Samuel E. Rajeus Publishing – S.E.R.P

Majid Tavakoli, a student activist in captivity in Iran

Majid Tavakoli was arrested in Tehran, Iran in the beginning of December 2009 of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He is a student activist who played a major role in organizing post-election-protests against Iranian president Ahmadinejad in June this year. Iranian regime released a photo of Tavakoli in dress and claimed condescending that he was dressed as a women at the time of being captured.

The human rights agency reported that Majid Tavakoli is being tortured in captivity. And he was severely beaten when was captured by Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

A protest action started around the World by men in veil in defense of Majid Tavakoli. It is important to emphasis that veil is not a symbol for being pushed aside and being a second class citizen as some left-wing movements in Sweden argue. What they say is definitely true in Iran because the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran forces Iranian women to go in veil against their will. But veil in general is an Islamic traditional dress that millions of women in many Islamic and non-Islamic countries chose to wear completely freely.

A man in veil, A man in trouble

A woman in veil, A women in trouble

A country in veil, A country in trouble

A religion in veil, A religion in trouble

A nation in veil, A nation in trouble

A woman without a man

A man without a woman

A woman without a woman

A man without a man

A nation without a country

A country without a leadership

A leadership without an integrity

A leadership without honor

A leadership in trouble

A leadership in veil

I got somewhat sad but absolutely not surprised when I read about how some of International broadcasters including Swedish mass media commented the recognition of president Obama as the 2009 Noble Peace Prize Laureate by the Norwegian Noble Committee as a big joke.

There is no secret that The Norwegian Noble Committee has in many years used the peace prize as an instrument, hopping to create change and to enforce peace activities in different regions in trouble such as meddle east conflict and peace keeping activities in Asia and Africa, fight aganist poverty and also environmental change in the World.

There are a number of winners who received the prize without actually doing anything remarkable to create a change or reaching a lasting peace. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei, International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore jr., even Anug San Suu Kyi are some of those who received the peace prize long before they did anything important to be awarded with this prize, in fact some of them had the blood of thousands of innocent people on their hands when they were awarded with peace prize.

It is not unfamiliar for the international community that The Norwegian Noble Committee used to use this tool in order to fasten the attempt of the world leaders to reach for instance peace or to create a better world for human beings to live in. In that regard awarding President Barack Obama with the Noble Peace Prize is not a joke but it is in many regards a very correct decision by the Committee in a very right time. By doing that the Committee puts another burden on the shoulders of the President in which the president is going to feel even more responsible to reach as many goals as possible he sets up to reach, everything from ending two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a better relationship with Muslim world, giving America a more fair and respectful role in its relationship with Europe, control of countries that are trying to make nuclear bomb and last but not least getting through a public health insurance in the US.

All of these have already made lots of pressure on him and created lots of domestic and foreign enemies against him. He is falsely and foolishly called by wicked people within the US: an Arab, a Muslim, a socialist, and a communist. He may be all of them, thus none of them as he emphasizes. He is Barack Obama, period! A man of his own. A man of his persona who shares many characteristics with Arabs, Muslims, socialists and communists but he is first and foremost Barack Obama, period!

The decision of the Norwegian Noble Committee was correct and exactly in time in order to put more pressure on president Obama to continue the way he started. And for a man in his caliber and in his position the road will be very rocky and of course dangerous. He is without any doubt a man who fits perfectly in the company of great laureates such as Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Shirin Ebadi, Dalai Lama, Martti Ahtissari, and Dag Hammarskjöld.

Nahid* is a forty years old woman living in Sweden since the eighties. She has a job, is married and has three children. Her parents and siblings are living in her home country. Her relationship with her husband is based on respect, she emphasizes. In her whole life here in Sweden but also in her home country she has felt a sense of missing and sadness that she has been trying to manage in different ways. She cannot find an explanation for the way she is feeling. She made herself busy by raising her children in Sweden. She learned the language and got into the labor market. Thus, her most meaningful tool that made her to go on living in forty years was her strong belief in God. The problem is that she is feeling that even this tool is loosing its power the older she is getting.

A friend of her at work who has a closer relationship with Nahid recommends her to see a psychiatrist who too speaks her language which makes it easier for Nahid to talk about her thoughts. She finally decides after quite a while hesitation to book an appointment with the doctor who is specialist in adult psychiatry and also a licensed psychotherapist. The doctor is too a woman and in the same age as Nahid is.

It´s her first meeting and Nahid is trying to explain for the doctor that she has been feeling down in her whole life and can not feel any joy for anything. The doctor asks her about how she could go on living after all these years having this feeling?

Nahid´s explanation is spontaneous and she says: I think my strong belief in God could save me.

The doctor interrupts her quickly and says with an overtone: Hum, Do you really think that God is looking at you from the above and taking care of you, lady? Forget it. All these talks about God are just bullshit. The religion is taking advantage of people like you. Wake up.

It has not gone more than ten minutes of the session. And Nahid has absolutely no confidence in the doctor. She is seeing the doctor for the first time, also with a huge skepticism about the psychiatric health care. The only common denominator between them is that both are women and both are coming from the same country.

Nahid starts shaking, getting sweaty in her body and in her palms. She has just difficulty to manage her rage. She stands up and says: You are an idiot. I do not want to talk to you any more. And she leaves the clinic.

The doctor who feels very assaulted gets so mad that she issues a medical letter and gives order to a nurse to call the police and report that Nahid is an unstable individual who threatened to commit suicide and left the doctor office in rage and without permission. She pointed out for the police that Nahid must be arrested and be taken to an inpatient psychiatric unit as soon as possible.

A half an hour later police is behind her door. In spite of Nahid´s denying suicide thoughts and suicide plans and her giving gathered impression they took her in front of her husband´s astonishment and her daughter´s terrifying eyes to an inpatient psychiatric center in a Stockholm suburb for an evaluation.

When she arrives with a police car and two police men, she just cries and cries. She is shaking and it is difficult to calm her down. Later she explains that she was thinking in her way to the unit that we will force her to take lots of pills and inject her with lots of heavy drugs and when she refuse to take more we will lie her in belt. She has no previous experience of psychiatric care and all of this is just a horrifying scenario and a trauma for her. A nightmare.

She explains for on duty psychologist about what was happened at the doctor´s office and why she just interrupted the session and did not want to talk to her any more. It was because of doctor questioning her belief system rudely and without any reservation, a belief system that has saved her for so many years. The psychologist interviews her for an hour and runs some questioners. He can not find any serious disorder with Nahid. Later comes a doctor and reviews the psychologist´s report. He goes in to Nahid´s room and talks to her for about half an hours. The final report from the inpatient psychiatric unit in Stockholm suburb shows no sign of psychiatric dysfunction and no sign of suicidality.

Nahid can finally go home at 9:30 pm that evening. Neither her husband nor her daughter could talk to her for more than four hours since she was taking in of the police and waiting for the final report from the psychiatry. There were some very tough hours for the whole family, nevertheless for Nahid.

Nahid tells that she never told her man and her children about her having sad thoughts and about that noting makes her happy. That she never told her parents and her siblings that she feels down and life is kind of heavy for her. Her explanation for not telling them is that she does not want to burden her family and that she feels ashamed and is worried to be marked as a mental case. However, this is going to be big news at home and it will be difficult for her to explain for the family about why she was picking up of the police and taking into a “madhouse” in Stockholm.

When the taxi is here to take her home I recommend here warily that she tries to find a good therapist in order to be able to talk about her thoughts and feeling.

She looks at me with a cutting laughter and says condescending: Are you kidding me? I am never going go to a psychologist again (she calls all psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists for psychologists). They are all mentally sick.

After having such a experience that Nahid had today I have no chance and no time either to convince her that it is not at all the way she is thinking. And she just had bad luck to talk to a bad or may be sick doctor.

While she is disappearing at the back sit of a taxi and her silhouette is loosing color into a late and weak lightshades of the August, her sad look stays still before my eyes and her bad experience of psychiatric health personals makes my mind busy.

What is worse than ending up at a sick individual with power on you? If so, much can go wrong, and one´s life course can get a drastic turn. This sick person with power can be your partner, your boss, your parent, sick powerful persons at key positions in a society, and even a sick government.

*Notify that name, age and places are changed in this essay.

There are many voices these days in Europe that say, as a non-Islamic party or group that supporting Mousavi and the Green movement which is actually a fraction of Islamic movement within the instruction of Islamic Republic of Iran is a enormous mistake kind a like they did in connection to the revolution against the Shah of Iran in 1979. All political parties from the left to the right supported Ayatollah Khomeini and backed him up to shake the regime of the Shah and finally break it dawn. You could see surprisingly that khomeini and his opportunistic way of running the country forced the country back in hundreds of years, continued an unjustified war which cost hundreds of thousands of lives of Iranian people and an economic backlash of five hundred billion dollars. Different parties are worried if they go behind the Green movement in Iran now there is a risk that they do the same mistake as they did before. My opinion is that they are wrong.

There is a distinguishing difference here. Khomeini and his group were a gang of Muslims with a very opportunistic and fundamentalistic seen of Islam. It was clear from the beginning for all other parties that what agenda Khomeini was running. They knew that Khomeini was trying to shift the power from a secular, military regime of the Shah with a strong political and financial relationship with the western world to a power of more traditional and old Islamic law. Mousavi and the Green movement in opposite have a moderate seen of Islam. Their way of interpreting Islamic law, in opposite to the hardliner takes the country out of isolation and take the life standard in Iran to a higher level compared with what it is today. The Green movement is seeking also an international recognition.

The second part of this argument is that a majority of Iranian people voted for Mousavi. And they want to see him as their president. If the parties want to support people of Iran they must respect the wish and the will of Iranian people and respect their presidential candidate. They must try to win more freedom within this structure.

As a non-Muslim and opposed to Islamic law I think that in this stage of straggle against Iranian regime we need to support the people of Iran that want to see Mousavi as their president. When it happens the next step will be to find another presidential candidate with a more democratic agenda that can take the country to the next level and so on.