Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
by Elaine Sciolino
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elaine SciolinoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-27
ISBN: 0743284798
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Free Press
Book Reviews of Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
Book Review: Deep understanding of the Islamic Republic, Persian culture and Islam.
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe this book is important because it describes Iran very different from what Iran is generally perceived.
Before this book, I thought Iran is a clear cut example of totalitarian state, Islamo-fashism, as someone called it. Like Saddam's Iraq, Spain (Franko), Italy (Musolini), Germany (Hitler), Soviet union etc.
Not that simple: The Classic totalitarian systems have 5 common elements, and if even a simple element is removed, the totalitarian system can not function:
1. Single party system with personality cult.
2. Merger of the political and ideological apparatus
3. Total spying
4. Death camp system
5. Censorship
This is true for all European totalitarian systems, for dark-age Europe, and for the Ottoman empire.
But Iranian system simply does not obey these rules! And this is why is so important to keep the separation of the church and state.
Iran may or may not fit in the above 5-point list, but does not exactly work the way Soviet Union or Germany did.
For example, both Stalin and Hitler would execute everybody they did not like, very fast. Not in Iran: Leading ayatollahs and hojatolleslams are very critical to the way Islamic republic is going: they are NOT executed.
They are still influential and outspoken.
The way the presidential elections are carried out is both censored AND democratic! The candidates must be approved by a religious committee, but once they are approved, the people's votes are really counted, and the winner is the one with most votes, as was the case with Khatami. In contrast to that, Brezhnev, Castro, Chaushesko and Honecker, were "elected" always with 99.995% majority.
Some of the readers are upset that Mrs. Sciolino is too soft on the
Iran's leaders, and describes them with sympathy. I did not have this
perception: I have the feeling, that she is very neutral, but neutrality
may appear as sympathy to some readers. There was no sympathy from Mrs. Sciolino with regard to Masoumeh Ebtekar, for example.
Some readers noticed, that Mrs. Sciolino pays too much attention to women.
She herself realized this and had an answer: That she, being a woman had access to many places, she could not have been to if she were a man. But there is something else very important: According to Lloyd deMouse, the state of the society can be determined by the attitude towards women. The progress of European and American societies coincides with the liberation and empowerment of women. The conservative forces always try to keep women down and back. Right to education. Right to work. Right to equal pay for equal work. Right to vote. Right to be elected. Right to drive a car. Etc. So, even if Mrs. Sciolino writes a lot about women, this is not too much, I think. And the situation of women in Iran is not equivocal. On one side, they have to wear Chador. On other, they are allowed to go to school and even to drive car.
Dictators will always use war and external enemy in order to solidify their powers. This was also the case with Khomeini. "The Iran-Iraq war was the glue that solidified the Islamic Revolution." The revolution was so spontaneous, and with so many different forces involved, that without the war, it would have fallen apart.
Unfortunately, this often happens in history: A universally hated dictator is replaced by a popular revolt. And during the confusion, the power is captured by the smallest and most disciplined faction. And they always turn out to be worse than the first dictator.
People in Iran are not as brainwashed believers, as they may be portrayed.
Contrary, they are very smart, and they are forced to be hypocritical, and live double lives. "Before the Revolution, we drunk in public and prayed at home. Now we pray in public and drink at home." The cynicism and hypocrisy is present amid mullahs and ayatollahs. Officially, they only think and talk about Allah. Unofficially, they tell dirty jokes, even before Mrs Sciolino, a foreigner and a woman! Enough about pure thoughts, inspired by Islam. We are all human, we are all the same.
Again, I strongly recommend the book to all who are interested in Islam, Persia, mid-east politics, totalitarian system, and are not afraid to learn something new and different and to have their perception changed.
Summary of Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
The book that revealed Iran to the West, now with a new Afterword. Elaine Sciolino updates Persian Mirrors to include coverage of the 2005 presidential election in Iran.As a correspondent for Newsweek and The New York Times, Sciolino has had more experience covering revolutionary Iran than any other American reporter. She was aboard the airplane that took Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Tehran in 1979 and was there for the revolution, the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, the rise of President Khatami, the riots of 1999, and the crisis over Iran's nuclear program. In Persian Mirrors, Sciolino takes us into the public and private spaces of Iran, uncovering an alluring and seductive nation where a great battle is raging -- not for control over territory, but for the soul of its people.
In 1979, a clerical revolution in Iran swept aside the inarguably corrupt government of Shah Reza Pahlavi and set in motion events that would make that nation a world pariah. In the place of one dictatorship came another, one led "by an old bearded cleric in a turban and cloak whose answer to the king's injustice was to wrap the country in a populist message of promise and smother it with an intolerant version of Islam."
So writes Elaine Sciolino, a reporter for The New York Times who entered Iran with the Ayatollah Khomeini and who remained there for more than 20 years, providing American readers with memorable accounts that were less, it seemed, about politics and religion than about human nature. For Iran is a mass of contradictions, she writes, a country many of whose leaders press for forward-looking change while serving a government that seeks a return to the distant past, and whose citizens constantly seek ways to experiment "with two highly volatile chemicals--Islam and democracy." In her book, Sciolino travels the length and breadth of Iran, interviewing national leaders and citizens, turning up stories of resistance and accommodation that are at once hopeful and cautious. (For instance, she writes, "Personal expression is entirely possible in Iran. You just have to be careful when and where you engage in it, and you have to be ready for nasty surprises when the rules change.")
Iran has been overlooked for too long, Sciolino suggests. Her book, both sympathetic and critical, makes a useful guide for those outside the country who seek to understand it better. --Gregory McNamee
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