A country of soft, gentle people, who rarely  talk loudly and carry on their shoulders the weight of a millennia  – old nobility. This country is called Iran – this country we are visiting. The country that will be having elections in a few weeks

(Reading on the Kindle: All the Shah’s men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror  by Stephen Kinzer / Collected Poems by Forugh Farrokhazad / Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski / The conference of the birds    by Farid Attar )

All the Shah’s men – a gripping account of the CIA and MI-6 organized coup against the most popular politician in modern history in Iran – Mosaddegh.  A story, recounted in the introduction of the film Argos, that is the key to understanding not just the Iranian revolution but modern Iran. An elderly Iranian female writer is quoted in the introduction in an outburst ”Why did you Americans do this terrible thing? We always loved America. To us America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment no  one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. ”. A foreign  plot hatched by the archetypal Graham Green’s “quiet American”.  Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt buying and manipulating the press against Mosaddegh, plan street demonstrations by paid thugs, push the  Shah to add a fig leaf of legitimacy to the coup by blessing it and corrupted and finally buy pliable  military officers to execute the coup itself. (In 1951, that was a trial run for the  USA on how to removed a  popular, elected government – the success of this coup provided the blueprint for subsequent interventions in Chile, Indonesia, Congo, and only a few years ago the attempted coup in Venezuela.)

Zoroastrism, the ancient religion of the Iranians is based on the freedom  (indeed the obligation) to get rid of your king if he loses moral authority. When Iranians became (unwillingly)  muslims following their conquest by the arabs, they twisted Islam to accommodate their ideals of social justice. Again, it was the revolt against the power of the state and its officials, all the way to martyrdom if necessary, as symbolized by the sacrifice of  prophet Ali and Hussein, that became central to their identity. Shiite Islam was born.

Four observations on Islam in Iran

–         This is the first Muslim country I have been where I have yet to hear  the muezzin’s voice:  The call to prayer is three  (as opposed to the traditional five) times per day, and it is much less loud and obtrusive.

–          Women (especially the young and middle class) wear the headscarf like a tiara – barely covering the back 1/5th of the hair.

–         The association of western tourists with (generally perceived negatively) western policies in some Muslim countries is completely absent in Iran: We have never encountered anything but softness and kindness in our dealings with Iranians

–          Men do not have an (occasionally manifested) predatory attitude towards western women and local women do not seem to have a cowered, subservient or passive look.

Παρκο ,  Tabriz, απογευμα

From Gaza to Morocco, from Xinjiang province to the Netherlands, Islam seems to be on the offensive: confident, dynamic, effortlessly inspiring  loyalty…everywhere?

Well – not in Iran: Religion seems to be on the retreat – or so it feels:

First impressions in Tabriz: Young people  playing a cat and mouse game with the moral police. Young women  letting their headscarves  in a gravity free-fall, leaving most of their hair uncovered – hijab slowly but inevitably mutating to a  scarf and this mutating to a necktie… In the park a young medical student, big beard, a bit like a 70’s hippy approaches me, slightly awkward, pimples and all: “ I would like to change my religion, I do not like Islam”. Behind the mosque, couples are holding hands.  Two young guys run around letting everyone know that police is coming; couples disperse and a few seconds later, the police arrives. Chuckles everywhere –  policemen are not even hated, they are the butt of the joke..

And poetry raises its head again – the main street is Firdausi street, people cut their hair to resemble poets of previous centuries and everyone can recite the verses of poets long dead…

First impression: The true religion of Iran is poetry (and Islam only to the extend that it is poetic – not  Islam that holds a measuring tape)…