Salmiya

One year of secret diplomacy between the US Administration and Pakistan’s Musharraf is in vain. Benazir Bhutto returned in October to Pakistan only for surviving an assassination attempt upon arrival and eventually being assassinated on December 27. She knew that she had mortal enemies in Pakistan, in particular in the immediate vicinity of Pakistan’s President. Apart from the personal and national tragedy, Benazir’s assassination is a great threat to the whole region. As commentators describe it, America’s Pakistan policy, which had recently urged Benazir’s and Musharraf’s cooperation, is in tatters. It is revealing that Musharraf, who had survived several assassination attempts in the past, did not provide security to his opponent in the election campaign, and thus is at least indirectly responsible for the disaster. It seems so as if Bush has counted again for too long on the wrong buddy.

Dear friends and colleagues! In my first year in Kuwait it happened that Eid al Fitr was about at the same time as Christmas. When I bought some Christmas flowers the man in the flower shop congratulated me and I said Eid Mubarak! And he told me that he was very glad because Muslims and Christians can celebrate at the same time and even together. Six years later, it happens again that now Eid al Adha (or Eid-e Ghorban) is being celebrated more or less at the same time as Christmas. According to the course of the moon this coincidence of holidays will happen only in 26 years or so again, then again with Eid al Fitr. So, this time is also very special and I am very glad that I can wish my dear Muslim and Christian friends Eid Mubarak and Merry Christmas! And a Happy and Successful New Year 2008! Ma’asalamah! Khoda Hafez! Take Care! Ha det bra! A Common Word greetings Thank you Saad, Lothar, Fatimah, Saeed, Jawad, Dora, Mohammad Reza, Julie & Uwe, Lars & Karin, Christel & Er...

The Kuwaiti pilgrims who I accompanied on their visit of Mashhad last year were neither interested in the tomb of the great Iranian poet Ferdowsi nor in that of Harun ar-Rashid in the near-by village of Tus. Harun ar-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, had poisoned the father of Imam Reza, Musa al-Kazim in 799 CE. In the West admired for developing art and science in the Islamic world and known for his correspondence with Charlemagne, whom he sent two albino elephants, Shi’as have grave resentment and disdain for his dissipated and sinful life style. Ferdowsi (935-1020 CE), on the other hand, is not really known among the Arabs. I had visited both mausoleums already in 2005. About Ferdowsi it is said that he preserved, in his monumental collection of pre-islamic national epics, called the Shahnameh, Persia’s language (Pahlavi) after the conquest of Iran by the Arabs in the 7th Century. His tomb, built by Reza Shah in 1925, evokes Cyrus the Great’s mausoleum in Parsagadae. The small museu...

Kingdom Tower , Riyadh 2004. 302 m

In order to learn more about Shi’a Islam and the piety of ordinary people it would have been most helpful to visit at least some of the plenty of Emamzadehs (holy sites) all over Iran. So, it was a most welcome opportunity and, in fact, great honor when my Kuwaiti friends invited me to accompany them on their several bus trips in Khorasan on the occasion of their 2006 pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mashhad. Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires each embraced half of the then known world when they climaxed. And even when Iran was under the reign of Seleucids, Arabs, Seljuks, or Mongols, the Iranians imprinted their lifestyle and culture on the non-welcome invaders, who in any sense immensely benefited. So, the austere new religion Islam, which replaced Iran’s state religion Zoroastrianism, was fundamentally reorganized, and, as I see it as an outsider, filled with life. The rapid and shocking decline of the Sasanid Empire at the end of a century-long fight with Byzantium, and the ...

The 3-million city of Mashhad in the northeastern corner of Iran has virtually no history unrelated to the Holy Shrine of Ali ibn Musa Al-Rida. The Eighth Shi’a Imam, Reza as he is called, died in 818 CE (203 AH) in the ancient city of Tus nearby. According to Shi’a beliefs, he was poisoned by the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun, the son of Harun Al-Rashid, whose mausoleum is in nearby Tus. Imam Reza’s resting place in the small village of Sanabad was soon attracted by pilgrims since there was a saying that a pilgrimage to Imam Reza’s tomb would outweigh 70’000 visits of Makkah. And gradually the city of Mashhad, literally “place of martyrdom”, developed. Al-Rida’s tomb is one of the most significant places for veneration and worshipping of Shi’a muslims outside Iraq. The huge circular island in the center of Mashhad is under permanent major construction since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. From space (which might actually be the best way to get a complete overview of the site) you can ...

When recently visiting Iran, I saw a framed picture of Mohammed Mossadegh on the mantelshelf in the living room of a friend. In our discussions he told me that Iranians would not forget Madeleine Albright’s apology in March 2000 for the 1953 C.I.A. coup and reinstatement of the Shah. Albright, then Secretary of State in Clinton’s Administration, said: “In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs. Moreover, during the next quarter century, the United States and the West gave sustained backing to the Shah’s regime. Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah’s government also brutally repressed politica...

Mashhad, December 28, 2006

The National Intelligence Estimate which has considerably relieved the strain on Iran’s nuclear program was not entirely new. While IAEO Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in October 2007 that there is no evidence that Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons, largely confirming NIE, Seymour Hersh reported already one year ago about clandestine results of the C.I.A. activities which were perceived in the White House with hostility. He wrote in The New Yorker on November 27, 2006 (!): “The Administration’s planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to co...

End of last year one of my Kuwaiti colleagues invited me to join her family and a group of Shi’a pilgrims heading for the city of Mashhad in the northeastern corner of Iran. For me it was to be the second visit of Emam Reza’s Holy Shrine after 2005 in hot summer. This time of the year, Christmas, the Christian New Year, Hajj, Eid-e Ghorban, Eid-e Ghadir, and the expected execution of Saddam Hussein would more or less coincide when I was in the wintry Holy City. It was a special experience I would not want to miss at all. I have heard that many Europeans nowadays follow the hype and hopes of hiking on St. James Way in Spain. A certain longing for spirituality and even mystic experiences may be the thriving force for bored Westerners searching for meaning. So, I was somewhat curious about what I could get from that trip. The nowadays more and more emerging problems for Westerners of getting a visa for Iran were to be solved by the Shi'ite organizers, who were located in Bayan, close ...

This week’s published summary of the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate has considerably lowered apprehensions of new military actions in the Middle East. The American President is now personally addressing North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-il for some further nuclear clarifications. Anyway, G.W. Bush's last year in office might become more boring than had been suspected so far.

From Kashan on my way south, the highway followed the fringes of the great Dasht-e Kavir to the left, while to the right it nestled close to Iran’s Central Massif, a ridge which is running parallel to the Zagros Mountains. The taxi driver followed the sign to Abyaneh, the ancient village from the Sasanid era. Until the founder of the Safavid Dynasty in the early 16th century, Shah Ismail I, persecuted them so that most flew to Yazd and further to India, the village was mostly populated by Zoroastrians, as Sylvia A. Matheson writes in her archaeological travel guide. The village is located at the northwestern foothills of Mt. Karkas which is about 3900 meters high. It is a lush country with wide and fertile fields and plantations of fruit and walnut trees. We had a lunch in the only restaurant, and then I walked down the narrow lanes through the beautiful village. The red mud brick and clay houses lie at twisted and steep, climbing, lanes. They display beautiful wooden lattice windows a...

Unexpectedly, Tehran presented itself in early November this year more than charming. The air was clear and sun shining every day while temperatures were very comfortable at 22 centigrade. An obligatory visit of the Carpet Museum at the north western corner of Lahle Park with its small but selected collection and exhibition of pieces mainly from the 18th and 19th century would prevent me from buying more carpets in Tehran’s bazaar. The nearby Museum of Contemporary Art is also interesting. Besides displaying paintings, sculptures and very interesting installations by local artists, the fine collection includes works from Picasso, Max Ernst, Magritte, Miro, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, even Francis Bacon. Our hosts took much care of us so that we were guided, on a special tour, also through the Archaeological Museum (part of the National Museum of Iran), Golestan Park, and the incredible National Jewels Museum which is located in what can be called a walk-in bank saf...