final words on that conference in Tehran

It’s a toss-up between Sacha Baron Cohen, out of character, accepting an award for his movie Borat:

“Borat couldn’t be here. He was the guest of honor at the Tehran Holocaust denial conference.”

And Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran:

I can name a few amazing, as well as a number of disappointing, cultural events for 2006, but none can match my sense of outrage at the so-called Holocaust conference convened by the Iranian government. I felt outraged as a human being, because, like all the great human catastrophes, the Holocaust transcends its own time and place, concerning not just the Jews and those who tried to eliminate them but the rest of mankind, and when we deny it or remain silent about it, when we manipulate it for political purposes, we become complicit in the assault not only against the actual victims but against all that goes by the name humane.

As an Iranian, it was with a sense of tragic irony that I witnessed a regime that has denied Iranian citizens the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, and has systematically repressed, jailed, and tortured thousands of its own citizens for demanding their most basic rights, claim to provide freedom of expression for neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

I had to remind myself that, while the ruling elite in Iran convenes such an event in the name of the country’s culture and religion, many Iranians boast of the fact that more than 2,500 years ago, a Persian king, Cyrus, after the conquest of Babylon, allowed the Jewish people to return to their land and permitted the practice of all cults and beliefs of the countries he had conquered. The ancient city of Hamadan is the site of the pre-Islamic temple of the water goddess Anahita, the Mausoleum of the vagabond poet Baba Taher, and the shrine of  Esther—believed to have been the wife of the Persian king, Xerxes—and her cousin Mordecai, who together rescued the Jewish people from extermination.

These sites represent the best of the Iranian culture and tradition, its diversity, its passion for poetry, its hospitality and generosity toward others. And yet, today when we talk about Iranian culture, none of this comes to mind.