Gulf. Iran is the new superpower, with unconventional warfare methods that could easily bring a conventional army to a standstill.

[06] Iran has all but abandoned Khomeini’s revolution. It is a rational actor which coldly and methodically pursues its national interest. Scratch at the veneer of Islam and what you get is old-fashioned nationalism.

[07] Iran’s proxy Hezbollah was the irst military force to defeat Israel on the battlefield since it was founded. Hezbollah defeated Israel again in the 34 day war of 2006. Israel withdrew with heavy losses achieving not a single military objective, and indeed strengthening Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon.

[08] US interests in the Middle East were founded on the old Sunni order which has all but collapsed.

[09] This book is about defining Iran’s imperial drive.

This book is a riveting read, though at times it is prone to generalisations and a fair bit of the explanation of Sunni and Shia theology is just plain wrong. However, the basic proposition is well-argued and compelling.

You can read an excellent profile of the author by Rod McGuiness here.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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REVIEW: Ambitious cultural journey loses its way ...

A Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands
By Aatish Taseer
Text Publishing, 323pp, $34.95

WE all inhabit the same planet, yet so often we hear phrases such as "the Muslim world" and "the Western world". Do such discrete entities indeed exist? Perhaps those best equipped to answer this question are those with one foot on either side of the divide.

Aatish Taseer, a 29-year-old freelance journalist and the son of an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, should have been such a person. That he isn't so is not entirely hisfault.

The two sides of Taseer's family share the culture and language of Punjab, a region in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent shared by India and Pakistan. Islam and Sikhism have inhabited Punjab's geographical and cultural space for centuries. Sikhism is indigenous to Punjab, while Punjabi Islam has adopted the cultural symbols of the land.

My background is a mixture of Indian and Pakistani. Having been reared in a small South Asian community in Sydney, I found it almost impossible to tell Muslims and Sikhs apart. To this day it is easy for me to confuse a mosque and gurudwara (Sikh temple) until the saffron flags of the latter become apparent.

But there is a huge difference between my upbringing and that of Taseer, whose parents' relationship was kept largely secret.

Taseer's father, Salmaan Taseer, became a senior figure in the Pakistan People's Party, at present the governing party of Pakistan. He is a businessman, media magnate and governor of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Aatish's parents met in India in 1980, where Salmaan Taseer was promoting a biography he'd written of his political mentor and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Aatish's mother, respected Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, was then a young reporter.

At the time of his parents' brief affair, which lasted hardly a week, Salmaan Taseer was already married with three children.

After his parents' separation, Aatish was reared in his mother's Sikh household in Delhi, under the wing of his loving maternal grandfather. The grandfather had grown up in what is now Pakistan and still corresponded with his best friend from across the border.

Like other Sikhs, the Singhs had to flee their ancestral lands in what became Pakistan during the 1947 Partition, which still leaves some members of the family bitter and resentful towards Pakistan and Muslims in general. To his credit, the maternal grandfather wasn't affected by these sentiments.

'A human being,' my grandfather always asserted, when people asked whether I was being brought up as a Sikh or a Muslim. 'He's being brought up to be a human being.'

It wasn't until 1980, when he was 21, that the author met his father again. Taseer's interest in travelling through Muslim-majority states was sparked after he wrote a story on the July 7, 2005, London bombings for British magazine Prospect. Taseer's father wrote an angry letter ...

... accus[ing] me of prejudice, of lacking even 'superficial knowledge' of the Pakistani ethos. 'Do you really think you're doing the Taseer name a service by spreading this kind of invidious anti-Muslim propaganda?

Taseer was upset by his father's letter, an irreligious Pakistani politician who hardly embodied religious values.

Yet Taseer's language when describing his father is always restrained, consistent with the elegant and often hauntingly beautiful prose of the book, sadly spoiled by serious factual errors exhibiting not prejudice, which would have been understandable, but some elementary research.

In setting the stage for his travels, Taseer writes that the whole Islamic world ...

... stretched between my father [Lahore] and the place where I read his letter [London].

How does Taseer expect his reader to take his understanding of the Muslim world seriously when he excludes from it the world's largest Muslim majority state, Indonesia?

He claims his father's Pakistani Islam emphasises rejection of Hinduism. But this is hardly pan-Islam, as I discovered during a visit to the Javanese cultural capital of Yogyakarta in 2006.

There I saw Muslim artists perform the Hindu Ramayana ballet before Muslim audiences in one of Southeast Asia's oldest Hindu temples. Not all Muslims share the religious chauvinism of some Pakistanis.

Taseer's book covers his travels in Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia (including a visit to the pilgrimage centre of Mecca), Iran and Pakistan. In each country he provides us with tremendously detailed portraits of scenery, but when it comes to people our encounters are limited to the devout yet chauvinistic on the one hand or the irreligious and resentful on the other.

Are we to believe that only an insignificant unrepresentative minority exists between these two poles?

Most unfortunate for Taseer is that his paradigm for understanding pan-Islamic sentiment emerges largely from Hassan Butt, a young British man who for years claimed to have recruited British Muslims for al-Qa'ida.

Taseer brought Butt to prominence in the article that prompted his father's wrathful letter. Yet in December last year Butt admitted to a British court that he was a professional liar who had told journalists (including, presumably, Taseer) stories the media wanted to hear.

It's a shame such an elegant piece of writing is spoiled in a way that may make some dismiss it altogether.

Sadly for Taseer, this book, the product of months of travel and a lifetime of anguish, may vindicate at least some of his absent father's criticisms. It is not a vindication well-deserved.

Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist (Allen & Unwin). This review was first published in The Australian on 27 June 2009


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IRAN: Maz Jobrani's serious reflections on Iran ...

Maz Jobrani is an American comedian of Iranian extraction who has toured with the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.



He has also visited Australia.

Here are his personal reflections about the current situation in Iran ...

Dear Friends,

The recent events in Iran have had me glued to the TV, the internet and anything else that can give me updates on what is going on in the country of my birth. When I was 6 years old in Iran, the revolution of '78-'79 happened. I remember having to have our lights off by a certain time for curfew and how the police would drive by and flash their lights into our homes to make sure we weren't causing any trouble. I also remember one time running into our basement when we heard gunfire coming form a protest close to our home. At the time I was a kid and had no idea what was going on. I just thought it was cool to be hanging with my mom and family in the dark in the basement. For a 6 year old it was an adventure - like being in the Bat Cave.

30 years later I am being bombarded with images and clips from the protests in Iran that remind me of my youth. As someone who is not in the country and watching from overseas I must say that I am emboldened by what the people of Iran are doing these days. No proof has come out to show that the election was actually stolen, but the obvious signs do point to voter fraud. In breaking it down on some of my shows I've been saying that it seems in a country of 70 million people, Ahmadinejad got 75 million votes. Voter fraud? Divine intervention? You be the judge.

Anyway, I am writing this e-mail to express my solidarity with those within the country struggling to have their voices heard and their votes counted. It has been too long that the people of Iran have had to live like 5 year olds being monitored by "adults" who tell them what to wear, how to act and what they can and cannot do. The last time I was in Iran was just over 10 years ago and I remember leaving my mother country feeling depressed. I remember coming back to the US and making sure I appreciated the freedoms that we have here. I remember thinking that the people of the world should be guaranteed these basic freedoms which do not exist in Iran.

I hope that you will keep this struggle in your mind and support them in any way you can. I have changed the image on all my facebook and myspace accounts to the image attached here. Please do support by at least using this image on your facebook and myspace pages. I also know that many peaceful rallies are taking place around the world in support of this movement. If you have the time please do join in these marches.

Last, but not least here are a few links that I found interesting and helpful:

1. This video comes from Iran where at night the reformists are yelling "God is Great" in support of the movement. The woman speaking on the video breaks down towards the end and she keeps asking "where is this?" Responding to herself "This is my country Iran." It's actually very moving if you can have a farsi speaking friend translate.

[I think the translation is as follows (this isn't mine by the way; I found it next to the YouTube video).

Tonight the sound of God is Greater can be heard louder and louder than previous nights
Where is this?! Where is this place where everything has been blocked?
Where is this place where people are just shouting the name of God?
Where is this place where the sound of God is Greater can be heard louder and louder?
Everyday Im just waiting to see if there will be more and louder voices at nights?
My body trembles
...and I wonder if God trembles too?
Where is this where weve been imprisoned so innocently?
Where is this where no one gives us a helping hand?!
Where is this place, where we are getting our voices heard worldwide through our silence?
Where is this place where the blood of its young people is shed on the streets..., where people stand and pray on their blood?
Where is this place where its people are named Gangsters & Thugs?!
Where is this?
This is Iran. This is my land and yours!
This is Iran]

2. This video is a Brazilian expert on Iran who breaks the situation down very well.



3. This last one is a song that a friend of mine put together. It has some explicit lyrics, but I hope you enjoy.

All the best,

Maz

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COMMENT: The Oz gives space to nonsensical analysis ...

Some years ago, I had an interesting exchange in Crikey with a former opinion editor of The Australian concerning what I saw as his refusal to allow space on his page for those who looked beyond his narrow binary view of a world divided into:

... two allegedly monolithic entities of ‘conservative Islam’ and ‘Western modernity’.

Could this judgment also be made about Mr Switzer’s successor? Certainly her choice of author to comment on President Obama’s recent address in Cairo about relations between the United States and Muslim-majority states seems curious to say the least.

Former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Magaan has visited Australia on a number of occasions. I myself had the opportunity to interview her when she was the guest of honour at the Sydney Writers’ Festival some years back. Hirsi Magaan is a strident critic of Islam, her ancestral faith. She herself is an ardent evangelical atheist of the Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens mould.

Being an atheist and an ex-Muslim shouldn’t disqualify Hirsi Ali from commenting on the speech of a politician. But one wonders how seriously we should take someone quite happy to make remarks like this:

Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries.

How do we define and measure bigotry? How does Hirsi Magaan measure it? Does it include making crude generalisations about hundreds of millions of people? And what evidence does she have of widespread chronic bigotry across over 50 Muslim-majority states? The examples Hirsi Magaan provides are: Saudi Arabia , al-Qaida, Al-Azhar University and Iran ’s leadership. A monarchy, a terrorist organisation, a university and a country whose political establishment is at war with itself. Imagine if people judged the West and/or the "Christian world" by pointing to the KKK, Fox News and Moore Theological College.

And what about Indonesia ? How is it that Hirsi Magaan, a former Dutch MP, doesn’t regard a former Dutch colony as significant enough to mention in her column? Is Ms Hirsi Magaan prepared to convince Indonesia’s religious authorities, not to mention science teachers in pesantrens (traditional religious boarding schools), that there are “edicts of sharia law that reject scientific inquiry”? Or will she tell this to Malaysia ’s imam-cum-astronaut with a straight face? Or will she ignore developments in Iran relating to embryonic stem cell research as shown in the video below?



The Oz's opinion editor, back in February 2007, gave a most generous and uncritical profile of Hirsi Magaan, suggesting that her hysterical views – including that “Islam … discourages the work ethic that is the motor for economically successful societies” – were views that “have added weight because they are not those of an outsider or a dilettante”.

One wonders what kind of editor would give credence to a suggestion that 14 centuries of religious and cultural heritage have discouraged a work ethic and deterred economic development. One wonders how Hirsi Magaan and Weisser would respond to the paper of Chris Berg and Andrew Kemp published in the IPA Review in 2007 entitled Islam and the Free Market.

And as for the notion that former "insiders" always make good sources, should I take for granted the words of a jaundiced ex-Jew about Judaism just because she too isn’t an outsider?

People’s beliefs, cultures, communities, leaders and/or countries can and should and must be subjected to scrutiny and criticism. But there is a difference between criticism and ill-informed bigotry. By providing space for even such extreme and jaundiced opinions, certain segments of our national broadsheet are doing disservice to their readers.

IRAN: Post-election situation ...

If I was able to read and understand Farsi, I'd be able to provide a more comprehensive analysis. Instead, like most readers, I'll have to rely on English-language sources.

An excellent summary of analyses can be found at the Huffington Post website here. You'll find video of opposition protests in various cities of Iran as well as the various messages being sent out by Iranians on the ground via blogs and twitter. Here is a brief summary:

[01] Incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has claimed victory. His main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has rejected the claim, alleging mass vote-rigging.

[02] Mousavi and other opposition figures have apparently been placed under house arrest.

[03] The Iranian authorities have closed down twitter and other social networking facilities that have been used throughout the campaign to great effect, mainly by the opposition.

[04] There is talk of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei, being overthrown.

[05] Ahmedinejad claims the election was free and fair, and accuses forces outside and inside Iran and subjecting the country to "psychological warfare".

[07] Check out this video from MSNBC/ITV showing protestors and reporters being attacked by police:

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[08] Demonstrators are shouting the slogan of "Allahu Akbar" (trans: God is greater). No, they're not terrorists. It will be interesting to see how neo-Cons in the US respond to this, especially given that a fair few of them were supporting Ahmedinejad.

[09] Iranian groups in the US are asking the US government and lawmakers to refrain from openly commenting on the Iranian election result for fear that the Ahmedinejad camp will use US support to discredit the opposition.

[10] Videos are being placed on You-Tube showing a veritable intifadeh by Iranian protestors against police, the latter behaving in a similar manner to Israeli troops. It's not a good look.



[11] Here's an excellent report from Channel 4. Mousavi describes the election as "a dangerous charade". Protestors are screaming out "death to the government", not "death to America".

[12] Here's an excellent analysis from Juan Cole.

[13] One more video report from MSNBC including a short interview with their correspondent in Tehran.

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And another video ...



Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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OPINION: Repressive rule losing lustre in Iran?

It's not often the leader of the free world publicly acknowledges his country sabotaged the democracy of another country.

Yet this is exactly what United States President Barack Obama did during his speech in Cairo, billed as an address to the Arab and wider Muslim world.

And which country deserved this honourable mention? Why none other than Iran, referred to by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush as one of three nations making up the "Axis of Evil".

For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against US troops and civilians.

It's little wonder the self-styled Islamic Republic of Iran has defined itself by opposition to the United States.

As Obama states, the US played a key role in the royalist coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953.

US and British agents installed Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The West resumed its near unfettered access to Iran's oil.

The Shah was at first an enlightened monarch who focused on education and economic development. However, he succumbed to more dictatorial instincts, his ruthless secret police unleashing a brutal crackdown on any opposition, whether from leftist parties or from religious scholars led by the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

Not even the full backing of the United States could keep the Shah in power and he fled Iran in January 1979. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Iran and the US have fought each other using proxies.

America's main agent was former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who began a decade-long war against Iran in September 1980.

I was a teenager in Sydney at the time. The internet was not widely available, and our access to news was limited to whatever we were fed by local media.

We were told it was Iran that had invaded Iraq, and Saddam Hussein was a moderate democrat fighting the good fight against Iranian theocratic extremism.

There were other myths. Iran was just one Islamic hotspot in the world. The other was Afghanistan, where theocratic-minded tribal warlords were battling the military might of the Soviet Union.

America and the West were opposing Islamic theocracy in Iran and yet were supporting it in Afghanistan.

In mosques and Islamic centres across the Western world, including New Zealand and Australia, young Muslims were taught that the Iranian-style Islam was evil and anti-Western.

Meanwhile the Islam of Saudi Arabia and the Afghan mujahideen was presented as good and pro-Western. Iran's main proxies have been various Islamist political movements and militias that have struck US interests both directly and indirectly in various parts of the Middle East.

These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and more recently the dominant faction in the democratically elected Government of Iraq.

The great irony of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime was the power vacuum was soon filled by America's sworn enemy.

American troops maintain security in a country effectively administered by Iranian proxies.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Iran has become a regional superpower, one of the few Middle Eastern nations with some kind of functioning democracy.

Yet the battle for Iran's future wasn't won by the religious elite in 1979. This week, reformists will battle the eccentric conservative President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

The reformists want to see a return to the liberal days of former President Mohammad Khatami.

Most Iranians are under 30. They are an educated generation that knows only a repressive revolution whose Basij or morality police regulate their lives.

Iranian Muslim youth aren't the only ones disillusioned with theocratic politics. Many young Muslims in the West like myself, once attracted to political Islam, have now become disillusioned in it.

At the same time, we feel disenchanted with Western attempts to manipulate it, then demonise it when it suits. When politicians attempt to co-opt religion, both religion and politics lose in the end.

* Irfan Yusuf's book, Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-Fascist, was published last month by Allen & Unwin. This article was first published in the New Zealand Herald on 11 June 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: Iranian elections: of mullahs, women and Jews

If you believe everything you read in the op-ed pages of The Australian or watch on Fox News, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Iran is a nasty dark country ruled by dark-skinned mullahs and populated by repressed dark-skinned women wearing dark burqahs chased by religious police everywhere they go. Only the Koran is read in school ... woops ... maddressas and each Friday citizens are drafted to participate in marches shouting chants of "Death to America" and "Death to the country Rupert Murdoch is no longer a citizen of".

But if you live in the real world, you’ll know that things in Iran are a little more complex. Iranians are currently going through a process both they and we take for granted -- an election campaign. Iranian elections aren’t exactly perfect and neither is Iranian democracy, but Iran is far more democratic than other “moderate” states (as in pro-Western) in the Middle East, most of whom are ruled by paramilitary dictators, presidents-for-life, kings and emirs happy to torture and kill terror suspects (especially domestic political opponents) at Washington’s behest.

Iran’s presidential election campaign has involved plenty of verbal biff. The main presidential rivals had a televised mass debate in which insults were thrown all round. Conservative candidate and incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad accused centrist Mir Hossein Mousavi of being backed by a corrupt clerical cabal that have enriched themselves.

The head honcho of that cabal, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, entered the campaign by writing an open letter to Iran’s Supreme Head Honcho, Ayatollah Khamanei, attacking him for not attacking Ahmedinejad for attacking Rafsanjani. Okay, it sounds better in Farsi.

But forget the mullahs. What about Iranian ladies? Which way will they vote?

Well, the electoral authorities may have ruled out even the most conservative female presidential candidates, but this hasn’t stopped many Iranian women from rallying around Iran’s first female university chancellor since the 1979 revolution, who goes by her maiden name and has been described by some as Iran’s future Michelle Obama. Dr Zahra Rahnavard, wife of opposition candidate Mousavi, has been happy to address huge rallies, often speaking on her husband’s behalf and calling for greater freedom for Iranian women.

What about that anti-Semite Ahmedinejad’s worst enemies and biggest victims? According to a leading Israeli newspaper, the vast majority of Iran’s 25,000 Jewish voters will support the man famous for allegedly calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Finally, if you’re really interested in the campaign, you can watch full coverage of the Iranian election from your PC at the state-funded but allegedly independent Iranian Press TV Channel. Or you can focus attention on a contest many Iranians will perhaps be far more interested in.

First published in Crikey on 11 June 2009.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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VIDEO/POLITICS: Miscellaneous reports on the Iranian Presidential Election ...

Iranian reformists try new media to win votes

Political reformists in Iran have long accused Irib, the state-run broadcaster, of biased reporting against their organisations.

With the fate of the presidency up for grabs, many have turned to new media outlets including social networking sites and text messaging as a way of making themselves heard in a closely-fought campaign.

Al Jazeera's Alireza Ronaghi reports from Tehran on the race to master new technology and win Iranian votes.



Iranian women barred from presidential contest

Iran's president is being accused of lying to win votes with just four days to go before the country's election.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, one of the main challengers to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says the incumbent is trying to sabotage his presidential campaign "unethically".

But women in Iran can only dream of contesting the presidential election. Alireza Ronaghi reports.




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OPINION/CRIKEY: Khatami: a case for dialogue ...

Last night, I was among the crowd who filled a large lecture theatre at the Australian National University in Canberra to hear a presentation by Dr Sayyed Mohammad Khatami, Iran's President from 1997 to 2005.

Dr Khatami spoke confidently about dialogue among civilisations starting at a grassroots level between civil societies of various nations. Khatami argued limiting dialogue to politicians could result in just another round of negotiations that entrenches the geo-political status quo.

I've criticised the views of some who object to the involvement of a Victorian university and the Anglican Church in hosting Dr Khatami. Yet the fact that these critics frequently don't acknowledge crimes committed by one non-Arab state in the Middle East doesn't mean their critique of the other non-Arab state in the Middle East is without foundation. Iran isn't a haven of liberty and human rights. There's plenty of evidence from credible sources about the mistreatment of ethnic, sectarian and religious minorities (not to mention bloggers and student activists) in Iran, including during Khatami's rule.

I don't know what it's like to live in a country where I could be jailed or denied access to a tertiary education for my religious beliefs. Yes, here I have to put up with reading racist and xenophobic material published in tabloids. Some schools may not want my type teaching their kids. But I'd sooner be a South Asian Muslim in Australia than a Bahá'í in Iran.

Hence, I refused to stand with those who stood for Khatami. No amount of sweet talk about dialogue between civilisations was going to convince me to get out of my seat. I wanted to hear what Khatami had to say about minority rights. Khatami received two questions about the treatment of Bahá'ís, including one about a law that disallowed Bahá'ís from attending public universities.

Khatami was much more blunt than I'd expect of a politician from a dictatorial regime. He admitted people were imprisoned in Iran because of their religious beliefs, including Bahá'ís and even Muslims from the dominant Shia sect (who presumably opposed Ahmedinejad). He said this happened for any number of reasons, none of which were justifiable. Khatami also acknowledged women were mistreated, and blamed his colleagues from the religious establishment for interpreting texts in a discriminatory manner. Yet progress had been made, especially in tertiary education where over 70% of students were female.

Khatami said all this in a public lecture in the presence of Iranian diplomats, who would certainly report his comments back to officials in Tehran. If everything we're told about Iran being a police state is true, Khatami was a brave man for criticising his own country so brazenly.

Of course, none of this will please the neo-Con ayatollahs of free market fundamentalism. But with most Iranians under 30 and from a generation that only knows a repressive revolution, it's little wonder young Iranians embraced Khatami's politics and continue to do so. We may not like Khatami, but he polled 70% of votes cast in the 1997 Iranian election, and then 77% of votes cast in the 2001 election. That's enough reason for dialogue.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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UPDATE: Elsewhere on the planet ...

The far-Right Little Green Footballs blog has decided that far-Right blogger Robert Spencer is a wacko. Yep, like they've discovered America. Or maybe what LGF is saying is that Spencer is not their kind of wacko. It's fun watching wackos fight other wackos. Read more here.

Christopher Hitchens argues in Slate that Obama must talk to the Iranians. But which Iranians? He suggests the Iranian people, not all of whom support Ahmedinejad. This sounds fabulous in theory. And in practice?

The idea of direct and transparent negotiations with the Iranians is not wrong in principle, but it depends on which Iranians are the actual or potential partners. The president can address the Iranian people directly if he chooses, from the podium of the United Nations ...

Perhaps not quite as good. I'm not sure if Iranians get to visit the UN all that often. Still, hopefully anything Obama says at the UN might make its way to popular media in Iran. And it's a good thing Washington has moved beyond just parrotting imbecilic phrases like "the Axis of Evil".

Hitchens also makes this observation:

For decades, we have wondered what might happen when or if an apocalyptic weapon came into the hands of a messianic group or irrational regime. We are surely now quite close to finding out.

Maybe Hitchens was asleep when Mordechai Vanunu spilled the beans.

Seeya.

UPDATE I: Neo-Nazi blogger Sheik Yer'Mami, whose racist comments (under the name of "Red Baron") frequently appear on Tim Blair's blog, is rather upset with my mentioning what LGF has to say about serial extremist Robert Spencer. SYM/RB is also upset with lots of other people. He's upset with US President Barack Obama (whom he refers to as "The Magic Negro" and "My Muslim President Obama") and David "Britain's dumbest Jew" Milibrand. Like I said - he's Tim Blair's buddy ...

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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COMMENT: Iran's Infantile Attitude to Israel

Recent comments made by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran have drawn international condemnation. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” included a condemnation of Muslim nations who choose to recognise Israel.

The Iranian leader’s claims have been made in the context of supporting the struggle for a Palestinian state and for the restoration of Palestinian rights. He described the Palestinian struggle as being part of an “historic war between the oppressor and the world of Islam”.

Mr Ahmedinejad’s calls represent a return to Iran’s old policy of drumming up popular hysteria with a view to exporting its “Revolutionary Islam” to different parts of the world. But how real are these sentiments on the ground? Is Israel the enemy of Islam itself? And what right does the Iranian president have to speak for Islam?

Iran is a majority Shia country. Shi’ism is one of 3 major sects of Islam. The other 2 sects are the mainstream Sunni and the more modern Wahhabi sect. Shia Muslims make up some 10% of the Muslim world. Shia majorities exist in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and some Gulf states. There are also substantial Shia majorities in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

The Shia sect insists political leadership of the Muslim community must remain in the hands of the Prophet Muhammad’s household, including their descendants. Shia Muslims regard the first 12 male successors of the Prophet (also known as “the 12 imams”) as being infallible.

Sunni Muslims reject the infallibility of the 12 imams, but place enormous importance on all the Prophet’s descendants. Sunni Muslims do not insist that political leadership must remain in the hands of the imams or their descendants.

Wahhabi concepts of political leadership were previously tied to the Saudi Royal Family. With the split in Wahhabi ranks and the formation of Usama bin Ladin’s al-Qaida movement, many Wahhabis no longer regard the Saudi family as a legitimate source of international Muslim leadership.

Sunnis make up at least 85% of the Muslim world. Comments of the Iranian leader do not bind Sunni Muslims, and Mr Ahmedinejad’s standing as a Shia scholar is not strong enough for his views to bind Shia Muslims.

Yet apart from theological considerations, the Iranian leader’s comments on Israel do little to progress the Palestinian cause. Since the late Palestinian and Israeli leaders Arafat and Rabin shook hands on the White House law, Palestinian leadership has consistently rejected the idea that Palestinian statehood necessarily involves destruction of the Jewish state.

Further, Turkey’s more conservative Islamist government sees no reason to reverse its stance of continuing friendly relations with Israel. In recent times, Turkey’s Islamists have sponsored talks between the Foreign Ministers of Israel and Pakistan.

Many Muslim voices seeking the destruction of Israel use historical figures such as the Kurdish general Salahuddin Ayyubi (known in Europe as Saladdin) who defeated the Crusaders and liberated Jerusalem. Yet even Saladdin recognised the Crusader Kingdoms and sent emissaries and ambassadors to these kingdoms. Perhaps if Saladdin were alive today, he would have recognised Israel even if engaged in military conflict with the Jewish state.

The brilliance of Saladdin’s campaign against the Crusaders lay not just in his military tactics. Saladdin was a brilliant negotiator with moderate views who sought to avoid war at all costs. Further, Saladdin made regular overtures to his enemies, and insisted that his troops obey the rules of law as outlined in the customary international law of the region at that time.

Saladdin is not the most popular figure in Shia circles. Prior to attacking the crusader kingdoms, Saladdin single-handedly destroyed the Fatimid Empire in Egypt. The Fatimids were the most powerful Shia empire of the time, and were accused by Saladdin of providing assistance and intelligence to the Crusader kingdoms.

Saladdin did not see the task of liberating Jerusalem in purely Muslim terms. Further, it was not a battle against all Jews or all Christians. Indeed, Saladdin appointed the prominent Spanish Jewish physician and rabbinical scholar Shaykh Musa bin Maymun al-Qurtubi (Moses Maimonides) as the chief medical officer of his army.

Saladdin’s good sense and moderation yielded results. He was able to liberate Jerusalem within his lifetime, and showed magnanimity to his defeated opponents. Both Christian and Muslim historians record that when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, they entered the main Mosque and Synagogue with civilian blood upto their knees. When Saladdin achieved victory, there were few civilian casualties.

The Iranian President’s comments are more reminiscent of Crusader barbarism and ignorance than the moderation and tolerance of the great Saladdin. If Muslim nations follow the Iranian formula in their dealings with Israel, they will go down the same path of destruction as the medieval Frankish hordes that invaded the Holy Land.

(The author is a Sydney-based lawyer and occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University.)

Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf