'Fashion police' continues intimidating Iranian women

No, the Iranian regime is not getting any better.

The police has recently announced to tighten the control of 'immoral' clothing. What they do is standing on the street and reminding 'improperly' dressed women. Some of the conversations between the police and women are offered in this article here.


A female police officer talking to an Iranian woman (Turkish Daily News)

"I am wearing stockings but, sorry, they are too light. Sorry I will change them, definitely I will change them. Now can I go?", says a nervous girl as a reply after being warned. Yet, others are more audacious and speak out:

"Shame on you, look what you've done! Go fix the traffic situation, people are stuck in traffic for hours, go fix other real problems".

I completely agree.

Elections in Turkey

In a couple of hours, the Turks will start heading to the polls to elect a new parliament. As you might have heard by now, the election is considered crucial for the future of the country. In this election the Turks will decide whether the current AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will continue its rule as a single party government or not.

The AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) has become an issue in Turkey due to the Islamist background of its founders. The party leaders have described the AKP as a party of the center right, but the secularists remain skeptic about its aims. They believe that the AKP has a hidden agenda and simply uses democracy as a tool to achieve its ultimate goal: an Islamic state.

The main opponents of the AKP are the secularists of the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People's Party), the party established by Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The CHP holds the label "leftist" but is not really leftist in its policies. I personally do not find the CHP really interesting. They are too rigid in their ideology and simply too nationalist.

Interesting, however, are two independent candidates. I'm talking about Baskın Oran, professor at the University of Ankara, and Ufuk Uras, former chairman of ÖDP (Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi, Freedom and Solidarity Party) and professor at the University of Istanbul. These two men represent the small liberal leftist community in Turkey. I'm not sure whether they will be elected, but if they will be, I'm sure they will contribute a lot to Turkey. Pay attention to these two names!

A useful Q&A about the election is provided by Al Jazeera, for those who wish to get more background information.

Rodents bring Israelis and Jordanians together

Economical benefit remains one of the greatest motives for individuals to actually do something. In some cases, it even neglects political barriers!

Read this story of Israeli and Jordanian farmers sharing experiences and working together in their struggle against rodents.

Let us hope that one day they will also work together fighting prejudices and hate.

The Turkish-Egyptian fez issue

As a want to finish my thesis this month, I've been writing and reading a lot this week. I had never imagined that I could use some of that reading material for my blog - most of it is too serious too handle - but I've stumbled upon some really funny stories.

It appears that Turkey and Egypt were on the brink of a serious crisis for a fez - or tarboosh as it is called in Egypt - somewhere in the thirties. The fez is a conical red hat that was worn by men in most parts of the Middle East, until the first half of the 20^th century.


The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II (reign 1876-1909) wearing a fez


Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), the Turkish leader that established the Republic of Turkey and carried out a series of reforms in his efforts to modernize his country, prohibited the fez on the ground that it was a sign of backwardness or whatever. You might not believe it, but people were actually put in jail for wearing the fez. Such was the sensitivity of the Kemalists regarding a simple headgear.

Well, the postwar (referring here to World War I) Egyptian regime had no such problems with the fez - or tarboosh I must say - and kept the hats just as they were. In fact, it was part of the Egyptian national attire and was hence also worn by Egyptian diplomats abroad. So when the Egyptian diplomatic envoy to Turkey, Abdel Malek Hamza Bey, attended a 'Day of the Republic' celebration where Mustafa Kemal himself was present too, he had no idea that he was 'offending' the Ghazi (that's Mustafa Kemal's nickname in Turkey) by wearing his beloved tarboosh!

Upon seeing the tarboosh, the Turkish officials hurried to Hamza Bey with the request to put it off, but he refused and declared that it was an essential part of his national attire. Feeling insulted himself by the officials he promptly left the place.

When the reason for Hamza Bey's unexpected departure was made public, the Turkish and Egyptian press - the Daily Herald in London too by the way - took the issue to a another level by dealing with it as a matter of national dignity. While some argued that Egypt's dignity was violated and asked for an apology, others claimed that no such thing was the case and that Turkey would not need to apologize at all. At the end, the two parties managed to come to an agreement and the incident passed without serious consequences.

Some twenty years later, in 1952, the tarboosh was abolished in Egypt by the newly established republican regime - yes, yes also in the case of Egypt it was a republican regime! At the same time, all relations with Turkey were broken off.

I love the irony of it.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad

Just married! Hurrah!


The newly married couple posing for the cameras / Reuters



The first dance:


The happiness of Hugo and Mahmoud was visible throughout the wedding / Reuters

In Iran, it's not always about religion

After the presidential elections of 2005, many had tried to explain Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprising victory by pointing to his promises on solving the economical problems in the country. After all, the only thing that mattered to the common people were not ideological issues, nor the veils, but the very basic needs of mankind: enough food, clothes and a shelter.

You shouldn't think that this is recent problem in Iran. Academicians have argued that the underlying cause of the revolution against the Shah in 1979 was not really his authoritarian rule or his Westernist policies, but the bad economical conditions. Yet, the mullahs were no saviors, nor economists, so the situation remained.

If I had been a mullah (who I assume to be devout), I would have already left the country. I mean, the fact that the problems were continuing despite the rule of religion was surely a sign of Allah, wasn't it? Is there a better way to say "beat it you mullahs!"?

Ahmadinejad, the first non-mullah president of the Islamic Republic, has been in office for two years now, but has not succeeded in improving the conditions of the masses either. Instead, he has sought confrontation with Western governments and is facing harsh sanctions now. Well, you don't have to be an economist to see that this will aggravate the economical situation even more.


Iranians burn a gas station / AP

The decision to ration gasoline is the first measure of the government to deal with the threat of sanctions. The riots after the declaration of this decision, however, seem to be the first signs of public opposition against the government.

A hymn chanted out of place

On wednesday last week, a group of Egyptian bloggers and activists, partly from the Muslim Brotherhood, held a conference and demonstration in favor of online press freedom at the Press Syndicate in Downtown Cairo. Read more about it here.

It seems that at a certain moment the Muslim Brothers started to sing the Muslim Brotherhood hymn. I don't know what that is like, but I can imagine that the other participants weren't really enthousiastic about this. I mean, it's like only singing the Belgian national hymn at the start of a game between Belgium and the Netherlands (random pick). Really stupid.

If I would have been at the site, I surely would have started chanting the Internationale (preferably in Arabic). Not that I'm a socialist, no I just like annoying and provocating others in such situations!

By the way, check out this Arabic version of the Internationale. They play it with the oud! Hah!

Ah, almost forgot to say! You can find pictures of the conference on Hossam el-Hamalawy's blog.

The Turkish dilemma

Two ordinary Turks having a chat:

Ali: If you were rowing a boat with only one extra seat and passed by a deserted island with the Prophet Muhammad and Ataturk, whom would you save?

Veli: Ataturk is resourceful. He can save himself. I'd take Muhammad.

The Birth of Venus

It was time for a banner update!

What you see now is a detail of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". A beautiful painting, one of my favorites!

According to Roman mythology, Venus was born as a full grown woman out of the sea. This was actually the result of - it may sound strange, I warn you - Uranus' genitals falling into the sea and fertilizing the water. In case you might ask why his genitals fell in the first place - and here I warn you again - well, his son Cronus chopped them off!

In reality, Venus arrived in Rome from the east. The Romans had borrowed her from the Greeks, who were calling her Aphrodite, but the goddess had her origins even further to the east. According to the Ionian historian Herodotus, the Greeks had borrowed her from the Phoenicians. In fact, she was known as Astarte in the Levant and as Ishtar in Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, creators of the first Mesopotamian civilization, called her Inanna. From Mesopotamia to Rome, quite a journey huh?!

I wonder why there is no sign of the goddess in her native lands nowadays. Might it be that she has fled the violence as well?

Khatami shaking hands of na-mahram women

Lately there has been much fuss in Iran about the former president Mohammad Khatami. The thing is that he shook the hands of women during his visit to the Italian city of Udine. "What's so special about that?" I hear you say. Well, the act is forbidden in Iran! That's the fuss about!

When are people going to stop blathering about such trivial things?



(I myself count two three hand shakes; one two around 4.30 and one around 4.40)

Khuzestan: a new theater of war?

Since the start of the war in Iraq, there has been a widespread concern that the conflict could lead to a regional war, involving such countries as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has caught my attention that the number of news items referring to this danger has been rising lately.

I'm not only referring to the Turkish desire to enter Northern Iraq, but also to the (apparently) growing tensions in Khuzestan (also called Arabistan), an Iranian province in which the majority is constituted by Arabs.


Source: Google Maps


"Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran have expressed a strong will to split from Iran and restore their own state, accusing Tehran of suppressing them racially, economically, and politically."

I was bowled over when reading these lines in an article entitled "Iran Arabs denounce discrimination" on Al Jazeera. I knew that Arab separatist movements existed in the region, but these lines make it seem as if the whole Arabic population of Khuzestan is engaged in a struggle for independence. Does that sound reasonable to you in any way?

Well, I myself am quite sceptical about it. I don't question the claims of suppression or discrimination, but I do think that being suppressed or discriminated doesn't automatically make one aspire independence. Independence is a political ideal, not the practical solution that comes to the mind of the ordinary man. It is possible to spread such ideals among the people, but in order to do that, one has to have effective propaganda tools at its disposal. As far as I know, no such thing is the case in Khuzestan.

Secondly, the indifference of the common people towards this political ideal has in fact already been demonstrated during the First Gulf War (1980-1988). In those days, Saddam Hussein had expected that the Arabs in Khuzestan would join the Iraqi forces against Tehran, but this appeared to be a big miscalculation. Most Arabs did not join the Iraqi forces at all and a considerable number even allied with the Iranian forces!

Of course, things may have changed since the First Gulf War, but I believe that things have also changed since the war in Iraq. Confronted with images showing the brutality of war in the media everyday, I don't think many are willing to open up a new theater of war.

No Israelis and Palestinians in the pub

Have you ever seen an Israeli and a Palestinian official sitting around the same table in public? I mean in real, not on television or in newspapers! Well, did you? I myself did yesterday!

The deputy chief of the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands, Yair Even, and the Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, Sumaya Barghouti, met each other yesterday evening in a debate organized by a group of students of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They were joined by Bert Bakker, former Dutch MP and Foreign Affairs spokesman for the small Dutch liberal party Democrats '66. The debate was presided by Paul Aarts, lecturer of International Relations at the UvA.

The event was titled "The good, the bad and the Dutch: The Netherlands' role in the Israel-Palestine conflict", but it was clearly not this Dutch thing that had attracted the 100-120 people present in the lecture room. It was rather the fact that two high ranked Israeli and Palestinian officials would talk to each other in public. The debate started with the aforementioned topic, but quickly shifted to the main issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I will only mention the main arguments though - this blog entry is not intended as a report or whatever.

"We want Israel to end the occupation, which is the root problem of the Palestinian question! If the occupation ends, there will be no Palestinian question!" shouted Barghouti. I never know what to think about female politicians and diplomats. There are so few of them, especially in the Middle East, that I can't afford myself to utter any critical word about them...

"If the Palestinians are really committed to peace, like Sadat (the former Egyptian president) was, then we will end the occupation and disband all settlements. Remember that we had cities in Sinai! We disbanded them all! Why? Because we saw that Sadat was committed to peace!" was Yair Even's reply. Though people had reminded him several times to speak up, the guy muttered throughout the debate, which really drove me crazy.

The Pub
The most interesting part of a debate in the Netherlands starts after the actual debate, as both the audience and the participants rush into a pub to continue talks in a more informal atmosphere. I was eagerly awaiting the moment that Even and Barghouti would have a beer together, but sadly enough, that did not happen.

The only debater that did come to the pub was Bert Bakker. Rushing into the pub, shouting "They sent me here!", he seemed as if he was totally unaware of the Dutch tradition of the Borrel (this is how the Dutch call such post-lecture pub sessions), but was eventually spotted drinking several pints of beer. At the end of the evening he greeted me twice; the first time on his way to the men's room and the second time on his way back - and this actually caused me some trouble in judging the guy: was he a real gentleman or simply a drunk man?

I myself was of course totally clearheaded, despite one Palm, two Maredsous and two La Chouffe...

In Ahmadinejad's Iran, no tolerance for loose headscarfs

I've always found it remarkable that there are people who actually think that they can successfully (trans)form society by simply imposing their ideas on other people. History is full of examples that demonstrate the failure of such attempts. Is it that these people are too pigheaded to accept any lessons from history or is it just that the capacity of their brains does not permit them to do so?

For a long time, I had the idea that the clerical regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran had (finally) realized that imposing Islamic rules on society would be to no avail. I had deduced this from the fact that the regime had been tolerating certain phenomena and practices, such as loose headscarfs (the scarf actually looked like a fashion item), fashionable and attractive clothes, young people dating in public parks, mixed parties at private homes (even though there were occasional police raids), the easy access to alcoholic drinks and so on.

However, it seems that under the current government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the authorities are much less willing to maintain such a policy of toleration. The picture below exemplifies this change to an intolerant, ruthless and rather brutal policy:


source: Masih Alinejad

According to messages in the Iranian blogosphere, this women was questioned by the police for being "improperly" dressed. In the struggle that followed, the woman was beaten by an officer and ended up having a face covered with blood. For more about the incident read this and this on Kamangir's blog.

Pious lady breaking taboo of sexuality

Breaking the taboo of sexuality in the Middle East is often regarded as the endeavor of 'Westernized' minds. The reason for this is not quite irrational. Western modernity has influenced the Middle East in various ways and since a very long time, so it is quite likely that its way of dealing with sexuality - for those who are uninformed: sexuality is generally an accepted topic of conversation in Western societies since the 1960's - has found cheerleaders in Middle Eastern societies too.

It is in this respect quite a suprise if you see a pious Muslim lady on Egyptian television encouraging people to have more sex. I'm talking about Heba Kotb¹, a female Egyptian sex therapist. She has her own tv show in which she answers questions on sexuality and advises the audience on sexual topics.

In her shows she appears to say, among others, that couples should have sex all the time to keep the relation interesting. They should also mix up positions and not fear explorations.² I stop telling more right now, cause otherwise my blog will probably appear in the list of those Middle Eastern guys googling for "sex"!

I guess you are curious about Kotb's source of inspiration... Well, you might not believe it, but one of them is just the Qur'an!

See Kotb's website for more information: http://www.hebakotb.net

1. I'm not sure whether this is an alternative spelling of Qutb. If so, it woul be interesting to check whether she's a relative of Said Qutb! (No I'm not serious on this)
2. "The Dr. Ruth of the Muslim World", in ABC News, 11 April 2007. Available at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Story?id=3027905&page=1 (accessed on 05/24/07)

A critical female Saudi voice

Thanks to improvements in communication technology, we are nowadays able to inform ourselves more easily about distant societies. I believe this wonderful development is a huge opportunity for all of us to get rid of our prejudices. However, as it can be quite demanding to actively engage in a continuous act of broadening the horizon, sometimes this prejudice-obliterating information needs to be provided by others - let us call them Prejudice Terminators for the sake of originality. (I surely would not dare to call myself a Prejudice Terminator, but I do admit that I occasionally make an effort to show 'the other side' of some situation, as I will do now)

In most parts of the world, including the Arab world, the image of the Saudi woman is not very cheerful. Most people think of Saudi women as submissive beings with no ability to speak. This may indeed be true for some women - and this may obviously be true for women in other parts of the world as well - but let us not stick to that part of reality and start looking around us for those other pictures the reality is offering.

While surfing on the fascinating waves of the blog ocean, I hit on this remarkable youtube film. It is a fragment of an Arabic talk show about whether women should appear on television (at least the first part of it, the second part is about brainwashing in Saudi Arabia). The charming but critical lady is Buthayna Nasser, a Saudi newscaster. The talk show was on LBC, a Lebanese television station.

Gulf of Peace

A couple of days ago, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the honor of being the first Iranian head of state ever to visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This may actually sound strange if you realize that the UAE has been Iran's largest trade partner since years. The two countries have a dispute about three little islands in the Gulf, but this doesn't seem to disturb their commercial links in any way.

It is well-known that the Iranians are not very fond of the American presence in the region. They feel surrounded on all sides. Indeed, almost all neighboring countries have pro-American governments and most of them also American military bases. You might expect the lionhearted, audacious Ahmadinejad to criticize Iran's neighbors on this point, but he is actually not as gutsy as he seems.

Expressing the wish of wiping Israel off the map and questioning the Holocaust, do not have any serious consequences, since Iran doesn't have any relations with Israel and neither with its American ally. These actions would at the most lead to disapprovals by Europeans and other countries in the world, but at the same time it would boost the regime's prestige in Iran and the region.

The situation is quite different when things really are at stake. Could the regime afford to be rude against its largest trade partner? Don't think so!
See below how elegantly the oh so ferocious Ahmadinejad addresses the issue of the American presence in the Gulf:

"We all wish that foreign troops would leave the region and give a chance to countries in the region to establish security in the region themselves. [...] With each other's help, we can turn the Persian Gulf to the gulf of peace and friendship."¹

Ahmadinejad visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
source image: IRNA / balloons and text by Ponentin

1. Quoted in "Iran calls for 'Gulf of Peace'", on Al Jazeera Net, 13 May 2007; available at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FA9EB904-7553-4641-B715-C394D2CCF0F1.htm (accessed on 16 May 07).

The struggle against and for the center-right

After Ankara and Istanbul (see my post on April 29^th), a major demonstration in favor of the secular establishment in Turkey, is now also being held in the Aegean city of Izmir, Turkey's third largest city. As one can see on the pictures, the demonstration is quite similar to the one in Istanbul; beside the usual banners, the main instruments of demonstration are again Turkish flags, portraits of founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and war veterans in late Ottoman/early Republican military uniforms. Today, however, I'm not going to complain about nationalism.


Fatih Saribas / Reuters


Hürriyet


Hürriyet

According to news reports, the demonstration is attended by hundreds of thousands of people. An unnamed military officer in Izmir even mentioned a number of 1.5 million. Similar numbers were also mentioned for the demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul earlier.¹ It should be clear that these demonstrations are not 'just demonstrations'; they are quite significant, they mean something.

Supporters of the current AKP² government have usually claimed that the current resistance to change in Turkey, is simply because the secular elite doesn't want to loose the favorable position that it has had in the past 84 years. This argument would imply that the issue is strictly bound to the elite and that there is a difference between what the elite wants and what the people want.

The huge number of participants in the last three demonstrations indicate that this is not simply a matter of 'an elite resisting change' at all. A considerable part of the population does favor the secular establishment and does believe that its way of life might be in danger - perhaps not immediately, but in the longer term. Even though the AKP has often expressed its attachment to democracy and the secular establishment in Turkey and has claimed to be a center-rightist or moderate conservative party, the secularists have never really trusted the party. ³

On the other hand, another considerable part of the population has indeed considered the AKP as a party of the center-right. It is this fact that complicates the Turkish political landscape.

Since the beginning of the multi-party system in Turkey in 1946, the Turkish political scene has been characterized by a struggle between the center-right and the center-left. The center-right has usually been the dominant political wing in Turkey. Its main opponent, the center-left, won elections only a couple of times.
The center-right was in the fifties represented by the Demokrat Parti, in the sixties and seventies by Adalet Partisi (Justice Party), in the eighties by Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party) and in the nineties by Doğru Yol Partisi (True Path Party) and again Anavatan Partisi. Now it seems that this task is being carried out by the AKP.

So, in a way, the traditional political struggle between the center-right and the center-left is being continued as before. The situation is just more complicated now, because the current party claiming to represent the center-right has itself actually no origins in the center-right, but rather in the religious right.

The center-left has reacted to this situation by adjusting its political rhetoric to attract not only leftist voters (who are already secularist) but also the secularist rightist voters. On the other hand, the traditional center-right, being pushed out of the political scene by AKP in the first half of this decade, now wants to return and to regain its position. In its campaign the traditional center-right too uses the secularist rethoric, as they want to create the impression that it is exactly this point that distinguishes the traditional center-right from AKP.

And there they are, hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the AKP government and in favor of secularism! Among them is the center-left, struggling against the center-right... And among them is also the traditional center-right, struggling for the center-right.⁴

1. "Turks stage rally against Islamic-rooted government", in International Herald Tribune, 13 May 2007; available at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/13/europe/EU-GEN-Turkey-Secular-Rally.php (accessed on 05/13/07)
"Turks rally in Izmir despite blast", in Al Jazeera, 13 May 2007; available at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/476B952C-8237-4629-9369-77DF4E1A7BC0.htm (accessed on 05/13/07)
2. Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party.
3. The reason for this is that the AKP was founded by former members of the Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) and the Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) , the former being the successor of the latter. Both parties were suspected of anti-secular tendencies and were subsequently closed down by court decision. The AKP was founded in 2001 as a center-rightist or moderate conservative party, but with the previous political affiliations of its founders still fresh in the memory, the six years since its foundation just haven't been enough to convince secularists of this change in political orientation.
4. These demonstrations are not organized by political parties, but by civil society organizations. There are those who want to depict the demonstrations as pro-center-left, but indubitably the demonstrations are also attended by rightist secularists.

Another world through exchange

For the ordinary man reading his daily newspaper, it may seem like squabbling is the only form of intercourse between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran lately. I have to admit that this is indeed true for politicians and diplomats; they keep on arguing, bickering and maneuvering, yet not producing any tangible results. But hey, it's their job to act like that! We wouldn't have expected it otherwise, do we?

I'm happy to say that there is much more dialogue on much more levels between Western countries and Iran. In fact, at this particular moment, a group of Dutch students is visiting Iran, as part of an exchange project between the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Tehran based School of International Relations (SIR). A group of Iranian students had already visited the Netherlands in March 2007. The exchange project was started in 2002 and is repeated each year with new groups of students.

It is worth noting that the participants have always described their experiences as very positive. The exchange is indeed a perfect tool for the development and facilitation of mutual understanding and dialogue. The participants not only get the opportunity of studying the country on location, but also of meeting fellow students and maintaining links with them. To give just one example: this blog itself is also read by Iranian students! (Hello my friends!)


Dutch and Iranian students in Tehran.
source: www.pidad.org

I myself participated in this exchange in 2005/2006 and I'm still involved in the project in some way. Together with fellow exchange students (both Dutch and Iranian) from my year, we have developed an online platform with the aim of making the dialogue stabler and permanent. Visit the platform for more information: PIDAD. Oh by the way, you can already read the report of the Dutch students' first day in Tehran!

Guys, I'm eagerly seeking new exchanges! Anyone organizing one?

Escaping sexual moral codes on the internet

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very particular news item in a Turkish daily.¹ At first I was shocked by the news item itself and soon after by the very fact that I was shocked in the first place. In my few trips to the Middle East, the very first thing that I noticed was exactly that what appeared from this news item. It was actually nothing new for me, was it? Or was it just that I hadn't expected it to be that pathetic?!

I'm talking about the conclusions of Google's Zeitgeist and Trends services, which report about search trends all over the world. The funny thing is that you can actually look up the information yourself! Try it out!

Anyway, the news item focused on a couple of very remarkable keywords: sex, porno and child porn. In all three cases Turkey ended up in the top ten - and in the last case even as number one.² I especially found the top ten for "sex" very interesting, please have a look at it:
1. Pakistan
2. Egypt
3. India
4. Turkey
5. Morocco
6. Viet Nam
7. Iran
8. Saudi Arabia
9. Indonesia
10. Serbia and Montenegro

I don't know anything about Viet Nam, but isn't it just so typical that all the others in the list are countries with a rather conservative sexual moral code? Isn't it funny that those who criticize the West for lacking sexual morality, are actually embarassed by members of their own society on this specific subject? I love the irony!

Searching "sex" on the internet itself is a quite trivial consequence of the suppression of sexuality by society, but it can actually lead to much more worrying situations. Several months ago women were sexually assaulted by gangs of men in downtown Cairo in broad daylight. The incident was much discussed in the Egyptian blogosphere; read this account of Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey (who has just quit blogging). This was apparently not the first time. Journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy writes in his blog that a similar incident occured in January last year.

On Malek's blog you can actually see pictures of the incident (the blog is in arabic, scroll down for the pictures).

Just don't ask me where the police was when all of this happened. OK?

1. "Seks arayışındaki tanıdık ülkeler" ["Familiar countries in the list of googling sex"], in Radikal, internet baskisi, 05/07/07; available at http://213.243.28.21/ek_haber.php?ek=sa&haberno=3473 (accessed on 05/08/07).
2. Please note that this does not imply that these keywords are the most googled keywords in Turkey; they are not! The top ten of most googled keywords is in fact not very unusual and certainly not embarrassing: Most googled keywords in Turkey

Hızır arrives with drops from heaven

Six weeks long, the people in the low lands of Northwest Europe enjoyed the rays of Helios without being disturbed by drops from the skies. Apparently, Haddad¹ became so inconvenient about this exceptionally long period, that he finally made it rain yesterday.

It's quite remarkable that it started raining on this specific day, the 6th of May. No, I'm not referring to the misfortune of Sarkozy being elected president and neither to the hanging of 21 prominent Muslim and Christian Arabs in Beirut and Damascus by Djemal Pasha, 91 years ago on this day (and please don't make me start talking about the inability of the Turkish parliament to elect any president, whatever his political background!). I'm rather referring to the much more pleasant event of Hıdırellez, the day that marks the beginning of the Days of Hızır.

Hıdırellez is a holiday celebrated in the Levant, mostly in Turkey, but also by Roma and Albanians in the Balkans. In the Western world the holiday is better known by its Romany name, Ederlezi, due to Emir Kusturica's "The Time of the Gypsies" ("Dom za vešanje") and Goran Bregović's soundtrack for this film, "Ederlezi".

The name Hıdırellez is actually a contraction of the names Hızır, or Hıdır (Arabic: الخضر, al Khiḍr), and Ilyas (Arabic: إلياس), both of them religious personages. Hızır is believed to be a saint, sometimes also considered a prophet, that became immortal by drinking from the spring of life (ab-ı hayat) and has pretty much all of Jesus' (or any other prophet's) supernatural abilities. Ilyas is the Arabic, Persian and Turkish name for Elijah, a prophet in ancient Israel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Christian Bible (New Testament) and the Qur'an (Newest Testament?).


Hızır and Ilyas sitting at the Fountain of Life.
source: www.khidr.org

In Turkey, the two act among others as the protecters of travellers. According to traditional belief, 6 May (23 April according to the Julian calendar) is the day on which Hızır and Ilyas meet each other to decide in which part of the world each of them will serve. It is usually thought that Ilyas takes care of travellers at sea and Hızır of those on land.²

This great meeting, however, is not the main reason for people celebrating it. Hıdırellez is actually a holiday marking the beginning of a new season: the summer. In the old Rumî (=Julian) calendar, the year was usually split in two seasons: the summery Days of Hızır (6 May - 8 November) and the winterly Days of Kasım. In this respect, Hıdırellez is actually part of an old common tradition in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East of celebrating the arrival of the temperate season. Nowruz is another example of such a tradition.

In fact, celebrations on the 6^th of May are also held by Orthodox Christians in the Balkans. They celebrate the day of Saint George (Serbian: Ђурђевдан, Đurđevdan, Bulgarian: Гергьовден, Gergyovden), a saint considered important by many Christian nations. However, just as in the case of Hıdırellez, the celebration is actually related to the arrival of the summer.

It may not be a complete coincidence that Saint George's Day and Hıdırellez fall on exactly the same day and are so similar to each other. There are some indications that Hızır is actually associated with Saint George (Arabic: مار جرجس, Mar Jirjis/Girgis). Near Betlehem, Muslim and Christian Arabs and Jews commonly visit a shrine of Saint George and all refer to the saint by the name al Khiḍr. In the Balkans, Muslim Albanians refer to the saint as Hızır, while Christian Albanians call him Saint George.³ It must be no coincidence either that the alternative name for Hıdırellez is simply Ruz-ı Hızır: Hızır's Day.

Anyhow, while the Balkans and the Levant are welcoming summer with celebrations, I'm welcoming it with drops falling from a grey sky...

1. Haddad, sometimes called Ba'al (Lord), is the Mesopotamian God of the sky, the storm and the rain. He is equated to the Egyptian Set, the Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Norse Thor and Germanic Thunder.
2. Uysal, A.E. and W.S. Walker, "An Ancient God in Modern Turkey: Some Aspects of the Cult of Hizir" in Journal of American folklore nr. 86, 1997; available at http://khidr.org/hizir.htm (accessed on 07/05/07)
3. Hanauer, J.E., Folk-lore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish, 1907; available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/flhl/flhl12.htm (accessed on 07/05/07);
Hasluck, F.W., Christianity and Islam under the Sultans. Oxford University Press, 1929, pp. 319-336 Chapter 2: "Koranic Saints"; available at http://khidr.org/khidr-turkey.htm (accessed on 07/05/07).