A man bites a dog!

By: Muhammad Zakki Haidery

'News' is plural of 'new', so according to some intellectuals news is nothing but something new! All they want to state is that "when a dog bites a man, its not a news, but when a man bites a dog, it realy is a news." Keeping this meaning of news in mind our media, in particular, and western media in general has developed into themselves a neck of creating news by themselves in their own words, they seemed to be in search of finding a new news some thing like a news of a man biting a dog, and when they fail to find one -which occures in most of the cases- they try to make a man bite a dog!

This fact proves to be bright like a star when one comes across an article published in The Guardian. It, although, may not be a document of surprise for Pakistani people, since they are used to this nature of media, but what was more striking about this news of Guardin was its exact resemblance to what our media writes about the only Islamic government in the world i.e Islamic government of Iran.

The Guardian in one of its articles dated 31/07/2011 asserted that the Sunni Muslims in Iran were not allowed to offer their Eid Prayers in Tehran. Before digging deep into the question wether this news is based on reality or not, one should first have glance at religious freedom of Sunnis in Iran.

Islamic republic of Iran is predominantely a Shia country where almost 98% population belongs to the Shia school of Islam but segements of Sunni Muslims are found in southren part of the contry bordering Pakistan; province of Kurdistan, west Azerbaijan; Golistan and northern & southern parts of Khorasan. Starting with Sistan and Balochistan province, one can find Sunni mosques and even _madarisas_ in this area, an strange fact about this southren part is that the inhabitants are fanatic Sunnis called Deobandi in contrast to conventional Sunnis like Brelvis, who some how resemble to Shia Islam. *Sunnis not only have mosques in this province but have religious schools called _madarisas_ as well, this can be proved from the fact that Sunni Scholars from Pakistan have not only payed visits to these _mardarisas_ but have frequently shared religious information as well.*

In addition to this, moving on to the northern part the cities like of Gorgan, pockets of Sunni muslims are found *and what is special about this city is that it posseses a campus of Iran's largest Islamic University namely Al-Mustafa International University, this campus of Al-Mustafa Univeristy is especially for Sunni Muslim*, *where most of the students belong to Sunni school of thought.* This campus was brought into existance in order to facilitate the Sunni students with pyschological comfort in acquiring knowlege because other campuses of this University like Qom, Mashhad etc have majority of Shia students so the Sunni students would not be at ease in those campuses.

As far as Western Kurdish province named Kurdistan is concerned it is called the largest Sunni-populated segment of Iran, and like all other Sunni areas this area too enjoys absolute religious, social and political freedom. As Gorgan had a especialty in having a Sunni campus, this area too is unique in terms of the fact that the most of the street names are attribute to Sunni religious figures, *and it takes one to suprises when he passes by a street named after Hazrat Umar (r.a) the second caliph of Sunni school of Islam*
Moreover *Sunni Muslims are free to enrole their electorate, there is no limit for Sunni candidates in contrast to minorities who have limited reserved seats in Irani parliament.* This,too, is a testimony to the fact that Sunnis of Iran area enjoy political and religious freedom.

In a nutshell a few hours browsing on internet would reveal that the Sunni Muslims of Iran enjoy freedom in all spheres of there life, if it was not so they would have been up in arms, but fortunately for Iran and unfortunately for Pakistani and Western media the picture is totaly diffrent, we see no movment against Irani government on part of the Sunni Muslims.
It would be illogical to accept that a country which allows Sunnis to bulid mosques, madarisas; establishes a seperate campus of the country's largest university, would deprive them of Eid prayers in its capital. One with least of wit and wisdom would reject such allegation on the grounds that they do not coform to reality. The fact of the matter is that Tehran, like most of the cities of Iran, is packed with Shia population and there are hardly any Sunni muslims, so there are no Sunni mosques. But newspapers like Guardian seemed to be less satisfied with news like dog bitting a man so they want to decorate there paper with news of man bitting a dog!


_mzakki@yahoo.com_