{"id":8033,"date":"2009-06-19T06:38:37","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T13:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8033"},"modified":"2009-06-19T06:38:37","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T13:38:37","slug":"an-important-op-ed-from-a-student-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8033","title":{"rendered":"An Important Op Ed from a Student in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

You really should read this op-ed piece the NY Times<\/a>, especially given the maybe-the-election-wasn’t-stolen-rhetoric coming from some sectors here in the US. An excerpt:<\/p>\n

For instance, some American analysts assert that the demonstrations are taking place only in the sections of Tehran \u2014 in the north, around the university and Azadi Square \u2014 where the educated and well-off reside. Of course, those neighborhoods were home to the well-to-do … 30 years ago. The notion that these areas represent \u201cthe nice part of town\u201d will come as a surprise to their residents, who endure the noise, congestion and pollution of living in the center of a megalopolis.<\/p>\n

People who haven\u2019t visited a city in decades are bound to give out bad directions. But their descriptions of where the protests are taking place, and why, also draw on pernicious myths of an iron correlation between religion and class, between location and voting tendency, in Iran.<\/p>\n

This false geography imagines South Tehran and the countryside as home only to the poor, those natural allies of political Islam, while North Tehran embodies unbridled gharbzadegi (translated as \u201cWeststruckness\u201d or \u201cWesternitis\u201d) and is populated by people addicted to the Internet and vacations in Paris. It is as if political Islam withers north of Vanak Square and the only residents to be found are \u201cliberals\u201d who voted for the opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi.<\/p>\n

We must not assume that the engagement of members of society with their religion is uniform or that religious devotion equals automatic loyalty to a particular brand of politics. To do so is certainly to deny Iran\u2019s poor the capacity to think for themselves, to deny that the politics of the past four years may have made their lives worse \u2014 and plays right into Mr. Ahmadinejad\u2019s dubious claim to be the most authentic representative of the 1979 revolution. Mr. Moussavi was, let\u2019s not forget, a favored son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and a member of Iran\u2019s original cohort of revolutionaries, and he remains a firm believer in the revolution and the framework of the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

But the United States seems able to view our country only through anxieties left over from the 1979 revolution. In the \u201chow did we lose Iran?\u201d assessments after the overthrow of the shah, many American intelligence agents and policy makers decided that their great mistake was to spend too much time canoodling with the royal family and intellectual elites of the capital. Commentators now are worried that, by siding with the opposition today, the United States will once again fall into the trap of backing the losing side.<\/p>\n

But the fact is, Tehran is not the Iranian anomaly it was 30 years ago. It has become more like the rest of the country. Internal migration, not just to Tehran but to other major cities, has accelerated, driven in part by the growth of universities in places like Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashad and Shiraz, and now nearly 70 percent of Iranians live in cities. The much vaunted rural vote represents not a decisive bloc for Mr. Ahmadinejad but a minimum, one that was easily swamped by the increased turnout of city dwellers, who normally sit elections out.<\/p>\n

And, of course, Iran in 2009 \u2014 better yet, Iran on June 12, 2009 \u2014 is not the same as Iran in 1979. Just as Tehran\u2019s neighborhoods cannot be fixed in time, the cultural lives of Iranians have greatly changed in the past 30 years. The postrevolutionary period has seen the expansion of education, the entry of women into the work force in large numbers, and changing patterns of marriage and even of divorce. These have all shaped Iranian society. The pseudo-sociology peddled by so many in the West would easily dissolve with a week\u2019s visit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You really should read this op-ed piece the NY Times, especially given the maybe-the-election-wasn’t-stolen-rhetoric coming from some sectors here in the US. An excerpt: For instance, some American analysts assert that the demonstrations are taking place only in the sections … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}