REPLY TO JALADHI

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Feb 26, 2008 at 04:06

Dear Jaladhi:

My friend Azar was not a typical Muslim by any means. Having grown up in a highly educated family and having traveled in the West extensively she abhored the oppression of women in particular, even when I knew her forty years ago. Psychologically she was quite liberated in her approach to life. I think her mistake, made as a very young woman, was to over-estimate the evils of Shah Pahlavi and to assume that anything replacing his regime would automatically be an improvement to Iranian society. As she found out, replacing the Shah's rule with the iron fist of the Ayatolluh Khomeini became a case of jumping 'out of the fying pan and into the fire.' She suffered much because of her illusions regarding the Iranian Revolution. We're all entitled to make mistakes, I guess. Azar is currently teaching at Georgetown University here in the USA.

As for the Iranian people in general, you are correct in that ultimately people get the leaders they deserve and that it is their own responsibility to overthrow an oppressive regime like that of the mullahs. Strange as it may sound, I read that even a grandson of the late Ayatolluh Khomeini has said that an overthrow of the theocracy is the best thing that could happen to the people of Iran.

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