Terrorism by Sanctions

tehran times : 77 killed, 33 injured in Iran plane crash: "The Iranian airline industry, which is heavily reliant on the second-hand Russian planes, has suffered from a series of plane crashes in recent years due to its aging fleet of passenger jets seriously affected by the Western sanctions banning the sales of planes and spare parts to Iran.

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These 77 people who were killed in the Iran plane crash were murdered by the United States and its allies.

Iran is prevented from buying parts from and doing business with western suppliers. As a result, planes crashes are a regular phenomenon in Iran. What pleasure do the American people get in murdering Iranian men, women and children? What has Iran done to America? This is terrorism.

America armed Saddam and abetted in the murder of thousands of Iranians defending their liberty and country. Today, no foreigner can engage in financial transactions with Iran. I asked here in Bangladesh how I could send money to Iran from Dhaka; I was told that I couldn't. I wondered why, and I was told that dollar transactions have to go through New York.

Some of my happiest days were spent learning Farsi at the Iranian Cultural Center in Dhanmandi. What nice people they are! And what culture! Slowly, I began to be able to read Persian classics with the help of my teacher, Dr. Kulsum. Rumi, Sa'adi, and Omar Khayyam became accessible in the original. How can western literature compare or compete with Persian classics?

The only comparison possible is with Latin literature (and no doubt Greek, which I cannot read): there is a similar terseness and nobility of expression, both being Indo-European languages.

As for American literature, the less said the better: it is a derivative of a derivative culture, being derived first from English literature which in turn was derived from Greco-Roman literature. No one who has read Virgil's Eclogues will ever feel passionately about Wordsworth and Co. again, never mind the pathetic Whitman and Dickinson.

And yet the Iranian Cultural Centre hardly draws people who pass by without notice or pause: even the Alliance Francaise is full of young people learning another derivative language like English.

We prefer the murderers to the victims, however great.

Our Vices, Their Virtues

What allows the western world to purchase us? Our vices.

We suffer from ambition, jealousy, greed, impatience, pride....

If we could give up these vices, they (or anyone) would be unable to get a purchase on ourselves.

In fact, if we followed the advice given by Sheikh Sa'di in the Golestan, then nobody could rule our minds. We must remember that the first struggle against the west was that of the dervishes - they had nothing to lose, and nothing to gain.

In order to acquire knowledge, we can and should travel the world. But the knowledge must be for our souls, not for greed and ambition and pride.

As Rumi said in his divine couplet:

Elm ra bar tan zani mari bod
Elma ra bar dil zani yari bod

Knowledge for gold becomes a snake
Knowledge for soul becomes a friend.

the clever will not be in paradise

I came across the following masterpiece the other day:


Aksar ahl al jannat ablah, ai pisar,
Bahr in guft sultan ul bashar
Ziraki chun bad kibr-angez tust
Ablahe shu ta bamanad din durust."

JALALUDDIN RUMI.


"For this cause,O son, the Prince of men declared
The majority of those in Paradise are the foolish.
Cleverness is as a wind raising storms of pride,
Be foolish, so that your heart may be at peace."


Immediately, I thought of the clever people of Bangladesh - the so-called educated men and women, our 'thinking' elite.

Take the economists who backed Sheikh Mujib: they thought they knew everything, that they had wisdom enough to determine the future of 70 million people. In the event, as we all know, thousands died through violence and starvation, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that perished in the civil war. People like Rehman Sobhan, Mozaffer Ahmed, Mosharraf Hossain...were 'clever', and they are still 'clever', backing 'democracy' and 'civil society', terms too big for me to understand.

Now, we have 'clever' fools, who pride themselves on thinking like white people, our former masters...Mahfuz Anam, Zafar Sobhan, son of Rehman, Rowshan Jahan, wife of Mozaffer Ahmed, Abul Barkat, the partisan economist, Ali Zakr, an Indian patriot, Rownaq Jahan, wife of Rehman Sobhan, importer of ideas from American universities, my cousin in the United States who thinks I am unintelligent for not believing in democracy....So many clever people.

These people are all 'zirak', Persian for 'clever'. I don't know if they'll go to paradise or not, but I know they have made life hell for their compatriots - those who are not 'zirak'.