Reply #15: A Question It Might Be Worth Asking, Ma'am

[The Magistrate]

Is what lies at the root of the Iranian policy of non-recognition that directed this athlete's refusal to compete. Is that policy itself a rational or a bigotted act?

The Islamic government of Iran can make no pretense of having a pricipled commitmemt to self-determination for stateless peoples, as it acts itself to suppress Kurdish independence on Iranian soil, though being willing enough to assist Kurdish insurrectionism on the soil of other countries. Having disregarded openly the will of its own people expressed at the ballot box, maintaining oppressive and torturous jails for it political and social enemies, and engaging in tremendous degrees of coercion upon the most private behaviors of its citizenry, it can scarcely be accused of any principled opposition to disenfranchisement, or brutality, or any degree of deprivatio of freedom imposed on any people. There is not a doubt in my mind you are aware of, and deplore, these things, of course.

Nor, being Persian, can the Iranian government make any claim that its opposition to the existance of Israel is rooted in Arab Nationalism. This nationalism may be misguided in much of its actions in this matter, but nationalism is, for better or worse, at least an organizing political principle that, though its expressions can often take the form of bigotry, cannot really in and of itself be classed as bigotry.

It would seem that the only real ground on which this policy of the Islamic government of Iran could rest is religiousity, and the common conviction among believers in Islam that any ground once ruled by Islam must remain ruled by Islam till the end of days. The existence of Israel is certainly an affront to that conviction, and that conviction can hardly be assigned any higher value than the conviction of a Christian fundamentalist that the establishment of Israel is a sacred and necessary thing dictated by the deity, or for that matter, than the conviction of some Kachist that great swathes of land not now part of Israel ought to be part of it by holy right.