Iranian Liberal Democrat

IRANdokht you are a genius :o)

You are amazing! :o)

Solh va Doosti

Nadia

true

Dear Mr Kazemzadeh

your calculation seems accurate and I agree with your conclusion too.

also: please check your previous blog

best,

IRANdokht

responses

Dear IranDokht,

Thanks.

On executions. China’s population is 1.3 BILLION. Our population is 70 million. In other words, their population is 18 times our population. And we have more or less the same number of executions. About 5 years ago, I did a calculation on per population, and found out that Iran has the HIGHEST rate of executions in the world. The second place was almost tied between China and US. Iran’s rate was 6 times higher than those!!!!!! In other words, there is no close second. No regime in the entire globe executed more proportionate to its population than IRI.

Worse still is the murders of intellectuals, literary figures, and political activists. If we add all of these, the fundamentalist regime is THE WORST on this planet.

Best,

MK

==========================

Dear Doost,

We should not blame our Kurdish ham-mihans for the actions of a very few. We should expect that all Kurdish political parties to publically and privately demand an end to this.

MK

=================================

Nadia jaan,

Thank you. I don’t think the sophisticated readers of this site are stupid enough to be fooled by the attacks of saalek. I have a lot of respect for the intellect of our readers.

Best,

MK

====================================

Dear Sadegh,

Thank you. And you are most welcomed.

Best,

MK

Dear Saalek, we all differ

Dear Saalek, we all differ in our political persuasions and are often inclined to post those things which vindicate that position. We are only human after all. We do however have to be careful not to let this transform into accepting anything, no matter how spurious in origin, so as to vindicate our political position (this is not a surreptitious side-swipe against Masoud). From what I have read of Masoud's work he's certainly not an Iran hater or hater of his native country, though I think there is little doubt that he detests the regime of the Islamic republic.

Dear Saalek, many Iranians do and surely you believe this to be a legimate position, amongst others, to take, as long as it is defended rationally and with arguments based on fact, as opposed to rants and ad hominem attacks. In this case I think that the evidence is both tendentious and suspect. I have never heard of any serious study or article or whatever suggesting that fgm has an origin within Islamic doctrine or Shi'ism and I say this as an atheist.

Furthermore, fgm has recently come to prominence with the insipid duo of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christopher Hitchens (though I must admit that I do enjoy much of the latter's pre-pro-Iraq phase), and has been used as a fictional stick with which to beat the enemy of the day, 'Islam'. This practice occurs in Hirsi Ali's (not her real name) native Somalia and through her serial distortions has come to be conflated with Islam tout court. This is simply a falsehood. Hirsi Ali has also been proven to be a pathological liar over the years and that is the reason she fled Holland for the US - all her cant about forced marriage has been put into question. Much of her 'biography' has also been shown to be highly suspect. She is incredibly crude in her evaluations and is completely unqualified to make pronouncements on much at all; in my opinion much of her pontificating (with white males like Hitchens cheerleading all the way) is pure chicanery and part of the ideological rationale for Western interventions whereby, as the philosopher Gayatri Spivak wrote some years ago, 'white men save brown women from brown men'. 

I unequivocally reckon this practice to be idiotic, ignorant superstition and aberrant nonsense, however, I also believe that it is being used in order to target a fictional and one-dimensional Islam which is increasingly depicted as inherently misogynistic, violent and expansionist. This is all BS and in keeping with previous depictions of Islam and the East dating back to the Crusades. Previously we were debauched sex-addicts and now since woman's lib in American and European campuses in the 1960s we've emerged repressed misogynists. These are discursive effects, and little more besides. An interesting little fact is that in the US 1/3 of all women murdered are done so by their boyfriends and husbands. Is this rooted in Catholic dogma or the tenets of Calvinism - if we were to propose this to be the case, we would surely be laughed at and ridiculed. But with Islam today, everyone is an 'expert' even if they can't read, let alone read Arabic and has no, let alone, in depth knowledge of Islamic history, thought and culture. The Islamic Empire, just like the political machinations of the Catholic Church was first and foremost about realpolitik, power and political institutions and nothing to do with essentialist claims emanating from religious doctrine.

A lot Iranians tend to be sympathetic to the slamming of Islam since they have experienced its political incarnation and many have suffered greatly as a result. This has lead to the understandable, albeit in my view completely mistaken view whereby Islam in toto is identified with its political theocratic manifestation. Structurally in fact it shares much with many other authoritarian political organizations, the only difference is that its rationalization resides in a highly politicized political IslamISM, and like all ISMs it's ideological and therefore a mundane creation which tries its best to fathom the world to achieve tangible political ends.  

Masoud knows that the vast majority who read this site are not sheep and will not unthinkingly take forgranted whatever is posted. Masoud is sympathetic regarding the objections I presented and is a very reasonable gentleman - he invariably posts his counterpoints with factual backing and never resorts to slander unlike many others on this site e.g. Zion, Fred and others.

Dear Saalek, I sincerely suggest that you post your objections and let the better argument win out; we just need to have a little more faith that the more reasonable arguments predicated on fact will triumph as opposed to malign and mendacious propaganda. We should never oppose the fact that others pose their opinions unless it's intentionally misleading, deceitful and dangerous. I would say Fox News is an ideal representative of the latter paradigm.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjvNSpsPu1k

Apparently Obama sounds like Hitler and Mao now!!! The madness continues...Saalek, thanks for your comment, and Masoud thank you for your pleasant response, it is appreciated... 

Ba Arezu-ye Movafaghiat, Sadegh

How can an

How can an Iranian be an Iran hater? It is a contradiction in logic. Simply because they vary in political or religious views from some Iranian people does not make one an Iran hater.

Now, if you had said he hates the IRI, then I could agree but then a large group of Iranians in the Diaspora do. Some voice their opinion and others just play it "safe".

By the way Sadegh has been following some  of his posts. How do I know?  Sadegh posted some comments.

Solh va Doosti

Nadia

It's ironic

that FGM was not practiced in a wahhabi country like Saudi Arabia

To Sadegh

Dear Sadegh, it is good see someone has a common sense. For your information, Mr. Masoud Kazemzadeh is an Iran hater. He will do anything and will go to any length to misrepresent Iran and drag Iran into the dirt. Distribution of suspect information is actually one of his best posts. If you follow his posts you will find out how one-sided his views are.

As I don't know......

As I don't know Farsi, I went in search of some English sources. I found the following:

fgm

UNICEF

Education and Network Project

FGM 

Solh va Doosti

Nadia

Dear masood

If you are going to post information on any site, it is your responsibility to make sure what you are posting is true to the best of your knowledge and not put the responsibility on an unnamed scholar.
The links you gave prove fgm is a problem among the kurds in Iran, not among muslims.
by mentioning islam you divert the focus away from the real problem, which is the extremism of the Kurds.

Too bad I just logged off. I

Too bad I just logged off. I hope I don't get deleted...
I did some research on this issue. In almost every place that fgm occurs, it's a socio economic issue. Many women do not want their daughters to go through this but there is no choice as the married life and sustainability of the women depends on the absense of their sexuality.
What I'm saying is that religion per se isn't an issue here. I doubt that Mohammad or Taghi or Naghi ever instructed followers on such a barbaric practice.
It is practiced among muslim and non muslim societies (pagans, tribal cultures etc). You rarely see this problem in developed countries where poverty has such a high price. Also, it isn't as "raayej" among the bourgoisie of the cultures that still practice fgm.
In Iran, this was not a real tradition until recently.
Governments or individuals who want to help, should concentrate on the ecnomic toll that poverty has on cultures where fgm is practiced rather than picking on people's religion or blaming fgm on religion alone.
NazaninC

in Africa

I was disturbed to read in "Monique and Mango rains" that this practice is still claiming victims in sub sahara Africa. Young girls are aware of pain and cruelty involved in this nightmare but are nonetheless powerless from escaping the hands of older practitioner women who do the surgery and often seriously mutilate their subjects. The mens role is vague and appears to be as mere bystanders. The book is a non-fiction work by a US peace corps volunteer and is good reading for people from developing nations.
Women's status in society is a good yardstick to measure a nation's relative intellectual progress.
The less said is better.

In my..

In my women's psychology class we did briefly discuss this. All I have to say is, that wherever this is taking place, it needs to be stopped. There is no excuse for subjecting females to this kind of atrocity. It is clearly a Human Rights violation.

Solh va Doosti

Nadia

I was reading this article earlier

I think the text of your Radio Farda link explains it best.

It's also the same article that I was reading in AmirKabir's newsletter:

//www.autnews.eu/archives/1387,03,0009964

Thanks for the information and I am so very relieved that we're not trying to match the top offenders of this list, like we challenge china for the #1 ranking in executions...

IRANdokht

Sadegh jaan

Dear Sadegh,

I agree with everything you wrote.

This is not my area of specialty, I just posted them here. The little I know, FGM certainly pre-dated Islam and Christianity. In Egypt, BOTH Coptic Christians and Muslims impose fgm. In the Sudan and Nigeria, animists, Christians, and Muslims do fgm.

In Iran it has been extremely rare. I have read that only some Arabs and Balochis have this. I was very surprised to read that some Kurds also have it. Actually I was very surprised. It needs to be discussed and STOPPED.

What I found new was the discussion on the Prophet Mohammad accepting this and thus providing Islamic legitimacy on this misogynist practice. It is up to Islamic scholars to refute the sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad, if in fact he did not say that.

My 2 rials,

MK

Dear Masoud, Genital

Dear Masoud, Genital mutilation and to a lesser extent circumcision are backward and ignorant practices, which find their rationalization in mythical and superstitious nonsense. A lot of the evidence cited in these articles looks pretty suspect however. To my knowledge there is little to no historical precedent in either Arabia or Iran of the practice. And a few marginal incidents in my opinion is not evidence that a mass epidemic of female circumcision is gripping Iran (though I am not saying you suggest such a thing), especially when it's thoroughly alien to Iranian culture as far as I know. From what I have read myself it is pretty much accepted that such practices have their roots in Somalia and some African tribal practices. Such practices have a tribal origin and often originated in polytheistic and animistic beliefs that were then assimilated into subsequent belief systems such as Islam etc... Thanks again Masoud jan...Ba Arezu-ye Movafaghiat, Sadegh