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Of all the mayhem that took place last week in Boston, there was an image I willed to stay with me… a photo showing a local police officer in a bulletproof vest, carrying two gallons of milk in a residential area. The caption of the photo, which made the rounds on Facebook over the weekend, read that the officer elected to help a family with small children that was out of milk and stuck at home during the lockdown. As the mother of a small child, I could immediately relate to the horror of being forced to remain at home with an empty fridge. Forget terrorists… the screaming alone would kill you.
As a Moscow resident, I also thought about the image of our own police officers. Several of my Russian friends shared the photo with disdainful comments of their own, messages that amounted to, “Try getting a Moscow cop to do something like THAT during a lockdown. Fat chance”. Of course, one should probably try imposing a lockdown on Moscow and see how that works out (hint: It won’t work out), before one judges. Yet, I understood the sentiment my Russian friends were expressing. In a city like Moscow, authority figures simply can’t appear too caring. It’d go against everything they were taught. It’d make them look soft, possibly vulnerable… and vulnerability is frequently punished.
However, I remembered a story that happened to a former Moscow neighbour of mine a couple of years ago. This story will never go viral on Facebook… and not just because there’s no photographic evidence. Simply put, most people wouldn’t believe it. Yet, as a witness to part of it, I can at least confirm some of the details. This neighbour, an ancient lady of the sort one might describe as “old Soviet intelligentsia”, had a nasty run-in with a member of Moscow’s nouveau riche. He nearly ran her over on a pedestrian crossing in his luxury car, and she injured herself while lunging out of the way. The guy tried to speed off, but ended up losing control of his vehicle and crashing it into a construction fence.
I wasn’t there for the immediate aftermath, but was living in that neighbourhood at the time, and hearing about what had happened, elected to meet her at the police station and walk her home. She didn’t need hospitalisation, but she was badly shaken and, worse still, humiliated by the man who’d nearly run her over. Apparently, he’d screamed at her that it was all her fault, that she was an “old bag” and “too slow”. This may seem shocking, but if you know anything about the Moscow nouveau riche, you wouldn’t be shocked at all. I waited for her from across the street and saw her walk out, shaking, barely able to retain her composure, after giving a statement to the police. There was a little hat with velvet flowers on her head, and the hat alone broke my heart. For an older woman, she’d taken such great pains to always look her best… and here she was, looking fragile and lost, with the hat askew on her gray hair.
As I made my way over to her, an old cop car drove out of the parking lot adjacent to the station, and a policeman inside rolled down his window. He said, “Get in, we’ll drive you home, it’s only a few blocks”. My neighbour asked if I could join, and they nodded, so I got in. On our way back to her building, the two policemen sitting up front consoled this old, lonely woman the best way they knew how. From what I gathered later, they’d witnessed her being berated and humiliated after having been nearly run over by the member of the so-called “elite”… and took umbrage. Therefore, they told stupid jokes, made her laugh, and told her that things would be OK. It was a very short and surreal ride in a Moscow cop car, but I haven’t forgotten it. I haven’t forgotten the officers’ eyes in the rear-view mirror, as they told her that the guy would surely “get his due”.
I never did find out what happened to the guy in question… whether he suffered any consequences, whether he at least had his license suspended, or if he pulled strings and got off scot-free, as people like him frequently do. My neighbour died soon after, when I was away. She had a chronic illness she had taken pains to conceal. Her heirs, who live far away, I didn’t know very well. Nevertheless, I do think about this woman, already in the last weeks of her life, being helped out of that police car and walked all the way to her apartment. I think about those two cops… one older and one younger. They weren’t being heroes that day, but they did act like human beings, which can be heroic in the right kind of context. I hope they’ve continued to act like human beings… and I hope that one day, they too will go viral on Facebook for performing a small act of kindness. If only to remind us that Moscow’s cops can also be kind.
22 April 2013
Natalia Antonova
RIA-Novosti
Editor’s Note:
Nicky and I had an encounter with an “entitled” nouveau riche similar to the one that happened to the old woman in Moscow. We were pulling out of the Russian store on Central Avenue, and a BMW started rolling down the alleyway that provided access to Central Ave. The driver jumped out of the car, and started to scream at us in Russian and English, and you could tell that they considered themselves “better” than the rest of us, and that “their shit didn’t stink”, as the saying has it. They were thoroughly nasty, but you could tell that they thought themselves “oh-so-superior” to the common herd such as us.
Let’s not be coy. Crapitalism encourages such behaviour. After all, they “earned” what they have… and, we, lazy layabouts, didn’t deserve equal (or even decent) treatment. It’s why I oppose people such as Victor Potapov, James Paffhausen, Alexander Webster, Terrence Mattingly, Rod Dreher, and Freddie M-G… they’re cheerleaders for the Affluent Effluent and “Economic Freedom”. Reflect on this… they’d tack up Our Lord a second time, and they’d back Caiphas to the max. Why? After all, you can’t have working-class rabble-rousers stirring up the envious hoi-polloi, can you? It does make you wonder about the Christianity of certain loud “Christian” sorts, doesn’t it? Oh, yes… there was only ONE “educated” Apostle… Judas Iscariot. Think on that one, too… it’s a meaty Lenten meditation (pun intended)…
It won’t last forever… God will NOT be mocked…
BMD
Iranian Atheists: Waiting to Come Out
Tags: atheism, atheist, Facebook, Hashem Aghajari, Iran, Iranian Revolution, Islam, Islamism, Islamist, London, Muslim, Muslim world, Muslims, Opposing Views, opposition activists, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Sharia, Tehran
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Asked about atheism in Iran, a group of women at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran said that they were unfamiliar with the concept. Eventually, an amiable elderly lady in a black headscarf said in a puzzled tone, “Maybe, there are people like that abroad. We wouldn’t know”. There’s no faulting her, given that atheists and agnostics don’t exist in Iran… officially. A 2011 nationwide census put the share of Muslims in the country at 99.4 percent, with Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians making up another 0.2 percent, and the rest… about 300,000 people… fell under the “other” and “unknown” categories. Yet, there were some doubts about the reliability of these statistics, and, certainly, there appear to be Iranians who question God’s existence… although they don’t speak about it openly, for a public coming-out to embrace Christopher Hitchens and his ilk could land them on death row.
Milad, an Iranian IT professional now living in London, said, “There are quite a lot of [Iranian] atheists, including myself to some extent”. Like all people interviewed for this article who acknowledged the existence of non-believers in Iran, he asked to have his name changed, fearing persecution. Milad is right to be cautious, despite residing abroad, because the government isn’t above cracking down on dissenters’ relatives, said Cyrus, also a native Iranian, who works in the American media. Cyrus said that he knows of at least one case where police arrested the Iran-based father of an émigré who ran a pro-atheism group on Facebook, releasing him only after the group was shut down. He gave no details. Nevertheless, arrest can amount to getting off easy, given that punishment for apostasy under Sharia… the prescribed standard for Iranian judges… is death for male apostates and life imprisonment for females.
One problem is that Iranians must spell out their religious affiliation in numerous official documents, such as college applications, relatively early in life. For the majority, that means formally-identifying themselves as Muslim. Once that’s done, there’s no turning back to embrace any other belief system. There have been no executions of atheists reported from Iran in recent years. However, apostasy is often cited among régime opponents’ crimes, lending extra weight to the accusations against them. In a high-profile case in 2002, a court convicted Professor Hashem Aghajari of apostasy just for criticising Iran’s theocracy and gave him a death sentence, later replaced by three years’ imprisonment.
Tempting Fate on Facebook
The administrator of the Iranian Atheists and Humanists group on Facebook (not the one that was shut down) wrote to RIA-Novosti in response to questions last month, “If you try to lie, or don’t say anything about your beliefs, no one will do anything to you”. None of the self-proclaimed Iranian atheists reached by RIA-Novosti agreed to in-person interviews. One of them quipped, “This would make me a very dead Iranian girl”. The administrator of the Facebook group, who wouldn’t even give his/her gender, added, “[But he] who dares, wins, so we’re acting anonymously”. There are several Iranian pro-atheism communities on Facebook, run in either English or Farsi, mostly focused on aggregating pictures poking fun at religious figures (not limited to Islam… for example, the recently-resigned pope also got skewered). The groups have anywhere between 2,000 and 40,000 likes each, although many supporters seem to be foreigners. This form of protest may seem toothless by Western standards, but it amounts to something more daring in the Iranian context. Whilst the apostasy punishments are by far the scariest stick in the government’s arsenal, there are more-mundane reminders of the risks for Internet activists… Iran blocks Facebook and local authorities don’t take kindly to irony; they’ve even banned toys based on Simpsons characters as “Western propaganda”.
Take Off That Scarf
Online dissent may be just the tip of the iceberg, the nameless Facebook administrator said, noting, “We aren’t alone. The population of people who’re atheist is growing”, adding that there are many atheists and agnostics in Iran among well-educated residents of big cities. These middle-class urbanites were the driving force behind the 2009-10 opposition protests in Tehran that, at their peak, brought three million people to the streets of a city with 12 million residents, according to Time magazine’s estimates. The protests… brutally suppressed by the authorities… were aimed against alleged election fraud believed to have robbed a reformist candidate of victory, and were the biggest civil unrest in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The protests had no outright religious agenda, but they called for more freedom… including personal freedom. In a telling gesture, female protesters removed their headscarves when camping out in Tehran’s city squares… a move that, under normal circumstances, would have likely led to immediate arrest for defying the country’s strict Islamic moral code.
Live and Let Doubt
Although no reliable studies exist, all the Iranians and Iran experts interviewed for this article (those who admitted familiarity with the concept, that is) said that explicit atheism appears to remain a rarity in Iran. Lana Ravandi-Fadai, a researcher in the Iran section of the Moscow-based Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said, “I’ve heard some friends say that they’re atheists or agnostics, but they don’t admit it publicly”. American-based Cyrus shared similar observations, saying that those who admitted atheistic views even in their own social circle could face a judgemental response. Nevertheless, several émigrés and Iran-based atheists said that religious practices have shifted, with more people giving up active worship whilst still embracing Islam as part of their cultural identity. According to London-based Milad, who said that he still keeps in close contact with relatives and friends in Iran, “Many have never even set foot in a mosque despite identifying themselves as Muslims”. Ravandi-Fadai said, “In my personal view, the local mosque often serves social and even psychotherapeutic functions in addition to its spiritual significance. For instance, I know many women who spend their days at the mosque in order to socialise and talk over problems with others”.
Nonetheless, politicians for whom Islam is dogma stir up more public ire than the little-discussed atheists, Cyrus pointed up, and others agreed. Ali, a native Iranian living in Moscow, said, “Some claim there are fewer true believers in Iran now than before the Islamic Revolution. People are put off by being forced to believe”. It seems, judging by a smattering of conversations at least, that ordinary Iranians’ identity-over-ideology approach to Islam leads to a spirit of live-and-let-live when it comes not only to other religions, but also even to the lack of any religion at all. None of the half-dozen religious Iranians interviewed by RIA-Novosti, including two Tehran clerics (they said they were unfamiliar with the concept of atheism), expressed any hostility toward non-believers. Reza, a 30-year-old taxi-driver from the southern city of Bushehr, said, “I’ve never met such people, but I’d just want to speak with them and understand them. I’m really interested in them. I’m not thinking I’m better than them just because of my religion”. He was visiting the Khomeini mausoleum with his wife and toddler son. Reza came to the shrine to “enjoy the calm and peace” (an effect to which his child seemed immune). Later, the family strolled along the enfilade of stores that ring the tomb of Iran’s great religious leader offering snacks, carpets, Parker pens, and other items as appealing to the religious as to atheists, if any happened to pass by.
19 March 2013
Aleksei Yeremenko
Mikhail Gusev
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20130319/180108603/Iranian-Atheists-Waiting-to-Come-Out.html