Cosmetic surgery is very common among women, they tweak their noses to look more aryan. A large group also dresses in more western ways, with form-fitting dresses, high heeled shoes, small scarfs showing bleached hair and plenty of make-up. this is something i've mentioned in earlier threads about Iran, so thats no surprise to me. the surprise is naturally that they are going for an Aryan look, which we come to next.
Iranians are Persians, which consider themselves Aryans. Which surprisingly is true.
(Aryan roots)...Its history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, peoples who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India."[1]
They hate Arabs with a passion, partly because of the ethnic differences, and partly because of the Sunni religion. For an Iranian its a smaller sin to convert to Christianity*than its to convert to Sunni Islam. They consider the Arab states rise to power the last decades a disgrace, because the Arabs have in their eyes been nothing but farmboys for millenia, until they found oil in their sand. ("These desert beduins only got a civilization when it found oil a petty few decades ago, while the persian kingdom can trace its history thousands of years back through time")
Also, Mein Kampf by Adolf is a very popular book in Iran, although only in farsi. they get irritated when people claim that they want to wipe Israel off the map, because they consider that preaching from the mosques and not foreign policy. they say that their president has been misquoted on the topic of wiping Israel off the map. what he really said was more or less that Israel was a synthetic/fake country created in an unnatural way, and that the Palestinians should get to vote on its existence, and the Europeans should give the Israelis some land in europe for them to live in instead of in the middle east. its not a very politically correct thing to say either, but at least its a bit less war-mongering.
All in all, they hate jews, but they respect them. But they totally despise the Arabs, which they consider fakes and beneath their superior culture.
At the same time, Iran has since the islamic revolution seen itself as the natural head of Islam in the middle east. With the fall of Iraq, its shia Nemesis and main opponent, it has gained more power here. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have lost power and is annoyed because of that. Syria has sided with Iran in the fight for Sunni/persian influence, in exchange for getting Iranian support to help them with Lebanon through Hezbollah. All in all, the invasion of Iraq was a blessing in disguise for Iran.
Homosexuality is still illegal and punishable by death, but some have found out that surgery to change your sex is totally acceptable. I don't think there are many female to male operations though, considering the limited rights women have(as witnesses in court their voice only counts half as much as a male, if the husband in a marriage is not satisfied he can arrange a short term marriage with other women for money, polygami, etc etc.)
Equal rights for women might look a bit dark, but in the universities 65% of the students are women. The professor asked about equal rights started asking how far this would go, because soon the women would be in power and the men would be at home in the kitchen. Might take a while, but at least its a good sign that there is a majority of women in universities.
The election, now here's a no brainer. It might be an election in the strictest sense of the name, people go out and vote. but since people are so disillusioned by the system, only the fanatics that believe in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the islamic revolution actually go and vote. And since he now more or less has endorsed Ahmadinejad, his current favorite puppet in promoting his vision of Iran, which means that the more reform-friendly opponent is very unlikely to win. It's almost like wondering if the communist party would win the election back in Stalin's days.
Then again, they just had to block Facebook because it seemed that Mirhossein Mousavi, the reformist's candidate and the biggest opponent to the current president, actually might whip up enough couch-voters to turn the election unpredictable(Technology is certainly a blessing).
on the topic of nuclear weapons, they don't really want them and claim that their nuclear activities are only for peaceful purposes, or else Israel would attack and make a mess of things. but it seems that their biggest wish is to gain respect from the nations of the world, and by getting a nuclear weapon would be a way to do that. in fact, they are playing this on the edge, claiming that they are not making nuclear weapons while making it look like they are. For them its a victory in itself that we think they are making it. But not too much, because then Israel would bomb them. they arent too scared of USA because they think the US is too busy in Iraq and Afganistan, so their main threat is Israel.
A very short summary of that article. It was fascinating. I didnt know that the Iranians hated the Arabs so much, or even that there was a difference in there. strange what you can learn. Another thing that is strange is how they can be fans of Islam when it seems that its primarily a Arab religion. And at the same time, they want to be in charge of Islam, even though they are primarily shia, which are like 10-15% of the total muslims in the world. a dangerous train of thought imo. But still its fascinating.
*=(though you can still get executed for it, but you can at least be Christian at heart and keep it a secret, going over to Sunni Islam would be impossible to hide they claim)
Edited by duke_Qa, 25 May 2009 - 05:13 PM.