Blog

What happened

Iran is one of the few countries in the world that has had three revolutions in the past 100 years. It was in 1905 when

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Farewell Hawaii pono

It has been a great pleasure to live among the beautiful people of Hawaii. It also has been a privilege to teach at the Manoa

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About

Greater Iran: A 20th Century Odyssey, by Richard N. Frye. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2005. I first met Professor Frye as a graduate student at

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Blessing in disguise

In the past few decades, the world has entered a new layer (not stage!) of human civilization. Historical layering is a more realistic way of

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A pioneer of a new age

In James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933), an Englishman finds paradise in the Tibetan valley of Shangri-La. Ever since, Shangri-La has symbolically stood for an imaginary

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Mapping love

Of the great mysteries of the universe, love is perhaps one of the most mysterious. We know much about the processes of birth, aging, and

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Choose dialogue

See English translation below FORSAT SHOMAR SOHABAT Daani ke chist dowlat? Didaar yaar didan Dar kooye oo gedaaii, bar khosrovi gozeedan. Az jon tama’ boridan,

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Conspicuous absence

At my primary school in Iran (1944-1949), I started a wall newspaper. Abraham Lincoln was featured in the first issue. He was my cultural hero.

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The fairly obvious

The war in Iraq is a huge gamble.  Both Saddam Hussein and George Bush have proved themselves to be addicted gamblers who should be perhaps

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Universal voice

We live at critical moment in world history. The world has two distinctly different options, to regress into a Hobbsian world of war of all

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The seventh oil war

If and when it happens, an invasion of Iraq will be the seventh oil war in some 50 years. Wars are largely violent struggles for

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Resolutions on Iran

While the nation is discussing how to deal with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, the debate on what to do with Iraq's neighbor to the east

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The ideal scenario

The voices of sanity calling for a strategy of cooperative rather than competitive security in the Mideast are more relevant today than ever before. Zero-sum

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Good idea

When someone asked Mahatma Gandhi what do you think of Western Civilization, he promptly replied, “It is a good idea!” Having traveled on the ancient

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Come together

Interview for the Italian journal, Buddhism and Society. After the attack on the Twin Towers, do you think that we need to start a deep

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The center cannot hold

I have just returned from two inspiring international conferences at Oxford University and Limassol, Cyprus, held in late March 2002. They were sponsored by a

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Axis of excess

In 1993, Samuel Huntington predicted a “Clash of Civilizations”. In 2001, a year declared by the United Nations as “The Year of Dialogue of Civilizations”,

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First city

The ancient Sufi masters believed that life is a spiritual journey through seven cities: Search, Love, Knowledge, Astonishment, Fulfillment, Riches, and Poverty (or Union). In

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