There is an old saying that a bout a religious school that one day in the Hoze-ye Elmi-yee a young student (Talabeh) was getting ready for breaking his fast at the sunset of a Ramadan day. So as it was customary on those days it was preferred by the religious to pray first before breaking the fast and starting to eat.
So to prepare for his pray our student first went to the toiled. As it is the Mullahs custom these people have a praying for everything and hence our Talabeh attempted to start saying the prayer (Zekr) for going to toiled but since he was a fresher he started saying the wrong pray which actually was for eating a meal and it was going as
”Oh mighty God I thank you for this feast that I am about to receive and please help to energize my body with this meal to enable me for serving you on this earth and so on and so forth”
Later on when he finished his prayer he went on to start his meal and before starting the meal he attempted to do the eating pray but instead he was doing the toilet pray stating
“Oh mighty God thank you for cleansing my body form such unclean poisons and hence assuring my health so that I could serve you and your purpose on this earth and so on and so forth”.
His teacher who was bewildered by this performance went to the student and told him that: Well my dear! Although you are saying the prayer correctly but you seem to have confused the holes for your prayer or we say in Persian “Soolakh-e Do-a raa gom kardi aziz”
I started my article with this old joke as it sometime reminds me of the way some of us behave and how we loose the prospective on the subject we are debating on, just to state our disagreement. Hence although we might have the best intentions in the world by loosing the site of reality and ignoring the proportionality of the argument we make a fool of ourselves so badly that instead of being funny it is so tragic that one wishes to bang his head on the wall and to cry for ever.
A few days ago I posted a blog (http://iranian.com/main/blog/areyo-barzan-1 ) on this site a bout the dangers that are threatening our identity culture and historical heritage and about our lack of knowledge about our past and heritage, stating that we need to educate ourselves and our children in order to be able to protect this treasure and hence to be able to hand it over to the next generation intact.
Sadly but not to my surprise I got a few odd responses some of which was so naive that I did not know whether to laugh at it or to cry at our ignorance as a nation especially when such ignorance came from our so called educated elite who reside abroad and are supposed to one day be the savours of this land, its people and its culture.
One of our fellow bloggers after accusing me of being an ultranationalist (Fascist) went on to state that he wished instead of all the services done by Darush the Grate to Iran he would “have gone to pioneer the first democratic election in history of the world”.
Although I do not appose the principal behind the comment made by our friend (pendar-nik) I am still baffled by the level of ignorance, naivety and lose of social historical, and time frame prospective or his failure to read my article properly. First of all in a few lines above our friend comment I mentioned the way Dariush was elected to be the next king and by the standards of those days and even today, that was an election much more democratic that half the world countries elect their leaders or kings even today.
Now! why is it that just to state one’s stubborn disagreement and negativity it is forgotten that we are talking about 2.5 millennium ago and why is it that without considering the state of the world, the conduct of other rulers and nations or even the state of our nation and peoples mindset at the time we expect a modern democracy by today’s standards and instead of recognising the services to our country and history we blame King Darush for not achieving what took the rest of the world another 2500 years (and still counting) to achieve.
Why is it that in spite of being praised by all historians in the world from Xenophon to Herodotus from Grishman and Mole Majeeran to Hertz Feland and many more we still look for petty wrangles to mourn and bring ourselves, our history and national heritage down.
Would that not be as naive of blaming the Challenger disaster on the Wernher von Braun and his poor design for V2 or demonising Right Brothers for their failure to provide an answer to modern aviation problems especially on Concord and Boeing 777?
Another friend came up to accuse me of being an extremist and trying to force feed him what he does not want to know “just as it was attempted and failed in the Pahlavi era“.
Well! My answer to our friend is that first of all I have long passed the point trying to enlighten those who do not want to be enlightened as it is my personal belief that one could always awaken him who is in deepest sleep but could never awaken him who is pretending to be asleep.
Hence my comment was only for those who consider themselves to be Iranian and believe in their nationhood and their obligation to preserve their own identity and history and heritage for the future generations.
Now a days most of our young people do not consider themselves to be an Ommat (Eslami) or a Khalgh (Marxist). But they consider themselves as members of a nation called Iran and inheritors of a culture called Persian
Furthermore I am also apposed to force feeding these subjects to anyone who does not want to know. I especially appose letting any government to use our national historical icons or religious beliefs to promote their own agenda or to pump up their own propaganda. But this does NOT mean that I don’t care about who I am, my identity, my history and my place in the world history or the contributions of my assertors. That is why I believe that protecting and promoting our identity should be our job and not any governments
For the dictators and totalitarian governments who use propaganda as a mean for imposing their force on the people and to hold a grip on the power, there would never be shortage of subjects and tools. If it is not nationalism then it is religion and if it is not religion it is foreign threat or the economy, the ideology and peoples way of life and so on and so forth. Just having a look at dictators around the world one could easily see that the problem lays somewhere else.
If you thing by destroying the tool you can eliminate or even stop the evils force that abuses it you still have a lot to learn my friend.
On the other hand just by having a brief look at the rest of the world especially the Western countries, one could see how perfectly these people protect and promote their identity and heritage and how they teach their children to be proud of their identity and the achievement of generations before them without loosing the site of reality or resorting to extremism and propaganda or arrogant pride and most importantly without allowing opportunist governments or individuals abuse such precious asset to serve their own malicious purpose one starts to wish
To wish that our people, especially our so called intellectual and political opposition abroad could learn a lesson or two from their host nations.
But then again that might be too much to ask or even hope for.
