Hey everyone!
I hope you all had a great summer! Unfortunately, it is over which means we have to come back to reality, so let’s dive right in. Today, I wanted to talk about something not many people typically like to talk about, whether they find it is because it’s a topic that’s too personal or it simply makes them a little uncomfortable: Religion. To give you some background on why I chose this topic, I’d have to avert your attention to my ASTU class, a course within my CAP Global Citizens stream at the University of British Columbia. You see, we started reading this comic book — I mean graphic narrative, as my professor, Dr. Luger informed us is the prefered term for the genre — Persepolis written by Marjane Satrapi. The book depicts what it was like for a child to grow up in Iran during a time of war and revolution. I won’t lie to you, I definitely had some preconceived notions before reading this book, as I think many of us did. I really didn’t know that much about the Iran, or the revolution, or especially their religion and the history behind it.
Now I don’t want to come off as offensive, and this is just my ignorance speaking, but I’ve always believed Iran to be a very religious culture. The two kind of just went hand in hand for me. So, seeing how Marji grew up in a “very modern and avant-garde” (6) family was a wake up call for me. I was really curious as to how religion, in Iranian culture, had taken on so much more power as we approached the twenty-first century. The narrative later explains how the fundamentalists had basically overthrown the Shah and imposed their beliefs amongst the public — which is where the hijab started to come into play. It was interesting to me how Satrapi portrayed religion in two very different ways. One being very safe and personal, as seen by Satrapi’s interpretation of Marji’s relationship with God. The other being rather dangerous by having it tied to the state and being enforced by the law, which I believe is how her parents saw it. I really appreciated the fact that Satrapi addressed the fact that not everyone in Iran had the same views. She was able to raise awareness for her culture by writing this memoir, which I believe helped reshape how many people thought of Iran.
I grew up in a very atheist household. However, I think I better identify as an agnostic. Nevertheless, religion never played a significant role in my life. I had a girl in my fourth grade class who was quite verbal about her beliefs. She often talked about God, and how she believed certain people were going to heaven and others to hell. It never really made sense to me, especially because at the time, I didn’t really believe in God. I was raised not to. One day in class I had said something to seriously aggravate her and she told me to “Go to hell,”. The comment didn’t really bother me, and to try to lighten the situation, I tried to make a joke by saying “Well, I guess I’ll see you there!”. Needless to say she broke down in tears. After being coerced into apologizing, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the delinquents desk, you know the one, it’s isolated in a corner and facing the wall. After class, I had to have a meeting with my mother and the teacher about how what I said wasn’t acceptable. Although I didn’t fully understand what had happened that day, it was that moment that I became more aware of how religion affected people differently.
After reflecting on the role of religion among the lives of the characters in Persepolis and my own life, it was interesting to see the similarities between Western culture now and Irani culture before the revolution. It changed the preconceived notions I had previously had, making Iranian culture more relatable. Writing this post helped me explore the history behind Islam, as well as how and why it’s represented the way it is today.