Of lies, jokes, and the Shia clergy
Lying is always a hot topic where Iran in is concerned. Iranians have long resented the Victorian statesman Lord Curzon for (among other things) depicting Iranians as inherently dishonest in his 1892 book, Persia and the Persian Question. The impostures demanded by life in Iran’s post-1979 Islamic Republic now form a discrete topic in themselves, one addressed by British-Iranian journalist Ramita Navai in her 2014 book, City of Lies. Many Iranians are happy to pillory their politicians as liars, as they did when Foreign Minister Javad Zarif claimed last year that Iran doesn’t imprison people for their opinions. Even so, when foreign politicians do it, they may hear echoes of Curzon. When US Republican senator Lindsey Graham made an ambiguous comment about “the Iranians” being liars in the context of nuclear negotiations last May, some Iranian-Americans assumed he was talking about them.
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Middle Eastern temperatures leave elite British warships defenseless
The repeated power outages - which leave the ships unable to attack or move - was reported on Tuesday by Scotland's Daily Record.
Manafacturer Rolls Royce have blamed the Persian Gulf's high temperatures for the problem, which is expected to cost tens of millions of pounds to fix.
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What we can learn from Muhammad Ali this Ramadan
As I try to think of how to commemorate and honor this extraordinary man and his extraordinary life, I am at a loss. I grew up learning about Ali from my father – his memories of watching every Ali match, the pride the boxer elicited from the Muslim world, with every victory, with every unapologetic, principled stance, with every stinging, lyrical affront.
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