St. John’s Telegram (Newfoundland)
June 20, 2004 Sunday Final Edition
Iranians shoot for change
SOURCE: CanWest News Service
by: Michael Petrou
ESFAHAN, Iran
In a coffee shop in Esfahan’s Christian Armenian quarter, four Muslim
men sit at a low table near the bar, smoking cigarettes and drinking
espresso.
The coffee shop’s stereo is playing Green Day’s Time of Your Life.
Several of the young men and women in the cafe and on the sidewalk
outside have bandages on their noses, the result of recent plastic
surgery — a popular trend among young Iranians who can afford it.
Nasser Behruz, a heavyset man with thinning black hair, uses a piece
of chocolate to scoop foam from his small cup of espresso and talks
about change.
Unlike most of the patrons, he’s old enough to remember the Islamic
Revolution of 1979 and has watched the country transform.
“Look at this,” he says, waving his hand at the young men and women
sitting in the cafe with their foreheads inches apart. “Ten years ago,
this would not be possible. … Things are getting better, but slowly,
very slowly. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I hope
the changes continue.”
I order a malt beverage that contains no alcohol, which prompts Behruz
to talk about his favourite alcoholic drinks and the occasional house
parties he throws for his friends.
“Sometimes if I have a party and there is a lot of music and dancing
and my neighbour calls, then the police will come. But it’s not a
problem,” he says, and rubs his thumb and forefinger together to
indicate a bribe.
“I give them something and they go away.”
Behruz invites me to his apartment for a few drinks.
“The government doesn’t like Iranians talking to foreigners,” his
friend says. “If they see us talking to a tourist, we get questioned.
But it’s OK. We thought you were Iranian, and the police will, too.
Let’s go.”
On the outside wall of Behruz’s apartment building, someone has
spray-painted “Down with women who don’t wear the hijab.”
“Must have been some Islamic person who did this,” he says.
We spend the evening drinking a clear and potent moonshine that has
been smuggled into the country from the Kurdish areas of Iraq in
two-litre pop bottles. In Behruz’s kitchen, we mix the alcohol with
Mecca Cola and fruit juice.
Behruz tells me he is an atheist, and we have a long, spirited
conversation about whether God exists.
After a couple of hours, Behruz puts on a video of the Iranian
singer Googoosh performing at Maple Leaf Gardens. The singer had
been banned from performing by Iran’s fundamentalist clerics after
the Islamic Revolution and was only permitted to leave the country
a few years ago. She promptly launched a triumphant world tour to
capacity audiences.
As we work our way through the bottle, Behruz becomes a little more
animated. Like every other Iranian I speak with, he says he doesn’t
want the United States to overthrow Iran’s government. (The only
person I meet in Iran who thinks this would be a good idea is a
visiting businessman from Afghanistan.)
But Behruz is desperate for regime change.
“If the Americans come here, I will shoot them,” he says.
“But they must go, the mullahs. They must go. I don’t know how. Maybe
we will have another people’s revolution. I think our spirit is like
France, and French democracy is best for us.”
Late that night, Behruz and I walk across the lower level of the
exquisite Khaju Bridge spanning Esfahan’s Zayandeh River. A group of
middle-aged men has gathered beneath the bridge’s vaulted archways to
take advantage of the structure’s shower-like acoustics and sing. One
man plays a flute and another earnestly belts out a Googoosh song:
“Of all the men in the world, you’re the one for me …”
I leave Esfahan and travel northwest, across the Iranian plateau
toward the mountainous borders of Iraq and Turkey.
It is a rugged and seductive part of the country, frequented by
nomads and smugglers. Most of the people who live here are Kurds,
Turkic Azaris, and Armenian and Assyrian Christians.
Kurds in Iran have their own distinct language and culture. And
unlike the majority of Iranians who are Shiite Muslims, Iranian Kurds
practise Sunni Islam. However, although heavy fighting raged in 1979
between Kurdish separatists and the country’s new Islamic regime,
few Iranian Kurds today want outright independence from Iran.
Most would prefer greater autonomy, more democracy and the freedom
to practise Islam as they see fit.
Kurdish friends invite me to a wedding. Women wearing beautiful,
brightly coloured dresses and no headscarves dance hand-in-hand
with men while energized musicians sing and play horns and stringed
instruments.
Guests hand the singer wads of cash with their names written on the
bills. The singer reads the names and sings their praises without
missing a beat. The dancers hold hands in a line and move in a
counter-clockwise circle.
The man leading the dance twirls a handkerchief above his head,
knocking blossom petals from an overhanging tree, adding to the riot
of colour.
“The Persians dance with the men and women separate,” one guest says.
“We Kurds dance together. It causes some problems with the Islamic
people, but I don’t care.”
“We Kurds are Muslims, too. But Islam isn’t telling women to cover
their faces. We don’t do that.”
Christianity has existed in Iran since before the advent of Islam.
An Assyrian church in the northwestern city of Tabriz is built on
the ruins of a much older church, believed to have been founded by
one of the three Magi, or wise men, who returned to Persia after
visiting the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem.
Today, about 300,000 Iranians are Christians, mostly ethnic Armenians.
“We don’t feel isolated here,” says Violet, a young Armenian woman in
Esfahan, where the Persian Shah settled a large community of Armenian
Christians during the early 17th century.
Privately some Armenians will admit to “misunderstandings” between
their communities and Iran’s government since the Islamic Revolution.
“Obviously sharia law isn’t natural to Christians,” one man says.
“But our religious rights are respected. We celebrate all our holy
days, even national days commemorating battles between Armenians and
Persians. … And we have our representatives in parliament. They
represent us and help us reclaim our rights.”
But if the older Armenian and Assyrian churches in Iran are at least
officially protected, the regime does not tolerate evangelism.
Muslims who convert are considered apostates and are subject to
harsh punishment. Most evangelical churches in the country have
gone underground.
“Me, personally, I must evangelize privately, in people’s homes,”
says Sharif, 26, an Assyrian man from Tabriz who joined a local
Protestant church as an adult.
“If the government found out, there would be a lot of problems for me.”
Iran is also home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the
Middle East outside of Israel.
Their history here began 2,500 years ago when the Persian ruler Cyrus
the Great captured Babylon and freed the Jewish slaves.
Some elected to stay in Persia rather than return to Palestine,
and subsequent generations of Jews immigrated here to escape the
persecution of Greeks and Romans.
Today, Muslims in the Iranian city of Shiraz speak casually about the
numerous Jewish merchants in the city they do friendly business with.
“They’re Iranian, just like the rest of us,” one man says.
But the attitude of the clerics in the Iranian government is less
benign. In 2000, a revolutionary court convicted 10 Shiraz Jews of
spying for Israel, in a trial widely regarded outside Iran as unfair.
All the convicted men were released within three years, but the
incident exposed the theocracy’s continued intolerance.
Officially, foreigners visiting a synagogue in Iran need permission,
and a guide, from the Ministry of Information and Islamic Guidance.
But I simply ask my taxi driver to take me to the “Jewish church,”
and he does.
The synagogue is located behind unmarked walls about a block away
from a Christian church. Inside, two dozen worshippers are preparing
for prayer. Several men are clearly uneasy about my presence and
continually look over my shoulder to where my driver is parked outside.
One man seems to suggest in broken English that I come back later
when I am alone. But the entire atmosphere is uncomfortable. I leave
quickly and do not return.
It would be misleading, however, to imply that all Iranians are
opposed to the ruling clerics, or that support for the religious
fundamentalists running Iran is limited to an old guard of aging
revolutionaries.
In Shiraz, I visit several madrassas, or Islamic schools, and other
centres of Islamic study that are crowded with young scholars and
new students.
I am guided through the city by Rezvan, a 42-year-old man with a
quiet voice and thick black beard. I assume he supports the religious
clerics because of his beard, a rarity among most Iranians, but we
have barely started walking toward the first madrassa when he says,
“Iran today is like Europe of the Renaissance.”
“We want to become secular,” he continues. “Religion and government
should not go together. Most of us feel this way. But the government
does not want what the people want.”
At the madrassa, we visit with Hussein, a young scholar of 20 who
invites us to his whitewashed room. The walls are lined with religious
books and decorated with a photograph of him when he was about 12
years old.
We sit on the floor, looking out over the madrassa’s courtyard and
drinking tea that Hussein boils on a gas burner in his room. Below
us in the courtyard a young student sits cross-legged on the floor
opposite a cleric with an open copy of the Qur’an between them,
discussing passages from the holy book.
Hussein wants to be sure that I know Muslims respect Jesus, and asks
why Easter is important to Christians. He says he will study Islam
for 12 more years, likely much longer.
“I want to spend my life helping to advertise Islam,” he says. “It
doesn’t matter if it is in a mosque or a school. It is all part of
the same life.”
On our way to a neighbouring Islamic study centre, Rezvan warns me
not to refer to the clerics there as “mullahs.”
“They don’t like to be called mullahs, because they think it makes
them sound like Osama bin Laden,” Rezvan says. He pauses before adding,
“But there really isn’t that much difference.”
All the clerics we talk to at the centre are gracious and polite. One
insists on personally driving us across town to our next appointment,
clutching his robes around his tall frame before folding himself into
his tiny car and plunging into the city’s chaotic traffic.
Another tries to explain the role of religion in Iran’s government.
“The Qur’an gives guidance for all parts of our lives: culture,
family, science,” he says.
Iran is approaching a tipping point. Religious conservatives still
command the loyalty of some. But the gulf between the Iranian people
and their government is deep.
Many Iranians openly disparage the ruling clerics, drink smuggled
alcohol in their homes and at parties, watch MTV on their satellite
televisions and, if they are women, wear their headscarves perched
precariously on the back of their heads.
State-censored newspapers are full of propaganda against Israel and
the United States.
But a private bookstore near Tehran University prominently displays
copies of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
and Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
For a while it seemed possible that President Mohammed Khatami and
parliamentary reformers might change the system from within.
But the conservative clerics cynically crippled the reform movement
before the last election by banning reformist candidates, and many
Iranians who seek democracy have now turned their backs on Khatami
and his contemporaries.
“We have had the so-called reformers for six years with nothing to
show for it,” one student says. “They think saving the system is more
important than the needs of the people. They are a dead end.”
The clerics will defend their power. And indeed, the death of Zahra
Kazemi, the Canadian photojournalist who was murdered while a prisoner
at Iran’s notorious Evin prison, and the cover-up of her killing betray
both the determination and desperate depravity of Iran’s religious
dictatorship. But a confrontation with Iran’s people is inevitable.
Ottawa Citizen
GRAPHIC: Color Photo: The Associated Press; Iranian President Mohammad
Khatami aims a rifle last week during his visit to Iran’s Defence
Ministry in Tehran. In a letter to the leaders of Britain, Germany and
France, Khatami accused the EU trio of working with Tehran’s arch-foe
Washington to heap pressure on the Islamic Republic. But many Iranians
are beginning to question the country’s form of theocratic government.