Last week I helped some friends build the site Vote for Iran. Many Iranians have written of their reasons to vote. If you would like to add your voice, you can leave a comment here that I will add to the site or you can use the contact form on the site.

I, for one, really want to hear from you!

You might not realize how much work Esra’a and others do behind the scenes just to keep this network of sites and organization up and running. Trust me, MideastYouth is more than a full time job!

This year, we are trying to raise money and are wondering what you think. We want to beef up Afghan Press, add lots and lots of translations to the site (into and from Arabic and Persian mainly), increase original multimedia production and, simply, become more professional.

We are looking at several sources: the EU, for instance, has funding for programs that promote free speech in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, there are foundations like HIVOS and Mama Cash. We would love to be self-funded, but face it, that’s expensive. Advertising doesn’t bring in enough cash yet either, maybe it will one day.

We have had long (believe me!) conversations about which types of organizations to approach for funding, and have all agreed that we would never accept money from a group or individual who would want to control our content or change our mission. Trust me when I tell you, if we were willing to betray our mission, we could have funded MEY a hundred times over.

Let us know what you think about our efforts to find funding. If you have ideas or recommendations, leave them here. We’ll be listening.

–Tori

When I was in Iran, I tried to explain this to commenters on my site (view from Iran) who seemed to think that their right to insult was more important than my right to remain free and out of jail.

Let me explain for those of you who do not quite get what I mean: there are people writing for this site who face very real threats to their freedom because commenters and posters alike think that bashing Islam is their inalienable right.

Now before you accuse me of being against free speech, please know that I am not approving of the actions of any group or government that sees a bit of insult as a punishable offense. I am simply stating that those governments and groups exist. And that we endanger our friends when we decide that our inalienable right to get into Koran bashing debates is more important than their freedom.

Personally, I think that anyone who wants to can take that debate to a private site where what is written endangers no one other than the writer. What do you guys think?

The question I pose is simple: Are you willing to see someone else arrested because of what you wrote?

–Tori

We recognize that the topics we discuss can be emotional and difficult for many people. When it comes to issues that concern the Middle East, everyone seems to have an opinion. What we are trying to promote is civil discourse, discussion, and debate. In order to do this, we must all accept some general guidelines. Here are the guidelines we propose:

Security-related

1. Remember that many of our authors are citizens of countries that limit free expression. No matter how tempted you are to do so, do not reveal anyone’s identity if they have chosen to remain anonymous. If you intentionally keep revealing a person’s confidential information without their permission, we will not hesitate to take legal action.

2. We will delete threatening comments or posts.

For Posters

1. Many of you write under pseudonyms. We respect that. In the case of Mideast Youth, the pseudonym is to protect you and the people who are connected to you. It should not be used as a cover to make unwarranted attacks on others or to reveal the personal details of others.

2. This is not a “cut and paste” blog. We want to hear your opinions and personal experiences.

3. Show courtesy! We do not moderate posts before they are published, so please exercise responsibility and courtesy in your writing. What does this mean? Support your arguments with evidence. Review your post for sweeping generalizations and attacks against groups of people. You can avoid most of these problems by being specific. Tell stories. Tell us what happened to you and how you felt about it. Be personal. There are enough generalizations out there.

For Commenters

1. Please comment on the post itself. Try to stay on topic.

2. Name-calling does not become you.

3. Threatening comments will be deleted.

4. Disagreements are natural. When you disagree with a writer or commenter, tell us why and provide evidence for your disagreement instead of attacking the idea or the writer.

Moderation

1. Moderators, remember that just because something offends you does not mean that it violates our commenting or posting policy.

2. If you feel that your comment or post was deleted unfairly and that you did not violate our comment or posting policy, please e-mail the administrators. We will review the case and if it’s a legitimate one, it will result in immediate action.

3. Moderators reserve the right to edit comments for technical errors only. Anything else is against our moderator policy; please tell us if one of your comments was edited for no apparent reason or for reasons unclear to you.

In addition, the human rights community does indeed make claims that cannot be verified by independent (and non-Iranian) investigators within Iran. This does not mean that violations do not happen. They do. Regularly. It means that many are hard to verify. Teachers are arrested every time they show up to march to demand their rights. Bus drivers are arrested for demanding living wages. The co-director of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Mideast studies was formally arrested yesterday after four months of unpublicized house arrest. (Not even at her own house: at her 93-year old mother’s).

What HD seems to have forgotten is the uncertainty of life in Iran. The law is invasive and vague, which is why it is so easy to break. As one friend says, “The law is so arbitrary that you can become an activist quite by accident.” The very ease of breaking the law in Iran means that nearly all adults are guilty of something. Imagine that. Granted, most people who will find themselves under scrutiny are public intellectuals, labor leaders, minority rights leaders, fallen government employees, and self-proclaimed activists, but the message is clear: life is insecure.

While blogging may not make you a target of scrutiny in Iran, it may be used against you at any time. The fact that bloggers here choose to remain anonymous is not necessarily to protect their identities (which would be extremely easy to discover), but to provide an illusion of protection for all parties. (I wrote a bit about this a long time ago in Reconstruction. Look at paragraph 10)

Freedom of speech is part of the law in Iran: the other part is that any speech that harms Islam is illegal. What harms Islam is open to endless interpretation. Unfortunately for people living in the smaller towns in Iran, scrutiny is more intense and the effects of unjust legal practice, corruption, and/or outright demagoguery more severe. This is not unique to Iran, of course. People in small towns often find themselves the victims of corruption and ruthlessness.

I would love to provide you with links to everything I have stated in this post, but my Internet Provider follows the government’s lead and keeps the bandwidth artificially low. It took me 20 minutes just to access the admin panel for Mideast Youth. Yesterday it took hours before I could log into blogger. I cannot tell you why: just that from time to time this is what happens.

Taxi driving is, in many ways, the male equivalent of prostitution in Iran. A man can make a few bucks a day driving around an old Paykan (9 miles to the gallon) or someone else’s newer car. The point is, these men are operating under the radar. They do not have official taxi licenses even though they may work for official taxi agencies. My local taxi agency employs only two people who have official taxi licenses.

Rumor has it that the official drivers will get an extra ration. This same rumor says that individual car owners will get 3 liters of gasoline a day (that won’t even take the Paykan 10 miles.) “I will be retiring when the rationing begins,” my driver told me yesterday. “I am tired anyway. I’ll go to Shomal and spend my days with my wife. The younger men are really in a bad way though. They don’t know what will happen to them when rationing begins.”

“They don’t have official licenses?”

“Only two of them do.”

So what will happen? This will be a disaster for poor women who, I predict, will be forced out onto the streets by the rationing. One of my friends told me about overhearing this conversation in an apartment building in one of Tehran’s poorest neighborhoods:

“The landlord is coming today for the rent,” a man called out to his 15-year old daughter. “I don’t care how you get it. Don’t come back here until you have the money.”

What do you think, will there be more of these conversations post-rationing or fewer?

Some Links:
Iran considers gas rationing

Iran to start gas rationing

Gasoline smart card delay

“The news is reporting that 93% of the population approves of the crackdown on hejab,” our cab driver told us.

“If that is true, there is no need to enforce hejab,” I responded.

“Don’t the women have mothers? Fathers? Brothers? Sisters? What business is it of the government,” the driver added. “On my wedding day, my wife asked me: What is your opinion of hejab? I said, What you wear is your business. All I want is your heart. If your heart is mine then you can wear whatever you want. If your heart is not mine, then wearing ten chadors won’t make a difference.”

The traffic on Jordan was, as usual, crawling. Since yesterday afternoon flocks of smiling religious police added to the traffic slowdown by standing on the street peering into each car that passed by. Above each checkpoint, another flock stood with a minibus and young women that they have pulled over for bad hejab.

And it isn’t just hejab…

Riding with dogs in taxis

“Please fix your scarf,” the taxi driver said to me. “Not because of me, but because the religious police are checking. I don’t care what you wear.”

“It’s not good enough?”

“Make it good enough for them.” I fumed a bit and then retreated into my thoughts. Up front Keivan and the driver discussed the crackdown on hejab.

“I was taking a young woman and she had her small dog with her. The religious police pulled us over. They said, We are impounding your car, arresting the girl, and letting the dog loose on the streets where it will be killed. I said, Hajh Agah, (Mister Hajh: a term of respect given to a man who has made pilgrimage to Mecca) you can’t do that. How can you take my car from me? How will I earn a living? And this young woman, what is wrong with her hejab? She is properly covered. There is no law against having a dog. And you have to consider that maybe the dog was sick, and we just came from the veterinarian.”

Riding in the car was testimony to the fact that he was able to talk his way out of the arrest and that the dog survived.

Bad Hejab

“Nuclear power is our inalienable right,” the staff of my favorite supermarket greets me as I walk into the bustling store. “It’s all your fault that the police are outside picking up women.” They are joking of course. They like to make fun of me when I come into the store.

Some people I know have yet to see the packs of police ushering women into awaiting minibuses, but my regular stomping grounds are in the heart of bad-hejabland. “At least the police are polite here,” a driver tells me. They have to be polite. They are being watched by neighbors with cameras and internet connections. “You should see them over at some of the other spots. They are really going after women with force and being rough.”

A few nights ago Iranian tv featured some official denying that women had been picked up by force. “We’re just talking to them. We have not begun arresting anyone.”

“It’s nothing,” everyone says to me. “They do this every year.”

“I’ve been here more than three years, and I have never seen the police so organized about picking up women before. I’ve never seen them flag down cars before.”

You’re right, people admit.

Say whatever you would like: that we are wrong to take this issue so seriously, that most Iranians support the crackdown on hejab, that this will pass I will tell you this: enforcing hejab makes me feel insecure and mistrustful. I am nervous walking down the street. I do not trust anyone. Why should I? I am wearing this by force. Therefore, there can be no trust. If I had come to the decision to wear hejab on my own, and wore it because of choice, faith, or even subtle social pressure, that would be different. But I wear hejab because of force and that force has been even more visible the past week.

The crackdown is a very visible symbol of oppression. So, some men are being picked up (or spoken with) for wearing ties or too much hair gel. That hardly compares to the insecurity of being a woman.

Links:

Anger at Iran dress restrictions

Islamica Community Forums: Anger at Iran dress restrictions

Iran police move into fashion business

Iran police swoop on slipping headscarves

Pictures from Iran

Summer Veil Program in Iran, By Kamangir

Well, here in Iran, we certainly know how to make a media splash. First there was the detention of the British sailors, now the nuclear issue. If you read our blog, View From Iran, you know that my husband and I are/were both opposed to Iran’s actions during the whole messy affair with the British soldiers.

What I find interesting, is how many people see this whole fiasco as a boon for Iran. I think the best way for me to sum up the different points of view is to respond to Hossein Derrakshan’s post-release post.:

There are some lessons we can all learn from this:
1. Islamic Republic of Iran, when genuinely engaged, is negotiable,
unlike what neo-conservatives try to make us believe.

Yes, they can negotiate, but an agreement does not mean much of anything. “Signing a contract is the beginning of negotiations.”

2. Iran is a whole different country now than it was 28 years ago when they captured the American embassy

Agreed. I felt that the comparisons between this affair and the hostage crisis (at least for us Americans it was a crisis) at the start of the revolution were spurious. Commentators seemed to thinkthat holding the British sailors captive would somehow unite the nation behind the regime. That was just silly. Any longer, and the Iranians we know would have started getting nervous about retaliation. The Iranians we don’t know seem to think that the regime capitulated.

Overall, the whole affair of the 15 British sailors (great Sherlock Holmes title) was barely noticed here in Iran because most Iranians were on vacation for two weeks and so was their press. There were no newspapers during the Norooz (New Year) holidays. This was all very low key in Iran.

3. Iran’s establishment is more united than everyone thinks. Painting the Revolution Guard as a Mafia or a government inside a government is a strategic mistake.

My husband, Keivan, also thinks that the regime is more similar than dissimilar. But I would disagree with this point. I think this whole ploy was for internal consumption and that the IRG was sending a message to parts of the establishment that are looking for compromise and negotiation. There has been a lot of internal debate on the nuclear issue, for instance.

According to Nicholas Burns, The US’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the US had been getting signals that the regime wanted to talk.

The affair of the 15 forced the various factions to at least appear unified.

And the IRG is, in fact, dangerous. It is an elite military that is stronger than the will of the people. Parts of the IRG seem to run autonomously from the whole of it.

4. The moderate conservatives in Iran, represented by Ali Larijani, have the unconditional backing of Ali Khamenei.

Maybe I do not know enough about backstage machinations to comment. There is an interesting article on Newsweek’s website that does shed some light: Reign of the “Melted Ones,” How Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei keeps control of Iran.

5. Ali Larijani, who brokered the deal, is the real president of Iran and is the person in Iran for the world to talk to. That’s why Ahmadinjad was reading from a written statement.

Ahmadinejad was clearly subdued during this whole affair. He appeared reigned in and uncharacteristically quiet.

6. Islamic Republic, including its radical elements, is not a rouge and irrational regime.

It’s not?

7. Ahmadinejad has been allowed to announce the release to repair the image of Iran that’s hugely damaged by himself over his unnecessary anti-Israel comments.

8. Iran has won the PR game.

The PR game continues. I don’t think that Iran has won this one quite yet. This implies that the game is over. But recent developments make me wonder if Hoder is not, perhaps, correct, despite what I think and how I interpret the affair.

9. Iran is a winner in the recent standoff, as it ultimately was when the U.S. removed its most threatening neighbouring regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan

I think this was more of a lose-lose situation rather than a win-win.

10. Ahmadinejad is one heck of a street-smart politician.

Yeah, maybe, but apparently the Leader seems to think his street smarts do not translate into true smarts. Here is a quote from the Newsweek article:

“NEWSWEEK has learned that Khamenei stopped Ahmadinejad from taking part in a U.N. Security Council session last month because he felt that the president would be out of his depth in the meeting. “The Supreme Leader deemed that president would not be able to add anything to Iran’s argument if he took part in the Security Council session,” said a Khamenei associate.”

I feel that the whole media circus will backfire on Iran. It shows a government that is not ruled by law or reason, but by bluff and magisterial whims. Ahmadinejad handed out the freedom as if he were a king rather than the ruler of a modern nation.

Maybe people thought it was some kind of pr victory, but a true examination of it should prove otherwise. That said, the Brits don’t seem to be handling their own media circus any better. When the sailors start getting six figure sums from the media for a story that would be barely worth a blink if it had not happened in Iran, you’ve got to wonder.

Keivan wrote a bunch of posts about the British sailors and even one about the movie 300. Now I am going to write my opinion of 300. Let me just say if you are a straight woman or a gay man, you will definitely want to watch this movie (well, not the rape scene) which features well-oiled hunky men. That Leonides. Yum.

The Guardian had a lol review of the movie that pretty much sums up my opinion: gorgeous men in underwear fighting the army of a gorgeous pierced Xerxes.

Keivan’s older brother commented, “Couldn’t they afford to buy material to clothe themselves?”

And Jonathan Korman at Miniver Cheevy sums up my opinion:

[A] guy who reads a story in which the Spartans are the good guys and the Athenians are a bunch of sissies as a “fight for democracy” does not have the political or artistic sophistication to tackle Watchmen.

How anyone reads the movie as a fight by free men for the sake of democracy is just beyond me. Let’s look at it as fiction, not as historical fact. I’ll call the Spartans the Musclemen and the Persians the Fashion Victims. Is there anything at all redeeming about the Musclemen other than their well-oiled abs? I mean, when the wife of Leonides goes to have a political discussion with a senator she is raped instead. Wow, what a great legacy. Now that’s a society worth dying for.

And then there is the part when the Musclemen push messengers of the Fashion Victims into a well. Jeez, that was a bright move. Another great legacy. I am so proud of my Western civilization.

It’s also clear that the Fashion Victims are just deranged enough to accept, yes, dwarfs into their midst. Wow. That’s deranged. The Musclemen, those great precursors of Nazism and fascism had the good sense to leave them out to die. Another legacy we can all be proud of.

The Musclemen were suicidal, fanatical fools, but at least they were buff. The Fashion Victims were racially and physically diverse but ultimately they were slaves to fashion instead of to freedom.

And then there was the dialog, our host yelled out half the lines in the movie before they were said. This movie definitely has a future as a midnight showing.

Someone somewhere tell me why they liked this movie and why anyone should feel any compassion for the death cult of the Musclemen.

Oh, and by the way, the movie is for sale all over Tehran, no riots yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

“They love Iran because they expect something much worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“They expect to be frightened and see people living in fear.” (Forgive me if I am not nuanced in my conversations, I am not a fluent Persian speaker. I do the best I can with my limited abilities.) “We are afraid of you.”

The driver laughs. He thinks I’m joking. I must be joking. Us afraid of them?

“Why is it that foreigners have such a bad impression of Iran?” the taxi driver asked me.

“The only images of Iran that we see in the west are of thousands of people shouting, Down with America, Down with Israel, and then burning flags. This scares us.”

“Yeah, but that does not mean that we dislike Americans. We like Americans. It’s the government we don’t like.”

“Americans do not understand that difference.”

“Don’t they ask why we burn their flag? Don’t they want to know?”

“We do not want to know why. It just makes us angry.” [Our 'friends' dislike us the most, it seems.]

“Why don’t you want to know why?”

“America is a big country. Our neighbors are Canada and Mexico. The rest of the world is very far away. We are not so aware of foreign policy or of other countries. Iran, Iraq, it makes no difference to us. In America, we worry about our own lives. We do not worry about the rest of the world.”

“Ah hah, the driver says. “You are too simple.”

“Yes. We are simple.”

“It seems that Americans want to attack us.”

“Most Americans do not want war.” [Majority expects war (different from supporting it]

“People never want war. It is the leaders who want war. When war comes, and I am a soldier and you are a soldier then I have to fight you.”

“That’s the job of a soldier.”

“America is thick-necked. Do you know what that means?”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that they want to get their way through force.”

“Ahh, we say that too. Roughneck.”

War scares me. It should scare me. What scares me even more is that there are many people in the world who do not fear war. I cannot help but be reminded of what an old biker told me when I told him that I was fascinated by motorcycles and terrified of them.

“So am I,” he said. “It’s when you lose that fear that you get into an accident and die. I have sworn to myself that if I ever get on my bike and feel no fear that I will stop riding forever.”