Monar Jomban (part 3 of 4)

we can thank the bush administration for their polarizing comments of Iran when clearly a very dynamic Iranian culture is interested in dialogue with the West as well as the East.

Iranians here in the US are generally very well assimilated and there are many who are leading figures in the performing arts. I suspect the Mullahs in Tehran are looked upon with contempt by young people in Iran - perhaps many of these Mullahs were party animals when they studied abroad in the 70`s and now that they are ``born again`` muslims they can be sanctimonious. Guess there`s not that much difference between our dear President Bush and the Iranians he loves to hate.

Iranians were always crazy about Indian films. Even thirty years ago when I was in Iran I watched the film Bobby six times in a jampacked cinema theatre, in Abadan, in the south of Iran, where boys and girls used to know of a lot of Indian film lyrics. The phenomenon is not new, and it is nice to see that an underground culture is still thriving, in spite of three decades of indoctrination and brainwashing by the guardians of the revolution, who tried their best to wipe out all traces of ``reactionary`` culture which could endanger the ``fruits`` of their revolution. It is my beleif that Iran`s age old traditions of cultural tolerance and accepting outside influences will triumph once again, if the outside world does not give the dogmatic elements a chance to shut away the Iranian people, once again, from the influence of ``taghoot``, the dark forces in the jargon of the Iranian religious establishment.
tariqz