If you (readers) noticed something then that there are few things that disgusts me as much as hypocrisy and it is hypocrisy when the heirs of failed empires who for centuries were part of the most brutal colonial-powers ever now cry about colonialism and “western beauty standards”. Such a bizarre whining is something one can expect from Hengameh Yaghoobifarah these days. It seems to me that Ms. Yaghoobifarah prostitutes herself morally. Let me explain that: Like other people sell their body for money and other resources Ms. Yaghoobifarah sells her heritage and writes in every given medium as soon as the subject has something remotely to do with her heritage and colonialism. She does that as “quota-migrant”- without regarding if she actually is qualified to say something about that subject or not.
With that Ms. Yaghoobifaran stays true to her main subject the Iranian victim-myth in Germany as her piece for the Goethe-institute shows, where she laments about supposed colonialism through beauty-standards.
Obviously, Ms. Yaghoobifarah is not the only one who sees herself personally and Iran generally as a victim of history. I wrote about Iranians like her in the anthology “Freiheit ist keine Metapher” (Querverlag, Berlin 2018) the following:
These Iranians excuse the current situation of Iran with the ousting of Mossadegh in 1953. These Iranians damp down the genocidal mania of the butchers of Tehran who hang people without hesitation in broad daylight on construction cranes and are the world champions of executing minors, and therefore (these Iranians) defend imperialists and anti-Semites in disguise of revolutionaries. In addition to this there were countless Georgian slaves during the reign of the reign of the Safavid dynasty, who ruled between the 16th to the 17th century, in Iranian households. The Safavids and other shahs managed with their chauvinistic policies in the Caucasus to make the popular TV-show “Game of Thrones” look like a children’s birthday.
The Shah looted the main church of the oldest Christian nation.
For example, Shah Abbas ordered to destroy the Ikalto-academy and the monastery of David Gareji, both important Georgian cultural landmarks. The same Shah also looted Echmiadzin, the most important cathedral of Armenian Christianity and brought the relics and icons from said cathedral to Isfahan, into the Persian heartland. Shah Abbas sought to the destroy the dreams and aspirations of the Armenians of a return to their homeland and therefore he allowed the Armenians to build the Vank-cathedral in exile. Shah Abbas I also ordered to torture the Georgian queen Ketevan to death because she refused to convert to Shia Islam. The same Shah Abbas I also ordered to choke his brother in law of his other Georgian wife princess Tinatin/Peri Lala to death with a bow-string. Whereas the Persian Shah Agha Mohammed Khan (1742-1979) burned Tbilisi as whole to the ground.
Therefore, the theory that such empires like the Persian empires under the Sassanids and Safavids could emerge through a defensive or pacifist foreign policy is simply ridiculous. By the way as Jew I am tired being scolded about Kyros the Great as if his liberation of us Jews from Babylonian bondage makes it legitimate for the Persian empires in the next 2500 years to practice as policy based on fratricide, genocide and enslavement. Read: With this piece I want make people to remember that Iran is the legal heir of the Persian empires and these empires rampaged through the Caucasus with an unseen fury.
Overall, it is the case that the Persian of the Caucasus gave the Georgian-Orthodox church more martyrs than Stalinism. Simply because of the fact that the Shahs had more time on hand for their bad deeds than comrade Stalin. This occupation started with the Sassanids and the killing of Christian orthodox martyrs such Eustakhius of Mtskheta and the Saint Shushanik. And Hengameh Yaghoobifarah is of Iranian descent despite her post-colonial rhetoric.
When somebody like her with so many historical skeletons in the closet starts to complain about “Western beauty-stands”, makes me think that is not only shallow and vain but also hypocritical. Especially given the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran today still acts like in feudal manner and practices Persian chauvinism under which minorities such as the Azeri, the Balokhi and the Kurds have to suffer.
The constant stylization of Iran as part of the “global south”, as part of the “miserable of the world” is therefore completely wrong. Especially given the fact that besides the forced Islamization through the Arb conquest Iran is one of the few Asian countries that were never colonized. The other countries are Japan, Thailand and Saudi-Arabia. Instead the Islamic Republic of Iran is a failed empire today at best regional power that exhausted itself through the export of the so-called “Islamic revolution” through the Revolutionary guards and the Hezbollah.
Would the Germans to be like the Iran?
It is not acceptable that such apologists like Hengameh Yaghoobifarah are given access to make propaganda for the Islamic Republic, even so that they do not have to face any form of protests in any kind of form. This idolization for Iran is, especially in the German speaking world, frankly bizarre and seems to me like a projection of German desires on other “Aryans”. The Iranian is allowed to be what is no longer deemed acceptable for Germans after 1945, namely taking pride in ones (supposed) Arianism, a revisionist view of history and the questioning of the borders of neighboring states that all combined with an Antisemitism in disguise of “Anti-Zionism” and Anti-Americanism. All in all, a toxic combination.
A combination that is fed by blind idolization and a racism of lower expectations and leads to the fact that mainstream-media cheers for inhumane regime whose bloody history is swept under the (Persian-)rug, everything under the beautiful cover of post-colonialism. Meanwhile the Islamic Republic Iran still systematically dispossess ethnic and religious minorities like the Bahai and Revolutionary guards and the Ayatollahs still try to terrorize the Jew among the nations, Israel.
Finally, I suggest that Ms. Yaghoobifarah does no longer lingers to such vanities like beauty-standards, but instead researches the reign of terror of the Persian Shahs in the Caucasus, or supports in this day and age religious and ethnic minorities who suffer under the yoke of the chauvinistic regime of the Islamic Republic Iran. I do not like to remind Ms. Yaghoobifarah of the Persian proverb “Dig be dig migeh rut siah”. The Persian version of a pot calling the kettle black.