As posted earlier in dutch, I’ve been reading the book ‘We Are Iran’ (in dutch). By now I’ve almost finished the book. I am quite happy that I have read it, it showed me new things from Iran and Islam, the combination, but also as separate concepts. Things about the history or Persia, but mainly the people that live there now and their thoughts about the current regime.

I find it hard to put a discription on the book, or find more things to cite from it. The book tells a story showing bloggers, some posts are like ‘proper’ newsarticles from regular journalists, some tell personal stories about experiences about home and others vent their personaly opinions on demonstrations or current events.

The stories gave me an insight to at least a subset of the Iranian people and a hint of it’s history. A new perspective on and maybe respect for a country so sadly abused.

The critical views on the Islam by some bloggers, with comments from the writer. Showed me side of Islam, I’m happy to see exists. People who can believe in an religion, while not needing to force it upon others.

This also made me realise more: “One cannot understand Islam by only reading it’s holy book, just as one cannot understand christianity by only reading theirs.” The same would account for any other religion I think.

Some would I supose, gladly define religions by the books it brings. But I think people give their own definition to what they read, and more often than not associate themselves through the people, not the literature.

The book gave me a new interest in Iran as a country, and a people. Somewhat sad I can’t read farsi, so I could read/track some of the blogs themselves. The latest blog entries in the book are from 2005, and many blogs cited have since disapeared already.

In 3 years many things can and will change, so I hoped to find some more information on this topic after I’ve read it. So today was a lucky day in that respect: the BBC posted an article on the subject, it gives a bit of an update on the situation arround the bloggers, without much details. But good to see that it hasn’t been crushed yet. You can find the article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782771.stm
I still got a few pages to read, but I think it’s a good book. If you care to look for it here are the ISBN numbers: English; ISBN-13: 978-1933368054 or Dutch; ISBN: 9789029078535

More information on Iranian blogs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Blogs