Sunday, July 27, 2008

Arrested in Iran for the crime of breathing while Azeri

CLICK ME, MY NAME IS VEDUD ASADI
BAKU -- Vedud Asadi is well-known for his work promoting the cultural and language rights of Iran's Azeri minority, so it's little surprise that he celebrated his wedding with a nod to his ethnic heritage.


Guests sang folk songs and danced traditional dances -- but the flag may have been the icing on the cake for Iranian authorities who came to arrest him two weeks after the event, according to his sister, Sumayya Asadi. "I think it was because we put the image of the Azerbaijan's flag on the wedding cake," she says. "We sang only Azerbaijani songs, there were no Persian songs. We all were speaking Turkic [Azeri], [and there was] Turkic dancing. There is no need for Persian in a Turkic wedding. We used our flag -- we don't need others' flags. I think Vedud was arrested for this, because the first thing they asked for when they initiated the search was the wedding film.


"
Vedud Asadi's bride, Zahra Purasad, says the secret police who arrived at the newlyweds' flat in Rasht on the evening of July 22 did not give any reasons for her husband's arrest. "I asked, but they did not say anything," Purasad tells RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.


National Azeri Music:
Mugham by Khan Shushinski


The Iranian authorities were already familiar with Asadi's activism. In 2006, the former chairman of the Islamic Students Union at northwestern Iran's Ardebil University was arrested for participating in a protest against cartoons that depicted Azeris as cockroaches.
His family says he spent about 3 1/2 months in prison without being charged following that arrest, and they now fear he will be imprisoned again. His wife knows only that he was taken to a local court on July 24, but has no information about the outcome in court or his current whereabouts.


The ethnic-Azeri minority makes up 25-33 percent of Iran's population. While the Iranian Constitution provides language and cultural rights for the country's minorities, the regime has banned the teaching of the Azeri language in schools, and harassed and jailed activists like Asadi.
Sumayya Asadi says the officers who arrested her brother seized his Azeri-language books, material on the history of Azeris, CDs, and his computer. Iranian authorities often cite the promotion of "pan-Turkism" as the reason for detaining ethnic Azeris.


But Sumayya Asadi says her brother is no separatist, he simply believes that his people's cultural and linguistic rights are worth fighting for.
She says that if she is Azeri, she has the right to speak Azeri. "I should not have to speak Persian.... If there are 35 million Turks [Azeris] in the country, shouldn't these 35 million have the right to speak, write, and communicate in their own language?" As for Asadi's wife, when asked what she feels about the arrest of her husband just two weeks after the wedding, she says she has no regrets for their actions at their wedding. "He was arrested for his nation, he did not do anything bad," she says. "Not for stealing, not for drinking alcohol or immoral behavior -- for his nation only. I am proud of him."



25 comments:

BabbaZee said...

Vehud is very beautiful despite the Karen Black eye thing


He also appears to be a warrior

pray for him
all ye who do such verboten unhinged lunatic type things

my Jewdoo fears he may be dead already

thanks

BabbaZee said...

Vedud.

/damn hands

Natasha said...

I thought Islam wasn't

RACIST?

OR PREJUDICE AGAINST

ETHNIC MINORITIES?

Oooops, did I read that wrong?

And I thought they were opposed to democracy? With all their posters of die democracy?

Looks like they got that Majority Rules 'pseudo democracy' down quite pat,

minorities have no rights type of regime?

That would explain their black market slave auction blocks now wouldn't it?

LOL and to think, African Americans who support Islam are against majority rules democracy and black slavery/or racism against blacks,

maybe we should send them to Iran!!!

Thinks they miss them ole auction human-sales blocks or something...because they damn sure supporting and propping it up again,

go figure. :0

Natasha

Anonymous said...

"That would explain their black market slave auction blocks now wouldn't it?

LOL and to think, African Americans who support Islam are against majority rules democracy and black slavery/or racism against blacks,"

That's something that amazes me.

Anonymous said...

He's beautiful!

Anonymous said...

Pray for him why - babba?
He is azeri, a turkish muslim. If anything, pray the division between muslim persians and azeri escalates. Arabs have issues with Turks and Persians. Turks have issues with Arabs and Persians. Persians have issues with Arabs and Turks. Islam has revealed it's own achilles heel. Fitzgerald advocates exploiting the many fissures within the Islamic world ... sectarian, tribal, national, racial.
Relax, let nature take its course. Not another drop of western blood or treasure should reach the umma to protect them from their own piety or nationalist desires. Islam must be permitted the opportunity to fail in all its bloody splendor.
Pass the popcorn.

BabbaZee said...

Pray for him why - babba?


If I have to tell you why
there is zero point in telling you why

Anonymous said...

Praying for any muslim is a rather self defeating counter-jihad effort. Now if you were to tell me that this individual was renouncing his ideology - apostasizing - then I'd agree with you. But only then. I refuse to lift a finger or prayer to save any individual from the consequences of their devotion to Islam.

BabbaZee said...

You are free to do whatever the fuck you want to or need to do,
Mr no-nick


Me?

I can not look into that particular face
and not feel love for him
I am compelled to pray for him by a force beyond my rational understanding

I do not expect anyone else to understand this about me

and I do not give one rats ass who approves it or condemns it

If he showed up to kill me
I would do what I had to do without hesitation or remorse
but I do not think that particular person has intention to kill me

I am no fuckin pacifist
nor do I normally find myself praying for Muslims

HOWEVER
There are those who are LIGHT embedded in everything

Even in Islam

There are those who are DARKNESS embedded in everything

Even in Judaism & Christianity

As an individual
I see light in that face
If you do not,
you do not.

and BTW if you are so effin' brave why don't you have a name?

Pastorius said...

Anonymous,
I think this may be an exclusive case where the Bill Clinton Question actually applies:

"It depends on what your definition of "Is" is."

By that I mean, what is your definition of Being. Being created in the Image of God.

If you agree with Babba and I, then all humans, Muslim or not, are created in the Image of God, and are all equal in dignity, and deserve equally to be loved and prayed for.

That does not mean we ought to pray for their twisted purposes to work out.

BabbaZee said...

exactly right Pastorius

Also

Iran is arresting any and all "OTHERS" who will not dhimmify
and this is the larger point here

Pastorius said...

Babba,
Preach it, baby!

You'd even pray for a Jihadi motherfucker as you were choking the life out of him.

Pastorius said...

Doesn't mean that Sufis are not at all dangerous. It does mean they are much harder to Jihadify.

BabbaZee said...

Pastorius:
You'd even pray for a Jihadi motherfucker as you were choking the life out of him.

Yes...I would.
;)

BabbaZee said...

MMMHMMM pastorius on the Sufi thing

BTW:

it was a FAKE Sufi that arranged for my fatwa (2003)


Many Jihadists are doing the Faux Sufi Shuffle for the benefit of wealthy credulous western new age caliphellators

it's a taqiyya which is big in the UK & NYC in the upper crusty circle of hell

Pastorius said...

Babba,
I didn't realize that, but it makes sense. Sufism has the trend-potential of Kaballah.

If you have info on that, please put up a post about it.

BabbaZee said...

P ~

Back in '03 I posted a lot on it
at LGF

most of the info I have is based on this 2003 personal experience though and I have to be very careful about how I speak on or reveal any of that

when my last computer died in '05
I lost all my work / corroborating research on it

But ya know what?
It is worth researching all over again

I will put it on my list

BabbaZee said...

BTW

everything genuine Sufism knows it learned from genuine Jewish mysticism

BabbaZee said...

Blogger BabbaZee said...

P ~

Back in '03 I posted a lot on it
at LGF

TYPO

should have read '04

Pastorius said...

From what little I know of Sufism, it would seem that to me it is heavily influenced by Hinduism.

BabbaZee said...

I see that as well

and I ask myself

what is Hinduism heavily influenced by?

/ I am always stripping all things down the matrix

Pastorius said...

I don't know the history well, but if I am not mistaken, Hinduism is an older religion. Hinduism certainly seems to have more in common, in its base form, with the various Pre-Abrahamic religions.

When I studied Hinduism in college, it seemed clear to me that there was a progression of revelation which gradually stripped away the Pantheism. I can't remember the name of the Veda, but there was a later Veda in which the revelation was that all the various Gods were merely reflections of the One God, Brahman, and the ultimate revelation (similar to Buddhism) was that Atman (Self) is Brahman. That enlightenment meant, shucking off self-hood and realizing that you and God are One.

Interestingly, Hinduism has something similar to a trinity, but the attributes of the Godhead are different from the Trinity of Christianity:

http://www.rudraksha-ratna.com/hindu_trinity.php

Pastorius said...

Oops, I guess it was in the Upanishads that the Atman is Brahman idea was articulated.

Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. The nature of Brahman is described as transpersonal, personal and impersonal by different philosophical schools. In the Rig Veda, Brahman gives rise to the primordial being Hiranyagarbha that is equated with the creator God Brahmā. The trimurti can thus be considered a personification of hiranyagarbha as the active principle behind the phenomena of the universe. The seers who inspired the composition of the Upanisads asserted that the liberated soul (jivanmukta) has realized his identity with Brahman as his true self (see Atman (Hinduism)).

The word "Brahman" is derived from the verb brh (Sanskrit:to grow), and connotes greatness. The Mundaka Upanishad says:

Om- That supreme Brahman is infinite, and this conditioned Brahman is infinite. The infinite proceeds from infinite. Then through knowledge, realizing the infinitude of the infinite, it remains as infinite alone.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

BabbaZee said...

thanks P

I'll pick that thread of thinking up later

it's in the file now

Pastorius said...

I'm the Administrator of the site. I like the Anonymous option because we get a lot of our most interesting comments from Anonymous people.