A prayer for those still living

[azurelunatic]

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran is still fresh in my mind, so when I read the New York Times article "For Iraqi Girls, Changing Land Narrows Lives", I saw that same slippery slope. Saddam Hussein is an exeptionally poor role model as a leader.

For those of you who will pray, or think good thoughts, or light candles:

Pray that Iraq will form its own government, of the people, by the people, for the people, and that the people will have the teaching to take this charge up responsibly.
Pray that the people of the country will have the freedoms they are accustomed to, with the ability to add more as they become assured in themselves -- rather than ruling themselves by fear such that the days of Saddam Hussein are looked to with nostalgia.
Pray that expression of religious law remain a matter of choice, not a matter of secular law.


I can't begin to say how much that article terrifies me. This happened in Iran, before I was born, while I was in diapers, before I learned to speak, before I learned to comprehend world news. Is Iran a safe place to be a woman now? I don't know. I haven't checked.

Are those who are ruling the last to know when the powerless people in a country can't bear it there? When I'm in terror for myself (I, not garnetdagger), I fold up as small upon myself as I can and am meek and compliant and as bland as can be. Invisibility is the refuge of the powerless. My voice is not heard when I think speaking will earn me the attentions of those I wish to avoid.

Comments

[acheron-hades.livejournal.com]

Iraq has to be one of trickiest moral issues of our time. I'm all for intelligent intervention, but what "we"'ve done over there is in no way deserving of that adjective. If Iraq degenerates into religious fundamentalism, it will be the Allies' fault as much as the zealots.

[azurelunatic]

And I would have no clue how to start fixing the mess, either. I don't know this stuff, and I don't trust the people who do say they know this stuff.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Invisibility is the refuge of the powerless. My voice is not heard when I think speaking will earn me the attentions of those I wish to avoid.

Oh, my.

My mind and heart and soul cried out in simultaneous pain and pleasure at that statement.

*applause*

[azurelunatic]

Thank you.