Tag: Iran

Politics

Call for Action: Majid Zamani – UPDATED

islamoyankee

UPDATE:  Majid Zamani has been released and I have removed the links to the action website. Received from a friend: Dear Friends, It is now 140 days since a good friend of mine, Majid Zamani, has been imprisoned in the aftermath of the elections in Iran. He is not a known political figure and thus his case gets little attention, yet given that he has studied in the U.S. (University of Illinois and Columbia University), we hear he is under pressure to confess to things he has not done such as training for velvet revolution. A group of his friends…

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Music Politics

Music, #Iran, and the #IranElection

islamoyankee

With my passion for music, I’d be remiss in not pointing out some resources on Iranian music, especially with the conflict surrounding the Iranian election. This piece from Religion Dispatches is good, but I think it takes the “all politics is personal” a little too far. It’s not always about the music. Hawg Blawg is always excellent, and Talk Islam has some work as well. Andrew Sullivan is running an intermittent series called “Outing Iran” that includes a lot of music.

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Politics

It was easier to hate Iran before we say their faces in #IranElection

islamoyankee

[Apologies for the hashtags in the titles recently. However, my RSS feed goes straight to Twitter, so I need to keep track there.] David Bromwich writes: If you want to kill with a clean conscience, the faces of the enemy had better be blank. Start to see them as human beings and it becomes harder to blockade and bomb them, to mine, and pollute, and “destabilize.” President Clinton had no imagining of the disease he would bring to the innocent in Sudan by the “surgical” missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998. George W. Bush had a happy…

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Television

Television Documentaries and the #IranElection

islamoyankee

Recently PBS ran a Frontline documentary from 2002 on Iran. While I applaud the effort to give some necessary background to the situation in Iran, there were some problems. Jordan Robinson wrote a letter offering some critique to the piece. I quote it below with permission: Subject: Rebroadcast of 2002 “A Clash That’s Centuries Old” a disservice to US public Dear Frontline Senior Editorial Team, I just finished watching your 2002 broadcast of “A Clash That’s Centuries Old,” part of your “Terror and Tehran” series. While I appreciate your effort to inform the American public life about life in Iran…

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Current Affairs Politics Religion

My Thoughts on the #IranElection

islamoyankee

inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un – We are from God and to God we return The unrest in Iran has been going on for almost two weeks, and I have posted nothing here for several reasons: The story is unfolding in internet time, and the updates are coming fast and furious on Twitter. I am geared for academic time and television time, both of which move significantly slower than internet time. Because of the speed at which things are moving, people with deeper knowledge and/or better resources are better positioned to give real knowledge on the situation. I do…

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Inter-faith Politics

Iran’s Jewish Rorschach Test

islamoyankee

This kind of complexity, so second-nature to Iranian Jews, always eludes the outsiders looking in. Thus, the Jews of Iran — lately a bitterly contested talking point for pundits of all stripes — have become a looking glass in which all find what they wish to see. Hawks hear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and see another Holocaust in the making. Doves cite the existence of Hebrew schools and synagogues in Iran, and see no reason for alarm. Who is right? Everyone and no one at once. Full story here via here.

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