A personal review on The Circular Room of April 15th 2012:
The reason we choose to debate about “nationalism in Iran“ is due to a recent happening, which ensured a lot of protest campaigns especially in the online community.
A well known Iranian news agency reported, that the city council of Isfahan had forbidden Afghan residents to enter a park. Immediately dozens of solidarity campaigns developed in the online community. But whether there was really such a prohibition or not is uncertain, explains a participant who had done some research on that story. It could as well be a journalistic canard, (false report), but still the discrimination of Afghan people is part of daily life in Iran.
Enough reason to deal with the Iranian national consciousness. Our discussion leader asked us about the term “Nationalism”. Is it equivalent to pride or can it be understood as a world view, is it an ideology, a narrative, an imagination? Is nationalism synonym to love for the homeland? How is nationalism related to racism and patriotism? Is Iranian nationalism a positive phenomenon or could it become a social problem. With all that questions in mind, our discussion dealt with positive and negative examples of nationalism.
(Shorted abstract of the German text. Translation: Yalda Zarbakhch)