When Will Iran's Nightmare Finally End ?
“The greatest calamity in the life of any oppressed nation is not to have failed to defeat tyranny and despotism, but to have failed to try.”
My views on the struggle of Iranian women for justice and equality are no secret. Like millions of others, I feel absolute shame and revulsion in the knowledge that the women of Iran have, by and large, had to struggle alone to break the legal and social chains with which the Islamic Republic has enslaved them. Whether peacefully protesting for equality under the law, or being viciously harassed about their sartorial choices as in the past few days, they have been the victims, in all too many cases, of extreme brutality meted out by government thugs. I have asked the rhetorical question in past articles, “Where have Iranian men been as our women have been abused?” From the responses I received, I’ve surmised that many of my countrymen would prefer if I stopped asking this question. While there are many who feel as I do that our women should be shielded as much as possible from acts of brutality by the regime, others would prefer to follow the ostrich’s example of putting their heads in the sand and pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Blissful ignorance of the situation facing our women is unacceptable and this is not our way. Iranian men through the millennia have been known for their courage, not their cowardice.
Just when one begins to think that things in Iran couldn’t possibly get any worse for the people living there, this regime comes up with something new. Is it any wonder that tens of thousands of young, educated Iranians seek to join the Diaspora every year? The list of reasons to give up on the country is almost endless: soaring inflation, widespread unemployment and underemployment, rampant drug addiction, an epidemic of prostitution, raging religious persecution, extensive state endorsed discrimination of ethnic minorities, unrestricted and unconcealed oppression of women, an explosion in the number of Aids cases, this state sponsored license to kill which was recently granted in a Supreme Court ruling which permits “the pious” to kill all those who don’t neatly fit into to the social rubric of Iran’s perfect Islamic Utopia without having to worry about facing pesky murder charges. Nazanin Kaviani’s poem, Plan B, which was dedicated to her friend, Fariba, speaks volumes of the disillusionment and despair that young Iranians feel toward life in our homeland.
The “bad hejab” crackdown that has been taking place in Tehran the past several days is just another in a never-ending series of outrages perpetrated by this God forsaken regime against our women. This time, however, I am hopeful that men will finally speak out about what is happening. The reason for hope is that it appears Iranian men are for the first time being targeted by the legions of rabid black crows and bearded thugs roaming the city in search of those whose attire doesn’t conform to the dark, drab and dreary sartorial strictures of the perfect Islamic Utopia.
Whether men take a more forceful stand on behalf of our women, it is clear that women have been the main targets, yet once more, of the regime. The savagery with which the women of Tehran, both young and old, have been treated is shocking. Black crow brigades have been harassing and arresting our sisters by the thousands. What we have been witnessing from afar is, in a word, SHAMEFUL.
Two nights ago, my mother and I sat watching a talk show on IRIB5, a local Tehran channel, which comes over our satellite. A high ranking Tehran police official was the guest and he spent an hour explaining the merits of the crackdown. He said that this is not so much a crackdown as a new policy of the government. He said that “they” were going to “clean” up the country even if it meant putting every woman in the nation in jail. He said that women, who showed their hair, their ankles, wore clothing deemed too tight, or wore make up deemed inappropriate were not the kinds of women that were fit to walk the streets of “our Islamic society” and that young men who wore short sleeved shirts or gel in their hair were just as bad. He said that the crackdown would never stop until every deviant element had been locked away, so that “decent Iranians” [fascist speak for Black Crows and Bearded Thugs] could walk down the streets without having share the same oxygen with such morally depraved filth. That policeman is just one of millions of regime sycophants that have been brainwashed into believing that any Iranian that doesn’t toe the party line, i.e. fully supports the regime’s policies and adheres to its agenda, isn’t fit to call Iran home.
Regime hardliners and sycophants view those of us who live abroad, and those inside Iran as filth unfit to be considered Iranian. In their eyes we are the enemy. Such people will never be reasoned with. They will never permit real reforms to take place that would accommodate all Iranians whether religious or secular and allow them to live in side by side in harmony. The logic of the Islamo-faucists is so twisted that there can be no compromise with them. All they will ever understand is that which have only understood these past three decades- the language of violence, brutality and intimidation. You can be sure that there are no Rodney King’s in the government of Iran. Neither, Mr. King’s famous words, “Can’t we all just get along,” nor the expression, “Live and let live,” are part of the Regime’s mentality.
Just two days ago, BBC reported that a high ranking member of the Majlis went on the record as saying that people who can’t adjust to and live by the regime’s Islamic rules should get out of the country because they aren’t real Iranians anyway. Haven’t enough of us left already!? If anymore young, educated and decent Iranians abandon the Nation, the only ones left one day will be the fanatics that are trying to steal, once and for all, our country from us.
At the rate Iranians have continued to emigrate from the country these past twenty-eight years, it is only a matter of time before signs will need to be posted throughout Iran saying, “Will the last good Iranian to leave, please turn off the lights.” People often say, “You can never go back home,” and this is surely true for all those who don’t make the effort. Our country has been hemorrhaging emigrants non-stop for twenty-eight years and it continues to do so. Now, there are two generations of Iranians that have been born outside Iran raised in a myriad or countries, learning a myriad of languages. It is now clear that the regime wants even more Iranians to leave. They want every Iranian who doesn’t agree with the Islamic system to leave and never come back or to die. Either way is fine with them. In a few more generations, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren born abroad will have little, if any of the love that each of us has for Iran. With each new generation born abroad the attachment to the adopted society grows stronger than the generation which preceded it while the attachment to our beloved homeland grows weaker and weaker.
Nothing has been achieved by millions of us [and I include my own mother, here] choosing life in the Diaspora to fighting to regain our country, and the sad truth is that nothing will be gained if anymore of our oppressed brothers and sister do as we have done, and leave. How many more Iranians must be born and raised in foreign countries -learning the customs and languages of other peoples instead of the customs and language of their own people. It won’t take many more generations before there is very little Iranian-ness left in the future generations of the Diaspora. Unless the thugs and despots who have brutalized our nation for so long are confronted head on, then Iran’s future looks bleak, indeed.
The regime’s black crows who this week have demonized our women by calling them filthy names because they don’t want to wear chadors have arrested thousands and sent many off to Evin Prison. There they can be beaten and possibly raped by the regime thugs so as to remind them their proper place in society! These fanatics are never going to stop harassing women, students, teachers, labor activists or any other segment of society which questions their rule. They think the country is theirs. They think that they are the only real Iranians! That’s why they brutalize everyone who objects to their rigidness.
It is well past time that people start fighting back. Trying to reason with this Islamo-faucist regime and its supporters is useless for the only language they seem to understand is the language of force! Instead of leaving the nation the Iranian people should start fighting back. These black crows need to know that if they harass an Iranian woman that they run the risk of catching a baseball bat in the side of the head. A well-swung ball bat to a crow’s head would be more than sufficient to insure that she never again cursed or harassed another Iranian lady. Just as one must crack a few eggs to whip up an omelet, Iranians are going to have to crack a few million fanatics’ heads to whip up a little justice and freedom for the Nation.
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