To Insult a Prophet: Why Does It Matter

     Furious muslims chanting death to their enemies, embassies surrounded by policemen fighting angry protesters, buildings on fire… we are all familiar with these pictures. But why? Why such things must happen? Why muslims can’t just get along and take everything easy. Why unlike other religions, muslims cannot accept even the slightest of insults to their beliefs?  Why should it matter so much?
Muslims have certain red lines. No matter what, you just cannot insult what they believe in. You can’t make fun of it either. But still, this doesn’t mean every time somebody makes a joke gets beheaded by muslims. It doesn’t mean they won’t let you express your mind. Hell, muslims even hold competitions for those who don’t believe in Islam, to come and challenge Islamic beliefs logically, and if they succeed there will be really huge rewards for them.

So where’s the problem? Why do muslims encourage you to challenge them, and at the same time they get angry over a movie or a caricature? There’s not a simple answer to this question. Not unless you try and look at the bigger picture here: it is not the first time and it is not just a movie, it’s been like this for so many years.

As George Bush once put it: “either you’re with us or against us.” Look at the muslim world. Islamic countries with pro-US governments are living in peace, others are either burning in war or hit by sanctions. Countries that remain true to their Islamic roots are facing with all sorts of difficulties, be it war, sanctions, regime changes and even terrorist attacks. For the past eleven years, after the 9/11 attacks muslims, for absolutely no certain reason, have been targeted by all sorts of negative attacks. Almost all kinds of entertainment have been adopted to weaken Islam’s image and the recent movie is no exception.

Muhammad, is one prophet that alongside with Koran, connects all muslims together. To insult him means to simply take aim at the very heart of Islam; you remove it, and Islam is no more – or muslims for that matter. Islam just like any other religion, is divided into many sects and the only way to hit them all at once, is to attack what holds them together. As it’s been done so many times and so far nothing has changed, because muslims have reacted, and never hesitated to defend their beliefs.

To insult Muhammad, is totally understandable. Given the world we are living in, and considering those who are trying to control it, and looking at the things that have been done to the true Christianity and Judaism, one will easily comprehend why Islam and its prophet are under attack and why muslims are so furious. As longs as there are people out there willing to replace the reality of Islam with their own version of it, one must not expect muslims to stand and watch.

Ramadan: A Whole Month of Desirables

          Most people around the world think of Ramadan as just a regular month during which Muslims do some rituals, some pretty tough ones, and then happily celebrate the end of it. Although it may all sound correct, one must know that there’s much more into Ramadan that even Muslims can’t wholly fathom and are yet to discover it themselves.  Ramadan is not just simply avoiding food and water for a few hours, and to think of it as a month of mere hardship won’t do it any justice.
Of course the most prominent aspect of Ramadan is the fasting. Not that other religions don’t have it, but in Muslim world it just goes far beyond eating nothing from dawn to dusk.  For them it is a sign, a sign reminiscent of the poor, those who literally have nothing to eat and don’t even know if they’re going to make it through the night. Poverty and hunger are two things that prevail in Muslim world due to the environmental, economical and of course political conditions Islamic countries face today. Huge conventions to raise money for the poor, mass adoptions of unsupported children, gathering vital commodities for the poor and many other activities of this kind are the things that Muslims do in Ramadan and one can’t ignore the important role of fasting in igniting this fiery feeling of caring for one another.
Now, If you think fasting is all Ramadan has to offer, you’re just looking at the cover. Everything is different in Ramadan, even the way people treat each other. Most families just find the love again and forget everything that used to keep them apart. Many unpleasant memories are forgotten and many friendships are renewed. Some people even start new relationships, establish new friendships with others, once they find out that they, too, are fasting and share a lot regarding beliefs. Ramadan is just a perfect way of socializing in a sense.
To make it even more interesting, crime rates drop dramatically during Ramadan. A safer community to live in is one thing every single individual prays for nowadays and in Ramadan it’s just a dream that comes true. Any sort of crime, be it murder, stealing, kidnapping or even your regular street fighting just fade away in the wake of what seems to be a universal feeling of friendliness and closeness towards other people, even those you don’t know.
Whatever it is, as I mentioned earlier, you’ll just get to know Ramadan as much as you can understand it. 30 days of all the good feelings, makes you want to be a better person, especially when you see all the love and respect that Muslims express for this month and the way they at least try to change who they are for a minimum of 30 days, and who knows, maybe even a lifetime.

War Is Ugly, But...

I can smell the war; it’s so imminent that I can smell the burnt meat of poor soldiers and civilians. I can hear bombs exploding everywhere and the cries of little children looking at their dead mother, and a wreck which hours before used to be their house. Another f*cking war…
My father had fought back in Iran-Iraq war. He says and I quote, “I know how exactly it feels, the insanity of humankind coming to life in form of weaponry. Sometimes you just don’t want to believe what goes on in wars. You just want to keep telling yourself what you see in movies is as gruesome as it gets. You really need to believe that, otherwise you’ll find yourself picturing it, trapped under its wreckage, in your mind. Mankind killing mankind, that’s just brutal and absurd.”
And it’s all happening again. A country is to sanction another country and they threaten to respond by using military power if sanctions are imposed. We never learn, do we? Thousands of lives must be lost, fathers must be killed, and houses must be burnt and destroyed for us to learn. It’s always been like that, from that bastard Cesar to our very own stupid Kings; war is the only way to learn.
It is as simple as that; a f*cking moron in Whitehouse sanctions our oil shipments, we retaliate by targeting those commuting through Strait of Hormoz and a deadly war breaks out. All the sudden coward Arab states of the Gulf wet their pants and start sucking their thumbs. Iran and US engage in an aimless war all over the world, attacking each other’s interests be it military, civilian, or economic. And we all know when it ends and how.
I pray to God it doesn’t happen. I sincerely ask God for everything to end in peace. I wish one never even thinks of invading the other. But God knows if it does happen… screw humanity then. If we’re all going to burn, let’s make it hard for the f*cking fire. In a world that innocent people are dying in old malfunctioning air planes simply because we’re sanctioned, mercy means nothing. Fighting against the cowards who would’ve done such thing is an honor. I will be in the front line as soon as it begins and I will do everything to them to earn myself that badge of honor, and become a war criminal. They deserve the worst.

Yes, war is ugly… but sometimes you just have to. 

Disclaimer: Warmonger’s discretion was temporarily not advised.

My Country, My Country

     There was once a great king called Xerexes… oh crap. I don’t know why, but whenever someone wants to talk about my country they always bring up the whole legends of Xerexes and other kings of ancient times who used to rule our motherland, the great Persia. So Xerexes didn’t kill women and children? Oh that’s great; but what about their cities, their everything else? How would he treat their men? What the hell did he even want to prove by capturing their lands and properties? Wake up dude!

I mean, not that I hate him or anything but I’m sick and tired of those stupid people who don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re always like, “He was such a nice guy he didn’t take hostage the women and children of the defeated” and so on. Come on man, the dude was a war monger at the first place. Why to start a war and then let go of the innocent? What, you’re saying their men were guilty so there was nothing wrong with killing them? Or they had to die, so that Xerexes could let go of their women and put his name out there as a merciful and generous “God”?! How about that?

Sadly, this madness doesn’t end here. Some go on so much that they talk about those times as if they’ve been there and have spent time with the guy himself. I read somewhere on Facebook, that “Xerexes liked fruits a lot and he always carried with him a big like a bag of different fruits and give them away to the poor, after invading their land to show his generosity.” Seriously? Is this what the world has come to? Now you’re lying to defend some douche bag vampire who used to invade other countries for no reason and used to call himself a God? Get a life man. Seriously, go get a life.

I’m proud to say I’m all but a supporter of that guy. He may have had written the world’s first human rights thingy and he may had shown mercy to some people, but I’m sure it’s because of kings like him that some people still hate my country today. Ask Arabs and they want all the Persians dead. Ask Turks and they’re so hurt, that they want to chew your heart for no reason and ask Afghanis and Pakis to see how proud they are for not being recognized as Iranians. How’s that Xerexes lovers?

But I know a few men who truly stood for my people and I worship them. I know Sattar Khan, Bagher Khan, Mirza Kuchak Khan. Yeah, these are my heroes and the ones you need to learn about. Xerexes was a king, he could do whatever he wanted, but Mirza wasn’t. He was an ordinary man with a terrible haircut, who built a little army in the jungle and scared the living hell out of the enemies of the nation. I know a man called Mostafa Chamran, who beat the sh*t out of Iraqis with empty hands and was killed 600 kilometers away from home, while he could easily stay in the US and get his PhD and live a very wealthy and comfortable life. The list goes on but I’d live the rest for you to find out. 

Whenever I see somewhere, a guy who’s yelling his lungs off to support a foolish king of this kind and thinks that showing the world how big heroes we once used to have is what he’s doing, I just want to choke them. Let’s hope they either wake up or go to hell to meet up with their beloved king.

P.S: Historians’ and Xerexes-for-life-people’s discretion was advised.

English Literature: Torturial*

          Do you want to torture somebody? Are you so bored of everything that you want to kill yourself? Wait a second… Before taking any further steps, read this and you may want to choose an easier way to do so.

It all started almost a year ago. A dark night in summer, when all of the God’s wonderful creation was asleep, an alarm went off and all the sudden ‘zillions of students of a particular university woke up; it was time to pick some bloody units up for the next semester.

After losing gigantic amounts of weight because of the stressful attempts that were made for logging into the site, there came the real sense of terror and fear: the place was wet and most of the children were missing*; classes were almost full and it was a tight war against time, but I managed to choose what I wanted as I wanted. Little did I know that what I wanted was what I actually didn’t want myself to want!

It was the first days of English Poetry class, when I found out that English poetry is the most horrible thing that can happen to an ESL student. Starting with Shakespeare and his stupid, boring mouth blabbing about how gay he is and how time is killing him but that’s not important and so on, we were all blessed with a huge pile of sheet, having short stories and a lot more poetry written on them.

Now I like short stories; I’m a writer myself and those are my thing. But imagine reading a short 3-4 page story in 3 sessions or to be more accurate 3 weeks. That’s like being burnt on fire in heaven! You will be disgusted no matter what is it that you are reading.

Poetry is a lot worse. To torture somebody, all you need is a sonnet from I-don’t-know-why-he-is-so-famous poet and whatever-else-he-is-known-as, William Shakespeare. Tell your victims to write a comment on a sonnet in a week and they’ll be free; and, don’t get surprised if you found them dead after that or begging to be executed instead. Yes, Shakespeare is that ugly. I can’t say that about other poets though. I happened to like one piece of English poetry or two, especially those of Robert Frost. Weird!

It is not easy to be an ESL student. People will think of you as this stupid person who couldn’t do any better in university entrance exam and is sentenced to take this course; basically, that’s enough to make you depressed like Michael Jackson when he was accused of child molestation. Now add English Literature to this mess and you’ve got yourself a frustrated student who will be the best possible case for both suicide and/ or experimental torture programs.

P.S: English Literature students’ discretion was partially advised. Partially because you are a human being after all and English Literature is a nightmare to those who can read regardless of what they major in.

P.P.S: If you think I’m promoting suicide and torture by writing this, then you are absolutely right.

Rainy Tehran, Rainy Hell

              I no longer wonder if it rains in hell. Why? Because it does in Tehran and that's enough to be sure about hell. Of course Tehran is not as horrible as hell might be but still you can’t say it’s anything close to a standard city to live in. Pollution is beyond any imagination here and so is the diversity among its people. No matter where you are, not a single day is passed without you encountering someone talking on cell phone with the weirdest accents known ever. And the pollution, trust me, you don’t want to breathe here. It’s almost a gas chamber (Holocaust, anyone?). Those who live in Tehran are, probably, the only human beings with the ability to survive a nuclear blast, thanks to the air pollution.

Is there any other way to make things worse? Sure! The only thing you need is raining for an hour or two; then the city would pretty much look like a giant ants’ nest flooded by water. People go crazy just like ants. Everyone take their cars to the streets and all the sudden the city turns into a gigantic parking lot.  

Unfortunately that’s just the beginning. Buses are always delayed, shops won’t open on their usual time and much worse, you can’t find your umbrella when it rains! That’s why, if you leave your home early in the morning, you’ll see people soaked to death waiting for the bus, and the stores to open; yes, they’re hungry too! To be honest they’re not regular people, they’re students like me who never get a chance to have breakfast in peace. 

The other day I was riding the bus to get to my university while it had been raining since the night before. So not surprisingly, it took me more than two and a half hours to get there. 2 hours more than a normal day! It’s been a recurring nightmare for more than 5 years.I love the rain though. 

P.S: Earthquake in the near future?! Please God, we’re suffering enough!
P.P.S: Now seriously,  does it rain in hell?!
Disclaimer: Tehran and its citizens’ discretion was advised.

I for Internet

           It wasn’t long ago, when having a decent dial-up connection was the craziest dream. One that you could talk about with your friends; the key to the unlimited source of the unreachable! You see, those days a connection was just a connection. It was just a tiny stream of tired bits being carried by some even more tired signals, and no one thought it’ll get better. Well, not in Iran!

When I’ve got my first dial-up connection, some 8 years ago, I couldn’t imagine having anything better than that. I used to spend lots of my time in Persian social networks of those days, or as I like to call them, the Cyber Pasturages! I still wonder sometimes, have we done any secret genetic experiences on animals in our country? Because I think I’ve seen some of them using internet several times. Anyway, Webshots is the only English site that I can recall from those days. My browsing habits went on like that for a year or two until the serious social networking came in.

It all started from Tebyan. The most creative Iranian site in the time, featuring lots of elements that could keep you entertained for hours i.e. a rich download section, easy blogging, free E-mail, etc. I thought posting on a site just does not make sense; well, I was wrong. My first post attracted many people: A boring joke revised by me into an unrecognizable new one. By no time I was addicted.

That was alright though; I still hated chat and blogging; two activities known as most time wasting things you could do on the internet, to me. But again, I was wrong. My first Yahoo ID was “Mohsen_15_marmoolak” (Yes, creativity was high!) and actually was of no use to me. But my second ID added another affliction: Chat. It still was not serious for me; I used to mess with my friends just to have fun. But when I started blogging it all changed. Readers started adding me from my blog and soon after that I was waist deep in IDs. I loved it though, most of them really liked my blog and that was cool. But you can’t keep chatting and living together. It was like hell for me. Imagine having a dial up connection and an add list with more than a hundred active IDs. Who’s going to pay the bill? I started announcing certain hours of day for a blog conference. Yes! People would gather in my blog and talk to me through comments or messenger. I felt like a celebrity, but in fact it was nothing but addiction. I was an internet junkie surrounded by a bunch of people like myself. All we wanted was to kill the time. However, blogging helped me a lot. It helped me to learn myself, and my abilities in writing.

But now it’s different. I’m not addicted to chat anymore; I’m not even addicted to blogging like I used to be. But thanks to ADSL, I’m a download addict now and torrent is dope!

P.S: To those who keep asking me why don’t I have a Facebook profile? Get a life and some privacy! I already feel guilty for keeping my Yahoo profile going.