Transcript:

My question, I think, to not just the Muslim world but to the western world – in fact to everybody on every side of this so called clash of civilizations that we are supposed to be embroiled in right now – would be, “What is the civilization that you are talking about? What do you think of when you say western civilization or Islamic civilization? And how is it that your view of civilization is so drastically different from the other’s view of civilization, that there is this inevitable clash that we are supposed to be seeing?” This sort of inherent division between these two societies that for, you know, that have no choice but to be on this collision course with each other? “What is it that you think your civilization is that makes it so different from the civilization of the other?” And I think that in answering that question both people in the Muslim world and the west will come to realize how absurd the idea of this division is. Yes we have different ideas, different ethnicities, different traditions and social customs; but are we in a war between social customs? Are we in a war of identities? I hope not. I think the idea that civilization is something that is how we define ourselves as a people – which is I think quite common amongst most people – I think that idea has to be debummed. There is something that connects us to each other that is far more visceral and far more deep-seeded than civilization is, and that is just the human condition.

Recorded On: 7/5/07

Transcript:

For my advice to people in the west with regard to the Muslim world is leave them alone. They’re perfectly fine. They’re perfectly capable of creating their own societies, their own cultures, their own democratic frameworks. They don’t need our help. They could use our financial help. No question about it. I think that we could do a lot more in investing in the civilian and democratic infrastructures of countries like Egypt and Iran; but the way that our foreign policy in the United States and in the larger western world has been almost single mindedly focused on our economic and security interest in that region, that has in some ways retarded the development – the social and political, and even religious development – of that region. “We’re not helping,” is what I would essentially say. But we can help. We can help by offering a platform and a venue for oppositional forces in that region, even if those oppositional forces are religiously inclined in order to express themselves and share their views, and their ideas within the larger marketplace of ideas; and to allow the Muslim world, and particularly these nation states, the citizens of these nation states, to make decisions for themselves about what kind of country that they want, what kind of government they want. We can’t simply shut down the democratic process if the people that we want to get elected don’t get elected. That’s not how it works. And so we have to understand that a process is underway in the Middle East. It’s gonna be a long process. It gonna be a violent process, and it’s gonna be a bumpy one. It’s gonna happen with or without us. It’ll happen more smoothly with our help; but that help has to come with the recognition that our sole purpose is to foster these kinds of reform movements, not to define them.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007

Transcript:

The most powerful force that defines religion is society. It’s very important to understand that religion is an ever-malleable thing. There is no such thing as Christianity. It doesn’t exist. There are Christianities and the way that one defines the gospel. The way that one understands Jesus as either the Son of God, or the Messiah, or as, you know, a great teacher to emulate. The way that one places sort of the Christology, or even the creedal formula of Catholicism, has everything to do with where one lives. If you are a Catholic living in suburban Denver with your two and a half kids, and your car, and your house, your Jesus is probably a white, blond haired, blue-eyed, peacenik who turns the other cheek. If you’re a Catholic living in the hills of Guatemala, your Jesus, besides being Mexican, is a fighter. A liberator. One who stands up to the oppressor and indeed who takes up arms against oppression. It’s the same Jesus. It’s the same Catholicism, but the understanding is radically different depending upon where you live. The same of course is true of Islam. If you’re a Muslim living in Detroit, then your idea of Islam is a religion of peace and submission and pluralism. If you’re a Muslim living in a garbage heap on Gaza, then you’re version of Islam is as a religion of social justice. So everywhere that you go you will see different expressions. Different manifestations of what can be called the same religion, the same faith. And I think that we need to understand that; because in a way, too often, we look at the differences between religious communities as being defined as differences in religion. And frankly its more often differences of community than it is of religion. Religion is an ever-evolving process. If a religion stops evolving it dies. And there are thousands and thousands of examples of dead religions in the world that we can talk about that simply went away because they were not able to adapt to the constant changes of human civilization and human societies. The reason we talk about the great religions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism – these five massive world religions that have been around for thousands of years and that have billions of worldwide followers . . . what makes them great is because they are constantly adapting. They are constantly evolving. That’s why they continue to exist. The moment you stop adapting, the moment you stop evolving to whatever social, political, economic or cultural landscape that the religion finds itself in, that’s the moment in which it goes away.

Recorded on: 7/5/2007

Transcript:

I want to sort of put myself in a position in which I could provide something like a bridge that links the so-called Muslim world with the western world. Those are meaningless terms, but nonetheless I think we all understand what I’m referring to. And what I want to do is essentially explain one to the other. I feel like I’ve got one foot very comfortably in both worlds and feel at home in both places. I want to explain I think to both that the mischaracterizations, and the mistrust, and the apprehensions that go both ways, particularly in the modern age, don’t necessarily have to be there. That there is something that we share, not just as human beings, but as people of faith, as civilizations, that we are inextricably bound to one another. But in a larger sense, it’s not so much trying to explain to someone your neighbor’s religion. That’s important. But to me it’s far more important to explain what religion is, what religion is not. Not just what Islam is, but what religion is. And I think that’s what I was referring to earlier when I said that, for so many modern people of faith, religion is not a means to an end, it’s the end. And that I think is a bastardization of what religion was supposed to be. Religion is not faith. These are two completely separate things. Religion is the language that we use in order to express faith . . . in order to express faith with each other and most importantly, in order to express faith to ourselves because we are talking about, almost by definition, something that is inexpressible. And so we need a language. We need a unified set of symbols and metaphors that help us to commune with one another these shared feelings of the divine presence, and that’s what religion does. Is it necessary in order to do that? No. I think that people of faith and intelligence can very easily formulate a language of their own in order to commune with God, to commune with the divine presence; but I do believe that it’s easier to use the languages that are available to us. It’s easier to use the metaphor of God as a suffering servant within Christianity; or it may be easier to view God as a divine and indivisible unity as Islam does. Those things, you know, are just means of helping us express to ourselves, and to our friends and neighbors what is ultimately inexpressible.

Transcript:

Islam sees itself very much as part of the long Judeo-Christian, biblical, prophetic tradition with which most Americans are familiar. Muslims accept the Torah and the Hebrew bible in its entirety, as well as the gospels and the rest of the New Testament, as part of the self-revelation of God that comes from Adam, the first man, and according to Islam, the first prophet to Muhammad, the seal of the prophets. They see this as one, long narrative – a master narrative – in which the revelation of God, the self-communication of God, is passed down through the prophetic consciousness of one prophet after another, after another, after another. And in fact, Islam takes this one step further and talks the concept called the Umm al-Kitab, the mother of books. This notion that exists in the Koran that all revealed scriptures – whether they be the Hebrew bible, or the New Testament, or whether they be the Bagadavita, or the Upanishads or the ___________ – all revealed scriptures are essentially derived from a singled source in heaven called the mother of books. And that God’s self-communication has been passed down to humanity not in its entirety, but in pieces. And as the Koran says “deliberately so” for God could have as the Koran says “created one nation, one book and one prophet”; but He chose instead to create many nations, and many books, and many laws, and many prophets, “so that,” the Koran says, “the nations may know one another.” So there is this concept within Islam that all religions are inextricably linked to each other through this passing on of a prophetic consciousness. I think, to me, that’s a really beautiful way of thinking about religion. Now of course Muslims believe that comes to an end at the prophet Muhammad, but I think an argument could be made that the revelation of God did not stop with the prophets’ last breath. That God is ever-present and eternal, and that the human societies, the human nations that He made are in a constant state of evolution. They did not come to a stop 14 centuries ago.

Recorded on:7/5/07

Transcript:

The Iranians who came to the United States in ’79 – those who sort of fled the revolution – came in two waves. The first wave were primarily the very wealthy Iranians. The aristocracy, the monarchists . . . those who were in one way or another affiliated with the regime of Mohammad Shah ________; and so in many ways were given advanced warning of what was to come. So they got out. And they also managed to get out mostly with all of their fortunes intact with their Swiss bank accounts; and set up not in Northern California, but primarily in Southern California, and Los Angeles, or in an area around Brentwood and Westwood that is often referred to as Tehrangeles. They have kind of created a very insulated community. They are enormously wealthy. Very, very conservative with regard to their politics, and incredibly hard-lined when dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Very much like the Cuban community in Florida, though much, much richer. We did not belong to that community. We were part of the Northern California Iranian community which was a different community. They got out a little bit later. They were primarily middle class. A lot of the intelligencia. So it was a much more educated, much less well-off, and much more politically left-leaning group than the Los Angeles community. So that’s the kind of community that I grew up in. A community that was certainly bitter and angry towards the _______ who were ruling Iran at the time; but who nevertheless were, I think, a little bit more open in their political ideologies and were far less isolated than the Iranian community in Los Angeles. Now after living in the Bay area for something like 20 years, I now lived in Los Angeles. So now I get to see the other side of the coin in many ways. And it’s a strange experience, because there is still – 30 years later – so much anger and so much hatred for the regime in Iran that most Iranians in Southern California, particularly the older generation, really take a far more neoconservative position towards Iran and towards the larger Middle East than even the neoconservatives in the White House do. So that’s been kind of an unusual experience for me as far as community-wise goes.

Individually, I think the thing that I take back most from the experience of leaving Iran in the midst of a revolution was I think it was the first time that I understood the power – the transformative power – that religion has . . . the means that religion has in order to unite disparate groups and to work towards a cause of good, a cause of social justice. Getting rid of the Shah was a good cause. It was a cause that almost every sector of Iranian society took part in; but they could only be unified – whether they were Communists, or Marxists or Liberals or Social Democrats or clerical leaders – they could only be unified by the symbols, the metaphors, the language of religion. Because even for the irreligious it was a language that actually rang true. It had the power to unify a population, to create a collective identity and to spur the kind of collective action that leads to revolutions. And so that never left me. I come from a fairly irreligious family. And all my life I had sort of experienced religion not so much at a personal level – at least not until I was in high school – but mostly kind of on a sociological and even psychological level. So it always made me very, very interested in the phenomenon of religion. And so when I, you know . . . By the time I got to college and it was time to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it was a very easy decision to start pursuing religion as an academic discipline.

Transcript:

I was born in Iran in 1972 and spent my first seven years there. We came from a fairly large and well-off family. Sort of a landed aristocracy of Northern Tehran. And so I had in some ways a fairly traditional upbringing because of my father’s family. Very tribal. They’re actually Bakhtiari in heritage. So it was not uncommon for the sons, and their wives, and their children . . . for everyone to live in one giant house. My mother, on the other hand, came from sort of Iran’s _________. Her parents were stage and film actors. She came from a very large entertainment family. And at that time traditional households like my father’s would have seen my mother’s household – especially because her parents were divorced – as somewhat loose and perhaps not adequate to join their family. In fact, my father had already been betrothed to someone else since she was about seven years old. And even though he met my mother in college and fell in love with her, they had to essentially put an end to the relationship because my father had to marry somebody else. Fortunately for him, that woman that he was supposed to marry also fell in love, and actually had the guts to run away with her love, whereas my father didn’t. But that did open up the door for my parents to actually get married and move into my father’s house. And so I really grew up surrounded by a very large, extended family, and in many ways was sheltered from some of the political upheavals that were taking place in ‘78 and ‘79. For the most part what I understood was happening was, you know, whatever I could see outside of my window. And you know, for a kid all that mattered is that school was canceled and that you didn’t have to . . . that you had to stay at home all the time. So I really don’t remember too much about the turmoil itself. I do sort of have a sense of the fear and the anxiety that was ever present during . . . especially those last few months before the Shah was exiled. But we left Iran pretty much right after Iatola Komani arrived. We got all our stuff together. We were basically allowed to take one suitcase each, and got out on one of the last flights, and arrived in Oklahoma, of all places, not really knowing anything about America. So that was kind of a shock. And spent a year or so getting used to the United States by watching a lot of television . . . a lot of sitcoms, and Chips, and Bugs Bunny cartoons – and then ultimately moved to Northern California where there was a much larger area Iranian community. And that’s where I grew up in San Jose, San Francisco . . . the Bay area.

Recorded on: 7/5/07

Transcript:

My question, I think, to not just the Muslim world but to the western world – in fact to everybody on every side of this so called clash of civilizations that we are supposed to be embroiled in right now – would be, “What is the civilization that you are talking about? What do you think of when you say western civilization or Islamic civilization? And how is it that your view of civilization is so drastically different from the other’s view of civilization, that there is this inevitable clash that we are supposed to be seeing?” This sort of inherent division between these two societies that for, you know, that have no choice but to be on this collision course with each other? “What is it that you think your civilization is that makes it so different from the civilization of the other?” And I think that in answering that question both people in the Muslim world and the west will come to realize how absurd the idea of this division is. Yes we have different ideas, different ethnicities, different traditions and social customs; but are we in a war between social customs? Are we in a war of identities? I hope not. I think the idea that civilization is something that is how we define ourselves as a people – which is I think quite common amongst most people – I think that idea has to be debummed. There is something that connects us to each other that is far more visceral and far more deep-seeded than civilization is, and that is just the human condition.

Transcript:

My advice to young Muslims living in the traditional Arab and Muslim world is do not be afraid of the changes taking place in the world around you. Do not be afraid at the fracturing of the Muslim world. Do not be afraid of the rise of individualism that is gripping you and your friends, and your neighbors and your community. Don’t be afraid at the way in which Muslim communities all around you are beginning to redefine themselves in nationalistic terms, more so than in sort of wider trans-Islamic terms. And don’t be afraid of technology. It’s inevitable. You are going to be evolving. You’re going to change. You’re in an interesting position right now to take advantage of what the world and the globalized economy has to offer. Do so. Take advantage of it.

Transcript:

I think Muslims, particularly young Muslims in the Middle East, are growing more and more comfortable in defining themselves in nationalistic terms. And again it depends what country you’re referring to, of course. But many Egyptians, many Turks, have no problems referring to themselves as Egyptians first, or as Turks first. And I think that sense . . . that rising sense of national identity, in particular this sort of overwhelming movement of individualism that is taking place within the Muslim world with the rise of the Internet and the widespread access to new ideas and novel theories; and the way in which these notions are being passed around in a new kind of community, a virtual community being created online. I think you’re seeing a sort of response to that geopolitical fragmentation that I spoke of; one that is at once comfortable with certain nationalistic identities, and yet also striving to create new identifies beyond borders, and beyond ethnicities, in an attempt to recreate the umma, the world wide Muslim community, and yet to recreate it not in the real world, but in a virtual world. And so we’re gonna see, I think, a lot more of that. As the region of the Middle East becomes even more fragmented and more fractured, I think people are going to go increasingly online to find new ways of creating collective identities that are simply not applicable anymore in the real world.

Transcript:

The most powerful force that defines religion is society. It’s very important to understand that religion is an ever-malleable thing. There is no such thing as Christianity. It doesn’t exist. There are Christianities and the way that one defines the gospel. The way that one understands Jesus as either the Son of God, or the Messiah, or as, you know, a great teacher to emulate. The way that one places sort of the Christology, or even the creedal formula of Catholicism, has everything to do with where one lives. If you are a Catholic living in suburban Denver with your two and a half kids, and your car, and your house, your Jesus is probably a white, blond haired, blue-eyed, peacenik who turns the other cheek. If you’re a Catholic living in the hills of Guatemala, your Jesus, besides being Mexican, is a fighter. A liberator. One who stands up to the oppressor and indeed who takes up arms against oppression. It’s the same Jesus. It’s the same Catholicism, but the understanding is radically different depending upon where you live. The same of course is true of Islam. If you’re a Muslim living in Detroit, then your idea of Islam is a religion of peace and submission and pluralism. If you’re a Muslim living in a garbage heap on Gaza, then you’re version of Islam is as a religion of social justice. So everywhere that you go you will see different expressions. Different manifestations of what can be called the same religion, the same faith. And I think that we need to understand that; because in a way, too often, we look at the differences between religious communities as being defined as differences in religion. And frankly its more often differences of community than it is of religion. Religion is an ever-evolving process. If a religion stops evolving it dies. And there are thousands and thousands of examples of dead religions in the world that we can talk about that simply went away because they were not able to adapt to the constant changes of human civilization and human societies. The reason we talk about the great religions – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism – these five massive world religions that have been around for thousands of years and that have billions of worldwide followers . . . what makes them great is because they are constantly adapting. They are constantly evolving. That’s why they continue to exist. The moment you stop adapting, the moment you stop evolving to whatever social, political, economic or cultural landscape that the religion finds itself in, that’s the moment in which it goes away.

Well talking about Islam, particularly as it’s experienced in the Middle East, I think you can’t talk about the rise of the Islam state, or the rise of Jihadism, or any of the various political, or economical, or religious conflicts that are taking place in that region without first starting with colonialism – the colonialistic experience – which, you know, came to an end only about half a century ago . . . we tend to forget that . . . was a profound experience for the world Muslims. You’re talking about an era in which 90% of the world’s Muslim population lived under direct colonial control. It had an enormous influence on the development of the modern Muslim consciousness, and the way that it sort of allowed Muslims to define themselves as opposed to an other. In this case, a rabidly, westernizing, an aggressively, Christianizing and total dominating force. A force that dominated the social, economic, political and religious landscape of the Middle East had, I think, an enormous influence on the way the Muslims began to see themselves, vis-a-vis, the rest of the world. And with the end of the colonialistic experience, with the decolonization period that began around the Second World War and accelerated immediately after that and this geopolitical fragmentation that was left behind in which Muslim populations who had hitherto thought of themselves as members of a worldwide community of faith were now suddenly forced to think of themselves as citizens of nation states. Nation states, that in most cases, were created through arbitrary borders and totally fabricated nationalities with the sole purpose of making these parcels of land more easily divisible, and passed along amongst the colonialist whether they be French, or Dutch, or English, or Portuguese, or Spanish. The idea that now you had to sort of define yourself in this incredibly unfamiliar way I think really rattled a lot of Muslim civilizations. Some of them were able to do so without much trouble; but many Muslims states, particularly in the Arab world, I think really . . . or to this day are having a very difficult time trying to define what exactly it even means to be a Muslim state. Does it mean that you have to have Muslim governance? Does it mean that you have to be ruled by Islamic law? Does it just simply mean that you are a majority Muslim state? What is it . . . what is it . . . how does one define oneself? And I think that particularly in the language we use, when we talk about the countries in the region as Muslim states, it doesn’t help; because frankly I can’t image what Morocco has in common with Saudi Arabia. Or what Saudi Arabia has in common with Turkey. Or what Turkey has in common with Indonesia. Absolutely nothing. Not language, not culture, not ethnicity, not customs, not religion. And yet we refer to all of them as Islamic states. So I think it’s not just Muslims themselves that are having a hard time defining post-colonial, Middle East and what that means. I think the rest of the world is having just as difficult a time figuring it out.

Recorded On: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I think that, you know, you could look at this issue and what role does religion play in the world in many ways. The way that I look at it is that religion is part of the world. That in fact from the very first moment in which human beings were able to formulate such thoughts, and to express those thoughts to each other, that religion came to being. Religion is certainly something that is made. There’s no question about that; but it is also indelibly a part of human civilization. There has never been a moment of the evolution of humanity that wasn’t in one way or another tinged with something that can be properly defined as religiosity. Perhaps not necessarily in the institutionalized form of religion that we so often think about when we talk about these issues; but nevertheless the phenomenon of religion; the phenomenon of immaterialism. By which I mean the belief that there is – that there exists – something beyond the material realm, that beyond my impirical experience of reality, there exists another level of reality that I can experience, that I can commune with in some way or another. I think that is essentially the fundamental thrust of human beings, and even those who fall into the category of the new atheists who want to essentially replace religion with science. Nevertheless, when you hear them talk about science, they sound very much like, well they sound like ________. You know, they speak of science, and they speak of this unifying principle of the universe in the same way that the great mystics of all religions talk about the divine unity, and the fact that all beings are interconnected, whether it be through atoms and molecules or whether it be through their experience of the divine in one way. So to me the language you use, whether it’s an expressly religious language or whether it’s a scientific language is nevertheless answering the same kinds of questions. They are separate modes of knowing in other words. And to me they’re equally valid modes of knowing. Certainly religion is not interested in taking the role of science, nor should science be interested in taking over the role of religion. I think that’s a real mistake. So in many ways I think that the connection that we share, you know, on that level, on that material level, is something that goes beyond ethnicities, it goes beyond national boundaries, it goes any kind of kinship. And it is the thing that I think could unite people. But again, only if we have a better understanding of the difference between religion and faith. And as long as we focus on faith as a binding characteristic, we’d be in a better position than trying to make religion that binding characteristic.

Transcript:

Recorded On: 7/5/07

Transcript:

I want to sort of put myself in a position in which I could provide something like a bridge that links the so-called Muslim world with the western world. Those are meaningless terms, but nonetheless I think we all understand what I’m referring to. And what I want to do is essentially explain one to the other. I feel like I’ve got one foot very comfortably in both worlds and feel at home in both places. I want to explain I think to both that the mischaracterizations, and the mistrust, and the apprehensions that go both ways, particularly in the modern age, don’t necessarily have to be there. That there is something that we share, not just as human beings, but as people of faith, as civilizations, that we are inextricably bound to one another. But in a larger sense, it’s not so much trying to explain to someone your neighbor’s religion. That’s important. But to me it’s far more important to explain what religion is, what religion is not. Not just what Islam is, but what religion is. And I think that’s what I was referring to earlier when I said that, for so many modern people of faith, religion is not a means to an end, it’s the end. And that I think is a bastardization of what religion was supposed to be. Religion is not faith. These are two completely separate things. Religion is the language that we use in order to express faith . . . in order to express faith with each other and most importantly, in order to express faith to ourselves because we are talking about, almost by definition, something that is inexpressible. And so we need a language. We need a unified set of symbols and metaphors that help us to commune with one another these shared feelings of the divine presence, and that’s what religion does. Is it necessary in order to do that? No. I think that people of faith and intelligence can very easily formulate a language of their own in order to commune with God, to commune with the divine presence; but I do believe that it’s easier to use the languages that are available to us. It’s easier to use the metaphor of God as a suffering servant within Christianity; or it may be easier to view God as a divine and indivisible unity as Islam does. Those things, you know, are just means of helping us express to ourselves, and to our friends and neighbors what is ultimately inexpressible.

Transcript:

I guess I’d like to think of myself in some ways as a public intellectual. I feel that as an academic, as a professor of religion, world religion and primarily a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and as a Middle East analyst for the media, and as a fiction writer, and a teacher of creative writing at the University of California in Riverside . . . I feel like all of these three aspects of my life – which may seem as though they’re diverse and disparate – come together in this sort of one, self-conception that I have as an intellectual who wants to sort of bring ideas to the public realm. Ideas of religion, and politics, and society, and art, and literature . . . the kinds of things that move us as a society, but which so often are enclosed in the vacuum of academia. What I really want to do is I want to open up that academic realm to everyone else. And it’s something that I think I’ve been fairly successful at because I think that there’s a great desire amongst people of all backgrounds, and all nationalities to take part in these pivotal discussions; but very few of them either get to do so or have the proper avenue of doing so.

Transcript:

I was born in Iran in 1972 and spent my first seven years there. We came from a fairly large and well-off family. Sort of a landed aristocracy of Northern Tehran. And so I had in some ways a fairly traditional upbringing because of my father’s family. Very tribal. They’re actually Bakhtiari in heritage. So it was not uncommon for the sons, and their wives, and their children . . . for everyone to live in one giant house. My mother, on the other hand, came from sort of Iran’s _________. Her parents were stage and film actors. She came from a very large entertainment family. And at that time traditional households like my father’s would have seen my mother’s household – especially because her parents were divorced – as somewhat loose and perhaps not adequate to join their family. In fact, my father had already been betrothed to someone else since she was about seven years old. And even though he met my mother in college and fell in love with her, they had to essentially put an end to the relationship because my father had to marry somebody else. Fortunately for him, that woman that he was supposed to marry also fell in love, and actually had the guts to run away with her love, whereas my father didn’t. But that did open up the door for my parents to actually get married and move into my father’s house. And so I really grew up surrounded by a very large, extended family, and in many ways was sheltered from some of the political upheavals that were taking place in ‘78 and ‘79. For the most part what I understood was happening was, you know, whatever I could see outside of my window. And you know, for a kid all that mattered is that school was canceled and that you didn’t have to . . . that you had to stay at home all the time. So I really don’t remember too much about the turmoil itself. I do sort of have a sense of the fear and the anxiety that was ever present during . . . especially those last few months before the Shah was exiled. But we left Iran pretty much right after Ayatollah Khomeni arrived. We got all our stuff together. We were basically allowed to take one suitcase each, and got out on one of the last flights, and arrived in Oklahoma, of all places, not really knowing anything about America. So that was kind of a shock. And spent a year or so getting used to the United States by watching a lot of television . . . a lot of sitcoms, and Chips, and Bugs Bunny cartoons – and then ultimately moved to Northern California where there was a much larger area Iranian community. And that’s where I grew up in San Jose, San Francisco . . . the Bay area.

The Iranians who came to the United States in ’79 – those who sort of fled the revolution – came in two waves. The first wave were primarily the very wealthy Iranians. The aristocracy, the monarchists . . . those who were in one way or another affiliated with the regime of Mohammad Shah ________; and so in many ways were given advanced warning of what was to come. So they got out. And they also managed to get out mostly with all of their fortunes intact with their Swiss bank accounts; and set up not in Northern California, but primarily in Southern California, and Los Angeles, or in an area around Brentwood and Westwood that is often referred to as Tehrangeles. They have kind of created a very insulated community. They are enormously wealthy. Very, very conservative with regard to their politics, and incredibly hard-lined when dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Very much like the Cuban community in Florida, though much, much richer. We did not belong to that community. We were part of the Northern California Iranian community which was a different community. They got out a little bit later. They were primarily middle class. A lot of the intelligencia. So it was a much more educated, much less well-off, and much more politically left-leaning group than the Los Angeles community. So that’s the kind of community that I grew up in. A community that was certainly bitter and angry towards the _______ who were ruling Iran at the time; but who nevertheless were, I think, a little bit more open in their political ideologies and were far less isolated than the Iranian community in Los Angeles. Now after living in the Bay area for something like 20 years, I now lived in Los Angeles. So now I get to see the other side of the coin in many ways. And it’s a strange experience, because there is still – 30 years later – so much anger and so much hatred for the regime in Iran that most Iranians in Southern California, particularly the older generation, really take a far more neoconservative position towards Iran and towards the larger Middle East than even the neoconservatives in the White House do. So that’s been kind of an unusual experience for me as far as community-wise goes.

Recorded On: 7/5/07