Prejudice is a disease. And when they come for you, or refuse your worth, I will be ready for their stones. I belong to you.
alejandro disease hatred music persecution prejudice stoning
As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by then had been fully counter-revolutionized by the forces of the Ayatollah. Yes, it was true that the Western press which was one half of the pun about 'covering' had been naïve if not worse about the Pahlavi regime. Yes, it was true that few Middle East 'analysts' had had any concept of the latent power of Shi'ism to create mass mobilization. Yes, it was true that almost every stage of the Iranian drama had come as a complete surprise to the media. But wasn't it also the case that Iranian society was now disappearing into a void of retrogressive piety that had levied war against Iranian Kurdistan and used medieval weaponry such as stoning and amputation against its internal critics, or even against those like unveiled women whose very existence constituted an offense?
1980s amputation carnegie-endowment covering-islam edward-said human-rights iran iranian-kurdistan iranian-revolution khomeini media middle-east mohammed-reza-pahlavi new-york september-11-attacks shiism stoning theocracy women women-and-religion women-in-iran women-in-islam womens-rights
