The following is an excerpt from an interview on the online magazine Guernica with Seyed Mohammad Marandi head of the North American Studies graduate program at the University of Tehran. You can find the full interview here: http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/506/teaching_north_american_studie/. I copied this excerpt because it refers to some of the content in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "Persepolis". Checkout the entire interview if you get the chance. Enjoy!
Guernica: Can you give an example or two of distortions that you believe are found in books like Reading Lolita in Tehran or Persepolis?
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: I don’t know where to begin. Nafisi is one of the few people, including Saddam Hussein, who claim that the Iranians were the “perpetrators” of the war (page 209). She makes the ludicrous claim that ten- to 16-year-old Iranian military combatants carried out “human wave” attacks (208) and were promised “keys to a heaven where they could finally enjoy all the pleasures from which they have abstained in life” (209). As a veteran of that war, in which Saddam Hussein, with the backing of western powers, invaded Iran and used weapons of mass destruction against Iranian civilians and combatants, I would like to see some of these keys or other evidence to support these absurd claims.
She also claims that in Iranian prisons they married the virgins off to the guards, who would later execute them. The philosophy behind this act was that if they were killed as virgins, they would go to heaven (page 212). Of course, such systematic acts of rape never took place, but more important is the fact that no such philosophy exists except in the mind of Nafisi and other like-minded people.
What makes these bizarre accusations especially significant and dangerous is that Nafisi falsely associates them with Islam and the ideology of those whom she opposes. She does not feel the need to provide evidence to support her accusations. In fact, many of the quotes in her work are inaccurate, misleading, or altogether nonexistent, as a search through the complete works of Ayatollah Khomeini will reveal. It seems that people such as Nafisi are so sure of the unexamined reception of anything even smacking of opposition to the Islamic Revolution and Islam in general or any kind of hype about Iran, that they do not deem it necessary to give at least a touch of credibility to their claims… The same is true about Persepolis.
By dehumanizing others these people are aiding the neocons and other forces of darkness to justify more war...
Guernica: What kind of evidence can you offer to back up these distortions you cite? I’m particularly interested in the “keys to heaven” (depicted in the new movie Persepolis) and systematic rape of female prisoners. Has there been any serious historical research into these claims?
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: There is no need for historical research. The war didn’t take place a thousand years ago. Over a million Iranians served at one time or another in the war fronts and most of them are living ordinary lives today and are available for interviews. These stories are largely unknown in Iran and when I tell them to my friends or students they usually laugh. If one were to claim that the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq have been provided with “keys to heaven” by the Pentagon, would that need historical research to be disproved or would you just say, “That’s just propaganda”? Indeed, how can you disprove the claim that U.S. soldiers have such keys? Or why should you disprove such ridiculous claims? It is the accusers who must provide the evidence. However, unlike some of my friends and students, I don’t think it’s a laughing matter. I think it is frightening to see what outrageous stories can be told in the United States and then are accepted by many educated people and academics as facts. Movies get awards, books become best sellers, heroes are made, and people become wealthy as a result of dishonest caricatures of Iranian people and society. By dehumanizing others, among many other things, these people are also aiding the neocons and other forces of darkness to justify more war, more suffering, and more destruction.
3 comments:
It is true that there is a U.S. agenda to discredit the Iranian government in order to justify attacking it and that Iranian authors are promoted when they have something negative to say about the Iranian government. As you mention in your review of this interview, all memoirs naturally hold some bias.
However, there has been extensive documentation of the torture and rape which occured in Iranian prisons, in particular during 1982 and 83 and the last year of the Iran/Iraq war. There has also been extensive documentation of the presence of young Iranian teens used as mine sweepers, or other military aids, typically not soldiers, during the war. They were told, as were all Iranian soldiers, that if they died they would go directly to heaven and be revered as martyrs of Islam. This was a constant theme broadcast on TV and other media during the war. There is ample proof. One can quibble about keys, but the promise of heaven and martyrdom was there. I did find Nafisi's memoir less true to my experiences in Iran during the same time period, but that doesn't mean she didn't experience it.
Nima,
Thanks for the clarification. As I read Shirin Ebadi's"Iran Awakenings" I am running across the exact same claims of the of "minesweepers", "human waves", and rapes of female prisoners before execution. It would be nice to find more certain, absolute documentation on the subject. Any suggestions?
Hi Chuck,
I'll look for more documentation and send it to you. It is out there in spades. I tend to focus on the positive myself, not in an effort to distort, but because I don't really like to dwell on the horrors of war or government abuse unless there's a positive purpose behind it.
Post a Comment