Why Iran's Turmoil Makes Me Want to Take to the Rooftops and Shout 'Allah-o-Akbar'!

By Layli Shirani, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2009.

I clicked "play" on a cell-phone video posted from Iran. It was nighttime there, and the images were grainy and unsteady to say the least. But the sound was perfect, and I experienced an electric memory jolt that transported me to a rooftop in Ahvaz, Iran, in 1979, when I marched with the other neighborhood kids and shouted at the top of my lungs, "Allah-o-Akbar! Allah-o-Akbar! Allah-o-Akbar!"

The significance of Allah-o-Akbar is deep, and it is layered. Who can deny the piercing beauty of the Azaan (the Call to Prayer), which begins with Allah-o-Akbar and is heard from the minarets of mosques across the Muslim world at dawn, dusk and in between? For me, the Azaan is both lullaby and wake-up call. It reminds me where I am and causes me to wonder if my life would not be more serene if I actually heeded the call to prayer.

I worked hard to reach an appreciation for Islam. To get here I had to do what any thoughtful citizen of the world must do when combating ignorant antipathy: separate the religion from the Republic; snatch it back from Al Qaeda; pull it from thetragic rubble of 9/11; de-hyphenate it from "--fascism" and "-extremism;" and unhitch it from "terrorism." But I have a feeling that the Islam I reflect here will discomfit the western liberal who has -- despite best intentions -- unconsciously feasted on a diet of facile racism.

Recently, I've found myself murmuring those words. My mind plays tricks on me as I eye the rooftops on Dolores Street longingly, the words bubbling up in me no longer content to be murmured. I was 12 when I first clambered up to the roof at night and chanted Allah-o-Akbar. God is great. I didn't fully comprehend what I was saying. Those words, planted in me so long ago, were awakened by the sound coming from that dark YouTube video, and I cannot understand why I am not in Iran -- in solidarity with my people -- a heathen filling the sky with my Allah-o-Akbar.

Allah-o-Akbar is, simultaneously, an invocation of the Revolution, and a message of submission to God's will. I shut my eyes, say the words, and see the slow-moving crowd; fists raised high, chanting Allah-o-Akbar. Here -- uttered in unison -- it is a message of defiance delivered from the multitudes to authorities, a notice of appeal to the beyond. After nightfall, however, it is an individual's supplication, as people ascend to their rooftops and raise their voices heavenward. The point-counterpoint nature of this call and response harmony, the diurnal and nocturnal, reflects the two-fold beauty of Allah-o-Akbar. "Allah-o-Akbar." Those were the only words uttered by Ayatollah Khomeini when he was told that the Shah had finally left Iran. The intersection, par excellence, of the spiritual and the political.

I shut my eyes and mouth the words; the year is 2004 and I am sitting with my father in the shade of a plane tree outside an ancient mosque in Natanz, enjoying a simple lunch of fresh-baked bread, feta cheese, and grapes. Soon we will enter the mosque. Once inside, we will separate. As I roam around, I will be waiting for that moment that inevitably arrives: a moment when I am completely still and at one with the silence, the centuries, the majesty, the contrast of this coolness with the waiting heat -- and the countless millions of faithful who have knelt in worshipful submission in this place. Allah-o-Akbar. I have known no greater peace than the one I accidentally found in the ancient mosques of Iran.

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Layli Shirani is a criminal defense attorney living in San Francisco.

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