I have got three english translations of Qur'an. This is a shame that we don't have a popular farsi translation that you can take and read like any other book. The translations are either ugly or full of gramatically mixed up sentences. You would say whoever did these tranlations did not know enough either farsi or arabic.
The oxford calssic collection is the best one to read like a book but not for making refferences. The only problem with it is that the name of the sura is there only in english.

Prophethood?

I believe prophethood is a spiritual move starting from humans. Prophets are smart and thoughtful beings who started the move toward the meaning. Unlike the traditional believes, I believe the messengers of God picked up the torch by their own initiative and their conviction of the status quo being awfully wrong. I don't believe God chose any of his messengers. The difference between the successful and not successful religions goes back to how smart has been the corresponding prophet and how deep has been his spiritual experience.

Happy Ramazan
This is the beginning of Ramazan. I don't fast and I don't believe in God the way the majority of Moslems do. But from bottom of my heart I envy them. I miss the days that (not so long ago!) I thought there is a purpose for whatever happens. I still believe there is a God out there but I admit I know nothing about him.

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It is a long time now since my last post. Well I don't have had enough motivation to write anything. I have gone through a mental storm, I don't know what I believe in any more. On the other hand I am not reading good news about Iran at all. Not so encouraging!
Anyways I hope I can write something, that helps me.

I lost my son. Ryan passed away 4 months ago. Without any warning, no sign, no illness, no nothing. In a beutiful day of august, when Rosie took him and his brother for a bath, he just fainted and that was it.
It just happened when we thought everything was going to be alright, it was 3 months that I was at my new job and they were just back from a pleasant 3 months visit to Iran.
Once, when they were in Iran, I told a colleague that I could not remember Ryan's face and I was scared, I took a few of his picture and put it just in front of me at work. We miss him so much, I am patient, one day we will join him, that is the silver lining.

Long time no see

that is right it is a very long time that I have not written anything. First reason is that I had nothing to talk about ( I guess) and another reason possibly is that I am so badly entangled in everyday life that the blogging is not a concern anymore. I hoped to develop the habit of elogging and finally interhalize that, but too busy I guess.

Shirin Ebadi

I think people expect to much from Ebadi. Everybody is saying that she should do this or that but nobody is considering the actual limitations and obstacles she faces. After all she is going back to Iran and if she wants to do something real instead of complaining and nagging (just like many of us living abroad) she has to be pragmatist. I think the very fact that she has openly participated the ceremonies without Hejab is by itself a big achievement and a huge step forward. Just watch for the price she should pay for her move.

My Son and Mini Me

Last night we were invited to my bosses house for Christmas party. Lots of kids were around and it was the good part for My 4 year old son. The funny thing was that it ended to be a freedom night for kids. My boss who does not really care about the age ratings of the movies just went on by showing samples of available movies and cartoon to kids ( from 2 up to 12 year old) and at the end he had chosen a bunch to show in sequence. The most successful movie was the "Gold Member" and then the second most popular one was "who framed Roger rabbit". Now my son is asking to shave his hair and be the "Mini Me" and asking me to shave my hair as well, to look like Dr. Evil. I don't know if it has been a good idea to let the kids watch rated movies but it looks like that the kids pick up the parts which are interesting to them ( I am not obviously talking about XXX rated!!!), what I mean is that they actually filter out the unpleasant parts to their taste.

Barbari

It is more than one year now that I am baking Barbari. Thanks to fresh bread we are eating some breakfast. Every weekend I prepare enough dough to bake 7 to eight breads or pizzas. I have just started to bake Baguette, it is eatable but not commercial yet.
I have tried to bake Sangak too, no easy task.
I love bread.

Where is Bilakh ( the equivalent of giving somebody the finger in Iran) coming from?

One of my British colleagues sent out this email regarding the origins of giving the middle finger in west, read it.

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking the yew” (or “pluck yew”).
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, “See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!”
Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute!
It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as “giving the bird.

I replied the email and explained how in Iran the thumbs up is conceived the same as middle finger in west but I had no story for it.
Now I am thinking where our Bilakh is coming from, I guess it has something to do with the secound world war and the invasion of Iran by American and British troops. I read something about Bruce Willis travelling to Iraq and his comments about how well he had been welcomed by Iraqi people who had shown him lots of thumbs up. I don't know if in Iraq holding thumbs up is the same as in Iran?

Think twice before giving advice

My older son Danial has started to draw naked people since a couple of months ago. He found out that it was fun and rewarding too. I think I just gave him some hint to a very interesting thing to do when I told him it was not good to draw people naked and specially to draw men's penis or women's breast. He drew his own conclusion out of my comments, If he wants to impress people and get some extra attention he just should draw them nude with their stuff hanging out . Actually it is working for him. A couple of days ago I took him to work with me and he really impressed everyone by drawing a very good looking breast on our big whiteboard. He is going to be 4 years old in February.

How to fight terrorism

In my opinion the most important reason that US government in particular and the western countries in general (in a lower extent of course) have not succeeded to contain terrorism is the kind of approach they traditionally have chosen to deal with the problem and problem makers. What I mean is that they ignore the human nature of these guys and the societies they are coming from and by demonizing these guys they choose the iron feast policy which is not going to work just because we are dealing with people not machines or animals. The fist and the important thing is to put yourself in their place and see what would you do in a similar situation and then deal with it wisely. US officials look at the international terrorism as a runaway process which has to be killed ( as a matter of fact that is the case!!) without doing anything about the operating system. I believe that the long history of unfair and unilateral US policy and mechanical reactions in middle east is the source of all these problems. A sick operating system is the source of the frequent runaway processes and if they do nothing about the system just killing the unwanted process won't resolve andthing in longterm. By acting violently and not wisely, US is encouraging and incubating an upsurge of the next generation of violent actions through an idealogic and consistent type of terrorsism .
US officials have to understand that they should seek an answer to resolve a very important and vital issue which is engraved in the middle eastern's minds and hearts instead of trying to erase and ignore the problem and the human nature of it.

Superficial American fellows

Sometime ago I was looking in goggle for Iran e Ashofteh to see if there is any trace of my new URL at blogspot. I headed to the site called "blogs of war" in which people apparantly talk about the US and war ( I think it was created after the Iraq war). Some friendly, democracy lover american guy had copied and pasted one of my postings and then guess the rest.
These American fellows are badly superficial and aggressive. It is only talk and talk, it is like there is a debate going on instead of a discussion or something. It is like their setup is done to kick somebody's ass and that is the achievement.
They are badly ignorant of their image outside of the US and their crazy inflated patriotism prevents them from seeing the reality. The basic core of the US foreign policy is " the purpose justifies the means" whatever the means are. It is like these friendly human rights lover and democracy exporters have forgotten what they did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Frankly I don't see why they would not do such a thing again ( Say they have not done it already!).
When I imagine that if it was not because of the CIA sponsored Coup d'etat in Iran which resulted in overthrowing the liberal government of Mossadeq, it was for 60 years now that we have been practicing democracy in Iran. Just imagine that. Is it conspiracy theory if I think US is not looking for democracy rather than their national interests? (don't forget that the purpose badly justifies the means)

I am back again

I try to write again. Things look much better now.

let's go

Not accessible?

My computer is officially dead!!

I think this month I have not been so lucky. A surge from hell just wrecked my computer's mother board, and because it is a discontinued Pentume3 I should replace the memory and processor too. Something that I can't afford now. I had to disconnect my High speed Internet service too. Anyways I am using the blogspot free space and that is it.

I was very sad after hearing Laleh and Ladan's death news. I don't know about you but their birth was a big deal to me. I was six and seeing a twin like that was something extraordinary for me. Imagine yourself at their place, I believe they have accomplished what they wanted. They went into the surgery with a great hope to get separated and for them the time has stopped there. I mean they have not witnessed the failure. They have won their gamble. I am sure they would enjoy their life a lot if they had made it, but as far as the operation and this huge single event is concerned, because they have done that operation by hope and not as an act of desperation they have won.
God bless them.

Forth aniverssary of student unrest

Tommorow is the forth anniversary of the student's appraisal in Iran. I have a very mixed feeling about these violent events. From one hand I remember what kind of nonsense and rude creatures are these Hezbollah conservatives and kicking their ass sounds great and on the other hand I badly believe that violence is going to help them to advance their agenda the most. Violence is their mother tongue. They know nothing else and they want to drag people into this trap. With the momentum that the democratic movement and the need for change is getting I am sure in a couple of years there is no place no where in Iran for any of these guys, Hezbollah or Mojahed or any other kind of violence. Patience and reason is what should reign in our political culture now.
After all, all these problems, in my opinion , have cultural origins and to overcome those deficiencies is a long reform process. Just remember what we did during the revolution. We replaced a Tyranny with something worse. A nation does not change overnight, we need time to practice democracy and rule of law.

Political maturity

I read this from BBC Persian site. Safar Morad Niazev the Turkmenistan’s president (self chosen life time) has announced that in the capital (Eshgh Abad which means city of love) except for cats, dogs and ornamental birds keeping any kind of domestic animal is going to be banned. The reason is that they stink and they don't let the nice smell of a flower which recently has been renamed after the president to be felt. The same president has changed the name of months of the year to something inspired from his mom and I am not kidding.
You want to know how mature are a political system and nation, just look at what the political leaders say and do. By the way I am not excluding Iran.

US and IRAN

I just read a comment from Colin Powel saying that US should not infer in Iranian internal affairs and Americans should not forget that Iranian president has been elected freely. On the other hand Rumsfeld is playing another tune. The same business with reformists and conservatives in Iranian politics?
It is a matter of time. If all foreign powers specially US could stop war mongering and inferring in Iranian affairs ( something that Iranians are culturally very sensitive to) people are going to straight their account with conservative fellows, hopefully in a peaceful way.