READING: Majd: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Hooman Majd
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
2008

Majd, an English/US educated Iranian who moved to the US permanently after the Islamic Revolution, clearly still has a lot of love and affinity with his home country, and judging by this book the feeling is mutual.

He is the grandson of a revered Ayatollah and describes himself as both 100 per cent Iranian and 100 per cent American, making his book a decent window into the often imperceptible world of Iranian politics, religion and culture.

Majd skips from trendy cannabis-fuelled student parties to clapped out opium dens, and this striking contrast alone is enough to cast a thousand Iranian preconceptions assunder. Some westerners view Islamic Iran as abstinent and austere, but many of the youths Majd encounters live in thrall of American culture, taking "cool Western drugs" in contrast to the opium of the grandfathers. They watch scantily clad Iranians gyrate in music videos in defiance of the Revolution's strict dress codes.

The fact that many of the videos are made in the States may indicate a Western intent to ferment anti-revolutionary fervour amongst the youths, but in reality the Revolution doesn't appear to intrude into their private lives at all. Provided they keep their misdemenours behind closed doors, The Ayatollah, it seems, doesn't ask questions.

The nation's opium addicted old men, meanwhile, seem too spaced out to care.

One of Iran's most interesting cultural foibles, which dominates Iranian society and therefore runs throughout the entire book, is the practice of "ta'arouf", an almost manic politeness that makes even a simple taxi-ride a battle of self-deprication - ranging from "I am your devoted servant" to "Piss, and I'll dive in". In the end Majd practically has to force the money into the driver's hand.

Ahmadinejad is apparently an expert at "ta'arouf", managing to be both self-depricating and acerbically withering in a single sentence.

But it is the similarities between East and West the Majd exposes most colourfully, particularly the American God-fearing Right's pathological fear of fundamentalist Islam: "It strikes me often when I am in Iran that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America.

"Replace Allah with God, Muhammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chastity, sin, salvation and God's will, and a Christian republic is born."