IDEAS

see the dutch version here

“Would you do something in return then?” said the sound of the other side of the phone line. My eyes sparkled.

“Tell me!” I said excitedly, already having an idea what he was going to ask me.

“You are the Chair of the Confederation of Iranian Students, right?” he asked.

“Well, only the chair of the Federation of The Netherlands. We have many…”

He interrupted me: “Yeah, yeah, I know all that” he said impatiently.

“What I wanted to ask you is to write a column for our second edition about your position on Kurds of Iran.”

I had that “I KNEW it” smile on my face. “Yes, of course darling, it is an honor” was my answer.

“Good. Then I’ll see your column pop up in my e-mail in a few days” he said with his new journalistic tone, that was too fresh to sound professional.

So after consulting the Chair of the Confederation for a “green-light” I am now putting our position on paper (you will see the beautiful typed version without the scribbles of course).

Iran is a huge country, with almost 70 million inhabitants. The country is a composition of many contrasts. It is a rainbow of colors. Every color is beautiful in its own way. On an arbitrary day, you could experience the temperature of all the four seasons in different parts of the country. You can hear different languages or dialects, and you can hear Iranians with light blue eyes, brown eyes; bright white skin color, somewhat tinted color (like myself), chocolate dark skin, and everything in between.

You can come across very modern people with Western ideas, who also have conservative views on sex outside marriage. You can also fall into a religious Muslim family that sends their daughter to college with the Chador (=garment) but also give her permission to ac in a movie, which for that matter, could be very wrong and dodgy in the eyes of many Iranians. An “open-minded” professor may find it ridiculous for his daughter to appear on the silver screen and would rhetorically ask: “and SHOW herself to others?” as if she is going to perform striptease. (By the way, don’t these people ever watch an Iranian movie? The women are covered like hell. They have to wear headscarves even in bedroom scenes. Also women and men actors are not allowed to touch each other.)

Well it is not only a country with beautiful contrasts but also one governed by fools who are making a fool of the whole nation and have no insight in how to resolve issues facing the country.

Am I again jumping from one branch to the other? Shall I go back? Where was I?

Contrasts… Right! … And cultural differences.

Iranians do not only come from Fars. They are not just Persians speaking Farsi/Persian (the official language), but there are also other ethnicities. And Kurds are like the Fars, one of many ethnic groups of Iran.

This is exactly how the Confederation of Iranian Students sees it. We believe in the Universal Human Rights, we believe that every inhabitant of a state has to be equal before the law, in a society regardless of race, skin-color, beliefs etc. Because all the colors together establish the rainbow and if one is not participating, there would be no rainbow, it would be incomplete! And I know this sounds very simple, but that is what we miss in Iran: Simplicity.

It would be fantastic if I, with my provocative ideas, could be treated the same as a man with his Islamic philosophy in Iran. Why won’t it be fantastic if EVERYONE gets equal treatment?