Awake Iranian

When asked, “Are you a god?” Buddha responded by saying, “No.” “An angel?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?” Buddha answered, “I am awake (Smith [All the World's Religions] 82).”

My parents’ home country of Iran is under an Islamic authoritarian regime. Often one hears stories about Iranian expatriates, who upon returning to Iran after the Revolution become depressed over its disarming bleakness. My father asserts, “This Iran is not my home. Cruel people came and took my country away from me.” My mother laments, “Sogand azizam, this isn’t the same Iran. You wouldn’t believe how different it was before.” Is it the unleaded fuel, the air pollution, the humidity, and the mute-colored cars that evoke this sense of bleakness? Or it is the repression of Iranians? No matter how many times I’ve traveled to either Tehran or Mashad, every time I walk down from the air port buses and into the terminals, I’m always arrested with distraught. To see Iranians engulfed in Shari’a and shackled to religion just makes my heart so heavy.

Under the Oxford English Dictionary, to be ‘awake’ means to "arouse into activity, stir up, excite; kindle (desire, anxiety, interest, attention, etc.)” In a theocracy, one is confined to a dark place. How can one experience Enlightenment when the dark clouds of censorship are always infringing upon the sunlight? When a woman is confined to her house because even her college degree won’t help her get a job? When an acoustic guitarist’s performance is shut down because of ‘Western influence?’ When a homosexual is hung for experiencing love? According to Houston Smith, “Religion confronts the individual with the most momentous option life can present. It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertaken a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit.” If faith is a way of knowing and a path to critical reasoning, then the Ayatollah and the government’s ideology is not Islam; for the Iranian is not awake.