Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, the Iranian vice president for tourism and the director of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, has been under fire after he declared that Iran is “a friend of all people in the world, even Israelis and Americans.” He said almost the same thing a few weeks ago, but “corrected” his comment by saying that by “Israeli people”, he did not include Zionists and Jewish immigrants. Now 200 legislators in the Iranian parliament have asked President Mahmoud Ahmadinehad to dismiss him.
Esmail, an Islamist Iran-based blogger, writes that a group of Islamist students held a demonstration in front of the Cultural Heritage Organization in Tehran to protest against the Vice President. The blogger has published several photos of demonstrators and their slogans such as, “Go live with the lovely Israelis” and “Being a revolutionary requires revolutionary action not illusion”.
Photos from Esmail News.
Esmail writes that, “despite the fact that more than 200 legislators asked for the vice president's dismissal, the number of protesters was small. Maybe one reason is that a specific group of students organized it.”
Esmail adds:
It is surprising that some people instead of criticising Esfandyar Rahim Mashai, are attacking Ahmadinejad. They act like Ahmadinejad wants to recognise Israel and establish relations with the USA. They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad, despite all the pressure, did not retreat on his position regarding the Holocasut.
Hamed Talebi, who writes in Khabarnegare Mosalman blog and supports Ahmadinejad, wrote that he cannot understand why Ahmadinejad supports Mashai considering his comments on Israel, the US, and the world.
Amir Hossein Sabeti, another pro-Ahmadinejad blogger, has published [Fa] the declaration of Basij students from the political sciences and law department in the University of Tehran against Mashai:
What happened now that Mashai proudly insists that Iranian people have friendly relations with Israeli people, and does not want to retreat form his comments? Is it really too much that the children of Islamic Revolution ask Mr. Mashai to only speak of his specialty, and not play the role of government's spokesman?…
Of course, not all bloggers are against Mashai. Zamineh Ensha says [Fa]:
I support Mashai's comments. It is very valuable thing that somebody in the Iranian government repeats that Iranian people are equal with Israelis and Americans. Such a comment in the current international context is important.
20 comments
The Iranian government makes Hitler look like a boy scout. Hitler didn’t opress women, he didn’t stone people to death for sex, he didn’t ban alcohol and pork, and whip people who didn’t refrain. He didn’t segregate the sexes and issue punishments like whipping just for being in the presence of an unrelated member of the opposite sex.
Lets face it, you can’t compare the Iranian government to Hitlers government because that is an insult to nazis. Compared to the Iranian government, Hitlers government was a bunch of really caring people……in fact….unless you were a Jew or a Jewish sympathizer you would say he was pretty ok.
I say organize with a bunch of willing Iranians from around the world and gather together enough educated Iranians to form an interim government. Then attack. It will not be like Iraq……not a bit……because the vast majority of Iranians in Iran want the IRI overthrown. You put the previously selected interim government in power and stay as peace keepers. You execute all members of previous government……without execption….and stuff what the rest of the world says about it. The military is stood down and all members of their military are sent to defined areas like in refugee camps. Anyone who makes trouble, resistance….you kill them…..period…no trials….just kill them.
The new government is to contain no muslims at all and they select from the population suitably qualified people to resume government jobs and build up military and police force. All members of religous police are executed also.
We really have to throw out the rule book when dealing with animals who do not follow any such niceties. America should adopt of policy toward it’s enemies of….no more Mr Nice Guy…..enemies are for crushing..defeating…and stomping into the ground until all will to resist is broken……in the name of freedom…..you bet. Freedom is something you have to maintain with equal force as those that try to take it away.
What do you suppose will happen when America doesn’t have the capability to do any of these things anymore. All these multicultural PC people should take note…..when the shit hits the fan and we are under real and dire threat from the Islamists you will be seen as the enemy from both sides…..the people will turn on you and tear you to pieces. And if they don’t……when the Islamists are running the joint…what do you think your future will be……..what happened when the IRI took over Iran. Ain’t no room for free thinkers in that ideology, you will be the first ones they do away with……and it won’t be a quick painless death either. Slow, drawn out, pain to the max, in public…….to make an example of what happens to free thinkers in the new Islamic Rupublic of America.
The way things are going…..the Iranians will get nukes…..and when they use them on someone….probably us….you PC wankers will still be calling for diplomacy and restraint….you will probably be calling for restraint and more talk as the slaughter half the American people
I’m starting to seriously think that what we need to do is start killing off the intellectuals that are betraying us.
That would be a good first line of defence
Stu, you need to stfu. I am all about Iran bashing, but to say that they are already worse than the Nazis is indescribably offensive. As bad as Ahmedinejad is he hasn’t rounded up all the Jews, forced them to wear yellow stars of David and then herded them into gas chambers to be exterminated like cockroaches. He doesn’t have teams of scientists performing medical experiments on Jews and mentally retarded people like they are nothing more than lab rats. He hasn’t rounded up Jews and Gypsys and put them to work in forced labor camps forcing hundreds of them to live in cramped warehouses with no plumbing whatsover. I have never seen pictures of hundreds of Jews cramped together in huddled quarters forced to defecate on the rottin corpses of their family because there is nowhere else to do it. Iran has not invaded all of its immediate neighbors (yet). I would suggest that you go to a Holocaust museum and see the horrors the Nazis committed before you utter such hurtful, offensive, and downright FACTUALLY INCORRECT statements ever again. I really hate it when people down play the Nazi warcrimes. Nobody in history has ever come close to the level of depravity exhibited by the Nazis….not even if you multiplied Saddam Hussein by Ahmedinjad and then added Slobadan Milosevic would you come half way close to the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Well said Joe, thank you.
Wow Stu- you’re an idiot. “Hitlers government was a bunch of really caring people……in fact….unless you were a Jew or a Jewish sympathizer you would say he was pretty ok.”
Obviously someone was jacking off in history class, your Nazi fetish is blatant in comments like “enemies are for crushing..defeating…and stomping into the ground until all will to resist is broken…”
Unfortunately while you were palm-thrusting away, you missed the part about the Roma people, the disabled, the homosexuals, political dissidents and many other groups that were persecuted by the Nazis. So NO dumb ass, YOU WOULD NOT SAY HE WAS PRETTY OK.
The next part of history you missed was because it was never taught, poor Stu! You didn’t even get to play pocket pool through that chapter. The current political situation in Iran is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy… I’m not sure Stu really knows how to read but others can look up Operation Ajax
What is really interesting to me about the whole affair is that Mashai is simply stating what nearly every Iranian I met while I was there seems to believe: that there is no reason for Iran to be the enemy of Israel or the US. I heard this over and over and over again.
Now that I’ve left, I sometimes find it hard to remember the moderate voices I heard while travelling through Iran and have to continually remind myself that the politicians of the IRI give voice to the worst and most extreme elements of Iranian society.
When one of them speaks like your average taxi driver, like Mashai has, it’s a surprise.
I’m amazed at the lack of education on all sides. The blog of Iranians you read on this site are of ISLAMIST bloggers and anyone who knows anything about Iran will know that the majority of Iranians—the population—are not Islamists. Islamists hijacked the Iranian revolution–and lies and false promises–and now they are in power. Of course they have some support in the country (it’s hard to put it at a figure but it’s absolutely a small minority…most scholars put it at 15-20%) and with that support they have maintained a firm hold on the country. Having said that, within that government and its support base 15-20%, there is a lot of diversity (i.e. read what former President Khatami was like vs. these lunatics) and 3 blogs don’t begin to fully portray the country. Now, Jerusalem Joe, for you to lump of Arab/Muslim/Persian culture together is extremely ignorant. First of all Islam is a religion not a culture (I am fully aware of the interchange between religion and culture; and understand that religion is a cultural phenomenon. Yet it is not culture itself, in most nations—Iran for example—religion and culture are mostly separate entities–with some overlap). Secondly, Arab and Persian culture are greatly different from one another. They have similarities—as all cultures do—but as a whole they are vastly different. Once again, I have spoken to friends (Western friends) who have visited Arab countries and Iran, and they speak of the vast cultural/societal difference between Arabs and Persians. So if you want to make an argument, make sure your starting premise is logical and intellectual viable. Similar point to Robert need to be made, again, that notwithstanding your quotation marks around religion, it still need to be said that religion and culture are not one and the same–hence the need for different words to describe each. More importantly, for you to call modern progress Western is rooted in your deep Eurocentric view of history, in which you don’t understand—or know—how our Western culture has deep roots in the non-Western world–that includes our technological progress. For example, we are deeply indebted to Muslim (and in fact in this case a Persian) scientists for our understanding and expansion of medicine—in fact a medical textbook by the name of The Canon written by Ibn Sina was utilized as an official medical textbook for universities across Europe well into the 18th C. The industrial revolution had aspects of which came from other parts of the globe—for example the piston engine was NOT invented in the European world. I can go on and on this topic, but suffice it to say that Western culture has benefited immensely from non-Western cultures, and our progress would not have been possible without their technological input. Simply, we took their knowledge and of course added to it and expanded it–but they have done the work for far longer. The important point is that from about the mid-18th C onwards, we stopped acknowledging the source of “our” knowledge (and it should be noted that NOT all of this knowledge was non-European, there were in fact European sources of knowledge and technology) and started claiming everything for ourselves. We erased—or forgot—large parts of history, and the progress made from that point on, has been claimed as solely Western—in essence its plagiarism. So for the Muslim world–or places like China for that matter—it’s a tough pill to swallow because they have not forgotten history. What you or I call Western they don’t see—rightly—as Western. That is, knowledge and technology has always flowed through cultures and peoples without commodification and “ownership”. That is how a great deal of knowledge flowed into the European world (and by European I am referring to all cultural/historical European peoples, including European North Americans) from non-European lands–and no one called teaching The Canon of Ibn Sina in Europe as Muslim culture, or “Muslimization”, or “Easternization”. Now that it is time for a flow back to non-Europe from Europe–of new ideas and old non-European ideas that of been expanded–we are calling them ours and claiming that they are fully Western. This causes great problems for non-Europeans and great misunderstanding. In any case, it should be added that “they”–the Muslims–don’t reject modern progress or technology or culture but rather reject certain aspects of it…and they have every right to. I hope that people will learn to read and study a little before making comments in the future, and preferably, read some non-Eurocentric, non-Western biased, overall non-biased (or as limited bias as possible, as bias will always be prevalent in any work), non-Imperial, and non-power serving literature and history. Thank you and good on all of you who have decided to take the time to read this website (and anyone who read through my admittedly verbose comment)