Daanish Mustafa

Professor in Critical Geography

King’s College, London

Email: daanibahi@yahoo.com

Note: First published in The Friday Times

Notwithstanding the heart-rending scenes of 164 primary school girls murdered in the joint US/Israeli strikes on Iran, many in the liberal West and East are hoping for a regime change to liberate the Iranian women. We have been here before with the women’s liberation in Afghanistan. And we’ve known the story of women’s liberation at the hands of the West for more than 200 years of European colonialism. And yet, many among the elites of the Global South buy the story. The best analogy that I can think of, to think through this situation, is of a circus and a seminary. The collective West as a circus and Iran as a seminary. The circus represents revelry, curio and even freedom to most adolescent imaginations of days past. A seminary on the other hand promises, faith, discipline and ultimately meaning. 

The West is a circus, complete with strong men (Pentagon/NATO), clowns (Trump/Hegseth), dwarfs (European Union/Keir Starmer), captive lions, elephants (people of the Global North and South), apes and monkeys (leadership of the Global South) kept in Bretton wood cages. There are lion tamers and mahouts (IMF and the World Bank). There is a house of horror (Israel), joy rides (shopping malls, technology and consumerism), and soothsayers (Western media)—not to mention magic shows (green development and climate finance). Heck, you can even meet Merlin to look into the crystal ball (Western academia). It’s a complete package, for a cheering public, the world over. 

The desire to run away with the circus has been a longing for freedom, adventure and discovery. But has any real circus ever delivered that? Yes, it has provided a home to the social ‘misfit’ and the ‘weird’ [sic] at different times. But most of the times, it has delivered captivity to the human and the non-human, to perform for a pittance to a paying audience. Every performer must peddle happiness to fill up the coffers of the circus managers (global finance), whilst being worked to the bone. Just ask the residents of the West how it is going? How much of their lives are reduced to a performance, hiding back breaking labour, and social and spiritual loneliness.

A seminary on the other hand promises and then delivers on discipline. Sometimes, it can offer faith and, at its best, a journey towards finding some meaning. It is through meaning that people find the sum of their human existence—dignity. With meaning, a pauper can have dignity, and without it, a king can have none. 

A seminary can be, and often is, authoritarian. From its windows, the circus seems enticing and glamorous. Many leave the seminary to join the circus and never look back. As much of the Southern diaspora has in the West. One cannot begrudge anyone that choice. But is this a Manichean choice for humanity? The circus insists it is the only show in town.

Humans desire freedom, joy, and levity, but not at the expense of meaning and dignity. Humans may not be unique in their ability to think, as we now know, but as Aristotle said, they are unique in their ability to laugh. To impose freedom and laughter through violence is a fool’s errand. Just as inculcating faith and meaning through fiat is meaningless.  

The US/Israeli attack on Iran is a crime for all of the above reasons. Iran may be a flawed republic—which one is not? It has one of the highest proportions of women Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in the world (70%, where the US has 36%). More Iranian women are literate (87%) than American women (80%). There are many aspects of gender equality in Iran that need improvement, not the least in terms of legal rights. But please leave the Iranian women and men alone. The Iranian regime is Iran’s problem and Iranian people are best placed to solve it, not the West. 

The West’s war of annihilation against the Iranian state is going to fail. It is based upon the flawed premise of Western cultural and civilizational superiority. Perhaps this war will catalyse the transition of the West to exactly what has happened to its analogue. The circus was central to human social and recreational calendar for millennia. Today, it is at the margins of human experience. And one foresees, and hopes, that that is exactly where the West will be at the end of it all.