International Day Against Stoning

Today is the International Day Against Stoning. Many of you will know of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman who was sentenced to death by stoning in 2006 on the unsubstantiated charge of murdering her husband. Thanks to global condemnation of such barbarism, the Iranian government avoided carrying out Ashtiani’s execution, but she is still in prison, reportedly under horrible conditions.

Human rights activist Maryam Namazie is collecting statements in support of Ashtiani and the International Day Against Stoning. There is also a Facebook page that shows how you can contribute to this important cause. Please be one of those who stand against a cruel practice that has no place in a modern, egalitarian and just society.




11.7.11




CORRECTION: Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning for the crime of adultery. For the alleged murder of her husband, she was initially sentenced to death by hanging, but that sentence was then reduced to jail time. This only highlights how seriously fucked up the Iranian legal system is, that adultery is punished more severely than murder.




Image by Stephen Hughes

Hitchens on what breaks heroes and idealists

I should read more of Christopher Hitchen’s stuff. He’s a contributing editor and columnist for Vanity Fair, but apart from the occasional browse, I’m not a VF regular. If I hadn’t known that Hitchens wrote for the magazine, I wouldn’t have made it past the April 2011 issue’s cover photo of Robert ‘Twilight’ Pattinson molesting an alligator. I’m glad I braved that salacious image of reptilian abuse (though I suspect some minor psychic trauma was sustained), because the Hitch’s article on the Egyptian revolution (‘What I Don’t See at the Revolution’) contained a standout line, a poetic observation that captured the reason why social change is so bloody difficult, frustrating and, in many cases, nigh impossible.

But first, some context. Hitchens wrote the article before Hosni Mubarak abdicated the Egyptian Presidency. Hence its partly speculative character as Hitchens pondered on the possible outcome(s) of the protests in Tahrir Square. And he was not optimistic.

I was a small-time eye-witness to those “bliss was it in that dawn” episodes, having been in Lisbon in 1974, South Korea in 1985, Czechoslovakia in 1988, Hungary and Romania in 1989, and Chile and Poland and Spain at various points along the [revolutionary] transition. I also watched some of the early stages of the historic eruption in South Africa. And in Egypt, alas – except for the common factor of human spontaneity and irrepressible dignity, what Saul Bellow called the “universal eligibility to be noble” – I can’t find any parallels, models, or precedents at all. […] This really is a new language: the language of civil society, in which the Arab world is almost completely unlettered and unversed.

Referring to Karl Marx’s definition of revolution as “the midwife by whom the new society is born from the body of the old”, Hitchens believed that while Egypt’s “old body may be racked with pangs, and even attended by quite a few would-be midwives, it’s very difficult to find the pulse of the embryo.”

With the perfect vision afforded by hindsight, we now see that Hitchens’s misgivings about the Egyptian people’s ability and resolve are largely undue. The revolution happened, even if new challenges await the freshly emancipated country.

Now for that standout line. Appropriately, it sits within a paragraph on Iran. A textbook example of an aborted revolution, the Green Movement’s courageous efforts have been stymied by both state thuggery and, as Hitchens points out, something else equally pernicious, which I’ve highlighted below.

As we sadly remember, the Ahmadinejad crew in Iran was also able to retain power in the face of popular (mainly urban) democratic insurrection. It, too, was ruthless in the use of force and able to rely on the passivity of a large and fairly pious rural population, itself dependent in turn on state subsidy. Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.

And that is why social change can end up stillborn.




12.3.11

More unsurprising theocratic illiberalism in Iran

We’re a bit slow here in Melbourne to get some of the latest magazines, so I’ve only just got the October/November 2010 issue of Philosophy Now. In the ‘News’ section the editors have published a letter sent to them by an anonymous reader in Iran. While the actions described in the letter are distressing, they are sadly expected of a theocratic regime that seems bent on cutting off Iran from the modern world.

The letter:

After last year’s disputed election in Iran, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] blamed philosophy as the root of the problem. Sadeq Larijani, the head of the judicial system of Iran, followed in his footsteps to blame Western philosophy for corrupting the morals of the Muslim youth. Saeed Hajjarian, Iranian intellectual, journalist, university lecturer and reformist who was in jail for 3 months was brought on National TV to condemn, against his beliefs, philosophy, especially humanism, as corrupt. This show was particularly hard to watch since due to a failed assassination attempt 10 years ago Mr Hajjarian is unable to speak with a clear voice, is still using a wheelchair and is dependent on the constant care of doctors and family.

This was enough for over 40,000 students and professors in philosophy departments of Iranian universities to worry for their future. Now many professors and students are in jail and the Office of Higher Education has announced that the universities will stop accepting students in humanities [subjects] including philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, social science, law and arts.

Kamran Daneshjoo, the Minister of Science, said that any university that goes against Islamic values should be demolished and his Secretary said that we do not need humanities to be taught in universities anymore. It is also worth noting that the publication of many books, especially philosophy books, which grew noticeably during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, is now banned.

That’s right, it’s because of Satanic Western philosophy that Iran’s theocrats have to protect their good and pure vassals from being tainted by evil ideas like individual liberty, feminism, freedom of thought and speech, separation of religion and state, and universal human rights.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, there’s been news of the arrest and imprisonment of two liberal opposition leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, in late February. Mousavi, one of the leaders of Iran’s Green Movement, has apparently returned home but is now under house arrest. Anti-liberal ministers have called Mousavi and Karroubi traitors and demanded their execution.

The recent Arab revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may have reignited protests against the Iranian regime, which first began in 2009. But the Green Movement faces greater obstacles than its Arab counterparts, one being the more brutal methods employed by the Ahmadinejad government to crush any opposition, and another being a perpetual media lockdown that hampers activist organising and foreign press reporting.

Given Iran’s oppressive theocracy, it’s no surprise that its despots would view Western philosophical ideas as a threat to their power. After all, it’s an Endarkening that serves their interests, not an Enlightenment.




10.3.11

Worried about Egypt’s future

The night shift security guard at my work was born and raised in Egypt. He’s now an Australian citizen. Most nights he drops by the lab during his rounds for a chat, usually just as I’m finishing up for the day. Naturally, last night’s topic was the Egyptian protests. A few months ago he had gone back to Cairo to get married. His wife is still there and he’s worried. “I told her on the phone to not go outside unless she really has to.”

For many Egyptians (and foreign observers), the thought of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood seizing power from Hosni Mubarak’s despised government is a scary one. Especially for minorities like my security guard friend’s family, who are Coptic Christians. My friend is adamant that if the Brotherhood are in government, Copts like him and his family will be persecuted. “There will be blood.”

His melodrama is understandable. His fear is nothing to be made light of, especially by an outsider like me. “But maybe”, I tried to reassure him, “maybe the moderates in the Brotherhood will keep the extremists in check.” After all, I argued, if they come into power, they’re not going to jeopardise their victory by angering the secularists with brutal acts of oppression. I also mentioned Turkey as an example of a country with a mildly Islamist government that is popular with the people yet has freedom of religion.

My friend’s response was dismissive of the Muslim Brotherhood’s benevolence, and pessimistic about religious freedom should they be calling the shots. He didn’t say it, but perhaps he felt that Egypt under the Brotherhood would be more like post-Islamic Revolution Iran, not Turkey.

Now that’s a scary thought.

In a Guardian article, Kenan Malik sketches Egypt’s tumultuous history of dealing with Islamists, describing how its leaders have used and abused Muslim radicals for political gain, with often violent results. The West has been complicit in all of this of course. For decades Western foreign policy with regards to the Muslim world has taken this cynical formula: support secular dictators and Islamists if it means stability and profits, oppose them otherwise.

But Malik expresses what reasonable liberals have always known; democracy may be a messy, factious and unstable system, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. To impose order on this healthy chaos, whether by secular or religious means, is to pervert the democratic spirit, chiefly because this imposition is top-down, while democracy is by definition bottom-up. And if the people decide that Islamists, whether the AKP in Turkey, Hamas in Palestine or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, should govern them, then as much as it galls liberal secular humanists like myself, it is their right to elect such a government.

I hope the Egyptian people will give themselves a government, secular or religious, that meets their needs, respects their rights and upholds their freedoms. May they reach this positive milestone with minimum violence and bloodshed.




1.2.11

Iran denied seat on UN Women board

Iran added another mark of shame to its national image when it recently failed to get a seat on the executive board of UN Women, a newly formed UN agency for gender equality and women’s rights. This is the second time this year that Iran has been denied a place in a human rights organization. In April Iran withdrew its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, presumably due to pressure exerted by liberal UN members who saw the utter ridiculousness of having an egregiously human rights-abusing nation like Iran on the council.

Ashtiani’s execution not revoked, only delayed

The 3rd of November has come and gone. To the relief of thousands, perhaps even millions, around the world, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still alive. But the Iranian judiciary has only postponed her execution, not revoked it, and may yet proceed with her murder within the next few days.

Iran's barbaric laws

By the time you read this, an Iranian woman may have already been stoned to death. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday 3rd of November for the crime of adultery. Ever since her horrible sentence became known worldwide, international pressure has mounted on Iran to stay Ashtiani’s execution and release her from prison.