The legacy and history of a man or woman is what can be written on his/her tombstone. Often one word or a few short sentences or poems. There is no person in history who is without defractors but when it is all said and done and the history is written it will end up being that one word or sentence on the tombstone.
You can play word association with famous people in history and other than some ill minded people the vast majority of people have either a positive or negative view of that person. In Iran when you say Mossadegh the vast majority of people associate him with nationalizing the oil. They associate him with taking the Great Britain to the International Court of Justice and win a judgment for Iran. How many people can say they’ve been to the International Court of Justice much less winning a judgement?
Take any other famous person, Hitler is known as the devil but as we speak he is saint to many neo-Nazis and a patriot. A little more specific to USA, Thomas Jefferson is known for being the author of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington as the father of the American revolution and James Madison the author of Bill of Rights, yet all of them were slave owners.
Icons like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are all universally acknowledged as being heros yet they all have detractors too and some can’t stand people having so much love for them. We just don’t know about their detractors much because we’re more focused on our own.
Mossadegh is an Iranian icon like Takhti. Their tombstones already says Heros for the vast majority of Iranians and you can often find their pictures in people’s stores and businesses.
Here in i.com and our made up corner of the world Mossadegh and his legacy are constantly being debated. His detractors are afraid that the “innocent” eyes and ears of young Iranians (or old Iranians for that matter 😉 are being exposed to calling Mossadegh an icon so they go biserk and like allergy can’t help themselves but say something negative every time the word Mossadegh is used!
So I say why not, why not instead of haggling with these people just use the word MOSSADEGH like you’d use a cross to exorcise the devil! The name is truely made for this purpose! It has tashdid in it in the most appropriate way and you can use it again and again to scare the bejesus out of “some” people! I say some because even the British and American intelligence services have admitted their role in trying to defeat Mossadegh and organizing the coup d’état against his Government in 1953 solely because he dared to take on the powerful and be a national figure. So that leaves us with some people who remain allergic to this man and his name!
MOSSADEGH!
