This is a blog I read fairly frequently, dealing with terrorism, and the introduction provides a very good snapshot of what the author wants to accomplish.
This post came out a while ago, but it illustrates the reasons for the tension behind the elections. I'll quote the most important parts below, but the entire post is well worth reading.
----"Now going onto the government and why the people are sick and tired of it. Basically, the government hasn’t stayed true to its promise, and the poor are still poor and the rich were driven out of Iran pretty much. The clerics have all the money. The average salary of an Iranian is equal to about $300 a month, which is pretty good with their cost of living…. the average cleric makes $50,000 a month just for being a cleric, and $500,000 a month if they actually preach at a mosque. Compare that to the cost of living here, and their salary would well over $1,000,000 a month just for sitting on your ass and wearing a fancy robe.
Also, many of the clerics have gone against their teachings, you can see a lot of them wearing fancy Italian shoes and expensive slacks. This goes against the teachings of anti-materialism that they learned. Also Khamenei, the poster boy for clerics, moved into a mansion about 20 years ago with the excuse that he needed it for extra protection. (No one knows the location of his house as it’s kept secret for his protection.)
The reason the people are so pissed off now isn’t just because the elections were supposedly rigged. It’s also because the government spends too much money serving the clerics (majority of taxes go toward “religious funds” which translates to the clerics’ salaries). Also the government has ownership over 100% of business and all institutions. Even private businesses are technically owned and monitored by the government. These were all things that Mousavi promised to stop, he also promised to get rid of Iran’s bad image of Anti-America and Anti-Israel
In reality most Iranians don’t give two shits about the affairs of a bunch of Palestinians that throw rocks over a country the size of Delaware."-----
I feel as those this post reinterates the on going theme that middle eastern leaders employ western things when they see necessary and use relgion as a cloak to insure their own agendas. I feel that it is these continual actions that employ the western consesus that these leaders are evil people with hidden agendas. These people are hypocritical in terms of the clothing they wear and where they live in relation to their religion. This article along with the other posts allows me to realize why one would make the leap to assume these leaders are capable of being hypocritical on a larger scale; these men more than violate their political promises but also their religion promises too. While, it is easy for westerns to accept when someone forgets it's a friday during lent and has a burger, it is not so easily dissmissed in forgein lands. Here our emphases is on ethics before morality... morality is emphasis through religion. Yet, these Iranian officials are figures of intertwined morality and ethics. Thus, their wrong doings whether big or small are felt much more.
ReplyDelete