So sorry for offending your delicate sensibilities, Rana, but this is a blog comment thread – shit happens, you know.

I see ours isn’t going too well, either, so I’ll sign off.

Clearly he is not a supporter of Islamism in any shape or form. Here’s his recent op-ed:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD28Ak02.html
Any potential or actual US/Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic will significantly change that balance, will unify the clerical establishment and popular resentment alike, and will lead to a Shi’ite/Islamic alliance across the Iranian borders and well into Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – an alliance that will aggravate the already volatile region in terms of even more violent guerrilla operations, making even more room for al-Qaeda-like globalized terrorism.

You seem to be assuming that Mr. Dabashi is some kind of Khomeini supporter, right? Well, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Dabashi

What distinguishes Professor Dabashi even in his political activism is his uncompromising critique of all forms of theocracies (Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Jewish or any other), any form of violence in which preemptive wars and pro-active terrorism are in fact identical in their destructive consequences. While he is not teaching world cinema, comparative literature, and social and intellectual history at Columbia University, he is an anti-war activist like other high-profile academics such as his late colleague and friend Edward Said at Columbia University. Similar to other American academics who are anti-war activists, like Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole, Norman Finkelstein and Howard Zinn, Hamid Dabashi’s activism has sparked criticism by neoconservatives in the United States, while earning him support from many in the academia as well as praise from the American anti-war movement.

In fact it’s Wolfowitz, Lewis and their little useful idiots are the ones who aren’t much different from Khomeini. Same shit, different idol – and better weapons.

I believe that the Turks use the phrase, “Osmanlı imperatorluğu”. This is almost a direct translation of “Ottoman Empire”.

My impression of the Turkish sensitivity to anything regarding the Armenians is that it is used as a wedge issue by the West to rip apart Turkey and take what they denied it as the Ottoman Empire and then again when it was a fledgling state: its rightful and independent sovereignty. Then, too, many people don’t believe it happened the way it really happened, just as Americans simply don’t want to believe the Lancet study is VERY probably close to the mark. But I think Henry’s right: The France thing seems like a neato way for the parties in France to jab Turkey (an easy target) as well as Muslims (Turks being Muslims, albeit not the way they are in other countries after Ataturk’s strong secular influence).

A very good book (but BIG) in English on the founding of modern Turkey and (two for one!) the character and actions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the biography Ataturk by Andrew Mango. While I suspect that it goes easy on Ataturk’s personal life, it is an excellent biography on a man who is revered by many if not most Turks, not quite so much others.

There are more academic books that are also wonderful, harder to read, but shorter than Mango. Try Eric Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History for a nice, fair start. There are several others, each with their own bent. Search for that book at Amazon and look at related books to see others. They all have to tackle controversial subjects like the Armenians, the subjugation of the failing Ottoman empire by the West, the not-so-neat-and-tidy creation of modern Turkey by (among other things) defeating and expelling huge populations of Greeks, and—what else?—oh yeah, that pesky Kurdish issue. Where each book falls on these subjects is an exercise best left to the reader, as they say…

What demographic?

Really? I got the impression from the book that a large chunk of the Iran population were opposed to the fundamentalists – and that those people opposed to the fundamentalists were as much native Iran citizens (is that right?) as the fundamentalists.

According to this logic, native Brits who attacked Margaret Thatcher are presumably also stressing native savagery (of the British), and contempt for the Orientalist “other”.

To me, Nafisi’s just doing the thing it is very easy to do in debate – looking at your opponents as an ‘other’ – not quite a whole person. I see it all the time in NZ politics, and I don’t believe that NZ politicians are Orientalists or regard their fellow Kiwis as native savages. Given the relative costs imposed on Nafisi, this attitude of hers is much more forgivable than the same attitude amongst NZ politicians – though it would be better if she hadn’t fallen into the trap.

But on the other hand, it’s very, very, amenable to sort of reading that’s sending Dabashi into his florid flaming.

I get the impression that nothing critical of the Iran regime could have avoided Dabashi’s sort of reading.

Anyway, this whole discourse is amusing to me, because I read “Reading Lolita in Tehran” due to the WEA’s bookclub programme, and the WEA is definitely on the political left. Consequently my associations with the book are drastically opposed to American right politics and Dabashi’s insuinations.

Doug – I think you have it about right.

My late father was in jail under the Shah and then under Khomeini. He never forgave himself for signing a petition supporting Khomeini’s return from France. He would be appalled by Dabashi and Dabashi’s apologists here.

Shorter abb1: bitch had it coming.

What’s that supposed to mean – that I am a misogynist or something? Jeez.

Explain to me again what’s reasonable about it.

“Again, had there been no torturer, no soldier, no orchestrated campaign”

The connection between mediocre author Nafisi and convicted torturer England continues to elude me. Maybe I’m just slow, but there it is.

I note in passing that the book was written in the late 1990s, and bought before 9/11. IOW, when it was written, there /was/ “no torturer, no soldier, no orchestrated campaign”.

But the wrong sort of people like her book! So.

“And also should find herself some better friends.”

Shorter abb1: bitch had it coming.

Doug M.

But that’s the whole point. From this guy’s (not entirely unreasonable) point of view they all work to the same end by different means: the writer glamorizes, the jailer tortures, the soldier kills, the politician does his thing, the journalist his, the historian his – hence the comparison you don’t like.

Again, had there been no torturer, no soldier, no orchestrated campaign – I would’ve agreed with you that the guy is a wingnut; but unfortunately he has a point. And if she is merely an admirer of Nabokov, she should just say it, shouldn’t keep us guessing. And also should find herself some better friends.

So, because her stuff is popular with the Wrong Sort of People, you support some doofus saying there’s no difference between her and a torturer.

(Oh, sorry… don’t /support/, as such… you just see how it’s, like, totally understandable.)

‘George Bush makes me very angry’ is no excuse for throwing your brain out the window. Nor for condoning mean-spirited stupidity.

“You know, I’m pretty sure glamorizing, say, Japanese or German culture”

Godwin violation. Thanks for playing.

Doug M.

If so, then isn’t it ironic that pretty much everything Nabokov wrote (including Lolita) is pretty much purely aesthetical, the way abstract paintings are; pretty much none of it having anything whatsoever to do with any social or political issues.