Two alternative views exist in the field of organizational behavior. While one focuses on understanding the concept of "Organization" itself, the other is concerned with understanding the process of "Organizing". I believe the same type of distinction (focusing on structure versus focusing on process) is useful in looking at the concept of democracy. Specifically, one can talk about having a democratic system, which entails having certain institutions and social structures, versus practicing democracy, which can be embedded in small actions of individuals. In this article, I want to argue that the "process view" of democracy is more enabling for individuals, better conforms to the spirit of democracy, and helps us explain a diverse set of phenomena, however, it is very much under-appreciated in public discourses.

The structure-focused view understands democracy in terms of the existence of specific institutions, such as the parliament, the free press, elections, etc. In this view societies "have" or "have not" democracy, depending on whether they own the required institutions. Consequently, the path to democracy is through creating these institutions. Therefore achieving democracy is a very challenging task that requires collective action of large groups of people in society who pool their resources together in order to change the traditional institutions and power structures.

On the other hand, the process view of democracy defines democracy in action: in making decisions and acting democratically. In this view democracy does not come with specific institutions, rather, it is an attribute of decisions and actions that are continually made and taken by different social actors. In this view we do not talk about "having" a democratic system, but rather, we understand practicing it through acting and deciding democratically in the individual, group, or society level.

Taking a process view of democracy has deep consequences in theory and practice. First, this view brings democracy to flow in every-day actions of the individuals. This is a very empowering change: to achieve democracy your role is not to change the gigantic, non-democratic institutions single-handedly, but instead, you can decide and act democratically in your simple affairs and that is what counts. Second, by empowering individuals and distributing the responsibility of being democratic between all instances of social action, this view embeds the spirit of democracy in the definition of democracy. Finally, this view can recognize instances where democracy does not coexist with democratic institutions. For example, we have parliament and elections in Iran, but it is easy to question the liveliness of democracy there.

It is fair to say that the static, structure-focused view of democracy dominates most of the public conversation on the subject. We all know friends and family members who complain about the lack of democracy while they play the role of little dictators in their personal sphere of life. This tendency is not limited to our beloved countrymen: think of the officials who believe they have the greatest democracy on the planet while they are signing the bill to restrict the rights of some minority group; or scores of people who boast of the democracy in their country, while they never participate in elections, or even in their community decision-makings.

An interesting question is that why the process view, despite its empowering role, consistent spirit, and explanatory power, has been widely ignored? I can speculate about two possible reasons. First, cognitive wise, individuals allocate their attention based on the salience of different aspects of life. The static view of democracy, by signifying salient social institutions, is an easier target of attention, understanding, and theorizing, than elusive notion of democracy in practice. Second, the process view raises the responsibility of the individuals and challenges them to act democratically, which usually stretches them out of their comfort zone. In fact most people are more comfortable to whine about lack of democracy or boast on its existence, rather than constantly worry whether they are acting democratically.

In sum, eventhough a process view of democracy is enabling, consistent, and more informative, it is widely ignored. However, by recognizing this view, we open door to new opportunities and challenges: the opportunity of embedding democracy in our actions as individuals, parents, group members, and communities; and the challenge of being responsible if we fail to use these opportunities.

I would like to write about Hijab, but not on whether it is good or bad. I am more interested on how Hijab affects the relationships among people in our society: More precisely how the women, and even men, who believe in Hijab look at those who don't and vice versa. I may not be the right person to write this post (since I am a guy!) but I have a feeling that Hijab is a very sensitive issue for women and usually they are hesitant to talk about it in the public. Moreover, as an outsider, I may see some aspects of the issue which women themselves cannot.

I'll start with my mother's experiences. She is a strict Muslim who wears chador. Back in the time of Shah, she got admitted to Medical school but decided to study Chemistry because it wasn't possible for her to keep her hijab in Medical School at the time. My mother, now a professor at University of Mashad, in Iran, has told me stories of the time when she was treated as a house servant just because of her chador. Whenever my mother goes to a grocery store, the seller calls her haj khanoom*, the phrase that wouldn't be used if she was wearing a colorful scarf. These days, in Iran, women who wear Chador are treated as if they belong to a lower class. Supposedly, the women from higher class wear colorful clothes and show off their hair.

The story of course has another side. In many places, especially in the government offices, women without a full Hijab are treated very rudely. I have seen many people who believe that if a woman shows off her hair, she probably would sleep with a different man every night. Let me not go into the details of how Basij or police in Iran reacts to these women. Actually I am more interested in how ordinary people look at each other rather than how the government treats them.

Here, in Canada, the story doesn't end. Those who wear Hijab are never comfortable being in the environment where no one does. The other side is also true. When those who wear Hijab make their own colony, other girls usually don't feel comfortable joining them. Women are categorized into two groups, those who wear Hijab and those who don't.

The main challenge comes up when a woman decides to take off her Hijab (and in some rare cases decides to take it on). I guess they will go through a very hard time just because of the way other people will look at them. Sometimes just the factor of "other people" will make a woman not to do what she really wants to do. ["Other people" who have fun gossiping are never welcoming.]

I have a lot more to say, however I’d like to read other people's experiences. To me, hijab is a perfect example that shows how well we really respect each other's beliefs.

* Haj khanoom literally means the woman who has performed her Mecca pilgrimage. It is also a Persian slang term for calling an old traditional woman.

I open my eyes: The dream stopped; A big flash of events of the past days, my duties today and all that I have to do ... Everything is stale and familiar; I must be awake.

I have trouble focusing. I seem lost and out of place. I am looking for myslef. The radio is on, playing fuzzy classical music, it has to be turned off.

Seems that I have lost myself; I am not the one I used to be; I am not the one I wanted to be and never will be. What happenned to me?

Everyday I want to start my day with a promise, with a holy sign, with a real message. When I think, I can't even remember how it was for me in Iran. How did I wake up? What would I see and want? Breakfast would be ready, life would be already started. How would my parents think? Would they feel the same, or am I really experiencing a brand new kind of misery? Is it because I have moved here to Canada? Is it just that I can't feel at home? What would my life be in Iran? What would I do? What would be different? Would I have different hobbies? I would have a weblog? In Persian? In English? Would I learn Spanish? Someone would mistake me for a Mexican? Would I be doing physics? Would I be teaching? Would I be a salesman? I would be happy? Happier? Like a fish in a lake?

I have my moments; I always had them, those moments of clarity, I mean. You know; When everything seems to be stopped and everything suddenly is so rich in details, a feeling that an opaque screen has just been removed.

And the moment rules.

[post script: Iman, This is how I was thinking today.]

[...] Those who study trends say living side by side in more places - the 2000 Census showed gay couples living in 99.3 percent of the counties in the United States - has produced a tremendous shift in social attitudes over the past decade.

[...] The General Social Survey, done by the University of Chicago, found that the percentage of people saying intercourse between people of the same sex is "always wrong" has dropped by 21 points in the last 10 years, to 56 percent from 77 [...]

from the New York Times - Aug. 23, 2003.

Recently, I've been thinking about the degree of acceptance of Homosexuality in religious societies like America and Iran. Lately, American network and cable TVs have started a flow of gay shows that some of them like "Queer Eye for a Straight Guy", a make-over show in which five gay guys make a straight guy ready for a special occasion, have been major hits. The interesting thing about this show is specially at the end of the show, the straight guy (even the ones who seemed to have a little bit of homophobia) appreciates what these gay guys have done for him and somehow embraces their culture (or whatever is known to public as "gay" culture).

Despite the negative talks of the Bush administration and conservative Republican Party leaders about homosexuality and same-sex marriage (for example, remember the controversial statement by Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania) the rate of acceptance of homosexual behaviour, in the body of American public is increasing (Note the statistics presented in the the beginning of this post). I think this is mostly because American people have been mostly exposed to the gay culture in the past few years. And this is not just happening in media. More and more "settled" gay couples are moving to conservative neighbourhoods every day and they are gradually disproving the infamous stereotyped image of homosexuals, such as paedophilia, promiscuousness and lack of care (and/or respect) towards family values.

My point is, being with and talking about people with different life styles - in this case homosexuals - and getting exposed to their existence and their way of life plays the most important role in accepting them which would eventually result in treating them equally.

This is an example of the culture of change discussed before in this weblog. Having a constitution ensuring the freedom for all people, especially minorities, is essential but not enough to make everyone respect the freedom. The more exposure a nation gets to a certain minority group, the more it embraces their culture.

Here I just wanted to mention a personal experience. I usually have a long chat with my mom on Saturdays and we talk about almost everything. In the past few months, occasionally I’ve mentioned gay people and we’ve talked about them. At the beginning, she, being a liberal woman but still quite religious, couldn’t deal with the fact that they are just natural people like everybody, but now if in one week we don’t talk about anything "gay", she jokes about it and says "no gay talk today?" She has accepted them, which makes me very proud of her and myself!

This is a post some of the authors here may not particularly like, but hopefully someone will get the point.

Let me get right to the point: I want to read about what you are thinking more than what you could be thinking about. I feel many of the writers here are making some effort to write fancy and cool editorial-like articles, which I can appreciate the elegance of. But then, I cannot convince myself that someone goes to bed thinking about the ever challenging issue of changing culture via the culture of change or likewise my other buddy is truly obsessed with topics such as science as religion. Such posts seem just so made-up to me.

In principle it is none of my business to tell others what to write about, but they might care about what I—and perhaps a few more—most want to read.

I can't make sense out of debate for the sake of debate when more tangible and perceptible issues of our own lives are left unspoken of.

Give me the chance to read about your concerns.

People normally remember a very limited number of words about a far away country or region. For example, when many people hear about Colombia, they associate the country with words like drugs, civil war, and FARC. They probably have picked up these words while listening to the news or skimming through a newspaper article. They might not clearly remember what the details are, like whom FARC is fighting or who grows drugs, but what they keep in their mind is that Colombia is a dangerous place to be. (You may call it stereotyping, but make sure to check out kidnapping statistics for Colombia).

We know that Iran is associated with negative words in the news as well. However, to objectively find out what those exact words are, I decided to do a little bit of research. I chose to find out what an avid newsreader in North America would associate with Iran. Using computer scripting methods, I extracted 50 words that were most associated with Iran in news articles and Op-Eds written in English newspapers in the last six months (methodology). Here are the words, sorted by their number of usages:

Iran 5362 nuclear 672 US/America 345 Islamic 330 republic 315 program 205 policy 185 Iraq 173 weapon 163 IAEA 140 Russia 130 EU 112 concern 92 terror(ism) 90 regime 89

relations 81 Tehran 78 cooperation 73 threat 70 agency 67 Bush 67 stance 61 protocol 60 towards 60 Libya 56 sanction 53 Persian 52 agreement 50 Qaeda 50 facilities 44

administration 43 democracy 42 investment 40 cleric 39 technology 39 diplomatic 38 Elbaradei 38 korea 38 security 36 negotiation 33 NPT 33 Aghazadeh 30 violation 30 Straw 29 monitoring 28

U.N. 28 prestige 26 Afghanistan 24 access 23 enriched 18 Khatami 17

From the above, it is clear that the number one concern with Iran is its nuclear program. Terrorism is not quite on the top of the list, but for an American reader, "Islamic Republic" means almost the same as "terrorist state." I haven't searched for words associated with Islam, but I'd bet that terrorism would appear in the top 10.

Who runs the show?
President Bush and Mr. Elbaradei rank higher than the only Iranian on the top 50 who is Mr. Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's atomic program. The names of President Khatami and Ayatollah Khamenei, the people most responsible for Iran's foreign policy, do not appear in the top 50 words. This indicates that the story of Iran is considerably different from Iraq. The U.S. had a fixation on Saddam Hussein's character. Everything was about how evil he was (which he was) and his danger to America (which was insignificant). But in the case of Iran, thanks to the very limited existing political freedom, the country is mentioned as a whole. Maybe Iranian leaders are lucky that English speakers can't pronounce the "Kh" appearing in Khomeini, Khamenei and Khatami, leading to the apparent confusion about these three. (Not to mention the newly added Hossein Khomeini, the Americans' boy).

Who wants to talk about democracy?
The word democracy appears in 32nd position of the list. This indicates that the outside media cares very little about the democratic aspirations of Iranians. Anyone who cares about establishing democracy in Iran and wants to see more constructive international involvement has to act to get the ranking of that word higher on the list, as well as other words that show the aspirations of the Iranian people, such as women's rights, arrested students, dissidents, Akbar Ganji, and Zahra Kazemi.

---------------------------------
Methodology: Using the LEXISNEXIS database, I got 125 news articles from the past 6 months that were about Iran. I extracted all 10-word segments containing the word Iran, such as "...Bush's axis of evil. Iran's terrorism must be paid for...". This gave me around 5300 segments. Then I measured the frequency of word usage and pulled out 50 words based on their overusage in these news segments compared to their common English usage, since I was not interested in words like "the" or "he" that are used very frequently in any English text (this was done using the word's LEX score, which is developed by Prof. Donald Hayes). In this post, I have given 50 words from the list, sorted by number of appearances and not the ratio of overusage. I added the word "Iran" itself on the top of the list to make sense of other usage numbers.

I remember each time there was an election in Iran I would see and wonder at all the big posters of the candidates in the street in Tehran. It was always strange for me how I could make up my mind and choose my candidate with these photos many of which didn't even have any text explaining their campaign message. I was asking myself how an election campaign may look like in a “democratic” (and liberal) country!

After a while I found myself in France, the country of the liberal press. Fortunately the presidential campaign 2002 came up and my long wish became reality...

There were constructive analyses and discussions on TV and much better ones in newspapers and journals about the program of each candidate and their professional backgrounds. (These were apart from some funny French discussions like the penis size of the candidates in national TV!) But in any way I couldn't compare their style for debate, even Le Pen of Le Front National, with any Iranian candidate. I remember Rey-Shahri, one of the candidates in the presidential election 97 and the minister of information, when he wanted to justify his plan to decrease the age of marriage in Iran and said “I've thought about the financial recourse for this plan we can allocate 0.5% of the national budget for that.” I wonder if he knew what kind of budgetary reform that needs.

My concern here is more about Lionel Jospin, the candidate of the socialist party. Everybody knew Mr. Jospin well, the prime minister at that time, as a hard worker for the significant efforts he had made under his mandate: the 35-hour working week, le PaCS (Le pacte civil de solidarité) although he is personally against gay marriage, considerable decrease in the youth unemployment, etc. so that the majority of people believed that Jospin would definitely win. But the result was not what the majority around me was thinking. Not only he didn’t win but he was also defeated by Le Pen, the candidate of Le Front National, the extreme right party in France. Why?

There were tons of explanations that came outright for this so-called “catastrophe” and “shame” for the Republic of France: 1. the distribution of the votes between leftist parties; 2. tendency towards xenophobe-, popular nationalist- or simply extreme-right parties in France or generally in Europe which began in 90’s; 3. the austere character of Jospin; etc. I want to emphasize the last one. Although as I mentioned above Jospin was known for being hard-working, he was better known for his austerity. It seems that people needed him to put on a “show,” keep always a smile on his face, go into the crowd, shake hands with the people in village, take pictures with them, etc. Although he did some of these things, he could never make it like his rivals especially Mr. Chirac. He didn't even face any revelation of corruption or scandal, but people expected a ‘cooler‘ character as their president. That put France in jeopardy, leaving Chirac and Le Pen for the second round, but thanks again to the media and the press, a huge mobilization against Le Pen was established and delivered the Elysée palace to Chirac for another 5 years.

My point is that even in France, where the democracy has a long history and the question of secularism has been solved a long time ago, we encounter some collective behaviors that may appear illogical when viewed from a rationalist perspective. Let's go back to Iran where the idea of democracy is much younger than France, and the so-called sapling of democracy has started to take roots in the soil of a religious country. The transition towards a secular-democratic system needs a lot of effort, in a country that a lot of people voted for Khatami in 1997 because he was a descendent of Mohammad (the prophet) and his major rival Natgh-e-Nouri wasn't. Although lots of people became familiar and tasted the more or less free press and democracy after a long time, and went towards newspapers instead of foreign radios to see what is happening inside the country, the general concept is still far from secularism. Lots of effort should be put into, first, studying the “social psychology” of Iranian society which is not limited to Tehran and some big cities, and second, thinking about how to fortify the new-born democracy tree (if it was even born!) It is true that the latter is the goal but it seems that sometimes the former is forgotten. There are lots of elements affecting collective social behavior in Iranian society that distinguish it from other countries, which should be studied and discussed too.

The first time I heard about secularism and thought about it was when Ansar Hezbollah [an Iranian hardliner para-military group that was very active in suppressing the liberal figures in Iran during the late 90's] attacked Dr. Soroush's speech [Soroush is an Iranian scholar advocating a mild version of secularism], cursing him for being a secular. As a high school student, my curiosity led me to the Separation of Church and State as the core concept of Secularism.

Later I learned that secularism is much deeper than just prohibiting the Church and State from intervening in each other's business—after all, there are secular ethical values, which make secularism more than just a social phenomena—but I think I was confused even about the separation of Church and State for a long time.

Being from a country which is Islamic even in its formal title, my main impression from the separation was taking the control of the state out of the Hawzah's [Shi'ite seminary] hands. I thought this is the Hawzah who is controlling the State and due to its inability to understand the modern world, is causing all sorts of troubles for the Iranian society. After all, the historical experience of the medieval ages had shown how horrible the Church could be in manipulating the State, and so would be the intervention of Hawzah in the State (I think using Mosque as the Islamic equivalent for Church is not correct; Mosque is not an organization as Church, but Hawzah is)

Having Turkey as a regional example of a secular state, I thought the direction of control in a secular state would be reversed: State controls even the speeches of the Friday Prayers; Or at least does not allow people to behave according to their religious beliefs publicly—remember the prohibition of covering heads for the girls in French public schools as well as, of course, in Turkey.

Eventually, I got familiar with a different kind of secularism: the American version! The separation has been constitutionally granted in the US as the following: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ..." as a part of the First Amendment of the USA constitution, among all the other protected freedoms in The Bill of Rights. Surprisingly, there is nothing more about the Separation in the US constitution!

Despite having some similarities, I think the European and American Secularism have different roots: The former one is the result of the establishment of a new form of powerful statehood (or if you prefer nation-statehood) which encounters the greedy Church and demands to protect its authority against it (story of The Henry VIII); but the latter one is a result of the establishment of a powerful civil Society which wants to protect its rights (including the freedom of religion) against the greedy State.

Historically, non-religious groups and activists have promoted secularism and separation in Iran. However, especially after realizing the suppressive attitude of the Islamic Republic toward any independent religious figure, it is becoming more and more essential for religious groups and activists to promote a Secular State in Iran. At least in the past ten years, nobody has been forced to participate in the Tehran's Friday Prayer, but just think about what will the Iranian state do, if a group of Muslims want to have their own independent Friday Prayer in Tehran! This hypothetical example clarifies that, it is the State who controls the Hawzah in Iran, not the reverse as it may seem!

Finally, as a person who tries to be religious, I think religion has a lot to do with politics and there is no way to conclude the separation of politics and religion from the separation of the state and religion. Surely this needs more discussions which I may go over in another post.

I dont know what to say, but i likeed it.

The notorious Mordad 28th Coup (in Persian Calendar) not only disrupted the Iranians' attempt to be the real owners of their oil wealth but more importantly put an end to the democratic process that was thriving in Iran. The Shah who according to the 1906 constitution was supposed to be a more or less ceremonial figure got the American support to be an absolute dictator for the best part of the next 25 years.

As Albright acknowledged in March 2000, the coup had a devastating effect on Iranians. They got to see the worst anti-democratic face of the American power. Before the coup Americans were perceived by most Iranians to be a balance to the colonialist power of the British, but afterwards they were the colonialist powers.

Looking back to the ups and downs of the last 50 years, the single most important lesson to be learned by us Iranians, in my opinion, is the value of democracy. A democratic government committed to the national interests (in Mossadegh’s tradition) could have saved Iran from the horror of the 1979 revolution and the 8 years of meaningless war with Iraq (or at least its last 6 years after the Iraqis got kicked out). It could have used the country’s vast resources to make a better life for the people not for the ruling minority to keep their power (as it has always been in the 50 years after Mossadegh).

The coup should not be an excuse for being anti-western or anti-American. Americans have the experience of more than 200 years of undisrupted democracy—the oldest and the most stable one in the world. In contrast to their negative track record in Iran, they have had the capabilities of being committed supporters of democratic reform throughout the world. Their support has been critical for the victory of the democratic movements in Eastern Europe. Anti-Americanism only plays into the hands of the fundamentalists who are using it as an excuse to keep their undemocratic power.

As Albright has hinted, Americans can be persuaded to acknowledge their destructive past and be engaged as a pro-democracy force in Iran.

In this post, I want to share some of the feelings I have, and the last thing I want is to offend anybody who reads this piece.

I've been living in the US for almost two years now. I flew to Providence, RI from Ankara, Turkey on the day of September 11th of 2001. Then I lived alone for about a year while commuting about 300 miles every weekend to visit my wife, not to mention her commutes and many other problems we had which I couldn't go through without my friends' help.

There were times that I felt very depressed, but every life goes through difficulties. That's natural and nothing to constantly nag about. I just mentioned my problems very briefly to note that not all of these two years have been fun.

Now my wife is here with me. We’ve rented a nice apartment in the suburbs of Providence; We own a new car (considering my obsession with cars), and both of us are doing research in fields that we like very much. In my case, it’s actually my dream job!

In the last two years, I’ve changed a lot. I’ve been in charge of my life and started to learn how to deal with different problems that I face. I have tried to practice a democratic way of dealing with different people and to accept all the human beings in their own way (of course I’ve tried to ignore a bunch of them, but, anyhow, I’ve accepted them as they are). I have acquired some habits and developed some thinking "methods" (I really can’t call this an ideology, since I don’t have any) of my own, not really based on anything that I’ve been told.

With all that, I really don’t miss Iran. I may miss a couple of places that I used to go and hang out with friends, my favorite bookstore or my favorite ice-cream place, but I miss them as much as I miss my favorite Iranian restaurant in Boston. I miss my family too (especially my grandma) but they have nothing to do with Iran, beside the fact that they just live there. I mean, I miss places and people because of the values they have in my memory, not solely because they are form Iran.

When I think about going back to Iran after I graduate, the only thing that comes to my mind is how I’m going to live there. I should almost forget all the things that I’d learned and practiced here: social, personal and even professional. I’m somehow sure of my future, being able to get a job and afford a modest life here as an ex-patriot. Should I risk my future? I’m not sure how anybody would gain anything from such a risk.

I’m still going to care about the country where I was born and raised in and from which I have inherited many things, in my personality, taste and life style. I may never go back to Iran because of many reasons, but if I care about any country in the world besides where I happen to live, it will be Iran.

I really shouldn’t consider myself Iranian anymore, not that I don’t believe in borders and all that Marxist crap. You can tell me that I’ve lost my roots but I’m really a "Non-Resident Alien" anywhere, on the Tax forms, on Newburry Street in Boston or in Vali-Asr Square in Tehran. Maybe my feelings would change one day, but till then I guess I’ll be a hypocrite by making theories about building the future of Iran. But who listens to me anyway? Well at least I do myself!

In one of my comments to a recent posting regarding charismatic leadership, I suggested that due to the mythical approach of the Iranian culture to leadership, we Iranians as a collective whole may even end up turning Gandhi-like leaders to dictators. This in turn, inspired another article in which there was a mention of this habit, we Iranians allegedly have, of attributing every social and political dysfunction to some defect in our culture.

In this article, I shall briefly propose an explanation that I have been able to develop, which would hopefully exonerate my comments from the charges of being part of a "mediocre nagging" stereotype as well as help stimulate some interesting discussions.

The Iranian society as a whole has deep religious roots and convictions and given the long history (centuries rather than decades) of the dominance of such convictions, one would expect to witness clear symptoms of a massive and collective sexual repression. This large-scale libidinal crisis has consequently turned into a collectively dampened social self-esteem. Such a society is therefore expected to long, more than anything else, for a savior, a father-like figure and a god.

To us, charisma is not sheer magnetism or charm; It is indeed, divinity and a charismatic leader is in fact expected to be a god (or at least a reflection of the God) and if not, we'll make it one. One could only make a dictator out of Gandhi by canonizing his ideas, making a taboo out of any contradiction of his views and in short, giving him a god-like status and that is exactly what I mean by "mythical approach to charismatic leadership". And yet, that might not be the only drive. Take all that and put it together with the fascination of our folklore with heroes, heroism and sportsmanship (for lack of a better word for pahlevani). I don't think anyone can compete with that.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the American sponsored coup d'etat in Iran that ousted the popular prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. This event, with all its precursors and followings put an end to the golden age* of Iranian progressive movements. I find it instructive and very relevant to today's situation in Iran to discuss those dark days in this post. [My discussion is by no means complete or claims to be so - note added later]

First of all, the series of events in Iran that led to the removal of the British companies from Iran's oil production contracts (1951) marked a final step in the end of the British empire after the world war II. The oil nationalization movement set in motion by the Iranian National Front (popular with the people in general) at the time, even in the West was considered genuine and honorable, up to the extent that Mossadegh was chosen as the man of the year of the Time magazine. That could be because the movement showed no sympathy towards the Soviet Union and their supporters in Iran, the "Masses" party.

At this point many people would point at the Imperialistic visions of the US for sponsoring the coup d'etat that in practice created the darkest [maybe] periods for civil freedoms in Iran under the Shah. However, the US administration at the time had won the support of American people by magnifying the threat of International Communism [ding!], and the apparent instability of the Iranian monarchy led them to believe that another China was to be expected if Mossadegh had his way. Remember that this was the period that America was happily devouring her own brightest children suspected of communism. This adjustment of foreign policy resulted in the immediate increase of the CIA and American embassy staff in Tehran, and the beginning of preparation of a "dirt cheap" coup that would remove Mossadegh and bring in the military government of Zahedi.

The contradicting nature of the two phases of American love and hate affair with Mossadegh was catalyzed by the commercial gains obtained by the US oil companies virtually replacing the role of the British. The success of this enterprise led the US administration to a new international role and made it repeat the same patterns elsewhere in the world.

In Iran after the coup d'etat almost all of intellectual activities was suppressed. The only doors open to a people, once so devoted to representative governments and freedom from foreign interference, became those of the mosques; A place that finally lead them to the Islamic revolution of 1978.

Let me quote M. Gasiorowski from his article [also look at the notes] for a conclusion without further personal comments:

[...] Had the coup not occurred, Iran's future would undoubtedly have been vastly different. Similarly, the U.S. role in the coup and in the subsequent consolidation of the Shah’s dictatorship was decisive for the future of U.S. relations with Iran. U.S. complicity in these events figured prominently in the terrorist attacks on American citizens and installations that occurred in Iran in the early 1970s, in the anti American character of the 1978-1979 revolution, and in the many anti-American incidents that emanated from Iran after the revolution, including, most notably, the embassy hostage crisis. Latter-day supporters of the coup frequently argue that it purchased twenty-five years of stability in Iran under a pro-American regime. As the dire consequences of the revolution for U.S. interests continue to unfold, one can only wonder whether this has been worth the long-term cost.

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*the period between 1944 to 1953, between the coronation of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after his father was ousted by the allied forces and the coup

Culture is a word with a wide variety of meanings and uses. It is also a key concept in understanding a people's behaviour. On the one hand, it acts on a totally personal level, determining the responses an individual makes to many common stimuli in his/her everyday life, and on the other hand, it is related to the collective traits of a group of people or a nation. In this sense, culture bridges the gap between the individual and the society and is a most referred-to subject when discussing the successes or the failures of a people in the context of their society. Many of the social or political problems in Iran, for instance, are commonly blamed on some faulty sections of the Iranian culture. In a rather pessimistic example of such assesments, there was a quite well-received comment to a post on this site that the Iranian culture would probably make a dictator out of a Gandhi-like leader.

Once our societal problems are so linked to our culture, the question of how we could rid our culture of its defects becomes of utmost importance. Here I'll share some of my thoughts on this issue, and hope to motivate a stream of discussions on the subject.

First off, it seems to me that the only systematic and effective way to change the culture of a large population is through the means of mass education, which includes the public education of schools as well as huge social campaigns relayed to the people by the media. But such a mechanism is immediately faced by a problem and a paradox.

The problem is of course that the success of this method is vitally dependent on the efficiency and the range of influence of its means. The culture of a society passes from generation to generation mostly through families. Therefore, changing a particular cultural aspect of the society through the curricula of the public education would basically make a battlefield in the society the two sides of which are the family unit and the classroom. It is far from certain what the result of such a battle may be.

The paradox is as follows: the official curricula of the public education are designed and supervised by the government, which is in turn affected and perhaps even shaped by the culture, and in particular the defect we are after disposing of. The chances of a thorough implementation of any comprehensive program necessary to effectively address the problem are then narrow, thus making it almost impossible to correct cultural wrongs through the only systematic means provided in the adminitsrative body of the society.

There is, however, one way out of this paradox, that is, the existance of the meta-cultural element of self-criticism within the culture. Once present, self-criticism could open up and keep alive cultural programs aimed at changing/improving certain defective/improper aspects of the current culture.

To conclude, I believe the fate of an isolated attempt at truly correcting a cultural nuisance, however well-thuoght and well-funded, is dire. The way to proceed is to concentrate our efforts on the creation of an openness to self-criticism, which would pave the way for any further refinement of the culture at large.

Three days ago, after hearing about the blackout in New York, Toronto, and several other North American cities, the first thing that came to my mind was "Holy Shit! What if this is another terrorist act! We are in a big trouble!"* Fortunately, that was not the case, so here I want to write about my second thoughts. More specifically I want to underline two important trends that were highlighted by the blackout.

During the blackout several big cities were almost paralyzed. Not only electricity was out but also there was no water (at least in many cases), flights were stopped, inter and intra-city transportation was halted, in short, the infra structure that supports life in these big cities was out of the loop for a short while. In fact, if it wasn't for small inventories of back up supply—e.g. the food and water in the refrigerators or stores—or if the blackout lasted a few more days, we could have witnessed a humanitarian crisis. This brings me to my first premise, that the stable living conditions that we all take for granted and whose existence we never question can be easily destabilized, moving life to a non-equilibrium mode of operation where the simplest facilities of daily life are questioned. That is a setting where our concern is no more the 0.1% decrease in stock market index, but next day survival.

Another surprising fact is that the cause of this crisis has not been anything extraordinary. Even though not yet clear (to my knowledge), it seems that one of the power generators in the network has failed somehow and has destabilized the whole power grid of the North East. Sooner or later we will hear about the reason for that failure, nevertheless, it is not hard to imagine that ignoring a simple maintenance work, a human failure, or a raccoon that chewed a cable, have caused all the trouble! This comes to my second point, that we live in a very interconnected world, where very small events in one part of the world can have huge impacts on another part. In fact, the growing population and technology in the last couple of centuries have hugely increased the level of global interdependence, compared to older times, making us more and more influenced by events happening far from us in time and space.

I think these two trends have far-reaching consequences that need more attention. From how we do science (e.g. going into more and more detail, inside sub-fields, rather than thinking about the interactions between different sub-systems), to how we think in every day life (e.g. what are the events I should pay attention to?), these trends may require important paradigm shifts, but those discussions need other postings.

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* I guess I don't think in English very often, so this is the translation of my thoughts in English :)

Social forces for change always exist in one form or another. Actual change comes about only when these social forces interact at a level where they can create sufficient instability to upset the status quo. In order for this to happen, the social forces have to either reach maturity and acquire sufficient strength to destabilize society through gradual development, or be catalyzed by a charismatic leadership. While the former process prepares the society gradually for the change to come, any change led by the charismatic leadership is bound to result in a concentration of power and authority in the position of the charismatic leader, and therefore inhibit a transition towards democracy. In this entry I will argue why I am skeptical that unity behind one person or group could result in a change towards a democratic social structure in Iran.

Weber has viewed the rise of charismatic leaders as a serious threat to social stability. In Weber’s view, when a conflict with the status quo is led by a charismatic leader, the change is often more abrupt and revolutionary. Since this kind of leadership entails a response from followers that goes beyond mere obedience to a doctrine or a political agenda, it can be analyzed in terms of rational and irrational behavior in politics (Weber 1968). What makes people follow charismatic leaders is a source of debate, but it seems that the verbal ability of leaders to emphasize issues that people care about has been a major factor in their appeal. In the case of Ayatollah Khomeini, his ability to use a provincial accent, along with calculated periods of silence in his speech, accentuated by his image of age and holiness (which are cultural triggers of wisdom in Iran) could be cited as important aspects of his charisma.

A charisma-based society is one that results from a social change led by a charismatic leader. The authority of a charismatic leader comes from the unconditional acceptance by his followers. This unconditional nature changes the structure of society and its positions of authority. Charismatic leaders share an intense personal bond with a following that believes in their extraordinary qualities. Because of this they have a powerful say in the shape of the social formations over which they preside. (Bernhard 1998). After the Iranian revolution of 1979 for example, in the resulting charisma-based society people rose to positions of authority not through merit, but through their relationships with Ayatollah Khomeini. Mohsen Rafighdoost, the former head of the Janbazan Foundation, which is one of the most powerful financial conglomerates in Iran, was none other than the driver of the vehicle that took Ayatollah Khomeini from the airport to his temporary residence at the outset of the revolution. Administrative appointments were based on loyalty to the regime and adherence to Islamic values. Universities were purged of secular elements and the criteria for social mobility became the ability to demonstrate loyalty to the ideals of the new regime.

This hierarchy of authority is neither based on traditions nor on rationality. Such an allocation of power prevents any democratic structure from being shaped, since checks and balances necessary for such a structure are undermined by the choices of the charismatic leader and those who have his trust. The criteria for social and political power in such a society therefore inhibits meritocracy. Given that the charismatic leader is not responsive to the people’s feedback on his decisions, the peoples’ votes, even if present, become a symbolic source of legitimacy, while the political structure operates upon the legitimacy of the charismatic leader.

Given the above, it seems that the emergence of charismatic leadership can have very different roles in social change. Generally speaking, it can catalyze social change and increase the probability of its success. On the other hand, given that charisma is more suited towards dealing with change, it can be harmful in the creation of a rational social structure to replace the old structure. Specifically in the case of Iran, charismatic leadership can be very dangerous. Culturally there has been a tendency for people to follow charismatic leaders without questioning. The tendency of bestowing supernatural characteristics and creating personality cults is strong in the Iranian culture. Historically this has emerged through Iran’s hero-centered mythological literature and has later been emphasized through the effect of mysticism. In recent history, the cases of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and Ayatollah Khomeini as leaders with differing types of charisma, and the personality cults created around them, is an interesting social phenomenon.

While currently no such charismatic leadership exists on the horizon, it is doubtful whether such leadership would even be desirable. Instead, the emergence of a variety of alternatives creating rational, strategic and tactical alliances to achieve social change in any form will provide more of an opportunity for a pluralistic society to emerge.

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

Of course the scientist always had his (not her this time, it would be an anachronism and an interesting subject to talk about later) place in the society, sometimes dark and fearsome (Faust) and sometimes almost angelic (Pasteur), but always a source of rational (and proverbial) wisdom to the non-scientist people.

During the conflicts of ideologies in 19th century, science was one of the intellectual safe havens that provided its occupants with a neutral position in the war that was fought by culture and education. This contributed to its growth and strength. This neutrality was destroyed after the world wars in which a major recipient of science, technology, was the winner.

After the transfiguration of arts into an oblivious form (if not into barbarism), science once again assumed its position of power in the society: space travel, telecommunications, computers and nuclear weapons became the new wonders of the world. Science was victorious in its apparent objectivity, absoluteness and usefulness. The three building blocks of any religion are indeed in place and Nature (but in fact technology) would be God.

But what will stop us now? If we believe in science as a religion? Since we are made of stars ...

The fact is we are not made of stars. Science as religion isn't different from other religions. Its objectivity is only on the surface but from inside it is a world of people, interpretations and styles. Science might be useful but many other things are also and none have caused that many sufferings of humankind directly. As a matter of practice, usefulness of science has always rested with the user and ironically science and religion both have bloodstained hands when it comes to practical applications.

Absoluteness is at best a lie about science: Even the most conservative supporters of science and scientific method agree, science is good because it can be wrong and can be corrected! This point is not shared by religion, religion is always right, cannot be corrected. While it is still the same physics that is being corrected, it is not the same Islam that is being reformed, many clerics would tell you that; it is something else, just a new religion, a source of eternal schism.

My personal disappointment with science as religion comes from the fact that science is very incomplete and its wisdom is always subject to doubts, but it is still used by many in arguments that have little, if any, relevance to science itself. I will try to bring up examples of the unjust and pathetic use of science and scientific methods in the upcoming posts.

A year ago a friend of mine, Shabnam M., met a guy at ShabehJomeh, a monthly lounge meeting for young Iranian professionals in New York. They began talking and drinking. They shared their childhood memories in Iran and discussed the current political climate. There was a certain chemistry between them; they had a lot in common. He asked her out, and a year later they are still together.

Last weekend something happened. In a jolt of joy and enthusiasm, they allowed each other to think and talk about the future, their future. "fuck it, damn it all to hell," he finally said, "Lets get married!" And she couldn't have been happier. They immediately called Iran and informed their parents.

But as Hafez likes to remind us every once in a while, Love seems simple at first; but then pour the downfalls.

Last night we went to their semi-engagement party. Everyone was there. Champagne bottles were uncorked, and glasses were toasted. Everything was moving along smoothly until someone asked: "Well, what kindda ceremony are you guys planning to have?"

"What do you mean?" they asked.

"Are you going to get a mullah to do the--"

"Fuck no! No mullah's gonna attend my wedding," said the bride.

There was a moment of silence. "Then what?" the groom answered back, a bit confused. "You want to have a church wedding? I'm not Christian, and neither are you. I'm not having a church wedding. My mom would never attend a church wedding."

The music was stopped, and people were whisked out shortly after that.

I'm not worried about them though. They'll work it out. At one point one of them is going to "fuck it and damn it all to hell," and compromise. But it's quite evident that Religion and Politics are very much mixed not only in the state level, but in our day to day lives. To Shabnam, having a Quran or a Muslim cleric at her wedding would mean nothing but an approval of Iran's current government. This is true even though, in theory, she strongly believes in the separation of religion and politics.

Should the people change first, or should the government? That seems to be the big chicken-or-the-egg question.

I always liked Marx's verdict against religion; I liked its finality, its tone and the mention of the word "masses". Even when I had my super-religious period as a teenager (who hasn't?) I thought of the "opium for the masses" as something deeply paradoxical and disturbing, a sinful pronouncement that seemed to echo with a kind of truth.

Now I look at it differently: as a "slogan" that was only hip one day. I have now understood what "masses" refers to and what "opium" is really meant to do with them. Although I haven't truly understood yet if "opium" is bad or good?

"Religion as opium" for the masses might be a slogan or just plain absurd, but how about for the individual? Are religions supposed to be like opium for the individual? Is the notion of "the Divine" just a pacifying and pleasure-giving concept to believe in for me and you? Is there anything but hope, love, good and peace to be obtained from religion? I am asking this question because I have reached the conclusion that religion in general is incapacitated to rule in modern society, and I do not want to include religion as a pillar of modern society even in the "opium" format.

Most of us as individuals seem to need "opium," without which life seems too painful to bear. It can be our relationships; it can be our hobbies; it can be the art/science we produce; it can be our job; it can be anything that we can use to dress (or undress) the outside world and our significantly negligible role in it. Let's not get into some serious existential discussion here. Nonetheless the problem ("life sucks!") seems to be equally present in every individual with a certain degree of sophistication and responsibility.

The answer can also be religion. It has really good news about life (and death in most cases) for anyone who is ready to believe in it. From a psychological point of view, religion does offer a good answer and remedy for this sickness of/from life. It is not surprising to see that all of the (mainstream) religions (even more nihilistic Paths such as Buddhism) see life as a very valuable thing and all try to protect it. Even in Islam, which is to some extent a socialist religion, the life of each individual is valued at that of life of all members of her/his society*.

The failures of Religion as an opium are also shared by all other kinds of "opium": (1) You may be disconnected from your source of it, then the whole thing will collapse and you will be left in a void. (2) You might overdose on it: This could be even more fatal to you and maybe others.

Let me postpone a conclusion on this post for some time until I can produce a more detailed discussion of these ideas applied to Iran's religious history.

* Qur'an 5:32 "... if any one slew a person [...] it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people."

In a recent post, Niayesh Afshordi proposed a couple of changes to improve upon the experience of democracy, followed by a somewhat heated discussion in the comments to the post. To motivate his proposal, Afshordi has a quick look at two `fundamental flaws' of democracy. He then proposes to run the country on a model of government similar to that of a company by promoting or demoting people's agents, rather than representatives, through referenda, rather than elections.

Since historic experiences are hardly, if at all, repeatable, arguing for or against any such proposal could only be done through critical comparison of somewhat distanced events of the human history. There is one thread, however, that connects these events, that is, the thread of cause and effect.

I think the problems of the older experiences of the human history had been the prime cause for any change that has occurred in the form of governance of the human society. Indeed, Afshordi starts by pointing out what he thinks is wrong with democracy before he puts forward his ideas. However, one missing piece in Afshordi's proposal is an analysis of the problems in our past experiences—the very problems to which democracy was introduced as a solution. In trying to go beyond the experience of democracy, one should be careful not to fall back into the old problems again. This guideline is, I believe, the most important element of any attempt at new ideas, further underlined by the fact that changes of this sort are meant to happen at the scale of a society and thus affect many lives in the present generation and many more to come.

In the following I outline a few such problems, accompanied by a short commentary partly in regard with Afshordi's proposed `improvements' on democracy.

Infringement of the Rights of the Individual

What attracts many people to the more democratic countries, beside the lures of economy that are somewhat irrelevant to the form of the government, is the simple fact that they feel relieved of all the restrictions on their personal lives in their countries of origin. Yes, there are still restrictions of sorts in any country; but the size of what is left to the decision of each individual in our very populated societies has a critical value below which the natural course of one's life is so restrained that the only fix for it is an eruption of some kind.

Infringement of the Rights of the Minority

Contrary to what Afshordi says in a comment, democracy is not the rule of the mob. In a soceity ruled by the mob, the rights of the minority are infringed just as severely as the rights of the individual are in a dictatorship. A cornerstone of any democracy is that the rights of the minorities, including the freedom of speech and the press, are guaranteed by the law. The suffering of various minorities throughout our history and right now, from religious to sexual, is one dark spot that must remain only in history books.

Unchallenged or Permanent Power

The main problem addressed by a democracy is the problem of the unchallenged power that is usually given or forcibly taken by a person, a group or even a popular movement. The occasions of the same happening in a democracy, which are used in Afshrodi's post to argue that the democratic government is unstable, are rare. Although very important and in need of a proper fix (also look at Soashyant long comment), this kind of instability is in my view far better than the kind of stability that comes with other forms of government, including that proposed by Afshordi—the inherently stable situation of the latter is, I think, one in which a few people hold a permanent grip on the power. In short, in a democracy unchallenged power remains as an anomaly while it is in the very structure of other forms of government so far conceived.

Totalitarianism

I believe that a most valuable lesson to learn from the history of politics is that although a necessity for the order of things, government is not the key solution to prosperity and flourish of a people. Most of the times, governments with their unchecked and vast authorities have been and still are the biggest obstacle to the success, economic or otherwise, of a society. The rejection of totalitarianism, that is, the idea that the government should be in charge of every detailed aspect of social life, is in the spirit of the democratic experience. Democracy leaves individuals, groups, and people in effect, on their own to decide for what is best for them in their lives and for their future.

Last week, I attended a conference in South Hadley, MA. The conference was rather small since it was about a very specialized branch of physics. So, I was quite impressed by the high number of Israeli scientists. There were also several American Jews currently holding faculty positions at universities in Israel. Having seen this many scientists, I got the answer to a question I had been dealing with for a long time.

There are relatively many unbiased news agencies that keep telling people of the world about the brutality of Israel against the Palestinians. They do talk quite often about the plight of Palestinians especially the refugees. Considering that public opinion is not really unaware of how much Palestinians suffer why are they still in support of Israel and why Palestinians have never been able to use the public pressure to get a bit more of their rights?

One side of the answer to this question has to do with Palestinians themselves. Both the corrupt Palestinian Authority and Terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are equally responsible. However, there is another side of the story which is usually forgotten, that is Israel.

Israel is the most (and maybe the only!) secular democracy in the middle east. Whenever there is a peace talk going on, it is between the prime minister of Israel and a king or a lifetime president of another country in the region. It was not until few months ago that Arafat finally accepted to hand in some of his powers to a new face. The type of the government aside, Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US. Scientifically, Israel has the highest per capita ratio of scientific publications in the world by a large margin, as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

There are some international values that all countries, including the US, respect. First how much democratic a country is and then how powerful its economy is. If Arab countries want Israel to admit the Palestinians' rights first they have to take care of these issues. There is also a lot for our country, Iran, to learn from Israel. Iranian diaspora should also take lessons from the Jewish lobby.

* The image on the right used to be a portion of the Israeli flag, that we had to remove in case it meant disrespect. -Editor

Last week, after a year of anticipation, the Iranian parliament passed a bill to join the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The question is: is this convention going to do any good for Iranian women?

Most of us agree that joining CEDAW is not going to remove the discriminatory laws affecting the everyday life of Iranian women. It's not going to pave the way for them to take over more key positions or change the way they are treated in the society, let alone in their own homes. Nonetheless, I think there are certain ways that joining the convention can help women.

The answer lies in the arguments of the parliament members opposing the bill. They didn't oppose joining CEDAW on the basis of any of its articles, since they have been taken care of by the very ambiguous condition that no article or amendment opposing Islam is accepted by the Iranian government (Sounds familiar?*). Conservatives were attacking CEDAW on the basis of one and only one important issue: its very spirit. They argued that according to this convention, men and women are considered equal, and Islam doesn't recognize this equality. (In order to be PC, they also argued that what Islam recognizes for women is far better and more "natural", which is, quite frankly, complete nonsense).

I think this is where any benefit for the Iranian women's rights movement is going to be. Joining this convention can mean more foreign pressure on the Iranian government on issues regarding women's rights. Some even speculate that the fact that the bill was put on the agenda of the parliament less than a month after Mehdi Karrubi, the parliament speaker, asked female MP's to stand patient and not push for the bill, was because of the current state of the region and enormous pressure on the Islamic Republic on issues of human rights.

Even if the Council of Guardians rejects the bill (and it most probably will), I believe the fact that this issue has been brought to the spotlight in a time when even the reformists didn't want to take a risk on this bill—some found it not quite urgent—can give a new momentum to Iranian women in the quest for their rights.

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* If you glance through the Iranian constitution, or any other law regarding essential freedoms, you'll find that every single one of them ends with the phrase "as long as it's not against Islam (or the foundations of the Islamic Republic)". This simple phrase has made it possible for the conservatives in the judicial system and the notorious Council of Guardians to deny people's basic rights, to censor the press, and to block legislation proposed by the reformists.

"What is Khatami doing?" is maybe one of the most frequent questions in recent Iranian political discourse. I'm not going to answer this question through defending his actions, but only suggesting an alternative idea about possible benefits of what it might seem as his inactions.

I do believe that cultural backgrounds of a group of people has a relatively important role in the ways they think and act, and thus in how they make changes in different aspects of their society. I also believe that this kind of changes might take a longer time comparing to economic changes.

Looking back to our history and cultural traditions, I cannot trace that much "acting-together" that are based upon thinking-together and deciding-together, although there exist many signs revealing our wonderful sense of feeling-together in critical situations. So, there has always been good initiations for processes of change in some periods of our history that were mostly wasted due to what we can call "lack of rationalistic mainstreams" in the following steps of those processes. But what causes this fact and lets it happen again and again? Among many other possible reasons, I would pick two cultural characteristics that seem to have had a considerable influence on many historic events in Iran.

First, talking and not listening. The truth is we usually look at each other and think about the words we should pour out next, while nodding every now and then and pretending to listen. Back to our social literature throughout history, it is full of monologues and not that much dialogues. And actually wherever dialogues are found, they are mostly non-equal-conversations between a Morad and his Morid (take it as the teacher and the pupil). [Morid means devotee and Morad is whom s/he is devoted to]

Second, walking and not looking. One thing I've learned in several mountain climbing programs is the vital rule of looking at your path and checking it with both past steps and the way ahead even if it has been the right way in the beginning. But instead, in our personal life and specifically in our social and popular movements, over-eagerness is the dominant sense of individuals. So, you either walk by or stand aside and watch others pass.

This time around, optimistically, the flow is a bit calmer (assuming there actually exists one!). So, there might be a chance for the time factor to play its role and let the people think their thoughts, train their ears, find their real place in the river-flow and at least try to see in which sea it pours.

And again I should say, this is neither offending nor defending the whole flow. I'm just saying that accidentally or deliberately, President Khatami's actions (considering inaction as a kind of action!) could happen to make (and maybe it has already made) some historical change in Iran's political literature and Iranian's socio-political culture.

When I landed in Canada six years ago, I started living in a dorm near Chinatown in Toronto with a lot of East Asians who were there to learn English. That meant that I got to try lots of crazy food from smelly kimchi to all sorts of raw fish in different types of sushi. I never cared where that food came from and cared very little how that food was made. As we know, this is not the case for everyone who comes from a Muslim country, such as Iran. There are people among our friends who make sure that their food is in accordance with their religion. Not surprisingly, this turns out to be a bit of an inconvenience in the West. It doesn’t just mean that they can’t come along for dim sum in Chinatown. They have constant problems whenever they are invited for dinner at the houses of their foreign or non-practicing Muslim Iranian friends. But the most difficult inconvenience to accept is that Halal meat* is not offered at social events organized by many Iranian student and community associations. The justification offered by these organizations is that they are defined as non-religious, and as such, they can’t offer Halal meat, which is considered as a religious demand.

While, these organizations might be so resistant to offering Halal meat at their events, they are not resistant to offering vegetarian food because this is not perceived as a religious demand. To me, as a proclaimed carnivore with a great love for kabab, "Halalists" are not any more bizarre than vegetarians. And as long as neither group tries to stop me from eating my food, I would be happy for them to be offered their preferred food. In fact, this simple idea is a cornerstone for my personal version of secularism, which I call inclusive secularism. It says that as long as people are not asking for things that are prohibitive to others, they should be offered their options. By virtue of this rule, I fully support offering the option of Halal meat in all Iranian public events, considering that there is a sizable religious population and that Halal meat can be easily found in most big North American cities. By the same token, I don’t think the demand of a religious person to remove alcohol from an Iranian public event should be accepted on the ground that he/she feels “offended” by the presence of alcohol, because that demand restricts others who wish to drink a glass of wine with their dinner.

It is not just about food. We need to practice an inclusive version of secularism in our small community organizations to demonstrate that it works without excluding religious people. Even after so much deterioration of religious belief in Iran as a direct result of the excesses of the Islamic Republic, there are still many religious people in Iran, and it would be unimaginable for a secularism that cannot accommodate their concerns to take root. Our practices in North America can be a model for Iran.

Do I think Halal meat is more delicious? Not really!

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*Here, non-Halal food mostly refers to the meat that comes from animals (such as cow or sheep) when they are not killed in accordance to Islamic law. This usage of non-Halal does not refer to pork because I have never witnessed that pork be offered in any Iranian social events. Most Iranians do not eat pork even the ones living in the West. For a more general meaning of Halal visit wikipedia.

I was shocked for a few seconds after hearing that a bunch of Sharif University Students supported Iran's nuclear programme by writing a letter to the Iranian president [in Persian]. It is alleged that the letter is signed by many elite figures (yeah right) and winners of medals in international scientific competitions.

After dismissing Iran's oil and gas resources as a source of energy, the letter insists that most countries are trying alternative sources of energy, most importantly the nuclear energy and that Iran has to do the same, even under the international pressure that is mounting against it. In the end it wishes for honour, prosperity and freedom [independece] for Iran.

I love my country and really want to see her people prosper. I also think that those enemies of the Iranian government that have been spying and clamouring on Iran's nuclear threat are simply traitors to Iran's people and resources, but from a less emotional point of view, let me distance myself from those "elite" students:

Energy crisis? I would say major environmental crisis! With the degree of discipline in effect in Iranian organizations, leakage or even meltdown is simply a matter of time, should Iran have a large-scale "working" nuclear plant. Who would then be responsible for the unfading damage that would be done to the most precious resource in Iran, its people? Do these "elite" students know about the untold effects of nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl? That it is still taking its toll on the genetic material of the children of its victims? Take note that besides the US, Canada and the UK * most of western countries are either closing down or down-scaling their nuclear facilities, just because it is not worth the risk.

Yes, the technological expertise obtained in the process of building a nuclear plant might be unique, but not when someone else (Russia) manufactures it as a black box that eats enriched uranium and produces electric power and nuclear waste. I should say that there are many safer ways of education.

Besides, let these students think about the political dangers that have made the path to nuclear energy a diplomatic minefield for the Iranian government. It is not surprising that traditional enemies of the Iranian government are all accusing Iran of trying to obtain nuclear weapons through its nuclear plants. They all see this as a firm grip on the back of war-drivers in the US adminstration. Looking inward and considering the capital and energy already allocated to the Bushehr nuclear plant, these "elite" students should think twice before seeking to encourage its destruction the other way round. Aren't they encouraging a worthless confrontation?

* All the three countries incidentally having easy access to vast amounts of water.

So now (almost) everybody thinks that democracy is an ideal form of government. But what makes democracy so special?

According to Hajir, history has not recorded a more reasonable way to govern the people. Of course, hearing this from a pro-democracy advocate is not a surprise. You would hear similar things from a communist or an Islamist about their favorite governments. However, all of them would agree that lessons of history are there to be improved upon, and not to stick to (although they may not agree on what those lessons are). So can we improve upon the democtratic experience, without simply copying it?

One may argue that democracy is the most stable form of government. This is sensible as the majority has a legitimate way of enforcing their demands which reduces the chances of violent dissidence. It also has a natural (but not necessarily optimum) way of correcting itself through periodic elections, which can keep the system away from the verge of instability. However, we all know lots of democracies that have ended in chaos or dictatorships (Starting with Greek democracy, up to Hitler's election and on). So, it appears that democracy does not guarantee stability, although it certainly helps it.

We often say that in a democracy people can vote for what they want. However, the fact is:
In a democracy, people may vote for who they want, but (most of the time) not for what they want.
This is my central point.
I may know that I want to feed my children well, but I don't know if Mr. X is more qualified to make it possible or Mr. Y. Of course a more educated person is more qualified to make the distinction. However, in every society, most of the people are more influenced by the propaganda, than by their educated wisdom.
You may say that if you are not satisfied with your candidate, you can vote him out at the next election. Well, next time you will have the same dilemma between Mr. Y and Mr. Z.

Here is my idea:
May be our governments should work based on referendums, rather than elections.
May be all our officials should be elected/ promoted based on their performance, rather than their popularity.

“Big Change”. Everybody is talking about this big thing. Perhaps most people think of it as a change of government, but then what kind of change? Is it going to make state and “mosque” separate (and I don’t want to think about what is going on in Turkey as our future) or some sort of republic in which parties could bring religion to office? And is the latter really different from what we have now?

About 90% of Iranians are Muslim, and probably a lot of them demand Islamic laws, one way or another. Babak Seradjeh put it nicely in his post that still people’s political demands are uncertain. I think cultural demands are even more uncertain. A new government may bring freedom (that’s the hope), but is this freedom going to be respected by all layers of Iranian society? Probably the ideal government for intellectuals and non-religious people would ensure unlimited freedom as in North America, but is the mass population ready for this kind of change?

Consider these for example: will an official religion exist in the new constitution? Will punishments still be based on Islamic rules—what will happen to the principle of an eye for an eye (Qesas) or will adultery stay a crime? Even consider simple things in every day life. Will Hijab be mandatory? Even if not, will this freedom be respected every where? What about sexual freedom? The list goes on and on.

My point is that nobody likes the current constitution (especially judicial system introduced in it), but how much do we (intellectuals per se) want religion incorporated in the new constitution, and how much will mass population agree with us?

I was brought up believing that Iran is a rich country, and by rich I meant it has all different sorts of economic resources. I cannot provide statistics but I think most of the Iranian youngsters still believe so.

In the second year of high school, maybe for the first time in my life, I learned about the Gross National Production (GNP), and the fact that what Iranian people production and consumption per capita is less than what people of more than 100 other countries produce and consume (In 2001 Iran's GNP per capita was $1,680, the 112th country in the world! Look at here).

Then I was obsessed with the idea of corruption and inefficiency in Iranian government for a while. If our government decides to manage Iran's economy efficiently, having enough resources and being a rich country, in a couple of years the average Iranian will produce and consume $35,000 per year like a Japanese; after all Japan does not even have oil. Nice dreams yeah! But I think most of Iranians are still obsessed with this dream. Some conspiracy theories sparked in my mind, just like lots of other Iranians: Maybe some foreign powers do not let us grow, or maybe they are exhausting our wealth while not letting us spend it! Thanks to my desire for trying to see the story in a causal way (which I believe is casual as well) rather than a Godfather-lover's way, I didn't fall in love with the conspiracy ideas, but still the question was there: Being a rich country, why does Iran produce so little?

During my undergraduate years, the picture became a little more clear: I learned that a tiny fraction of the value of what I consume comes from nature, and most of its value has been added by the labor and machine work (and by value I mean exactly the price I pay). More essentially, I learned that despite being %76 of Iranian export, Oil and Gas production (the major wealth of rich Iran) accounts for less than %15 of the GNP. (Figures are for 1998)

Coming to the US for my graduate study, on my flight over Europe, I saw a green continent full of cities. Having in mind an image of the vast, usually dried, area between the cities on most of my trips in Iran, I recalled that I cannot name any developed country which is not green! And finally in the US, I realized that capital, in both human and physical forms, is produced by acuumulation; I realized that it has taken so many years for developed countries to accumulate what they have today, and maybe because all of them have very fertile lands, they have managed to accumulate long before us: when the agriculture was the dominant production method.

I used to think the richness is what “the mother nature” has put “under the ground” of the countries, but I realized it is what “the ancestors” have accumulated “on the ground” for their successors. I used to think Iran is rich, but I realized it is poor. It may become rich some ime in the future, but it is a long way to go; of course, for Iranians not for Iran.

P.S. The importance of agriculture in the development of the West should not be underestimated. Going over Adam Smith and Ricardo's works (founders of Economics discipline) will be enough to show how much of their concern was about agriculture which was counted for more than half of the overall British GDP at their time. West Europe may import wheat now, but I'm absolutely sure it didn't in the 18th century. Obviously, no one can ignore the role of Colonization and Industrialization in the “Rise of the West”, but we shouldn't forget both of them need accumulated capital, which the West had and the East did not. Apparently, development is a sophisticated topic (at the end of the day, it's an active branch of Economics!) and discussions are still on the table. I'll try to write more about them.

He woke up one day, shortly after 2 Khordad, and wrote a constitution. He gathered us around. Us being my mom, me, my kid brother and kid sister. We were to practice democracy from this day on.

The next day he made a box with cardboards and blank sheets. Cut a hole on the top and called it the Voting Box. Every decision in the house was to be decided democratically. Blank sheets were folded, scissored and handed out.

Much to his surprise, the next 4 months turned out to be nothing but takeouts and spagetti, loud music and indoor smoking.

He endured most of it, he did, much to our surprise. But when it came to deciding whether we can bring our boyfriends and girlfriends home, he finally snapped and burned the constitution and the Box in a flaming fury. We're now practicing communism.

What makes religious/political dialogues so tragically unsuccessful? Why is it that money, guns, books, music or "love" have played major roles in the rugged history of Iran, daresay I, even the world, while dialogue been in use traditionally only by philosophers, scientists, beaurocrats and alike? Is dialogue fundamentally flawed?

David Bohm, a name I should be very cautious to use in my research, outlines the following requirement for a succesful dialogue:

1. Suspend assumptions.
2. Regard each other as colleagues.
3. There must be a Facilitator who holds the context of dialogue. If group is experienced, facilitator can just kind of blend in, especially once the atmosphere is established.

My own perception is that the first requirement is extremely hard to meet among political/religious adversaries. Most of our assumptions are simply ours by inheritance. They are only a result of our family, social class, nationality. Even education and rationalization has surprisingly little lever on our assumptions. I personally think that the first requirement is not impossible, but has to be proposed as an idealization.

The second requirement has to do with our ego, the fact that we usually think of ourselves as superheros of thoughts and reason. In the intellectual community, humiliation and disrespect of the clergy is de rigeur while in the clerical circles the godless intellectuals are lost in a sea of eternal darkness. To the conservative politician, a Marxist activist is nothing but a pot-loving-loudspeaker, while activists will not even listen to anyone in a suit. In my opinion this second requirement is less difficult than the first to meet, but still too idealistic to work in politics or religion.

Now who is the moderator? Who is going to remove the insults and humiliations from the discussion? Who is going to let everyone has her say? Who has the clear understanding of the context and stands in the middle of it? With the cleavage between spectra* becoming deeper and deeper everyday, where should we look for the moderators?

I do not want to sound too pessimistic but according to Bohm's requirements (and I should say that as a student of science I like them very much) dialogues are having a hard time these days.

* This is a dominant trend in almost all contexts in the post modern world.