10 Lectures To Help You Understand Iran

Considering the recent uprising in Iran (and the promise of more to come), I thought I’d share some links to a bunch of lectures I was sent recently. Actually, I was sent 50 links, but I’ll share 10, as well as some couple excerpts.

Then, if you want to find out more, you can click through to see all 50.

And away we go…

1. Islam and Modern Science: “Many people feel that that in fact there is no such thing as the Islamic problem of science. They say science is science, whatever it happens to be, and Islam has always encouraged knowledge, al-ilm in Arabic, and therefore we should encourage science and what’s the problem? -there’s no problem. But the problem is there because ever since children began to learn Lavoiser’s Law that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, in many Islamic countries they came home that evening and stopped saying their prayers. There is no country in the Islamic World which has not been witness in one way or another, to the impact, in fact, of the study of Western Science upon the ideological system of its youth.”
2. Radical Islam and the Western Media: How Accurate is the Portrayal? (Audio only)
3. Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Iran (Video only)
4. A Perspective on Iran’s Post-Revolution Political Economy: “The bleakest spot on the Islamic Republic’s 21-year performance record, and a constant threat to its survival, has been the economy. Downgraded by the regime’s founding father as unworthy of revolutionary pursuit, and described in the 1979 Constitution as “not an end in itself, but a means intended only to contribute to the attainment of the ultimate goal,” namely, “a movement toward God,” the post-revolution Iranian economy has remained the regime’s Achilles’ heel. Striving in vain to find an “Islamic model” which could put an end to what the revolutionaries called “crass materialism” and “consumerism,” the national economy has been managed in an ad hoc, improvised, and inconsistent manner. An unstable mixture of capitalism, populism and pragmatism with some ornamental Islamic topping has served as its anchor. As a result, the economy has moved from one crisis to another in an almost uninterrupted course.”
5. Europe and the Middle East: Future Partners in a Free World? (Audio only)
6. China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-imperial World (Video only)
7. U.S. Policy Toward the Middle East
8. The Rise of “The Axis of Oil”—Big Trouble for the United States: “Linda Stuntz, who participated in a Council of Foreign Relations report last fall on “National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency,” stunned the Senators when she said that there was consensus among the report’s authors that talking about “energy independence” for the United States was chasing an impossible dream. Stuntz said that it was not clear whether the U.S. could achieve energy independence even with the most “draconian” government interventions. Dr. Flynt Leverett from the New America Foundation echoed Stuntz’s analysis: “…there is no economically plausible scenario for a strategically meaningful reduction in the dependence of the United States and its allies on imported hydrocarbons during the next quarter century.”
9. The Future of Islam in the West (Audio only)
10. Iran: War or Peace? (Video only)

Hope you enjoy these and please be sure to share these links.

(Photo: AP via Daylife)