“Since you are also Muslim like the hijackers, you can explain the religion to us: What would possess these Muslims to do such a thing?”
Huffington Post: Shiism, Nationalism, and the Past Clash in Modern Iran
Much as Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei notes, Iran is faced with a choice between the “school of Iran” and the “school of Islam.”
WSJ: Iran and Hezbollah’s Spiritual Leader
During the ’90s, Fadlallah had a falling out with Hezbollah and Iran. The sticking point was the concept of Velyat-e Faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, which held that the supreme religious and political authority for Hezbollah was Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pride played an issue for Fadlallah, who was a true scholar—a marja al-taqlid, or source of emulation—for millions of Shiites around the world. Khamenei was a mid-level cleric whose stature rested on his ability to maneuver among allies and adversaries in Tehran.
Why the Green Movement will Prevail
Sadness to me is the happiest time When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind Those times when I’m silent and still as the earth, The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe. Rumi It has now been almost six months since those fateful days in June when the [...]
The New Democrats: An intellectual history of the Green Wave
What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism–a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century.
The shackles are coming off
I have been following Iranian news daily now since about 1997, when I would trawl the internet, looking for anything I could find that would help quench a thirst that I must have been building up since my earliest days. A thirst for an understanding of the land I was born in, and that I [...]








