Beauty & the Beast; Neda Soltan vs. Evil; a Religion that allows Burkhas, Oppressions, and Repressions, Stoning, and Honor Killings of Women:
By Marc Chamot
"When G.W. Bush said that Iranian politicians were the “Axis of Evil,” and after what they did to Neda Soltan, he was proven right."
It was that video again. I just can’t get Neda off my mind. Not only that they murdered this precious angel, they also denied her, and her family their proper dignity to a decent burial with other grievers.
The more I think about her, and the more I read about world reactions to her death, it’s becoming clearer about our special relationships with Neda Soltan.
Let me explain: This once beautiful Persian princess is being compared to Joan of Arc. “Saint Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc;[1] ca. 1412[2] – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint.
A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII.
A decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr.[3] She was beatified in 1909 and later canonized in 1920.[2] She is one of three patron saints of France.”
I believe that Neda Soltan is Joan of Arc, plus a whole lot more to this world. There is that old familiar Greek mythological saying, “the face that launched a thousand ships,” which talks about their once own legendary gorgeous princess, where ships were sent to rescue her from her kidnappers.
Neda Soltan is the new face that helped bring the world together, Neda Soltan is the face that will end oppressive tyrannies and other human abuses and atrocities from evil despots, and not only in Iran, also anywhere else on this globe.
Neda Soltan is also the face that will end Muslim men with their oppressive, repressive, demeaning and abuses towards their own women. And Neda Soltan may be the face that brings down the sadistic, murderous and tyrannical government of Iran.
Neda Soltan’s death not only has united us for common cause, it has brought the outside world to recognize that there are serious problems and abuses going on around the world.
Neda wasn’t a Christian, or Jewish, and she even wasn’t a Hindu and a Buddhist. Neda Soltan was a devout Muslim, she wasn’t any Muslim; she was our Muslim girl. From the moment that bullet pierced her heart, Iran’s little princess, isn’t Iran’s anymore, she became all of ours.
The reason why Neda Soltan struck such a chord of grief around the world over her video death, it’s because not only she was a devout Muslim; she also came from a society that oppresses and supresses women. We witnessed a brutal murder of a woman in a Muslim country sanctioned by their very own government.
When we saw her being brutally murdered on the video, we didn’t see her as a Muslim. We saw Neda as a human being. We all saw her as our mother, a sister, an aunt and a cousin.
Even our own president, Barack Obama mentioned this Persian Princess by name, and called her viscous murder “heartbreaking.”
Neda did not seek for us us, but we wanted her, we needed her, and we all adopted Neda Soltan as our own. Neda is our new hope for peace and she’s the hope for world change.
Neda came from an oppressive, repressive religious upbringing, especially one that is more oppressive to women, a religion that allows burkhas, repressions, stoning, and honor killings of women. For her to captivate us like she did, Neda had to be pure as the driven snow.
It was ironic when her family pleaded with her not to go to the protests, but Neda’s aunt had a premonition of what was going to happen, but Neda jokingly told her, “Don’t worry, it’s just one bullet and its over.”
Here is an awesome piece on Neda and Iran’s future, by David Ignatius of the Washington Post:
Bet on the followers of Neda
David Ignatius, Washington Post Writers Group
On one side, you have all the instruments of repression in Iran, gathering their forces for a crackdown. On the other, you have unarmed protesters symbolized by the image of Neda Agha Soltan, a martyred woman dying helplessly on the street, whose last words reportedly were: "It burned me."
Who's going to win? In the short run, the victors may be the thugs who claim to rule in the name of God: the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and the other tools of an Islamic revolution that has decayed and hardened into mere authoritarianism. They have shown they are willing to kill enough of their countrymen to contain this first wave of change.
But over the coming months and years, my money is on the followers of the martyred Neda. They have exposed the weakness of the clerical regime in a way that Iran's foreign adversaries - America, Israel, Saudi Arabia - never could. They have opened a fundamental split in the regime. The rulers will try to bind this wound with force, and salve it with concessions, but neither approach will make the wound heal.
We are watching the first innings of what will be a long game in Iran. President Obama has recognized that with his gradually escalating rhetoric. By Tuesday, he was using powerful language to describe the "timeless dignity" of the protesters and the "heartbreaking" images of Neda.
He suggested that the mullahs cannot win a war of repression against their own people. "In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests," he said. Behind Obama's cool but confident talk is a judgment that, as one senior White House official puts it, the mullahs "can't put the genie back in the bottle." The official explained: "Iran will never be the same again. You don't have to know how this will end to know that. The regime has been challenged. They are now back on their heels."
A weakened Iran may seek the validation and legitimacy that would come from negotiations with the United States, presenting a diplomatic dilemma for Obama. Several American officials have told me that before its June 12 election, Tehran signaled Washington that it was ready for talks. Obama has tried to keep this door open. But as long as the Basijs are clubbing and shooting protesters in the streets, negotiation will be a nonstarter.
As the mullahs' grip on power weakens, there are new opportunities to peel away some of their allies. The United States is moving quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and there's talk of working with the Saudis to draw elements of the radical Palestinian group Hamas away from its Iranian patrons, toward a coalition government that would be prepared to negotiate with Israel.
The White House views the internal situation in Iran now as "a power play," in the words of one official. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have staged what amounts to a pro-regime coup. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the vanguard. There's talk that Ahmadinejad may appoint a fierce hard-liner, Ruhollah Hosseinian, as his new minister of intelligence. This hard-line group reminds me of Saddam Hussein's henchmen in Iraq.
But the opposition has tough leaders, too, with deep roots in the 1979 revolution. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate, is no starry-eyed Democrat. As prime minister, he supervised the Department of Investigations and Studies, which ran some Iranian operations in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Mousavi followers may move in coming weeks from street demonstrations to strikes and other economic protests. And behind the scenes is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been dickering over the past week to build a coalition of mullahs for a collective leadership to replace Khamenei.
How will the conflict proceed? Jack Goldstone, a professor at George Mason University who studies revolutions, sees a three-stage process that leads to regime change. First, members of the elite defect and form an opposition; then the nation polarizes and coalitions are formed; and then the mass mobilization. These three elements of the revolutionary process are already present. The ferment will ripen, as the regime tries to avert step four - its demise.
To comment, e-mail David Ignatius at davidignatius@washpost.com.
I’m just getting sick and tired; of the Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin’s Media/Public Obsessions & Perversions:
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