From Nikolai: ""As the Iranians say, "Not everything round is a
walnut"–and not every form of "heroic flexibility" is an olive
branch. Iran always operates on at least two tracks; to do otherwise would be
simplistic. Its Shiite religion permits, in some circumstances, the embroidering
of the truth for the protection of the faith, a divinely sanctioned
dissimulation. This is a land where straight talk and virtue are not widely
seen to overlap."
I will give this guy my entire library worth of Islamic
history books and literature if he's read even a paragraph of Ali's Nahj
al-Balagha.
And why do these ignorant reporters always have to use
anecdotes and silly sayings about walnuts instead of classical lines from
Arabic or Persian literature?"
