Some Questions on Minorities and Majorities

This article is truly amazing. Referring to the events in southwest Iran over the last few days, the White House “accused Iran on Tuesday of violating the rights of Arabs and other minority groups and urged restraint in dealing with them.”

Um. Is this the pot calling the kettle black or what! And pointing out that the Bush administration possesses an astounding level of hypocrisy uttering these statements, in lieu of the widespread mistreatment of Arabs (or people perceived to be Arab) in this country, does not mean that I think just because the US discriminates against minorities that Iran can go ahead.

The article further notes: “The United States calls upon Iranian authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with the Arab minority and to "respect the peaceful exercise by the Iranian people of their democratic rights," Ereli said.” Might I quote this to a police officer the next time I am at a demonstration against US government policy and am getting pepper-sprayed and shoved to the ground in hand cuffs? Also, I recall some demonstrations in Iraq last week against US occupation that seemed to have produced little effect… what does it mean to respect democratic rights? Allow the demonstration and then refrain from too violent a reaction while completely ignoring any demands? Does the fact of simply allowing a demonstration to take place constitute a respect of democratic rights? (Perhaps I am too jaded, but talk is cheap and I have yet to see this administration respecting my democratic rights. I wonder what lessons it has – besides the bid for full spectrum domination - to teach other governments.)

What does strike me as weird is this concept of ethnic minority. What does this mean?

Does this mean people who speak Arabic? (Presumably they speak Persian as well). Is ethnicity in Iran understood on the basis of language? If so, most of the country can speak Persian, even if it is a secondary language. If Persian has to be a native language, then I must regretfully inform all of my cousins that most of us are not “Persians.” They will, let me tell you, be shocked, especially after all those years of Persian lessons after elementary school. Furthermore, in Safavid times, there were seven times more Persian speakers in India than in Iran. Majority rules! India then, must have been the core of “Persian.” This notion of the Persian language as the bastion of Persian identity becomes even more complicated once we consider the fact that standard modern Persian is something that, before the twentieth century, existed largely in the world of literature and was largely the preserve of the literate. And the literate were usually bilingual, learning to read and write Arabic alongside Persian. If these people are disqualified from being Persian, we should certainly strike from the list of Persians traitorous bilinguals like Hafez, Rumi, Firdowsi, ibn Sina, Sa’adi, and Suhravardi, - anyone who ever wrote anything that enjoys wide circulation today as “Persian.”

If ethnicity is not based on language alone, then is it based on race? If this is the case, most Persian speakers are disqualified from being Persian because they or their families hail from parts of the geographic political entity of Iran that has been identified as non-Persian. This assumes that people in “Persian” villages and areas have always lived there and have never had any other people pass through. Common occurrences like migration, invasion and reconfiguration are absent from such assumptions that “Persians” have, since arriving in Iran and being forged into a shining people through the glories of ancient empires, never moved since or married any of the people who arrived later or lived there before.

The idea of a racial basis for “Persian” identity is pure fantasy, one that is further bolstered by patriarchal systems that try to erase all traces of maternal connections through name and larger community affiliations. This is currently enshrined in Iran’s citizenship laws, where Iranian citizenship is passed down from a child’s father. Thus, my brother, who has never set foot in Iran can assume Iranian citizenship for his children, while I, who was born there, will have to wade through a mountain of petitions and paperwork to have such status for my children considered – since my husband is American.) So according to patriarchal systems of assigning identity, my brother’s children are Iranian and mine are American. Unfortunately, naming cannot erase the fact that they will probably still look like one another and their playing in the sandbox will not be an youthful enactment of multi-racial/multi-cultural diplomacy!

So if we are all a little mixed up from the word go, then what is this Persian identity? Some could say it is a set of ethics, a way of being in the world that is upright, honest and honorable. After all, ethical texts from pre-Islamic times heavily resonate in Islamic Iran from the Qabusnama up through Safavid and Constitutionalist times. But these ethical texts are prescriptive, meant to urge the practice of particular behaviors – which means that these are not the ethics that all people live by, at all times. They are an ideal, and an ideal is something hardly anyone lives up to. So do you stop being Persian when you are behaving badly? Do something ethically suspect? Make a mistake?

My own (paternal) family hails from the mountainous area of Mazandaran that was notoriously rebellious in the hundred years after the Arab invasion. The region kept revolting, the Arab troops kept coming back, putting down the revolt, and the people would pledge their allegiance to get the troops to leave and then revolt as soon as they were out of sight. Finally, sick of this, the Arabs placed a permanent garrison there and settled. (Shah Abbas also forcibly converted thousands of Georgians and Armenians to Islam and settled them in Mazandaran). So my glorious ancestors are racially suspect AND ethically dubious (as oath breakers). Furthermore, up until my grandparents generation, most of them were learned, and therefore bilingual speakers of Persian and Arabic. Imagine that, Nur and Kujur, a hotbed of non-Persians linguistically, ethically, and racially. So why are they not considered a minority? What erases some aspects of the past and not others? Could it be that political, social, and economic expediencies of particular historical moments demand particular interpretations of the place of self and community?

So what is this concept of Arab minority or any other minority in Iran? What sort of myths and constructs does it uphold about the Iranian nation-state? That it’s core is “Persian” and everyone else is a minority? Rather than squabbling about what happened to cause the protests and crackdowns (which is entirely unclear) I wanted to ponder over why no one who criticized the IRI’s actions questions the basis of the argument, that there is an Arab minority and a Persian majority and that naturally the state is constituted by the majority nation and room must graciously be made for the minority. What is the Iran nation but the latest permutation of a fantasy of belonging? Is it not an idea that sustains a form of political rule, where cultural forms (and other similarities) may or may not overlap? There is no way to have a majority without excluding others. Maybe we need to think of belonging in more flexible ways.


A final note on the article: the caption of the generic militant picture (which always accompanies articles on Iran) reads “Iranian special forces soldiers march during the annual Army Day parade in south Tehran April 18, 2005. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said on Monday Iran had the military might to deter attacks against the Islamic state, which is under Western pressure over its nuclear program.”

Why does this accompany an article about US criticism of the Iranian government’s military behavior in Khuzestan? Does this hint that this criticism is an attack on Iran? What does this have to do with the nuclear program? Or is it just another statement of “proof” that the Iranian government is Evil and Violent in such absolute terms that specification, clarity and relevance of proof are unnecessary. Or is Reuters also colluding in underlining and reinforcing the peripheral nature of the Arab minority to the Iranian nation-state by implying that such protests constitute an attack on the state. As always, the picture to text logic of articles on Iran tell their own mystifying, insidious story.

*Mana Kia is a PhD student in History and Middle East Studies at Harvard University