From Pride to Peace

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Dear Ali Sina,

You have said somewhere that you were proud to be Iranian. What makes you proud of being Iranian? Isn’t the greatness of a nation measured by what its people have to offer? It is the collective wisdom of the people that makes the nation great or small. You could have a handful of Iranians who have contributed enormously to the world. They may be among the top intellectuals in the world. But that is overshadowed by the majority who still uphold a repressive ideology. It is the majority that represent the nation. Others judge us on how the majority behave. I would be ashamed, and not proud, to call myself an Iranian just as much as I am ashamed of my own country where I live.

I commend your desire and effort to free the people of Iran, to bring about real changes there that would make the nation great, but is your patriotic fervour justified when you say you are proud of the nation the way it is now?

I don’t think we have to remain attached to our country just because we happen to be born there. I have lived here practically all my life but I hate everything about this place. It’s not the landscape or climate that I find unappealing. It’s not the natural resources of the land or our wealth (or lack of) that I complain about. We have no control over these but to accept what nature has set aside for us. I only wish the attitude of people would change. It is their culture, mental attitude, values and general outlook on life that I find reprehensible.

What do you have to say about this? Do we really have to be attached to our place of birth? I think not. I think we are a citizen of the place we dream of. If I admire the Dutch, say, for their unrestricted freedom and open society and yearn to live there, that is where my loyalty should lie and not with a place I do not sympathise with.

Taqqiya Tactician

Dear TT:

A nation is like an individual. What holds true for an individual also holds true for a nation that is composed of millions of individuals. Each individual has great potentials and is capable of reaching to great heights. You can only tap into your potentials if you have self respect. You are who you think you are. If you believe in yourself, there is nothing that you cannot do. To a great extent we are all made equal. We might have different talents but each one of us is designed to succeed. Those who excel are those who trust themselves, are aware of their potentials, set goals and strive to achieve them. Those who fail are those who waiver, doubt their abilities, don’t’ believe in themselves and because of that they don’t set high goals and don’t strive to achieve anything. The only difference between those who succeed and those who fail is in how much they value themselves; in other words how much self worth they have. This sums up the difference between an achiever and a loser. It’s self worth, self esteem and pride.

Just as individuals can become sick, perform poorly and fail, also nations can go through periods of decrepitude and malaise that could last many centuries. What does addiction do to people? It affects their perception and disturbs their personality. It impairs their thinking and feeling, as well as their behaviors. A person who becomes addicted to brain altering chemicals will certainly fail in life. His addiction becomes his obsession. He loses touch with reality and instead of setting goals in life he strives to feed his addiction. Meanwhile he loses his self worth, he believes less and less in himself. He becomes so dependant on the substance to which he is addicted that this becomes the primary object of his concern and the focus of his life. Everything else becomes secondary and insignificant, including his honor, his loved ones and his own life. Such an individual is hopeless. He can become destructive and even dangerous. Of course if you look at him in that state, you find nothing in him to be proud of. But, what will happen if you rescue him, wean him from his addiction and return him back to normalcy? He can become a whole person again. Once the monkey of addiction is off his back, he can tap into his potential and become a successful person.

Marx said religion is opium of the masses. Islamic countries are suffering from addiction to Islam. They are obsessed with it. They can’t think of anything else. They bring Islam into everything, including their constitution and let it control their lives. Saudis don't have a constitution. The Quran is their constitution. As Muslims foolishly brag, Islam is their way of life. Just as addiction sets the pace of life of an addict so Islam controls every aspect of the Muslim's life. An addict needs his regular doses or he will go nuts, Muslims need their fix five times a day or they become filled with guilt and panic, terrified with the fear of punishment.

The difference between you and I is that you see them as worthless brainless addicts that they have become and I see them as what they once were and what they can become again. It is not that I don’t see the despicable people that they have become. It is not that I can’t see that they have become a bunch of, miscreant, uneducated, savage, low brained, insecure morons. But I do not judge them by what this addiction has done to them. I see their potentials and who they can be again. I do not intend to give up on them and write them off.

I am not proud of what has befallen to my people, but I am proud of my culture, my heritage and of the genius that is within my people. Even today, if you go to far off villages in Iran, where ancient traditions have been resilient, they will invite you to their house, kill their only egg laying hen and literally “force feed” you, because they believe guest is the mercy of God. I still run into these kinds of Persians even in the West once in a while. How can one not love them? These are unique qualities found nowhere. I have spent most of my life outside Iran. I left home when I was very young. My memories of Iran are vague, but anytime I watch my people on TV I see my own self in them. I am part of them. They are my extended family. They are my tribe. Of course I love them.

I am deeply saddened for what has befallen to them. How would you feel if your brother becomes an addict? You remember that at one time he was happy, exuberant, outgoing and goal oriented. Now his addiction has robbed his soul. He is no longer the same person. He is irritable, violent, dishonest and sometimes dangerous. That pains you. But you won’t stop loving him. You will do everything you can to make him come to his senses and free himself from his addiction. I feel the same way about my people. I know there is goodness in them. I know about the potential that there is in them. All I have to do is to wean them from this drug called Islam and you’ll see that they will shine again.

Why there are no shining stars in the Muslim world? It is not because we are less than others. We simply do not have the opportunity to shine. What do you think would have happened to Mozart if he was born in Mecca? Would he have become Mozart? Of course not! The most he could have become was a good moazin. Would Einstein have become a great scientist if he was born in Peshawar? Talent needs the right environment in order to manifest itself. Imagine planting a seed from the best tree in dry land. Will it ever become a tree? Will it ever give fruits? At this moment, there are thousands of potential Einsteins and Mozarts, Da Vincis and Newtons, Descartes and Hawkings in Islamic countries who will become nothing more than ambulant vendors. This is a loss for all mankind. If Hawkings was born in Kabul, all he could have become was a beggar. There would have been no opportunity for him to become the genius that he has become.

Islam encourages its victims to despise their own culture. Listen to the Muslim converts. They mock even their own selves prior to becoming Muslims. They sneer when they talk about themselves of yesteryears. This is comical but they do that unconsciously and get encouraged for doing it. They mock their own culture and call their own people enemy.

The first thing Islam does is that it takes away the self pride of its victims. Indian Muslims hate Indian culture; British converts despise Britain; American converts harbor the thoughts of destroying America and Jewish converts rejoice and praise Allah every time there is a suicide bombing in Israel. In order to become Muslims they must lose their pride. They must view themselves, their people and their culture with disdain. Naturally these self loathing addicts will be also underachievers, which make them despise themselves even more. Once everything is taken away from them, Islam becomes their only obsession. Religion is indeed a dangerous mind altering drug. Islam is the most potent and the most dangerous of them all.

This must be reversed. The victims of Islam must regain their pride. There is nothing shameful to be an Iranian, a Pakistani or an Arab. Look at Iraq today and see what has befallen to it. Now look back and you’ll see that land was the cradle of human civilization. Of course Iraqis must be proud of who they are. Of course Egyptians must be proud of who they are. Pakistan in my view is the most ridiculous country of the world. Imagine the absurdity of creating a “secular” country inspired by religious apartheid! Can you imagine anything stupider than this? Qaid-i A’zam was a clown. He deserves to be despised and scorned as an egotistic ambitious man whose main concern was self glorification at the cost of millions of lives. Pakistanis call him “Father of Pakistan”. He is the father of their miseries. No one has done more harm to these wretched people than this man. (With the exception of Muhammad of course) Pakistan is not a country; it is a joke. If you are Pakistani, you may have hard time to find anything to be proud of. In its short life, Pakistan has been a total failure. But instead of thinking of yourself as a Pakistani, think of yourself as an Indian. That is who you really are. Your ancestors were Hindus. They gave birth to one of the most splendid and richest cultures of the world. The Indian philosophy is still a beacon of light for mankind. Seeing yourself under this light can fill you with pride. You should be proud of who you are, of your heritage that has been taken away from you and of your ancestors. Meanwhile consider Pakistan, or Bangladesh for that matter, another symptom of Islamic disease.

You say “I don’t think we have to remain attached to our country just because we happen to be born there”. Yes, I think we must. We did not land there by parachutes or delivered by storks. Our roots are there. Our flesh and bones come from those folks. We can’t just cut our ties from our own people and pretend to be someone else.

I am a world federalist. I believe that mankind must be united through a world federal government. But such a government must rest on strong democracies just as a dome must rest on strong pillars. India, USA, Canada and many great democracies today are federations of smaller independent states or provinces. These federations would not exist if one of their federate members were a dictatorship. The very concept of federation implies democracy and power sharing. A federal government cannot become dictatorial because its authority comes from people. It’s the people who elect their federal representatives not the local dictator and because each state is independent, abuse of power by the federal government become impossible. Just as a pyramid is only stable when it rests on its wide base, governments of all levels must rest on the masses. To eliminate wars and much of human miseries we need world federalism, but to have world federalism we need free and democratic countries.

I believe Americans come first in their patriotism. No wonder they are first in everything else. Japanese are very patriotic too. See how they rose from the ashes of war and what they have achieved in just sixty years! Indians are also patriotic. They call their country "Mother India". That is the reason India is developing so fast and is soon to become one of the major world powers. On the other hand the poor Pakistanis do everything possible to escape from the Land of the Pure and the Islamic paradise that Jinah has built for them. Every year Pakistan is becoming worse than the previous year. Europeans are becoming lukewarm in their nationalistic fervor. As the result they will soon lose their freedom and their countries to Muslim invaders, known as "immigrnts". There is a direct link between the success, freedom and prosperity in a country and the patriotism of its people.

We must not confuse patriotism and healthy nationalism with tribalism and jingoism. There is a difference between patriotism and chauvinistic patriotism, between nationalism and fanatical nationalism – the same difference that exists between self respect and narcissism. Narcissist is not one who loves himself too much. He actually hates himself. Narcissism is a mask that he wears to hide his shame and belittled self. He pumps his ego to feign greatness. It is all façade. When a nation loses her self-respect and pride she will try to compensate with bellicim and chauvinism. We saw this in Germany during the the thirties. That led to the World War II. Today we see it in Muslims. This belligerence you witness in the Muslim world is the result of hurt egos and shattered prides. It’s this intense feeling of humiliation that manifests itself in chauvinistic and bigoted behavior and erupts in violence. People who are self assured and proud, are not chauvinists. Arrogance is the child of hurt ego.

Love of one’s country does not imply disregarding the well being of other countries. We are all related and members of one human family. We can’t have peace, happiness and prosperity in one part of the world while in other parts people die in wars, starve with hunger or rot in dictators' dungeons for having spoken their minds. Peace, freedom and prosperity are human rights. Every human is entitled to them and it is the duty of everyone else to make sure these rights are not trampled. We can't look the other way and say; "What happens in other parts of the world is not our responsibility. Are we our brother's keepers?" Yes we are our brothers keepers. We must think globally. Everyone has right to democracy and to freedom. Mankind is our bigger family. At the same time we must not neglect that charity starts at home. When you love your family it does not mean that you are careless of the well being of your neighbors or that you are licened to steal from them to feed your own. This is what the Europeans, headed by the master colonialist UK, have been doing for centuries. That is not patriotism. That is abuse. It is theft. Patriotism means that your responsibility is first to your own country. If you have two countries, one where your roots are and the other were you have branched out and are flourishing, your responsibility is to both of them.

Our job must be to return what Islam has taken away from our people and that is their pride. We must give them back their dignity. We must highlight their past splendor and the fact that their ancestors were architects of glorious civilizations. Jahelliyah (ignorance) started with Islam. We will never come out of the slum in which Islam has placed us if we do not restore our national pride. That is why I am a proud Persian. That is why you should be proud of your nationality, of your culture and of your people. The reason America is the number one country in the world is because Americans are proud and patriotic. They are proud of their constitution, of their struggle for freedom and of their democracy and they will stand guard to defend them. All the great nations of the world are great to the degree that they are proud of their country and are willing to sacrifice for it.

We must be proud of our assets not of our liabilities. The former will elevates us to honor and dignity and catapult us to the acme of greatness while the latter will demote us to haughtiness, and hubris and make us fall into the abyss of barbarity. Being proud of Islam is like being proud of one's ignorance. This leads to conceit, arrogance and smugness that so vividly characterize the Muslims.

Marriages in which one or both partners lack self esteem often fail. People who lack self esteem fail in any relationship because they are insecure and don’t love themselves. When they don’t love themselves they can’t love anyone else. They are always hurt, always brood and withdraw to a corner to lick their emotional wounds, or they erupt in violence. It's impossible to live with these people. This is the state in which Muslim countries find themselves. People in these countries lack self respect. They have lost their national pride. Until they don’t regain that pride we won’t have peace in this world. They will be always angry, always hurt, always offended and always ready to explode and start a war. How can we live in peace with people who can be driven to total insanity by a few silly cartoons? These are insecure people. Muslims react in this way because they lack self pride. They are ready to pick a fight, riot, burn and murder at a drop of a hat. They can’t contain themselves or their rage. In lieu of self pride, they hide inside gigantic inflated egos that can rupture with a slightest provocation.

The world will not experience peace and these wars and devastations will not end unless and until all the nations join together in a world federal government. That won’t happen unless all the countries of the world become democracies and respect the equality of the rights of their citizens irrespective of their belief and gender. That won’t happen unless Islam is completely eradicated. That won’t happen unless Muslims regain their lost pride; take pride of their native culture, heritage and of themselves and recover from their present state of ignorance and collective sense of inferiority that Islam has imposed on them. Restoring pride to all the nations is the key to world peace. This won't happen unless you and I love our own people and feel proud of whom we are.