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One result of the recent Palestinian elections is the growing alliance between Hamas and the Iranian regime. Hamas leaders have clearly stated their intention to direct Palestinian foreign policy relations away from the US and EU and toward Iran.
Yet even as this trans-Islamist partnership blossoms (bridging Sunni Islamists and Shi'ite Islamists), the Iranian authorities are cracking down on one of the main icons of Palestinian nationalism and solidarity: the keffiyeh. News of the crackdown comes from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which is reporting on the Iranian regime's latest repression of the Ahwazi Arab minority:
Ahwazis are using officially sanctioned religious festivals as a space for protest against the regime's policy of ethnic cleansing in Khuzestan and extreme poverty. In defiance of the regime's persecution, they have displayed symbols of Arab cultural identity, including wearing of the red keffiyeh and dishdasha, flying the Ahwaz national flag and performing Arab cultural plays in the streets.
Security chiefs have previously indicated that the wearing of the keffiyeh - a traditional Arab headdress - was forbidden. In November's Eid-al-Fitr demonstrations in Ahwaz, Governor General Heyat Mojadam ordered all those wearing keffiyeh be arrested. An Ahwazi Arab youth freed from prison following his arrest during the Eid-al-Fitr protests spoke of how the prosecutor, Mr Farhadi-Rad, argued that the wearing of the red keffiyeh was a "political statement" that indicated support for secessionism.
Gotta love the irony. It's quite a civil rights nadir when you get arrested simply for the style of your scarf. Call the fashion police!
What a day. What a week. No deep thoughts, just this link to a recent article on Libya's youth from the Dallas Morning News:
TRIPOLI, Libya – Redha Belhaj's life has not moved as he had hoped.
"At this moment, I don't have a car or a job or a house," said Mr. Belhaj, 26, an aspiring architect who smiles wearily as he expresses disappointment. "When will I have those things? If I had enough money, I would be engaged or married. It makes me very sad."
...Recent estimates by consultants put Libya's unemployment rate at 25 percent. Many of the unemployed are men about Mr. Belhaj's age. Their ranks have grown so large that prominent Libyans refer to them as the country's "lost generation."
...With only 5.8 million people, the country has an ample supply of jobs that Libyans traditionally shun. Foreigners from other African countries fill most of these jobs in hotels, restaurants and construction. Many Libyans have grown attached to easy government jobs facilitated by oil revenues. There is little incentive to work hard – wages have been fixed by law since 1981 – or even show up.
...Mr. Dernawi had already interrupted his studies several times to work as an electrician, plumber and painter of curbs and gutters. Although tuition was free, he could not afford tools like design paper and aerial photographs, which quadrupled in price during the period of sanctions.
....To save money for a house and to get married after a four-year engagement, he also works at one of Tripoli's few gourmet coffee shops and designs computerized blueprints for architects.
...He confesses that so much work, and so few resources for planning his life, leaves him "boiling inside." Still, he thinks of returning to the university.
"Of course, I have to live in a daydream," Mr. Dernawi says. "We have to hope that it changes."
The man whose 36 years of corrupt rule has spawned the "lost generation" is pictured above. But congratulations to Mr. Dernawi for continuing to hope and pursue a "daydream"; change will come soon.
Well, it took some creative work-arounds, but Wednesday evening saw a historic event in Riyadh: men and women sat together at a soccer game. This is what goes for civil rights progress in Saudi Arabia... but let's try to look on the bright side. (See our earlier report for background.)
The compromise that enabled such a monumental breakthrough was the Saudi authorities decision to let Swedish fans (and a few Saudis, evidently) sit in a "media" section, although it appears few were actually journalists.
Elaph has a photo gallery from the historic day. It's worth checking out, as it captures a moment of bizarre encounter between one of the world's most open societies and one of the most closed. International soccer forced them to collide. Soccer passions trumped "multi-cultural" sensitivies, as Swedish women demanded to see their national team in action. And Saudi authorities ultimately relaxed their institutionalized segregation.
There is, it appears, a limit to tolerating intolerance. And just maybe the movement to overturn discrimination against women in Saudi Arabia will become known as "The Soccer Revolution". Maybe.
P.S. For more on this larger struggle, see Mody Al-Khalaf's latest column:
I ask for my Islamic rights to travel with any “mahram” and not just my legal guardian. I ask for my Islamic right to eat at a restaurant without a male chaperone. I ask for my Islamic right to drive and not be forced to ride alone with a non-mahram. I ask for my Islamic right to get medical treatment without male consent. I ask for my Islamic right to rent a house without male consent. I ask for my Islamic right to get an education and job without male consent.
And finally, as a Muslim, I ask for my right to choose. In any argument, a Muslim has the right to choose the interpretations he or she wants instead of being forced to go along with other people’s choices. Since I am speaking about women’s rights in particular, where are my rights to choose the interpretations I want regarding my hijab, for example? Whether to cover my face or not is open to several interpretations; and there is certainly no Islamic law that says I must wear black.
Not to mention the right to attend a soccer game...
The photo at right depicts a funeral in Iran. It comes via Omid - "hope" in Farsi - the fascinating online memorial archive of Iranian executions just launched by the Abdorrahman Boroumond Foundation. Or, as the foundation calls it, a "memorial in defense of human rights."
The website features a database - in English and Farsi - profiling hundreds of individuals murdered by the Iranian regime. The site describes Omid as a virtual society:
The men and women whose stories you can read on this page are now all citizens of a silent city named Omid ("hope" in Persian). There, victims of persecution have found a common life whose substance is memory.
Omid's citizens were of varying social origins, nationalities, and religions; they held diverse, and often opposing, opinions and ideologies. Despite the differences in their personality, spirit and moral fiber, they are all united in Omid by their natural rights and their humanity. What makes them fellow citizens is the fact that one day each of them was unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. At that moment, while the world watched the unspeakable happen, an individual destiny was shattered, a family was destroyed, and an indescribable suffering was inflicted.
If you wander around this city, you will realize that, through their common ordeal, the citizens of Omid have created another Iran, an imaginary Iran: a democratic polity, pluralistic and diverse, where citizens posthumously enjoy their human rights.
Visit Omid, meet its citizens, and, by doing so, bring them back in memory. Let them challenge our conscience so that in the future we will prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again.
Take a look around the "city." We'll be back tomorrow with more on the activists behind this remarkable site.
