Quotes Tagged "iran"
I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it .
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
Tags: writing, wine, symposia, religion, reading, plato, passover-seder, passover, oxford, omar-khayyam, new-testament, mullahs, miracles, marriage-at-cana, judaea, iran, inspiration, hellenism, food, entheos, christianity, cana, brotherhood, boredom, atheism, ancient-greeks, alcohol
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
Tags: women-s-rights-movement-in-iran, women-s-rights-in-iran, women-in-islam, women-in-iraq, women-in-iran, women-in-afghanistan, women-and-religion, women, theocracy, taliban-treatment-of-women, role-models, religion, islam, iraq, iran, heroines, heroes, feminism, azar-nafisi, ayaan-hirsi-ali, afghanistan
When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…
Tags: washington-post, united-states-constitution, united-states, theocracy, stupidity, satanic-verses, rushdie, religion, principles, love, literature, khomeini, irony, iran, intimidation, individualism, humor, hate, george-hw-bush, friendship, free-speech, first-amendment, fatwa, fascism, enlightenment, dictatorship, demagogy, censorship, bullying, bastille, atheism
I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.
Being articulate is no guarantee of intelligence,” Zoe said. “I’m not doubting the value of education. I’m doubting its reach. Highly educated politicians still do stupid things. Anthony Weiner was educated; Mugabi was educated; Assad was educated; Mussolini was educated. For all their education, look at them.
Tags: unassimilated, politician, mussolini, mugabi, mossad, mispronounce, israel, iran, immigration, education, benzehabe, assad, anthony-weiter
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