As you may be aware, US intelligence agencies just concluded that Iran is still making enriched uranium, but that it does not have a specific nuclear weapons program right now. Ahmadinejad has called the report a "declaration of surrender" on behalf of the United States. What do ordinary Iranians such as yourself think of the report? How is it being talked about?

I can not tell about others but I will write my own opinions regarding this issue. I believe that the Islamic Regime (and nowadays Ahmadinejad) has a long plan to make nuclear weapons and use it for it's survival (kind of a new cold war). I do not call the US intelligence's report a "declaration of surrender" but a "we will be able to tolerate Iran for more years" and "Iran is not a emergency case".

Here in Iran, people are under the influence of the uni-voice mass Media. Telly tells them what to think and many of them do. I think you will be able to find millions and millions of Iranians who think that having access to the nuclear energy is our first priority and the west world is progressing based on nuclear energy. TV says that the nuclear energy is the cheapest and the cleanest form and energy and the US is trying it's best to prevent us from "inventing" it. On our side, we hear that US is preventing Iran from using nuclear energy.

QuantumFog wrote:

This is a question I need to ask of a Muslim in the Middle East; please correct me if I'm wrong in addressing this to you. The subject didn't seem to be appropriate for any of the current topics on your website.
The question has to do with perception. Is there any undercurrent of negativity associated with US soldiers, considering about 85% of them are Christian?
Thanks.

Hi there,
I don't think so. At least in my view and all of my friends view, these issues has nothing to do with religion. We believe that Muslim Fundamentalists are part of this problem but this is more about Fundamentalism than being a Muslim.
And we do not see USA/UK as Christian soldiers. We see them as a "soldiers" whom are controlled by a Rightist government.
At the end I have to mention that our governmental propaganda, insists that this "war" is between Muslims and Nonmuslims. In their propaganda, Iran is a very successful Muslim country and NonMuslims are invading us to stop this progressive Islam :)

Jadi

I had this email in my mailbox, I'm going to answer it here.

>Hello
>
> I am an italian boy who visited your blog and i would like to tell you that it is really well done! my congratulations!
> Then i would like to ask you some question about iran because i am going to make a trip before university(if my mother let me come because she thinks iran is like afghanistan)
> 1)is this a good period for making a trip? how police behave with foreigners?
> 2)how is the life in tehran in terms of money?i am italian and here in italy life is not cheap!
> 3)is it true that young people, if they see a foreigners, start making a lot of questions about his/her country and what she/he thinks about iran?
>
> i hope u will answer. thank you very much
>
> matteo

Hi Matteo,

1. Police behavior is good. But you can not have sex, alchole,

2. Lets talk in Euros. A sandwich is 1 Euro, A good laptop is 1400 Euros, A bus from Tehran to another city is around 8 Euros. A shared taxi for transporting in city is 0.5 Euro. A book is 3 Euros. A luxury meal in a good restaurant is 20 Euros. A t-shirt is 5-15 Euros, A pair of shoes is 15-50 Euros, One kilo of meat is 8 Euros, One Litre of milk is 0.5 Euro, A bread is 0.2 Euro, One kilo of orange is 1 Euro and the best part: one litre of gas is 0.08 Euro ! ... enough ? :) I don't know about the hotels' price but you can check them on the internet (i wish!)

3. Difficult question ! For sure younger generation is interested to know more and more about other countries and if you start to talk with them, they will have many questions. I think many of them will ask "What do you think about Iran ?" I think the reason is something like this: We believe that we have a good country and we are afraid what other people think about our country in this situation. So they want to ask to be sure that YOU know the difference between our government and our people. This is one theory, the other theory is "This question is simple and everybody knows how to ask What do you think about Iran so they ask it :D"


Jadi

p.s. If you are coming to Iran it's better to be here 6 months later; In the SPRING. Nowadays Tehran is cold and if you are coming to Iran in the fall or winter, it's better to visit south of Iran which is warmer.

Hello Jadi,
[...]
My question is this. I have read that Baha'i's are persecuted in Iran and that the government of Iran does not allow them the same rights and freedoms of other Iranian citizens. So, how do the younger people of Iran feel about this? Do they agree that Baha'i's should be treated like this or do they disagree with their governments treatment of them? Also, is the general public aware of how the Baha'i's are treated in Iran?

I really hope you are OK with me asking these question. Thank you.

Remi

Hi Remi,

[...]

I know about Bahai's and their Ideas and their situation. I've never had an Baha'i friend but met some Baha'i people. I think their situation in Iran is one of the worst things in this country and one of my biggest shames as an Iranian. They can not work for the government, can not study in the universities and as you said, they do not have same rights as me.

I can not talk on behalf of Iranians but me myself am against this situation. I think people should be free to choose their ideas and be equal with each other, independent of their ideas.

Let me add something more. When talking with even pro-Islamic people, they accept that this kind of treat is not fair, good or even an Islamic rule. During Prophet Muhammad's era, people had the right to talk about their ideas and live on their ideas (the pro-Islamics say) so we can not accept the situation of Baha'i people in Iran.

In Iran we have kind of freedom of religion but only for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians (Ancient Iranian). These religions have their parliament members and can perform their prayers and rules. But no other religion (or atheistic believes) can exist here.

wow.. another set of questions... let's answer them too. I know I've answered many questions recently but this is also a nice set about women and their roles.

Hi Jadi,
[...]

1. What is the role of a woman for you ?
2. How does the islami discribe the role of a woman?
How would these prescribe Role transfered by the laws and by the society?
Is there something like a doublelive?
Are there differences between the countryside and the big citys?
(just a question which interesst me -not for the work- How important is the islam for young people today?)
3. How is her possition reference to the man?
Would she prefer or underprivileged?
If she would prefer, how?
If she would underprivilegegd or discriminat, how?
Are there some differences between what the legislator say and it the society handle it?
4. In which way woman could study and have a job?
Are there some jobs which they are not allowed to work and if yes, which?
5. How is the sexuallity role of a woman?
How important is it for a young woman to be a virgin before she get married?
Do they hold on this rule to be a virgin or search they ways to have sex before marriage?
6. Under which rules the woman have to suit? Do they avoid these laws and how?

O.k. for now thats are all of my questions. -I know, that are much, SORRY!!!-
[...]

Bye bye

Kneltzel

1. What is the role of a woman for you ?
The role of a woman? I think her role is the role of any human. She can choose her role. I look at her as an human :) Maybe I did not get the question.

2. How does the islami discribe the role of a woman?
How would these prescribe Role transfered by the laws and by the society?
Is there something like a doublelive?
Are there differences between the countryside and the big citys?
(just a question which interesst me -not for the work- How important is the islam for young people today?)
Um... difficult. Islamic beliefs are very diverse and different and strongly dependent on the interpretations. But I think in most of them women's most important role is to be good mothers, raise good children and be good wives. There people who believe in this interpretation and people who do not. I think in cities and among educated people it is more common to believe that a woman is more than a mother and more than a wife.

Our law is an Islamic one, so you can see this interpretation of Islam in it. In our law a husband can ask from the judge to order her wife not work outside the house. This law (that a woman can not work if her husband finds it against family's order) was accepted 100 years ago but nowadays more and more people believe that women has same rights as men. Maybe not the majority but the number is increasing, specially among the younger generation.

3. How is her possition reference to the man?
Would she prefer or underprivileged?
If she would prefer, how?
If she would underprivilegegd or discriminat, how?
Are there some differences between what the legislator say and it the society handle it?
You know. I can not answer this one. For me, she is equal but I can not tell about whole society. I thing in rural areas, women are less than men. We can see the same pattern in cities but with less density. For sure there are some discriminations. have a look at We-change.org, 1000000 signatures against discriminatory laws.


4. In which way woman could study and have a job?
Are there some jobs which they are not allowed to work and if yes, which?
At least 64% of university students are women :D but few of them have a chance to be among more important jobs. Leila (my wife) is an communication engineer and works for Nokia as an IP Planner. They are demanding their rights, they study well, enter the universities, live separately from their family and show to the others and the society that it is possible. But.. there are jobs in which girls can not enter. Some of them because of the society; such as truck driver, taxi driver, construction worker, .... Although there are some female drivers in Iran (even one truck driver) but as many other societies, their existence is strange for most of the people. There are also some jobs in which women are not allowed to work legally, among them I can mention military jobs (pilots, soldiers, ...), judge (because in the legistrator believes their brain is not suitable for this!) and waitress in a coffee shop !

5. How is the sexuallity role of a woman?
How important is it for a young woman to be a virgin before she get married?
Do they hold on this rule to be a virgin or search they ways to have sex before marriage?
In Islam, a women should obey his husband's orders and be ready for sex whenever he says. I think in society this depends to each person and each family.
Being a virgin is still important and in older times it was vital to be a virgin. The pattern might be changing as sex before marriage is increasing, specially if the boy and girl intended to marry each other. Have a look at Women Have Surgery to 'Restore' Virginity :) This is common but this also shows a trend toward pre marriage sex.


6. Under which rules the woman have to suit? Do they avoid these laws and how?
You mean their clothing ? If I am right have a look at my older article on Islamic Fashion Show In Islamic-Iran. If I did not get the meaning of suit, inform me :)

Important: there are MY ideas. To have a reliable answer you have to conduct a research about each question :D

Let's answer this email :) A nice collections of questions on blogging in Iran. After a long delay. Pardon me guys!

Hello Jadi

We are three students from a university in Denmark and we are writing a project about Iranian bloggers. We've been looking at blogsbyiranians.com and found your blog interesting. We hope that you will help us in our research by answering the few questions listed below. You don't necessarily have to answer all the questions, but any information that you can give us will be greatly appreciated.


How many visitors do your blog have on average?

Why did you begin to blog?

What are you hoping to achieve with your blog?

Do you read/write/comment blogs both in Persian and English?

Do you see blogging having any effect on the Iranian society today, if so which?

How do you think the blog culture in Iran will develop in the future?


Best regards

Mikkel, Lasse and Kristian

How many visitors do your blog have on average?
These days it is around 550 people each day. In previous month (Jan 2007) I had 16834.

Why did you begin to blog?
I started blogging something around 5 years ago; but in Farsi (Pesian). Something around 2 years ago my famous farsi weblog (called http://jadi.net) was filtered so I decided to start an English weblog and started Inside Iran to write about my country. Before the censorship I was writing about everything, from gay rights, from nuclear pollutions and from religion. But after government censored that site, I started to write specially about the freedom of expression in my country and digital security in farsi (http://freekeyboard.net). I also started this weblog to tell the world what is happening in my country and at last I continued my divers blogging in my general weblog (http://jadi.wordpress.com).

What are you hoping to achieve with your blog?
I am writing for human rights and specially Freedom Of Expression in the Internet. For sure I will not reach to this goal by a weblog but I am sure that 1 is better than none and ten is better than 1. I am sure that writing about these issues make people more and more sensitive about it and if people will know enough about freedom of expression, the world will be a better place to live in.

In my country, we do not have access to the media. All the media is controlled by the government; so the weblog and the Internet is our only hope to communicate. We have to defend this right.


Do you read/write/comment blogs both in Persian and English?

	read	write	comment
Farsi (Persian)	yes	yes	yes
English	yes	yes	no :)

I do not comment that much in English weblog. I don't know why. Maybe I am not brave enough to write in English in others weblogs. I think I should start ;)

Do you see blogging having any effect on the Iranian society today, if so which?
Oh yes! In many circumstances the weblogs are the only source of the news. For example when police attacked the peaceful demonstration of the women in Tehran ( and ) the weblogs and specially the Kosoof.com's photos were the only source of the news.

Another example? There are weblogs dedicated to organizing and reporting on special movements / days (say students demonstration against President Ahmadinejad 16 azar 85 or Otobos1 which means TheBusOrganazation which is dedicated to the arrest of Mansour Osanlou, head of the executive committee of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company ).

How do you think the blog culture in Iran will develop in the future?
I am a researcher on this field. My job is researching on weblogs and educating people and organizations about it. The Weblogestan (farsi blogsphere) is professionalizing. After the first rush to writing weblogs, now the curve is slowing down but we see more and more professionals who write weblogs. At the begining years, the bloggers mostly were the younger generation who wanted to TALK and shout that "I AM HERE! I AM ALIVE" but in the recent years we see more and more journalists who use blogs as a media for their "unpublishable articles in the newspapers". We see more and more professors who use their blogs to write about their real beliefs and we see more and more minority who use weblog as a tool to show that they exist.

Eva writes:

Hi Jadi,

I came across this news item on BBC news channel, about the iranian brain drain.
Do you also consider living or studying in another country...?

Best,
Eva

And I think today is the best day to answer this question cause yesterday once brave reporter asked a same question from our president Ahmadi-Nejad. Ahmadinejad answered This brain drain is not true cause I am here ! I am one of the intellectulas of the country and I am an professor and I AM STILL IN IRAN; so there is no brain drain ! Poor man.

My answer is: Yes, there is a HUGE brain drain in Iran. Some say more than 90% percent of our international winners of scientific olympiads had left the country and I know at least 10 of my best friends who are living abroad for a better life. Those are most educated and intellectual Iranians.

But what about myself? I think I have to do my best in the world. It is good to help others and this is the most joy in life. So I try to be at the place in which I can do best. I have born in Iran and raised here; so I know the culture, the language, the people and the problems. I am more useful here. Specially these days, we have to be in our country to courage other people. Everybody is leaving the country so we have to stay here to show to others that BEING HERE AND WORKING IS POSSIBLE. You hear "nothing can be done", if I leave my country other people will say "another one left this poor country, I hope my turn will come soon". So I am not going to be another PROOF for this "nothing can be done". I am here, doing something and I am sure that one day I will be able to say "Those days I did'nt left the coutry. I stayed and did my best".

For sure if I feel that leaving the country will be more helpful to others I will leave but nowadays Leila (my wife) and I must be here to show that "working is possible".

Hi

My name is Vivek. I was born in India and now engineering in USA. I have quesio for u. I hope u'll answer.
1) What do Iranian people think about India?
2) Is there any Indian movies or Music in India?
3) Are there Indian restaurants in Iran?

Thanks

Vivek

1) What do Iranian people think about India?
As you may guess my answer is: It is impossible to say what Iranian People think about something. I can talk about myself and the people I know. As you know, Iran and India are neibours. They had some wars centuries ago and Irnaians won and even occupied India for some years I think. For sure there were some cruelty and wrong-doings :( Sorrry !

India has also many influences on our poets and my favorite old style poem are "Indian Style" (i.e. Saeb).

I think we like Indian people these days. They are famouse programmers and we adore their multi-cultural democracy. I also am very interested in Indian religons (specially Hindu and Sikhism). I have a printed photo of Shiva in my room and many sculptures of Indian gods in my mothers house. I also respect Sikhism ideas and their peaceful view to the world. It is also interesting for us that we have some shared words in Indian and Farsi.

2) Is there any Indian movies or Music in India? (I think it is a mistake, you meant in Iran?)
Oh ! Is there any country without Indian Music and Movies ? :) I think you can not find one Iranian person who have never seen an Indian movie. We even have and expression wichi says "It became Indian" (farsi: Hendi shod) which means it ended like indian movies! Check these Farsi weblogs, they are all about Bollywood:

• http://www.bollywood4u.mihanblog.com/


• http://bahrashtari.persianblog.com/


• http://bollywoodiran.persianblog.com/


• http://bollywood123.persianblog.com/

3) Are there Indian restaurants in Iran?
Oh yes. I have gone to two of them. Taj Mahal and Tandor. Taj Mahal is a luxury place who "pretends" to be Indian. I mean I didn't liked it. The food was normal and the prices was too high. But Leila (My wife) and me are big fans of Tandor (just near 7tir square). It is an Indian hotel/resturant and as it is an resturant for Indians, the resturant has to be an more realistic Indian one. They are hot (not as a real Indian HOT) and Indian (vegetarian or chicken or lamp) and the atmosphier is friendly and charming ! I like it and we go may be once a season :)

---

Related article: Glimpses of Indian in Tehran

I had some emails asking about AoE elections. I am not into politics and I don't know that much about it but I will try to write my opinions.

At Friday, we had two major elections. I have wrote about it some weeks ago (Pressure, Experts and brave people). The government announced that participation in Tehran was 47%. Have in mind that we had 3 elections on Friday: Councils, Assembly of Experts and mid-course(?) Parliament.

I did not participated because I did not had any appropriate candidate. Government had said that the results will be announced the next night but they have not announced it yet (3 days after the desired day). Some people and some reformist candidates are protesting against cause they believe the government is going to cheat.

In the AoE the results are not with Ahmadinejads group. Hashemi Rafsanjani is first and the pro-Ahmadinejad candidate is 6th (I think the first 15 will be in the AoE from Tehran). Right know the first candidate has 1'500'000 votes and this is from a city with 10'000'000 of population.

The main point about this elections was if our leader dies, one of these people are going to be the next leader so it was a great competition for those old people. For me, the elections was not important at all because I am sure in their next meeting -as always- they are going to say we have the best leader and this will happen each year. They never argue for peoples rights, they never criticize the leader cause they are all the same.

17. Who are (or were) the major artists and writers?
We are a country with a history of 2500 years (Persia), So we have many writers, poets and scientists from the previous centuries. I think the most famous poets are Molana and Ferdowsi. From the scientists we can mention Khayyam and Razi (discoverer of Alcohol). And about the contemporary artists, I can mention Mohsen Makhmalbaf (film director) and Shamloo.

Hey ! There are many people I can mention but I think they are not famous outside Iran. And keep in mind, Persia was one of the largest emperatories in the ancient times so our territory was much larger than this days. So many people start to argue if Molana was an Iranian or Turkish, if Bidel was Iranian or Afghan, etc. I do not argue about this, Iran was a big territory those days but it is much smaller these days. You can consider Molana as a Turk, Bidel as a Afghan and ... :)

18. What kind of music is popular at this time? Who is the major pop star or movie star at the present time?
We have two kind of music here: legal and illegal !
Every album has to have a license. You can not publish a song without a license from the government ! So we have two kind of music: internal (legal) and imported (mainly from Los Angeles). Many people listen to Imported POP music and some people like traditional Iranian music. Most famous traditional singer is Shajarian and some of the popular pop stars are Dariush and Googoosh.

19. How Patriotic are you about your country?
Not that much. I consider myself as an Internationalist. I love human race; with any gender, any color and in any country but I work in my country because I know the culture, the language and because it need more work :)
There is proverb in Farsi which says "Art is in the hands of Iranians" and there are many other Patriotic sayings but I am sure every culture and every country has it's own great poets, highlights and etc. The only point is that we have to study about them.


20. If you did not live in your country, where would you want to live?
I have just seen some counties and I do not know about all the world. But I really loved Netherlands (Thank you all guys there in Netherlands!). But do not miss understand me. I am glad that I have born in Iran because I know what I have to do here. It is easy to step for human rights in Iran; You easily will know what is right and what is wrong and what has to be done. Deciding what to do is much more difficult in an calm, peaceful country.