Iranian people cannot be simply compartmentalized into fanatical pro-theocracy religious people and then secular pro-Western democrats. A large number of Iranians are very difficult to classify. (
Pilgrimage of Karbala on PBS

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Iran is not just

March 20, 2007: Vali Nasr, Professor, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and author of THE SHIA REVIVAL, discusses Iran's emerging regional role and the escalating tensions between Iran and the United States with anchor Daljit Dhaliwal.

DALJIT DHALIWAL: Professor Vali Nasr, welcome to Wide Angle.VALI NASR: Thank you. It's good being with you.DALJIT DHALIWAL: What do you make of what you just saw? Put this all into context for us.

VALI NASR: Well, I think it revealed the depth of the emotional attachment to Shiism within Iran. And I think that's very interesting because most people in the West look at Iran and they think of the country as being ruled by a theocracy [with] a population that has become secular and anti-regime and is disaffected with Islam. And that's not the picture that we see. We see an enormous amount of attachment and emotion with the core values of Shiism and particularly with the myth of Karbala. And in the film I was particularly amazed and interested in seeing this associated with this social class in Iran that you often associate with secularism. Families with women who are not wearing the head scarf, have dyed hair; have a dog in their house. And yet their son at one point served in the Revolutionary Guards. And he's so attached to the popular aspects of the religion that he crawls on his stomach towards the shrine in Karbala. And I think that raises a more important issue. Nowadays in the West we talk about how we can extricate Iran from Iraq, as if the relationship of Iran to Iraq is mandated by the highest authorities in the Iranian government. And when we look at this movie, we look at the footage, we see the amount of attachment at the popular level Iranians have to Iraq, where most of the shrines are, where the myths of their religion come from. One wonders how exactly you can exclude Iran from Iraq now. I mean, this goes to the core of the religion that the Iranians and the Iraqis share, that is Shiism, and the fact that the centers of Shiism are in Iraq. And you cannot get Iranians to turn away from Iraq because that's where their whole religion is.

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