Happened to visit Blogger Brown’s site - Field Trip Anyone? this morning and was quite taken by the picture. At first I thought it was just the way the photo was framed - there clear as day on the lower right was what looked like a Danish flag or poster with the hindquarters of a dog complete with tail in white and the word ‘dog’.
Then I realized the whole picture had some rather strange elements in it’s composition. Supposedly it represented some radical elements of the Muslim faith in Tehran engaged in a fiery protest over the renewal of the Copenhagen cartoon controversy. Now I want to make it clear, so Curtis doesn’t go off in another snit, my focus is the imagery in the picture itself - his use of it along with it’s source isn’t relevant, other than that’s where it can be seen, and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else on the internet.
Was it just a part of the English word ’dogma‘? After all the other item being burned seemed to be some kind of white cloth or poster with Arabic calligraphy along with something that looked like a rather bizarre (disproportionate) depiction of an American flag. Perhaps it was simply a way of saying Danes were all son-of-a-bitches.
Having seen photos of a good many protests in Iran, I don’t find English language protest signs an oddity. I’m quite sure after the 38 year regime of of the American supported Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (The Shah - King of Kings, etc.) and his wife, Empress Farah (the weird lady with a shoe fetish) , along with occupations by every major empire for several hundred years, the people may have more abilities as linguists than 99% of the rest of the world.
Then the little memory bell went off. Last fall the Iranian clerics had ordered yet another crack down on dogs - denouncing the “moral depravity” of owning a dog, and calling for the arrest of all dogs and their owners. Dogs are unclean and can contaminate religious items. Actually over the last couple of decades it’s not only been dogs, but monkeys, and all manner of animals that are commonly kept as pets.
Now I’m not a dog person, even though I’ve owned a few - or actually I’ve been owned by a few - over the decades. I still pet my neighbours dog even though his howling at the moon at 3AM makes me feel like sneaking out of the house to throttle it. Dog owners are getting a little more responsible about poop and scoop, so the rite of spring only means doggie-doo up to your ankles instead of knees.
Yet the funny thing is this religious edict doesn’t seem to have stopped all Iranians from owning dogs, and after viewing some of the You Tube collection on the subject - 1 - 2 -3 - I think there might be two sides to the story. Sort of like how the only people that like pit bulls are pit bull owners and how it’s the horrible infidels who have enacted legislation to eliminate them.
So while I have no idea what a protest over Danish cartoons has to do with dogs being included in the protest, along with the strange depiction of the American flag, it suggests to me that the people in the picture may not be well educated, or perhaps not mainstream Iranian society.
Actually from what I’ve seen in the media of Iranian society in cities at least, the people seems to be far more ‘westernized’, and educated, than the people of Iraq, or Afghanistan. Of course Dubya is a dog owner so no doubt to him it’s one more reason to bomb the hell out of Iran so they don’t spread their Muslim extremism to the western world.
So far all this controversy doesn’t seem to have affected my relationship with my Persian cat. For a while I considered learning the language of Iran which is Persian - probably because until 1935 that was the name of the country. Then I realized that translating Persian to cat language so I could tell him to get the hell off the coffee table was far too complicated. So we compromised and he sits there on the table and I pretend not to see him. In the end it all works out because his being there doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things - and I know he’s just doing it for attention.
Maybe we should care more about modern day Persians and ignore what a small handful are doing for attention.
