VISIT TO THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

21st October 2012, 4th Dhul Hijah 1433
Bismillah-i-Rehman-i-Raheem

I visited The Islamic Republic of Iran from 11th to 20th October. Let me be clear and unambiguous at the outset. I am a staunch supporter of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution. Therefore my analysis will be from my own viewpoint with a belief that anything which is against the principles of Islamic Revolution is not good. Thus you may call it a "biased" report but this is what it is. I am here not as an independent journalist giving an unbiased, independent assessment of the situation. I right this report with two characteristics one as a supporter of the revolution and one as a follower of Ahl-ul-Bait.

Islamic Revolution of Iran holds a special place in my life because it occurred at a time when I was in the prime of my youth, 20 years of age to be more precise. The influence that it had on me and many other young people at that time is beyond description. As I have said in an earlier post the personality of Imam Khomeini (R.A) had such an influence on our lives that it changed the whole vision of life. I still look back at those days with nostalgia it was simply electrifying. Anyway in spite of the fact that I never had a chance to visit the Islamic Republic even though it has been more than 30 years since the revolution I have remained dedicated and committed to the ideals of the revolution and have felt happiness at times of triumphs and felt sad at moments of failures both of which have been in abundance. My visit to the Islamic Republic (IR) now was not something which I planned. In fact it was a bolt from the blue in a true sense of a word. One day early morning at about 7 A.M I got a call from my cousin Brother Imtiaz Hussain asking if I was ready to visit the IR to attend a conference arranged by World Ahl-ul-Bait Assembly. It was in fact our mutual friend Brother Qalbi Hussain Rizvi who lives in Qom Iran who had asked Imtiaz Sahib to attend the conference but he proposed my name and thus the things started rolling. Thus I finally left Delhi on 11th of October 2010 in Emirates flight via Dubai. So my story actually starts from the Dubai International Airport on 11th of October and will end there on 20th of October.

While I waited for the Dubai -Tehran flight my first encounter was with a young lady not from Iran but from Pakistan. She was from Quetta and was a Hazara. She was going to Tehran to visit her aunt. So while visiting Iran I started my journey hearing stories about the grave situation of the Hazaras of Quetta. It was very sad to know about their plight, which is a direct consequence of the rise of Salafi-Takfiri ideology in the Sunni world. I have discussed about them before just one word about their core belief. According to them the Muslim population of the world is just a couple of million, those who follow their opinion rest are all kafirs and mushriks. Not only that they think the violation of honour, life and properties of these "mushriks" and "kuffar" as part of Jihad. The result everyone knows : slit the throats of these "kuffars" and "mushriks" while chanting Allah-u-Akbar, destroy and demolish every tomb, every shrine, every monument of the Awliya, and what not. This was just a diversion because I felt it my duty to raise my voice for the oppressed Hazaras whose only blame is that the are Shias. The young lady told me of an interesting fact that some of the problem is economic. The lazy Balochs who don't do any work feel threatened by the economic prosperity and progress of the hard working Hazaras and it is also partly ethnic.

Anyway passengers started joining one by one. Dubai International Airport is a huge, and bustling airport where you have lots of people of multitude of nationalities and it is often difficult to know who is from where. But segregation started when announcement for boarding was finally made and all those passengers travelling to Tehran got assembled together and here I got my first surprise. If you ask what is the single most important symbol of the Islamic Revolution we are familiar with the answer is HIJAB and this was conspicuous by it's absence in the Iranian ladies present in the waiting area. As a matter of fact there was nothing to suggest that they are anything near to the picture of revolution one knows; one of millions of Iranian women walking down the streets of Tehran in millions in full Hijab wearing the traditional iranian chadoor. There was not even a single lady with even a trace of any Hijab at all not to talk of a Chadoor.

This above shown picture which used to be a trademark of the revolution we have known and to the principles of which we continue to remain dedicated was no where in view in that waiting room. Instead what was visible was something which you will not even see in Paris or Las Vegas. So this is my first topic of discussion about which I will talk in my subsequent updates. One thing should be clear before I close my first post. My visit was for a very short time and my exposure was very limited both in time and space. This time-span and this exposure can in no way be said to be enough to form an opinion about various aspects of contemporary Iranian society and neither do I make such a claim. These are my personal reflections about my highly limited and selective exposure to Iranian society and this important aspect should be kept in mind while reading this post. The sample size is so small and methodology so flawed that it no way can be said to be an actual representation of highly complex and diverse society in Iran.
23-10-2012
The scene which I depicted above was depressing to me personally and my trip thus started on a wrong foot. This continued even in the plane where wine was served right and left and almost everyone was busy watching Hollywood movies. This was not what I was expecting to see. Was the Western Media right after all when it projected the same picture of Iran as I was seeing? Had I made a fool of myself by thinking that the Western Media was deliberately distorting the picture of the Islamic Republic? They might have been right and my view seemed to have been biased because of my love for the Revolution and IR. These Iranians probably represent the upper and affluent strata of the society as they were in a position to fly to Dubai and almost everyone was carrying something from Dubai Duty Free. As will become evident subsequently Iranian  Society seems to be a highly fragmented and complex one and trying to stereotype them is problematic. Both   type of persons: one who expects Iranians society to be Westernised, alcohol imbibing, womanising one which is being governed by fanatic, backward looking theocracy and the one who expects all Iranians to be models of piety and virtue with revolutionary zeal are going to be disappointed. I got an impression that like every other society and in fact more so Iran seems to be divided into two different worlds which are poles apart with a large middle group which is indifferent. This was actually what came out to be the case when I had a discussion with Mr. Roullah Rizvi who is the son of Brother Qalbi Hussain Rizvi. This young man appeared to be very well informed, intelligent and frank young man with lot of revolutionary zeal. He had finished his MTech from Tehran University and had recently joined the Islamic Seminary in Qom to study religious sciences. He classified Iranians into three types: anti-revolutionary (zidi inqilab), non-revolutionary (gairi inqilabi) and revolutionary (inqilabi). Majority seem to be in the middle group like in most countries with their only aim being to live a comfortable material life not concerned about the ideological battle going on between the first and the second group. Even these groups are not homogeneous with some being very active and at virtual war. Thus the notion of "all good" and "all bad" is not true and anyone who goes to Iran with this pre-conceived notion is bound to be disappointed like I was in my first encounter before I realised my mistake and before I had an opportunity to see some other parts of Iran.