By Eric Vandenbroeck
and co-workers
Although that is what
the Nazis plus many Iranians believed (or do they?), ‘racially speaking’, there
is no such thing as ‘Aryan’ and none Aryan --- although Arabs supposed to be ‘Semites’
just like the Jews, the Nazis never killed any Muslims only Jewish ‘Semites.’
Furthermore, although only ‘Aryans’ supposed to be allowed to join the SS,
there was a (‘Semitic’) Muslim unit of SS soldiers under leadership of the
(Palestinian) Mufti of Jerusalem.
To gain a new
favorite status for an alignment of the Muslim world, Hitler with the help of
the Palestinians wanted to exterminate half a million Jews in what is now
Israel plus all Jews in Tunisia and Syria. SS Walter Schellenberg (Head of the
Secret Service) wrote Summer 1942: The extreme friendliness of the Muslim world
towards Hitler comes from the hope he will remove the Jews from the Middle
East.” For this end, a family member of later President Yasser Arafat, leading
pan-Arabist Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974),
met with Adolf Eichman to discuss a ‘Master Plan’ for
the alignment of the ‘Arab World’ with Nazi Germany. In fact The history of the
Middle East would have been completely different and a Jewish state could never
have been established if the Germans and Arabs had joined forces.
A chauvinistic
organization named "Anjoman-e Iran-e Javan"
(the Young Jran's Association) officially began its
activities in 1921, the year of Reza Khan's coup d'etat
against the Qajar king Mahmud Afshar, a well-known pan-Aryanist, was selected
as the chairman of the organization. The group published a journal titled Ayandeh (the future), as its official organ. In the
inaugural issue of Ayandeh, published in June 1925,
the group put forth its manifesto, expressing the urgent need for
"National unity" in Iran. Achieving national unity means that the
Aryan language Farsi must be dominant throughout the whole country, that
regional differences in clothing, customs and so on must disappear, and that
political autonomy of different regions must be eliminated. Unless we achieve
national unity in realms of language, behavior, clothing, etc. we will be in
constant danger of losing our sovereignty and territorial integrity. (Afshar,
1925, pp. 5-6)
In 1934 then, the
government issued a directive demanding the renaming (in foreign usage) of the
country from Persia to Iran. As a major justification for this name-change, the
directive cited the strong connection between the name, Iran' and the 'Aryan
race: "Because Iran was the birthplace and origin of Aryans:' it argued,
it is natural that we should want to take advantage of this name, particularly
since these days in the great nations of the world noise has gotten out
regarding the Aryan race which indicates the greatness of the race 3lld
civilization of ancient Iran. (Memo no. 41749, 3-10-1313/1934; also Kashani-Sabet, 1999, p. 218)
Later, linguicide,
the deliberate killing of language, became the official policy of three states
that divide Kurdish speakers-Turkey, during 1925-1941, and since the
1960’s to date. ”I have experienced linguicide as a native speaker of Kurdish.
Born into a Kurdish family in a Kurdish town. I had to get my education in
Aryan Farsi, the only official language in Iran, a multilingual country where
Farsi was the native tongue of only half the population. Fearing prison and
torture of her children, my mother burnt, four times during my life, the few
Kurdish books and records we had, acquired clandestinely. Silence about the
linguicide of Kurdish or other languages is, I contend, a political position
which cannot be justified by claims to the neutrality or autonomy of
linguistics.” (Hassanpour, 2000. pp. 33-39).
In fact there is a
strong connection between one's sense of identity and the names that one uses
to refer to oneself, one's ethnic group, and various features of the
environment in which one lives, features such as land, territory, historical
monuments, landmarks, rivers, and mountains. These names denote a profound
connection between one's Language-culture and one's surrounding environment. It
is not an accident that the eradication and replacement of indigenous names and
words have been a major preoccupation of all colonial powers. Supplanting of
names, words, and concepts gradually give way to the replacing of a language in
its entirety. And when a language is banned, discredited, and destroyed, with
it is destroyed a pan of consciousness that connects one to one' s people,
history, land and culture into which one is born. In such cases, one cannot
find, the right words' to tell his/her story, because such words no longer
exist for him/her. One's indigenous language is the only direct means through
which one transmits his/her people's oral knowledge, literature, myths,
narratives, histories, and stories.
Deprived of his/her
means of communication and expression, the colonized person becomes a faceless,
tongue less individual with no past, no history, and no place to call his/her
own. It is at this point that the dominant group becomes emboldened to lay
claim on lands and territories that belong to the colonized and excluded Other.
Post-Qajar
(1925-present) Iran presents a glaring example of this sort. In Iran's modem
history, there is no indication of any attempt to suppress or eliminate the
country's diverse languages, cultures, and ethnic groups prior to the beginning
of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. Up to this point, ever since the demise of Sasanid dynasty in the seventh century, almost all of the
major ruling courts were of non-Farsi ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. In
spite of this, non-Persian dynasties never introduced their own language as the
official language of the country. They never attempted to supplant the original
names of peoples, territories, lands, and so on. Difference and diversity were
accepted as a defining characteristic of Iran' s identity and were reflected
even in the name of the country: The Independent Kingdoms of Iran, Memalek-e Mahruse-ye Iran. (Vaziri, 1993: Kashani-Sabet.
1999).
A policy of one-nation-one-(Aryan)
language, became the official doctrine of the ruling elite in the country-hence
the birth of an overall Aryaisation process to date.
“Similar politics are still faithfully pursued in the Islamic Republic today.”
(Banitorof, 2002).
The colonial agenda
behind such politics has been to replace all non Farsi
names of territories, geographical locations, landscapes, towns, cities and
villages with Farsi names and words as a part of a major attempt to Aryanise the entire country. Yet already the name 'Persia'
was an invention of the Greeks, popularized through Herodotus, and later on
adopted by Orientalists and Western scholars. 'Persia' had currency only in
foreign languages and meant nothing to either ordinary Iranians or the
dynasties that ruled them. At the time of initial contacts between the Greeks
and Iranians, the province of Pars had been the seat of the ruling Achaemenid
dynasty. And taking the part for the whole, the Greeks bad referred to the
entire country as Persia and to its inhabitants as Persians. Thus, even the
names 'Persia' and 'Persian' were not self-designations but were designed by
outsiders.
The influence of Aryanist racism and Nazi mentality was so evident in the
name-change of Iran that the French newspaper, Echo de Paris in its February
10th, 1935 issue, claimed the whole idea to be initiated by Hitler himself.
Reza Shah' s son,
identified himself as Shahanshah Aryamehr,
which means. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the King of Kings, the Light of the
Aryans. clearly reflects the degree to which the Pahlavi shahs were obsessed
and infatuated by the West and its constructs such as Arian and Aryanism. Since
then aranist enterprises affected all official
institutions such as the education system, cultural organs, publishing industries.
census centers, and so forth.
“Now the majority of Khuzistani cities have two names, which is to say, in Farsi
and in official correspondences their Persianized names are used, and in
conversations among the local peoples their historical names are used. (Azizi-Banitorof, 2002, p.7)
In the region of
Azerbaijan for example, the ancient city of Urumiyya
was renamed as Rezaiyyeh-people restored Urumiyyeh (Ormiyeh) after the
Islamic Revolution under Komeini; Qoshachay
became Miyandoab; the famous Mount Savalan became Sabalan; the
villages ofAxmaqaya, Parkush,
and Esfistan became Ahmaqiyyeh,
Khargush, and Asbestan,
respectively, all of which had derogatory, humiliating, and negative meanings
in Farsi. In the province of Gorgan, "Gonbad-e Ghabus" was changed
to 'Gonbad-e Kavus under Komeini;' in Kurdistan, "Abu'l-mu'min"
was supplanted by 'Parsa' (Kashani-Sabet,
1999. p. 219). These Aryanist/colonialist policies against indigenous
languages, names and words have continued to date (2006).
In addition to the supplanting
of names of territories, towns, and landmarks, attempts have been made to
replace and redefine the names of whole ethnicities and nationalities. For
example according to Iranian intellectuals the homeland of Azeri-Turks, was
originally populated by Farsi speaking Aryans who had later become Turkicified thanks to the Mongol invasion of Iran. So they
concluded that the original Azari had nothing to do with the Turkic peoples and
their language; it originally was an Aryan tongue. Thus a chauvinistic
literature developed around the term 'Azeri' that aggressively advocated the
following:
1) the old 'Azari'
language was a variant of Farsi; it fundamentally differed from the current
'Azeri- Turcik;'
2) the ancient Azaris living in Azerbaijan were not a Turkic people; they
were an 'Aryan,' just like the rest of 'the true Iranians.’
3) the current Turkic
speaking Azeris have been Turkicified due to the
intrusions to Iran by the 'Saljuqs' and 'Mongois' that took place in the 11th and 13th centuries,
respectively:
4) the historieal name of "the Caucasian
Azerbaijan" was not originally Azerbaijan; it was 'Aryan'(also
written as Aran, Eran). The designation 'Azerbaijan' was given to that
Caucasian region by the Ottomans, and later endorsed by Joseph Stalin of
Russia, for the purpose of laying claims on 'the Iranian Azerbaijan' and
annexing it in the future.
In essence, by
constructing an imaginary 'Aryan' language and by equating it with an 'Aryan'
race, is blatant racism. Nevertheless these views are becoming fashionable
nowadays more than ever before.
This in spite of th fact that al Mes'udi, a 10th
century Moslem historian, stated: ''al-Arran min biladi Azerbaijan" which literally means: "Arran is but a town in Azerbaijan" (Mes'udi, 1894, p. 78; Heyat, 1993.
p. 6). Apparently, by rejecting the historical name of the Northern Azerbaijan,
Iranian extremists today are trying to further isolate and marginalize the
Azerbaijani community in Iran. In reality however Azerbaijan was a fenile land on which a multiplicity of races, languages and
cultures flourished side by side. According to the tenth century Arab traveler,
al-Muqaddasi. "over 70 languages were spoken in
Azerbaijan" (1906, p. 260). Ibn Hawqal, another
tenth century Arab historian determined the number of languages spoken in
Azerbaijan and Caucasia to be "360 spoken languages" (1966, p. 82).
As such, it would not
be difficult to dig out fragments of a variety of dead or living languages from
that region. Thus, when certain groups in present day Iran, try to present one
single language as "the only authentic and original and pure language
spoken in ancient Azerbaijan." Obviously. this is a colonialist act which
cannot be substantiated by any scientific and objective reasoning.
The so-called
'scientific' and 'cultural' collaborations between Iranian nationalists and the
Nazi’s proved to be very fruitful. And the Iranian Aryanists followed an
extremely racist ideology which sought to essentialize the “Aryan race” as the
only true and authentic owner of larger Iran, and the Farsi language was
elevated to the status of Iran's only authentic language.
For example in May
2004, the Iranian government divided the Farsi-speaking region of Khorasan into
three provinces named Khorasan-e Shomlai, Khorasan-e Razavi, and Khorasan-e Janubi
(North Khorasan, South Khorasan, and Razavi
Khorasan).
Thus the policy that
was set up during the WWII era is being implemented by the Islamic government.
Thus for example, the
editor of Majalle-ye Iran-shenasi,
in a 1992 editorial states:
In the currently
vague and chaotic state of the world our Iran continues to grapple with its
previous problems in addition to new problems that have emerged from the
1978 revolution and the long war with Iraq: panArabism
and pan- Turkism are distorting the facts about [the province of Khuzistan and the Persian Gulf and Azerbaijan. And our
eastern neighbor Afghanistan is not without intentions towards Khorasan. Some
of our so called political panies in Iran and abroad
are talking about "the multinational Iran" instead of a united Iran;
they also talk of northern and southern Azerbaijan and of self-governance for
the Kurds and Baluchs and Turks and Turkmens and
Arabs and. (Matini, 1992, p. 234)
Matini
continues the article by talking about the evils of separatism, panism, the ill intentions of world powers towards Iran and
how these powers cannot wait to see Iran destroyed and divided into smaller
parts.
In a later issue of Majalle-ye Iran-shenasi Jalal, Matini clearly states that his only concern is to obscure,
problematize, and eventually deny the existence of difference and diversity in
Iran. He writes that it made him very nervous when for the first time he read
in a newspaper that "Iran is a multinational and multiethnic country"
Iran keshvari-st kasir-ol melleh va morakkab
az aqvam-e mokhtalef. (Matini. 1998, p.
229). He enlightens his colleagues that the concepts of multinational and
multiethnic were infiltrated into Iran for the first time by Soviet communists.
reflecting the unfriendly intentions that they had towards Iran. Matini wams his colleagues to
take note that these concepts have not died out with the demise of the Soviet
Union. On the contrary, the concepts have found more currency in recent years.
What is to be done. then? "From now on, we should refrain from using such
terms as 'Iran is a multinational country' or 'Iran is a country composed of
different ethnic groups'" (Matini, 1998. p.
233). Matini's solution is typical of the dominant
approach to issues of difference and diversity in Iran today. This approach
stubbornly insists that the existence of difference and diversity in Iran is
not a real social fact but is an illusion created by construction of a couple
of terms and concepts. If these terms and concepts are not used, diversity will
cease to exist. The dominant group does not want to accept that more than half
of Iran' s population,have every right to have their
political parties, speak their own language, write their own history, and
represent themselves through their own voices. Yet by forcing them to abandon
their indigenous names, eradicating their identities, supplanting their
languages, they will not become different from who they already are. They will
still be the same Turks, Arabs, Baluchs, Turkmens.
and Kurds, with the same languages and cultures. Real progress would be to
acknowledge their diversity and address it by way of human rights principles.
In Decolonizing the
Mind (1986), Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
highlighted the dialectical relationships between the two related subjects of
language and culture: Language carries culture, and culture carries,
particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which
we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive
themselves affects how they look at their culture. at their politics and at the
soeial production of wealth. at their entire
relationship to nature and to other beings. Economic and political
control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a
people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship
to others. The domination of a people' s language by the languages of the
colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the
colonized (Wa Thiong'o.
1986, p.16)
Thus language is a
most powerful source of creating culture, and Linguistic powers and cultural
values play important roles in the development of individuals, communities, and
societies.
Or as Phillipson, Rannut. and Skutnabb-Kangas
(1994) have argued that in "many nation states the uneven distribution of
power and resources is partly along linguistic and ethnic lines, with majority
groups taking a larger share than their number would justify" (1994. p.
4).
In Iran, a minority
regards its race, culture and language as superior to all other, cultures and
languages. The minoritized groups are forced to believe that their history and
culture are not sources of pride and dignity that their ancestors have said
they were. In multiethnic societies dominated by a single ethnic group,
shrinking the number of marginalized groups is a colonizing act that takes
place for very obvious reasons. The dominant group does not want to let the
international community know that the alleged ‘Aryans’ in Iran constitute a
numerical minority, and that the minoritized so called non-Aryan groups are
indeed, numerically, in the majority. That is why in Iran they never allow for
a general population census to take place. Instead they present a distorted
picture of the numbers.
As an example of how
he took over the same colonization process as that existent around WWII, in a
message to the people of Kurdistan on November 17, 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini
explained:
The great Islam has condemned all sorts of discriminations and hasn't allocated
special rights for any group in particular. Piety and devotion to Islam are the
only markers of man's dignity. In the bosom of Islam and Islamic Republic of
Iran all nationalities have the right for determination of their own cultural,
economic, and political destinies, in their own localities. (cited in
Kurdistan, Nov. 1999. p.7; also McDowall, 1996. p. 271)
Also in the new
constitution under Khomeini, article 15 singles out 'Persian script' as the
only legitimate script to be used by all Iranians. It is noteworthy that in
practical terms, the current Perso-Arabic script has a very divisive function
in severing the linguistic/literary connections among a number of ethnic groups
in Iran (e.g. Kurds. Azeris. Turkmens, Armenians) and their co-ethnics in the
neighboring countries. Millions of ethnic Azeris, Kurds. and Turkmens are
living in the neighboring Republies of Azerbaijan.
Turkmenistan. and
Turkey (with a sizeable number of Kurdish citizenry) who use a Roman script.
The exclusive use of the Perso Arabic script in Iran serves to keep the
non-Persian ethnic groups of Iran unaware of important literary developments by
their co-ethnics in the neighboring countries, and vice-versa. They cannot read
each other's literature; nor can they write to one another due to an alphabet
barrier. This is a phenomenon to which the late Azerbaijani president, Ebulfez Elchibey, referred as 'the Alphabet Despotism'
(Elchibey, 1997; also Dei and Asgharzadeh, 2003).
In legal terms,
Article 115 of the current constitution of the Islamic Republic clearly states
that the president of the country should be a Shia Muslim (Man). Where over
twenty percent of the population are either Sunny Muslims or non-Muslims--not
to mention the over 50 percent female population along with a sizeable number
of seculars.
Not surprising
shortly after the establishment of an Islamic government in Iran they also
dismantled the 'Family Protection Act ' made veiling compulsory; reduced the
minimum age for marriage from 18 to 13, and while maintaining polygamy, took
away the automatic right for divorce of a wife on the grounds of her husband's
remarriage. Yet "The law of the four wives is a very progressive
law," asserted Ayatollah Khomeini, and was written for the good of women,
since there are more women than men. More women are born than men and more men
are killed in war than women. A woman needs a man, so what can we do, since
there are more women than men in the world? Would you rather prefer that the
excess number of women became whores, or that they married a man with other
wives? (cited in Sanasarian, 1983, p.134)
Thus it would be
unfair to not mention the plight of women in Iran today. This includes, that
'blood-money' to be paid for a female victim of murder is only half of that
paid for a male victim, plus women's testimony in court is only half the value
of men's testimony, thus women can never participate in the legal profession.
Since a woman's testimony alone does not carry any legal weight, proof of any
kind of abuse or crime against is almost impossible according to today’s
articles 5, 6, 33, 46,91, and 92 of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Penal Code.
"The prisons of
the Islamic regime," an Iranian writer has observed, are full of women who
have been subjected to the most degrading and inhumane forms of torture. Rape
is one of the commonest, yet horrific, forms of torture. (Hendessi,
1990, p.16)
"From the
religious point of view." says one of the grand Ayatollahs. "it is
not decent for a virgin girl to go to heaven, therefore, on the eve of their
execution, the guards (meaning gang rape) marry them to remove their
virginity" (Ayatollah Montazeri, cited in Mojahedin, 1982, p. 121).
Elsewhere Amnesty
International reported cases like: The lorry deposited a large number of stones
and pebbles beside the waste ground, and then two women were led to the spot
wearing white and with sacks over their heads. They were enveloped in a shower
of stones and transformed into two red s acks. The wounded women fell to the
ground and revolutionary guards smashed their heads in with a shovel to make
sure that they were dead. (Iran Briefing, 1987, p.3)
But in spite of the
fact that the policies described in the second part of our report have been to
some degree successful by now, so are also signs of resistance growing,
something apparently American intelligence is aware of.
A History of Iran: The Iran Documents P.1
The Iran Documents P.2: The Impact of Nazi Germany
The Iran Documents P.4: Today's Culture War to Heat Up?
List
of consulted literature and references
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