Tremendous Tehran

FOUR days is hardly enough to get a good measure of a place, but there’s no harm in trying.

As my Qatar Airways flight from Doha landed in the Islamic Republic of Iran, female passengers fished around in their bags to find their scarves and placed them loosely around their hair. That was the first surprise: although women are required to wear a headscarf, the style worn by the vast majority of women I saw is even looser than the selendangs of 1950s Malaya!

It was explained to me over dinner (followed by games of pool and ping-pong) that in Tehran, the application of what the regime considers to be Islamic law has gradually become less authoritarian, but that is less true in other parts of the country, where public hanging still occurs. I also discovered that less than 2 per cent of the male population attends Friday prayers, for two reasons: firstly that Shi’as place less importance on this compared to Sunnis, and secondly “the sermons are just political propaganda anyway”. However ‘most’ (I was told) Iranians follow an Object of Emulation: a religious leader whom one is free to choose according to Shi’a tradition.

At the mosque housing a shrine of a descendant of an imam (or Imamzadeh) near Tajrish market, I saw practices — such as chanting at the tomb and the use of a stone during prayer — that Malaysian Shafie Sunni Muslims would find totally unfamiliar, or in the current anti-Shi’a climate, offensive.

Indeed my new Iranian friends were aware of the anti-Shi’a rhetoric from the Malaysian government, for which two main theories are postulated. One is that it is about Malaysian domestic politics: either as a tool to denounce potential political rivals or simply part of a continuing effort by some religious authorities to monopolise the interpretation of Islam. The second theory is geopolitical: that for whatever reason Malaysia is increasingly aligned to Saudi Arabia — Iran’s greatest rival which is also embroiled in a Sunni-Shi’a conflict in Yemen. All this notwithstanding the Amman Message signed by our Prime Minister in 2004 providing mutual recognition of Sunni, Shi’a and other schools of Islamic jurisprudence and theology.

Still, Malaysia and Iran enable visa-free entry for nationals of the other. There are approximately 60,000 Iranians living in Malaysia with as many visiting as tourists every year, but according to our ambassador there are only 26 Malaysians in Iran today, made up of embassy staff, a few businessmen and a smattering of students.

In relations with the West also there are many contradictions. “Down with the USA” reads a gigantic mural on the side of a building visible from the Modares Expressway en route to the Grand Bazaar, where my awesome kebab was accompanied by a Coca-Cola manufactured in Iran (allegedly the factory belongs to the religious elite). Nearly every taxi is a Peugeot 405, and the French car maker is the first to return to Iran (its second biggest market) after sanctions in the automobile sector applied in 2012 were lifted after the Iran nuclear deal framework was agreed last year. And to taxi drivers you say “merci”, the most obvious example of extensive French influence on the Persian language.

The taxi could not take us up the mountains, but a hike up through Darband was rewarded with a stunning view of the city and snowcapped peaks, and a unique experience of sipping tea in the middle of the river that supplies the water for the city chosen as the capital by the founder of the Qajar dynasty in 1796. The official residence of that dynasty, the Golestan Palace – a Unesco World Heritage Site – features not only stunning architecture and decoration that is simultaneously obviously Islamic and Persian, but also full of items natural to European palaces: pianos, paintings and sculptures, which our fourth Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah extensively photographed during his state visit hosted by the Shah in 1969.

At the Pahlavis’ summer compound at Sa’dabad the international tastes continued, but always firmly on Persian carpets.

Outside these palaces, in kebab houses and pizza shops, a nostalgia for the past was detectable in the many photos of pre-revolutionary Iran, and the traditional-inspired music of rock band Dang Show (whose concert I attended in a hall headlined by pictures of the Supreme Leaders). In an almost self-reassuring way, my new friends said “the ayatollahs know that we will always be Persian”. I was reminded of my visits to Egypt and Turkey, where pride in pre-Islamic heritage and identity remains. If 60,000 Malaysians were to visit Iran every year, perhaps we would more easily realise the value of ours.

Tunku Zain Al-’Abidin is founding president of Ideas.

 

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