From Delhi to Dublin: The J-word

Hi my freind (Cieran Craven) I'm happy from familarity with you. I enjoyed from be with you and I learned very thing from you and use from your knowledge (you'r information).

I hope that I have were a good host for you. If I couldn't were a good host excuse me.

I'm very unhappy that you want leave my. I wish that you could stay with me more to I speack with you by English to learn English language (you were my teacher. you teach to my English language).

I hope you enjoy from your travel in IRAN and a long it in other places. You be succeed have a good time.

Your Iranian freind: Hossein doodman.

So goes the entry in my journal from a 23 year old, dark skinned Iranian student; a man who prays to Allah 5 times a day. A man who's Western perception of him is that he would like nothing more than to strap semtex to his chest and destroy our way of life. Our way of life where people lock the doors of their car during their 2hr commute to work; lock their houses when they're inside; and don't know their neighbours because they're too busy watching TV.

For 3 days I stayed with Mr Doodman and his fellow students in their dormitory in the city of Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf. For 3 days I was not allowed to reach into my wallet. I slept with them, ate with them at the university, and got tours of the city and hospital (they were all nursing students). They payed for my taxi fares around town and even fully refused to allow me to pay for my bus ticket when I came to leave. I met and spoke with 20-30 of them, and each one of them during the course of our conversations inquired about the reasons why the west thinks they are terrorists. The longer I am here, the harder it gets for me to even come up with an answer that even resembles sense.

There is nothing.

How these people have been labeled as terrorists is completely beyond me. The hospitality and warmth of reception that is shown to every foreign person that enters Iran in unrivalled in the West. It makes me ashamed to think that the Irish are considered to be a friendly race; we have nothing on the Iranians or Pakistanis that I have met so far on this trip. I almost feel disappointed that I am not Iranian and have not shown the same hospitability towards others in my country.

If this were the side of Islam that Jihad was trying to promote, I would be one of the first to pick up a tea-towel and belt.

But fear not of the cruel brainwashing that I must be experiencing here at the centre of the axis of evil, I'm still an atheist.