Four years ago today, the first Farsi blog appeared. Today, with the help of Hossein Derakhshan (aka "Hoder") and others, there are believed to be 75,000 Farsi blogs in Iran. Today on Global Voices, Iranian blogger Farid Pouya marks the occasion with a post about Iran's "blogistory".
There are of course a number of Iranians blogging in English, whose blogs you can find over at the Global Voices bridge blog index page for Iran. They include "Mr. Behi," who I interviewed for Global Voices not long ago. He is one of the many progressive young Iranians blogging in English, who want the outside world to know that many young Iranians are not particularly fond of their current leaders or the way their country is being run, and wish they could engage more directly with the Western world while maintaining their identity as Iranians at the same time.
As my colleagues note in their Report on Internet Filtering in Iran, the Iranian government censors and blocks a lot of blogs. Farid also notes that blogging can be dangerous if you're too critical of the government . Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad is now serving a 2-year prison sentence (you can sign a petition for his release here.) Blogger Omid Sheikhan is facing trial in October.
Farsi blogs do span the gamut of religious and political views. Farid points out that there are even Hezbollah blogs, like this one. And as I reported last year, Hossein received a death threat from an extremist blog called "Islamic Army."
I think you American bloggers tend to glorify Hoder too much. Hoder tells people that he had to "exile" himself for political reasons to Canada. However, the main reason he immigrated was that is wife had dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship and she wanted to move to Canada. Furthermore, if you read his Farsi and his English blog you will notice VAST discrepancies in his views, etc. NO, Hoder isn't liked by many of the Iranian bloggers inside Iran because he sold out on them and into the life of making himself "famous". If Iran wasn't in the Western news so much, Hoder would be packing burgers at McDonalds.
Hoder hasn't done anything for the Iranian people. All he does is hope from conference to conference telling people the same BS and people standing by and clapping because that's what your suppose to do. How does Hoder afford to pay for all these conference and live as a "blogger". I am a graduate student at Northwestern and barly make ends month to month! I doubt that blogging alone makes big $$$. Question: who is paying Hoder? By the way, do you think that the "blogsphere" that everyone talks about is such a big thing in Iran? No, it isn't. It is just elite communications by a bunch of "rich" kids in North Tehran who don't have anything else to do better with their time, other than drinking, smoking pot, and getting high. The real Iran are the people who are struggling to survive. This is the reason that blogs aren't such a "hugh" thing and that they are only used to give the aura that Iran is such a technologically capable country, when in fact there is a MASSIVE digital divide. This is not to mention the equally MASSIVE rich and poor gap in Iran that allows rich families (hoder's included) to oppress poor people and treat them with such distain.
The real problem with Western and US media is that you'll use ANYONE who has a slight link to a exotic country that you haven't heard or know about. If people would better educate themselves instead of using inept and corrupt people, then those in the West would have a better picture of Iran.
These are some things to think about the next time you congratulate Hoder.
Posted by: An Iranian-American with a True Mind | September 07, 2005 at 02:25 PM