Woman Attempts to Run for President in Iran

Good morning all!
Sorry about the bad link to all your Allahisms, but blogging is new to me, so it's taken a couple of tries to get what I want.

Anyway, we have 112 Allahisms available for your pleasure.

Link: http://muslimsandme.blogspot.com/

Afternoon Bill (it is here in London, anyway). Thanks for the Allahisms.

'In the past Rafat has also said that Iran, as an Islamic country, cannot and should not adhere to the notion of “women’s rights” which were essentially defined by the West...'

What a load of bollocks! It's only in the West that women have any real rights at all. She's another Ebadi (sp).

"she rejects Western accusations that the country is oppressing its women..."

Shirin Ebadi gets a Nobel Prize for defending the rights of some women, and insists in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech that the mistreatment of women has "nothing" to do with Islam. And she, Shirin Ebadi, denied a visa to this country, is in turn supported by the celebrated Azar Nafisi, whose book continues remarkably to be on the best-seller list.

And just why is Nafisi'a book, which in its title exploits the word "Lolita" which is juxtaposed to the chadored women on the book's cover) so successful? It is hardly a masterpiece of verbal art. In its belief in the Liberating Power of Art it brings a moral in tow of the kind that Nabokov himself, and Joyce, and a thousand others, would have mocked. Her book is an account of those seeking mental escape from the horrors, seen only obliquely and in parvo, of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But Islam itself is spared, and we are lead to believe that the Islamic Republic is a sport, and not in fact representative of the real Iran, with the Pahlevis being the odd-men out. Who fit better into the Iran of 1960, 1940, 1900, 1860, 1760, 1610 -- Ayatollah Khomeini, or Shah Reza Phalevi? Was Khomeini's theology unrelated to the concept of "najis"? Does Azar Nafisi know anything much about the real treatment of Zoroastrians (has she read Mary Boyce), of Jews in modern Iran (Laurence Loeb), of Armenians (see Arakel of Tabriz). She in a way seems to be a brave figure, but in fact is a most misleading one -- misleading, not least, herself, about the nature of Islam. A golden child of the already jeunesse doree of Teheran, she is hardly a representative Iranian, and like many nice Iranians who refuse to go all the way, and to see what it is about Islam that provides a ready-made and dangerous prism through which to view the universe, and of which the Islamic Republic of Iran is only an extreme modern example, she is not much of a guide to the truth.

Who is buying her book? Someone is. Perhaps it really is only book-club groups, looking for some way to understand, in properly feelgood fashion, the problem of Islam. Since the book never comes to grips with Islam tout court, but is on the obvious side of those obvious angels, it can be safely read and earnestly discussed in those meetings where people "share" their "thoughts" and "feelings."

Or perhaps the C.I.A. is buying up large copies of the book, in order to deliberately keep it afloat, and in the public eye -- hoping that this way more Americans will be encouraged themselves to buy the book.

Somehting is going on with that book that is worth investigating. But what, precisely, is unclear. And the effort to promote it, if it is being done by the American government and not some Iranian group-in-exile, ought better to be spent promoting, and buying and distributing copies of, "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and making sure that book is translated, and accurately, into a dozen major languages.

The real indictment, not the feelgood version (where Seven Against Thebes, or Seven Women Against the Regime, meet and d throw off their chadors, and talk and laugh and enjoy their Ya-Ya Sisterhood) is to be encouraged. It is Ibn Warraq, and Bat Ye'or, and Ali Sina, not Azam Nafisi, who come to grips with what motivates and sustains the regime in Iran, and what, even if that regime falls, will remain to come back, like Rasputin, as it has returned to what was believed by many to be a permanently Kemalist Turkey.

Since "Reading Lolita in Teheran" is not a masterpiece of English prose, the book-buying public presumably admires it for the tale of bravery it tells. But the analysis of the problem is weak. The suggestion that through Lliterature We Can be Saved is false. Literature has something to do with making our lives endurable, less boring, more interesting. But it is not a substitute for actually bringing down a regime, or an ideology. One might, in 1943, have sustained oneself by reading Shakespeare or Goethe. But, come to think of it, plenty of Nazis seemed to enjoy reading Shakespeare or Goethe. No, what was necessaary was the American Army, and the British Army, and the Soviet Army, to do the Nazis in. A Nazi-ruled Europe would not have endurable, not even if one were locked in a library.

Hugh:

'Who is buying her book? '

Well you must have bought it!

Actually you've just articulated far better than I could the reasons why I felt dissatisfied on reading 'Lolita'. A bit like a bad country and Western song where you're waiting for the chorus to redeem it, but it never comes. The title sounds daring, but the book isn't.

There was a Muslim comedienne a while back doing the Edinburgh fringe. I was really pleased to hear this initially, and to hear how she'd pissed off all those reactionary young men(and these days, depressingly, it is young men rather than old). Just one thing, though. She wasn't funny at all. Islam is a subject itching to be ripped to shreds by a comedian, but this girl just kept making bland jokes that people felt obliged to laugh at because she wore a hijab and they were too polite to heckle.

Strayed off the point a bit.

She told one joke that genuinely made me laugh. About getting her bottom pinched during the haji and being told it was the Hand of God. Come to think of it she did remind me a little of Maradona

If a woman's court testimony is weighted half that of a man's, shouldn't that also mean her vote in parliament is counted as half a man's?

The justification for the reducing the weight of a woman's testimony should also apply to her vote in a rulemaking body, it seems to me.

This isn't mentioned, so I assume male and female votes are equivalent. I'm curious how they justify the dichotomy. Anyone know?

Granny W:

Actually that is quite funny about the hand of God. What happened to her - did she get fatwa'd?

Saturnine:

'If a woman's court testimony is weighted half that of a man's, shouldn't that also mean her vote in parliament is counted as half a man's?'

Good point. To be consistent, women ought to have only half the punishment of men, eg half the number of lashes, two and a bit fingers cut off etc. But they seem to fare worse there as well.

I'd rather have Western "women's rights" complete with inverted commas.

Hugh:

Who is buying "Reading Lolita"? The usual suspects -- perhaps a more sophisticated strain of them than the ones who have made Michael Moore so very, very wealthy, or the gormless wonders who got all hot and jiggly over Taraq Ramadan's recent plea for a moratorium in stoning, etc.

"she rejects Western accusations that the country is oppressing its women."

""To say that women in Iran are under pressure, that their rights are violated, is not true," she told Reuters in an interview."

"In the past Rafat has also said that Iran, as an Islamic country, cannot and should not adhere to the notion of “women’s rights” which were essentially defined by the West..."

You can only guess what her chances of running for presidency, or even of not disappearing without any trace, would be if she'd be saying something different. This should be read for what it is: statements made by a politician in a totalitarian system who has determined to play by the rules to make it within the system. Being a pariah of the Islamic patriarchy - a woman - she hopes that by denying her oppression, and by flattering her masters, she will be given a little chance to survive, and even to succeed. She's trying to purchase her success at the expense of belittling her sisters' plight, and by silencing them even more than they already have been silenced, by lending a female voice to the apologists of the regime. This should not be taken any more seriously than a Soviet intellectual praising his freedom-loving government, or a Jew in Third Reich talking about the fairness of his homeland's minority policies...

Dear BillR,

Are you going to alphabetize the Allahisms?

Hugh

[[In its belief in the Liberating Power of Art it brings a moral in tow of the kind that Nabokov himself, and Joyce, and a thousand others, would have mocked]]

How bereft we are not to have a novelistic genius of the calibre of these two imps and magicians to turn their eye, with a cutting glint and comic gaze, over the carrion that is modern Islam and its nonsenses.

Imagine how they would bring to life and turn the stupidities of our era into wondeful life.

Rememeber Nabokov's recitation of poshlost and how it applies to art and life, then look at the bedraggled shabbiness of the Jihadi degenerates and their Useful Idiots in our lands.

We are bereft.

Interested
Anything to avoid washing up, so I did a google search for her. Her name is Shazia Mirza, she has a website http://www.shaziamirza.org and seems to be quite busy. She played Hackney Empire with Jo Brand last month, and is sold out in Dubai tomorrow. She wears the hijab as a stage costume only, in her portfolio pictures she is in western dress.

OT, I think the weight of a persons testimony in court should be related to their weight generally. So a slim dainty little girl would be worth not much, and the likes of me would win the case singlehanded.

"Good point. To be consistent, women ought to have only half the punishment of men, eg half the number of lashes, two and a bit fingers cut off etc. But they seem to fare worse there as well."

Well, really, if they're only half as good as men, then on the flip side, wouldn't they be twice as bad? So they're really deserving of double the punishment.

(Think I could make it as a Mullah, or what?)

Cross,

Yes they will be alphabetized. Probably in the next day or so.

If you can follow the IslamoLogic a womans sentence should be 3 times that of a man since her share of inheritance, when inverted, is 3/1, which we all know is three.

Another argument would be: one because she's evil, two because she's guilty, and three because she's a woman.

It a exactly parallel to their logic in showing how Muhammed knew the world was round. That's how he put his turbin on, round and round, just like the world.

So, let me see...where does the sun go at night?

I always find it strange that when Muslimahs rage against Western imperialism in feminist matters, they never mention polygamy, forced marriages and the lowering of the marriage age in Iran to nine. The few educated, and hence probably elite, muslim women seem to totally ignore the reality of life for the rank-and-file Muslimahs outside of their own sphere.

They also seem to be under the impression that up to one hundred years ago, western women were just oppressed as they are now. Not being well up on legal matters I cannot speak for the legal situation of women in the west back then, but I think that I can very safely say that we never had acid thrown in faces, that we could show these very faces in that such never came into question, that we could feel the wind in our hair, that we didn't have bars on our windows and locked doors which kept us prisoners, that we were not subjected to having our private parts butchered, and that we were were not seen as chattels, 'owned' by fathers, brothers, husbands. (And these brothers in islam seem to be worse than fathers, obviously rigourously (sp) tutelaged by the fathers in matters feminine.)

Nor were we ever subjected to polygamy.

Of course, the muslims would counter this by saying men will always have their mistresses. According to them every man in the west has his mistress. What poppycock. They readily buy in to the Jerry Springer version of the west, understandable because all they wish to view of the west is the strip clubs, brothels which they wish to enjoy.

They do not experience ordinary middle-class life where a marriage vow is a marriage vow and where ordinary people do not like the modern pornigrification of the mainstream.

I do not say this lightly, but I would rather that my daughter became a table-dancer than a muslimah.

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

That seems to sum up the philosophy of these deluded women.

Mary Wollstonecraft, author of "Declaration of the Rights of Women" (in the late 1700's already), must be spinning- and puking- in her grave at the 'intellectual' gyrations these Iranian XX chromosome numbskulls manage to perform.

Tapdancing must be the national political pastime in Iran.

"Nabokov's recitation of poshlost and how it applies to art and life..."

Nabokov's definition of poshlost', given most memorably in his book on Gogol, which he defined as "self-satisfied vulgarity," and offered such examples as the swan-lover in Lohengrin, and described how the "flowers of poshlost bloom" in such phrases as "we all share in Germany's guilt" does not apply to the menace of Islam. But of course in the crazed cult of "tolerance" with its self-satisfied aspect, that might merit the application of "poshlost'" to describe the phenomenon.

Incidentally, the very word in Russian for "self-satisfaction" (from the meshchanin "dovolen sam soboy/Svoim obedom i zhenoj" in Pushkin on up, or down), is "samodovol'stvo." But some 30 years ago, in the pages of the TLS, there was an exchange between the Oxford don John Bayley, and the Russian emigre scholar of art (Byzantine and Venetian mosaics) and literature (Vladislav Khodasevich, Tiutchev) and culture (Russian culture, the Death of Art -- Umiraniue Iskusstva -- which Weidle later expanded into a French study, "Les abeilles d'Aristee," that won the Rivarol Prize), on whether the correct word was "samodovol'stvo" or "samodovol'nost'." Bayley had used the latter in a TLS article, and Weidle had written in to insist that there was only one word for the phenomenon in Russian, and that word was "samodovol'stvo." But Bayley kept insisting and in his insistence, he cut a figure as absurd as Wilson did, ce vieux sapajou, in daring to challenge Nabokov on the subject of Russian words. The only one who ever scored a palpable hit or two re the Onegin translation was the late Alexander Gerschenkron (formerly of 8 Shady Hill Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

There. Feeling most samodovolen sam soboj, which means I am headed for a fall, I'll end this here.

Well, these are all matters that, under Islam, would not matter. Who would then give a damn about Pushkin, Weidle, or anyone else?

Hugh

Thanks for that. Yes, of course, I was referencing the shabbiness and vulgar idiocy of the Karen Armstrongs, William Dalrymples, those purveyors of whitewash, hagiography, tacit supporters of Jihad, those prancing panjandrums who believe that all Imperialism are bad, except those that bear the Arab Mans Burden, in which case they are the liberation of humanity; and their counterparts in the Islamic world, those 'liberals' and 'moderates' who push the fallacy of 'gentle' Islam that was a highpoint of civilisation and in fact, fertilised the renaissance with its tolerance and beauty etcetera etcetera (have you noticed how often this phrase is repreated: 'the beauty of Islam', as though there is some crystal clarity and mystical beauty in its possession, which of course, makes all else ugly)

I re-read 1984 recently and could not help thinking of the Islamic future; the sex-crime, the death of thought, the dispossesion of freedom, the destruction of history and the individual and the past, the endless Jihad and wars, and most of all, the uncanny sentence, that describes so simply and accurately the entire history of Islam:

"Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever"

Tapdancing must be the national political pastime in Iran.

Posted by: BigSleep at April 28, 2005 11:09 PM

Yes, and stoning women for "chastity" crimes is the national sport.

waterdragon52-

I thought that "stoning women" was the national religion?

And that the Iranian national sport would be tongue hurdles.

Where the lies are so tall that your tonsils have to take a running leap to get over them.