From: psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: Stop the...
Date: 26 Aug 92 20:58:08 GMT
Organization: Software Engineering Institute


26-Aug-92 jamshid@socrates.ucsf.edu (J. Naghizadeh) Stop the Racist Articles:

>SCI is not the school yard where people can throw around ethnic or 
>racist jokes  for laughs or enjoyment. This is a powerful medium 
>with over 20000 subcribers many of them non-Iranains. These jokes 
>and racist remarks create ill feeling between us and our Arab 
>neighbors. Please note that the present Arabs in the middle east had 
>nothing to do with the Arab invasion of Iran which happened 1400 
>years ago. 

Of course this is true.  Nobody should be racist.  In fact I am typically
appalled when groups who have suffered such enormous racism from imperialist
forces go off and show the same bigotry towards each other.  As a member of
the imperialists, I become less sympathetic.  

>The Arab conquest of Iran happened 1400 years ago and has little relevance
>in todays politics. 

This statement is totally flawed.  Please see my earlier post.  I contend that
Iran suffers a lot from current adherence to cultural baggage (note, I do not
say "religious baggage" per se) that is Arabic in origin.   For example, there
is no Koranic (Qur'An -ic) law determining that women must cover themselves
head to toe, and yet what is a Chador?  Where did this idea come from?  Ask an
Iranian woman whether this garment is relevant to her world today?  

>In the New World Order the former colonialists are exploiting the ethnic and
>religious tensions to impose their political will. This is specially true in
>the middle east.  Arabs are not our enemy today, they are suffering the newly
>emerging colonialism just like we Iranians are.It is just these ill feelings
>which are exploited by the outside powers to create wars such as the eight
>year Iran-Iraq war with immense cost and suffering to both Iranian and Iraqi
>people.

This is undoubtedly true and at the same time simplistic.  I agree with the
statement in principle, but in fact it has a decidedly Marxist ring to it.
And although I think Marx had a lot on the ball, he specifically identified
advanced capitalist societies as appropriate candidates for "advancement"
to a communist state.  Based on the totally abysmal performance of the
socalled Marxists worldwide (where each and every implementation has come
about in agrarian societies), I think spouting rhetoric of this kind is
valueless.  As much as George Bush and his colleagues desperately want their
manipulations to function in a linear fashion, country's like Iran are
unmanipulatable in large part, and are tantamount to holding a tiger by the 
tail.

In short, I think the Iranian (and general 3rd-world) obsession with blaming
the imperialists for their current ills is probably a dysfunctional,
retrogressive effort--even if every single allegation about imperialist
interference is true, and even if every imperialist act of interference is
100% effective.

>The anti-Arab peotry in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh was relevant about a 
>1000 years ago when Iran was struggling to free itself from Arab 
>domination and revive the Persian language. It is absolutely 
>irrelevant and harmful today.

This is also probably not true.  I think there is much of value in the 
pre-Arabic culture.  The value of certain principles is changeless.  To the
extent that I think Arab culture removes freedom of choice from individuals,
I think it is incorrect (admittedly, from my biased American/imperialist 
perspective).  I'm not saying that our behavior doesn't need to be normative
relative to societal concerns, but in our Constitution we have a notion of
a "right to privacy."   In other words, if what I do does no harm to you,
then you have no right to interfere with that behavior.  Of course I shouldn't
worry about Iran, or anyone else, because the enemies of this principle are
hard at work here in the U.S. to defeat it.  There is also a notion that we
should have a free press.  I think this is a cultureless value: of course
we should be able to express our ideas without government control.  I would
die to protect this right.  So, if we are ever invaded and overcome by a
culture or force that interferes with this right, irrespective of the duration
of their domination, their influence is *relevant* and should be overthrown.

In the end, I think each of our cultures has repugnant sides to it.  In all
cultures, I find religious fanaticism repugnant.  It is the father of all
hypocrisy in my view.  In every culture I find bigotry repulsive.  I think
we should all be able to criticize each others cultures without killing one
another, and without the presumption that criticism implies the supremacy of
one over another.  

In the end, I think Agha Sadeghi is the sage: by and large, our attention is
misspent on earthly stupidities.  If people would concentrate their own 
minds on God instead of just pontificating their *beliefs* about God, then 
we might experience something like true progress.  All else is flailing and
irrelevent.

If you think the imperial powers are all to blame, all you have to do is 
imagine your own country as an imperial power.   In fact, if your country
would even so much as seek to become an imperial power, you should be ashamed
of it.  My point is that when I hear people from oppressed countries
expressing views towards their neighbors that are so similar to those of their
oppressors, then I wonder how the oppressed and oppressors differ except by
degree of material accomplishment.  In other words I have often wondered if
given the same relative power and influence the United States currently holds,
how would Iran, Iraq, China, Israel or any other less influential power 
behave?  I am not generally encouraged.  Basically all cultures fail the test
as a function of raw human nature and the desire for power.