Furor over Iranian leader

Published by Houston Chronicle on Tue 09/25/2007

By LISA FALKENBERG

FERESHTEH Ahmadi's 50-year-old voice gets high like a child's when she talks about her Iranian homeland.

She begins to sob and explains what it feels like to hear reports of an increasingly oppressive society, torture of political prisoners, unjust executions and to see TV images of her Iranian sisters doused in their state-sanctioned uniform coverings, ideally head-to-toe black chadors.

"I'm living in a free country," Ahmadi says. "But what's the difference between me and them? What's the difference between American women and Iranian women? Everybody's born free."

This is why Ahmadi, a Fort Worth restaurant owner, felt compelled to travel to New York today to protest the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She said she's personally insulted that he's being allowed into the country.

"It looks like they're supporting and appeasing the Iranian government," she said. "It's stupidity to do these kind of things."

Protest planned

Ahmadi is one of several hundred Texans of Iranian descent who plan to hoist signs and join marches outside the United Nations as the man they call a cruel dictator, murderer and terrorist enabler attends the General Assembly.

Hordes of demonstrators have met Ahmadinejad at each stop since he arrived in New York, including Monday's lecture to a crowd at Columbia University. The New York Post announced his arrival with the headline, "Evil has landed."

Many Iranians and Americans alike wonder why a university would hand a megaphone to a madman who walks around proclaiming the Holocaust was myth and Israel should be wiped off the map, then requests admission to Ground Zero.

"We are living in a free country, and that's not the place for him to be," said Ali Soudjani, of Houston, president of the Iranian-American Community of Texas. "He's a criminal. Would you allow a criminal and rapist to come to your home and talk to your family?"

Soudjani said Columbia's inviting Ahmadinejad to speak only validates his views and creates the false impression that they're shared by most Iranian people. Ahmadinejad's expression of his twisted, hateful speech and laughable denials of critics' accusations seems to Soudjani to be a perverse abuse of our country's First Amendment.

"He's the axis of evil," said Houston car salesman Sohrab "Sam" Shirli.

Shirli, who hopped a flight to New York Monday night, said he wanted to condemn the president's visit and make sure Americans watching the spectacle are aware of the violence and oppression Ahmadinejad has championed in Iran.

In a recent crackdown on dissent in the Islamic state, Iran has imprisoned women's rights advocates for "endangering national security." Young men with shirts too tight or haircuts too Western are bloodied by police and marched through streets, forced to suck on jerrycans, bathroom fixtures which Iranians use to wash their back sides. Newspapers are banned from reporting on topics that might cause a stir, from Iraq issues to rising gas prices.

But maybe Shirli and the others don't see that the Iranian leader has already done more to discredit himself than any posterboard or T-shirt could do.

In response to questions, the Washington Post reported, Ahmadinejad told reporters after his arrival in the United States that "freedom is flowing at the highest level" in his country.

"Our people are the freest people in the world, the most aware people in the world, the most enlightened." He added when asked about Iranian women, "The freest women in the world are women in Iran."

After such statements, who would believe anything else he has to say?

I agree with Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge, Mass., civil rights attorney and board chairman of an advocacy group that defends individual rights at higher education institutions.

"It's useful," he says, "to see these monsters up close."

"You know, I always wondered what would have happened in the '30s if Adolf Hitler had been allowed to do a speaking tour in the United States, whether it would have taken us quite as long to realize that Churchill was right.

"You see these psychopaths up front, and you get a better sense of how dangerous they really are, how persuasive they can be to mobs of people. It's very useful to see them in the flesh."

Silverglate's only concern is that Columbia's tolerance seems limited to views that fit its liberal constitution. Last year, the university failed to protect Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal immigration Minuteman Project, as angry students forced him off stage during a speech. Last week, a Columbia student group uninvited Gilchrist to a planned forum.

The concept of free speech only works if it's applied fairly. It's a lesson our country can teach to less-free parts of the world.

And Ahmadinejad's lesson for us?

Let him speak, and he'll sound his own siren.