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Showing posts from October, 2007
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Upcoming Morgenlandfahrt

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Not East and not West. That is and always has been Iran. Since ancient days Persia not Turkey, which truly belonged for so many centuries to the former, was the real bridge between Europe and Asia. Persians tried to conquer the classic old world, of course, and only the incomparable Alexander could stop them, at least for some time. The influence on European civilization has always been tremendous. Persian poets are not only highly revered by their own kinsmen. Goethe was inspired by Hafiz and Attar for writing his Westöstlicher Diwan . The amazing astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam became incredibly famous in 19th century’s America after Edward Fitzgerald’s evocative translation of his Rubaiyat. The Achaemenids, the Sasanids, Safavids, Qajars, all of them left behind mind-blowing monuments and architectural pieces of pure beauty. Seeing this would change anybody’s thinking about history, the coming and going of Empires, the origin of monotheism and its influence on Jews in the

One Palmtree is not an Oasis

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Beach

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Temperatures between June and September may rise well beyond 45 centigrade in Kuwait. For someone that might be a constant cause for expressing discomfort and suffering. Others simply enjoy. Public beaches in Kuwait can be found everywhere at the seafront between the Kuwait Towers and Ras Salmiya, and further south. Kuwait’s multicultural society is nowhere evidenced better. The Islamic dress code has to be observed, of course. Jet ski racing has become very popular in Kuwait Bay, and it is mainly the young lads who really love showing their daring and acrobatic maneuvers.

Camel Race

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A great spectacle on Thursday afternoons, Kuwait’s camel race. When it was made public that the boys were usually kidnapped from Pakistan, 'robots' suddenly replaced them as jockeys all over the Emirates of the Gulf.

Tehran

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Tehran is buzzing, an exploding city of 14 Million. In very rare circumstances breathtaking and quite horrible air pollution from the exhaustion pipes of a million or so cars, and 2-wheel vehicles as well, may have been washed away by some rain showers giving sight to the marvelous snow-capped peaks of the Alborz mountains. Or even the near-by, 5671 meters high, sleeping volcano Kuh Damavand. It is a perfect cone, as that of Mount Fuji in Japan, but 3000 meters higher! Be aware of the taxi drivers at Mehrabad Airport in the very center of the city! They know their job well. Trust them as long as you know the difference between Riyals and Toman. And the true distance from one terminal to the other! In any case, if you have not an urgent appointment there, avoid that city. Unlike on other occasions I arrived at Imam Khomeini International Airport on November 1, 2006. That modern airport had been finished in 2005 and it is a more or less empty place. It is located far outside the Capital

Qom

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I had some eight hours left for my domestic flight, from Mehrabad, scheduled to Shiraz, where the conference was about to take place. I made a quick decision. A friendly taxi driver would rather take me to the Holy City of Qom, about 100 kilometers southwest of Tehran. Qom is the home of the Holy Shrine of Fatema Masumeh, a sister of Imam Reza, who died on her journey for visiting her brother and was buried here. From here the decline of Persia’s Shahs began. Legend has it that one day in 1928, Reza Shah’s wife visited the Shrine of the Innocent and when showing her face was dispraised by an ayatollah there. Next day, Reza entered the Shrine showing his anger and contempt and did not remove his boots. He even maltreated the mullah whom he had identified. They never forgot. Later Qom became the residence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. The center of the city is the marvelous Meydan-e Astan, from where the golden dome of the Holy Shrine can be seen v

Jamkaran

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Six kilometers east to the center of the holy city of Qom, at the fringes of the great Dasht-e Kavir desert, lies the mosque of Jamkaran. It is a holy place where it is said that Mohammad Mahdi, the 12th Shi’a Imam, had appeared in 373 AH, together with Al-Khidr. There is a well where the faithful drop their letters with wishes and desires. Not from Jamkaran but Samarra in what is now Iraq, the Mahdi will reveal himself at the end of all time. One of the first acts of the government of the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to donate $10 million to the mosque in Jamkaran. My visit of Jamkaran was mainly inspired by an article by Ulrich Ladurner in the German weekly DIE ZEIT from October 2006. Ladurner painted a most strange picture of Iran and the Iranians, emphasizing special features of Shi’a beliefs in the return of the Mahdi. The article conjured up a completely irrational society waiting, and indeed preparing for, an apocalypse. He argued that the current President of

Deserted

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Belonging to the Arabian Shelf in the Western part of the Arabian Peninsula, Kuwait is extremely flat. It is mainly made of sand of sediments which once were covered by the sea. In fact, the area is a sedimentary coastal plain with no real mountains or rivers. The only prominent natural feature in the country is the escarpment of Jal Az Zor which runs about 60 kilometers along the North shore of Kuwait Bay. To the North and Northwest, the desert extends up to the Iraqi border without any uprisings. The sand- and limestone cliffs of Jal Az Zor may rise up to 130 meters. Its sedimentary origin can easily be seen from the exposed strata and further proof may be marine fossils that can be found there. The gully systems along the escarpment are gradually being eroded by wind and rainfall and slowly being filled in by sand. The beauty of the desert in this part of Kuwait and its peaceful atmosphere can be soaked in particular in wintertime and spring.

A New Beginning

It was exactly one year before the abject, world-shaking September 11 attacks of Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in September 2000, when I stumbled over a large advertisement in one of our professional journals which told me that the new Faculty of Dentistry at Kuwait University was seeking applicants for academic positions. I have to admit here that I had never ever considered moving to an Islamic country, in particular not working there. But that was entirely due to lack of information at that time. What Islam meant was not clear to me at all. I was not even interested very much. A quick check on the internet told me that this was a project mainly engaging well-known international academicians, most of them from Scandinavian countries, with a quite good record of publications. So the question came to my mind, would I fit in that environment? I read Kuwait was the hottest place in the world. But a dear friend who had been traveling in the Middle East