Hooman Majd

I just finished Majd's book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Here is a review by Steve Coll. It is a wonderfully entertaining book full of insights about Iranians (or Persians, if you will). In the West, we clearly fail to understand them. Here is a post by Majd in September, which gives you an idea of the reason behind Ahmaddinejad's outrageous statements about the holocaust and why the nuclear issue plays into the hands of the conservatives who stole the election. They are deflecting attention from the clash between the reformers and conservatives in Iran. Mr. A has a lot of supporters but most Iranians know he stole the election, a first in the country of which they are very proud. It is not because there is so much difference between A and Mousavi; they are angry that their votes wre taken.

The nuclear question is one on which most Iranians agree, as is the centrality of Shia Islam in their country. As Shias everywhere, they see themselves as persecuted. And Western powers ran Iran for many years prior to the 1979 revolution. They are not interested in a western-style democracy, but they deeply care about their Islamic democracy.

I continually wonder at all the Americans that continue to portray all Muslims as the same. This is real ignorance. Iranians hate the Taliban, who are Sunni fundamentalists. Shia have Ayatollahs, or religous authorities, somewhat similar to Catholics. Sunni's do not. So those who say "why don't their religious leaders protest the terrorism" are guilty of not undertanding Islam on many levels. There are no Sunni authorities per se and the terrorists are Sunnis. Within Iran, there are many views of religion, and different Ayatollahs disagree strongly.

Addendum: Started reading Eugene Rogan's The Arabs. Arabs were ruled by non-Arabs beginning with the Ottoman Turks in 1571. Of course, Persians are not Arabs. Many refer to Arabs as "locust eaters," according to Majd.