Just a reminder to Our Dear "Reformists" of the fact that we don't all have Alzheimers ...

Like Bill Mahr points out, most Muslims traditionally, sub-consciously, naturally line up with their own ilk.

Nice job on reporting the hypocrisy of our so called progressive opposition. As for MR. Mehrdad’s opinion, it has nothing to do with being a Muslim but being a hypocrite. I don’t believe Ms. Ebadi is a practicing Muslim, let’s not act like a bowl hotter than the soup. Look, everyone knows we have huge issues to deal with and there is plenty of blame to go around including the way the major powers have treated middle east for centuries. These empty slogans would not get us anywhere but drag us more in to darker future and worst things to come. Have you ever asked yourself why is it that the Muslim countries like Malaysia and Singapore don’t have the same issues as us Middle Easterners?   

Singapore is not a Muslim country. It is comprised of the majority Chinese (Buddhist and Taoist) followed by Indians and a small minority of Muslim Malays.

Malaysia has a slight Muslim majority, but its culture is more aligned with the far eastern societies than the Middle East.

Empty slogans and fact-less comments will not get us anywhere! That's why I am in favor of a quick Bilakh, as I stated before!

Oh boy, where do I begin? Let's give it a try anyway. Dear Faramarz, the facts are right in front of us and you still bother to bring up that OLD Bilakh issue. Where were you when I made my final comment under that post? You strike me as a happy go lucky kind of a guy with above average intelligence and yet you try to make light of a serious matter by being witty (which by the way, take it from an older guy, it is NOT your best asset and you have a long way before you can master that fine art) here was your opportunity to engage me in a constructive debate and you chose to pick on the only part of my comment that was easy to search on Wiki (which seems to be the norm on this site and you are not the only guilty party) and ignored the main part of the comment. I meant to say Indonesia which is the largest Muslim country on earth. They have had relatively calm situation. We had that incident in Bali a few years back. Even in Singapore there is a 15%  Muslim population but when I visited there some years ago it was pretty obvious that they have at least very visible and active presence and mind you no religious group has more than 35 or so percent of the whole population which again it is not the point. Malaysia has more than 60% Muslim population and any which way you slice it, it is not a SLIGHT majority, slight means a few percentage points not 20 percent!! So please get your FACTS correct as well. And what is that lame excuse about aligning cultures with far east as opposed to Middle East? Are they more peace loving and we are savages? Where did Genghis Khan come from? What are the roots of deep hatred among Koreans, Japanese and Chinese? Another reason for some fact checking on your part. I’m starting to believe that we Iranians are developing some self hatred symptoms, we definitely have some identity crisis, trying to wipe out 1400 years of our history as if it never existed. Bottom line, I learned from you ( Wiki) that Singapore is not majority Muslim and I hope that you learned a few things from me which would not have been possible by a green or red Bilakh. And that is the advantage of a debate that a Bilakh does not provide, therefore it needs to go unless we are comfortably numb with where we are. Have a good night SIR.      

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand, what Ebadi and Ganji did were wrong. It's a slao in the face of free expression. On the other hand though they're free to express their disagreement with the cartoonist. That's part of their right to free expression as well. I personally think they did this to appease the religious population in Iran. They didn't want to alienate them.

But please friends--Let's not demonize a whole people. Nothing good in history has ever come from that. Remember the Nazis and their demonization of the Jews? Or better yet, just look at the Islamo-Fascists and their demonization of the West. My entire family, and 80% of my circle of friends are Muslims. None of them has ever liked, condoned or encouraged this type of violence. Yes, some were displeased with the Mohammad cartoons (including some in my family), but they never asked for the cartoonist to be punished. So what though? Shouldn't we respect their opinions if they disliked the cartoons?

Anyway, question for Dariush since he lives in France: how do you feel about a Muslim police officer giving his life to protect French citizens such as yourself?

http://iroon.com/irtn/link/22003/

AO.  It is yet to be verified that policeman was Musllim.  We all come from cultures with idiomatic names, delineating either ethniciy or religion.  All of us on this page can be attributed to Iran, and hence, to Islam.  Yet, every one of us despises even the thought of it.  After all, people are of any given religion, if they have chosen that on their own volition.

As for Ebadi and Ganji, they have the right to walk out. But it just shows how deep Islam has cut into Iranian intellectualism.  They haven't yet learned, nor will they ever, to tolerate dissension.

Why is it that when it comes to each of us as an individual, we consider ourselves beyond  and above such traps as deep rooted religious beliefs but when mentioning people like Ebadi who was a JUDGE during the old regime and a winner of Nobel peace prize, all of the sudden she becomes somebody incapable of freeing herself from the same issues ?!! Hypocrisy means beliefs minus action. She believes in freedom of expression and yet walks out of a ceremony celebrating exactly what she believes. As  A_O mentioned is most likely due to fear of negative reactions from authorities and common people. THAT is called ACTION which is in conflict with her BELIEFS = A HYPOCRITE. What has Islam to do with it is well beyond me.

 On another note and I don’t mean to put myself on a pedestal here but other than a few occasions that I have admitted to my shortcomings I’m yet to witness even one case when the contributors to this site admit to any faults or mistakes. It says a lot about our characters, Isn't it?  

Dear Mehrdad - The news about the policeman being Muslim are all over the news. If you Google it, you will see multiple articles talking about it. I actually have a Moroccon friend with the same last name. This officer though appears to have been from Tunisian descent.  These terrorists were equal opportunity murderers. The Muslim officer was their first victim. They then proceeded to kill a Jew (Wolinski) and a bunch of Christians. And that's just at the Charlie Hebdo office.

But it's not just the officer. There are perhaps thousands of Muslim servicemen and women in the U.S. military, my own cousin being one. He was with the USMC and served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we throw him in with this lot as well? If you visit the Arlington National Cemetery (which I have) you will also see graves of service members marked with Islamic symbols as well.

There are many, many problems with Islam today. Simly put, the religion has not reformed itself, and that's due to many religious, cultural, socio-economic and socio-political factors which I'm sure people who know about this stuff more than I do have written books and articles about. IMO, reform in Islam--under the current climate in the Muslim world--will not happen anytime soon. We're in this for the long run. But that doesn't give us a license to blame 1.6 billion people for the actions of a very small--albeit extremely dangerous-- minority.

As far as Ganji and Ebadi, they're just idiots and hypcrites. They have the right to walk out, just like we have the right to call them idiots and hypocrites.  

This great and timely blog can only be appreciated by those with inteligence and character stronger than  the level of a 5 year old kid getting offended by a red bilakh!

And AO jan, your cousine makes us all proud by serving his country in this brave manner  instead of sitting behind the computer moaning about how bad and nasty America is. I hope one day he'll be part of the military force liberating Iran from the bloodthirsty terrorist akhoonds land their bassiji and sepah terrorist army.

Thank you dear Hamal. My cousin is done with active duty. He's becoming a police officer in Virginia now--which gives me a license to speed on Virginia highways pretty soon! I think he might be staying in the USMC reserves though. Not sure. He keeps yapping about it everytime I see him, and I'm totally confused about waht he wants to do on the reseves end. He was telling me all about it a couple of months ago when I was visting him dwon in VA..but I was drunk and didn't really pay attention. :-) All I know is that he survived Iraq and Afghanistan, which made us pretty happy. I told him when he got back the last time that now that he's back all the sympathy and deference for him is out of the door. We'll treat him like s**t now--just to make up for all those years of his deployment and the roller coaster of emotions that we went through everyday just to hear that he was OK.

Dear Hamal, I suppose you have not read the other post where we discussed the merits of thumbs up or down (http://iroon.com/irtn/blog/5644/ ). Otherwise you would have known that I don’t give a diddly squat about either red or green Bilakh. Whether you or the fine editor of this site admit or not we are all panelist in a forum and not participants in a popularity contest. Most of our members are great Clarence Thomas impersonators, meaning that they have no input about any of these great topics which  is astonishing to me.  I explained in detail my reasoning for why I think having this option is harmful to the success of this fine site. And for heaven’s sake, when are we going to learn to have a civilized conversation without insulting each other? If it helps you to vent out some frustration then keep doing it and I even volunteer to be the target of your abuse. You have my blessing to use 4 letter words in response to my posts and comments since it doesn’t mean crap to me but it is the least that I can do to help a fellow compatriot. Best of luck. 

Hey Hamal

go ahead and enjoy freedom say anything you want to everyone. One day you will learn freedom is more than offending others.

Brother Hamal.

Those three criminals in France are as Moslem as Hassan Rouhany, javad zarif , Trita parsi and other whores of Ali Khamenei. I'll be writing a blog about this subject very soon. Please read it.

I have seen Amirkabear4u khanoom  has been following you and attacking you.

Please ignore her. She is not a Moslem. She is a Monafegh. a hatefull and oghdehi moozlim like those three criminals in paris. The only difference is that she has no guts to do what those criminals in paris did, so instead she comes here all the time bad mouthing people on internet.

Never been a fan of neither of them, but apparently these so called reformists don't seem to get the basics of free speech and freedom of expression: The whole idea of free speech is the speech that offends you otherwise why would you even need to have it as a constitutional right!  Its time to enroll these clowns in basic modernity 101!