The Middle East is often presented in the western media as a frightening dystopia. Alex Forsyth travels around the region and discovers a surprisingly different reality

Propaganda is a wonderful thing. It involves striking headlines, bright colours and memorable slogans. What’s more, it can be funny. Of course, today, propaganda seems a distant concept for those living in the west, and it’s certainly not what we expect from our ‘liberal’ media and democratic governments.

Unfortunately, however, western political and media culture is riddled with inherent prejudices, which contribute to a gulf of ignorance in the public consciousness. On a three month trip around the Middle East this summer, I stopped off in countries that are blacklisted by tourism boards, branded as rogue states by western governments, and written into the proverbial ‘axis of evil’ by the western media. Iran, which was my main port of call, dominated the international headlines for the weeks leading up to my departure. In going, I wanted to find out whether these places really are as hostile as is commonly made out, or just misunderstood.

Before I left, I glanced over various media sources, and found that the BBC website and various newspapers presented the Middle East as a dangerously hot climate to be stepping into. In the previous months, the Iranian military had taken 15 British marines hostage. Riots had broken out over Salman Rushdie’s OBE award, and the British embassy had been surrounded by angry mobs who shouted “Death to the British” and threw stones with such frequency that jokes were made about the embassy starting a rock garden.

Furthermore, there were reports of the vehemently righteous Moral Police cutting men’s hair in the streets and arresting women for bad hijab. The most frightening article was headlined ‘Behead those with long hair’, andchillingly spoke of execution threats for those whose hairstyles are deemed homosexual (essentially anything longer than a few inches). I got my hair cut first thing the next day.

No matter how seriously you take the media, no matter how finely tuned your propaganda antennae, incessant bombardment with fear-mongering tales has probably left you at least a little reluctant to pack your bags and go a-holidaying in the Middle East. Though I felt just about prepared with my short hair and bag full of plain t-shirts, my first steps on Iranian soil were nonetheless taken with trepidation.

This mentality lasted approximately seven seconds. The moment I stepped out onto the streets of uptown Tehran at night, I knew that the truth about Iran had been distorted. Older citizens in traditional dress mixed freely with young men sporting coiffures to rival Noel Fielding’s, teenagers garbed in glittering Franz Ferdinand t-shirts and skinny jeans, and glamorous women wearing oversized sunglasses and bright headscarves. That night, I met with Behruouz, a wealthy, Canadian-born Iranian who was repatriated when he was 15.

When I inquired about the Moral Police and their impact on Iranian civilians, he replied, “Oh them? Dude, they come out for a few weeks in the summer just to remind people they exist. Yeah they piss us off and sometimes some really bad shit can happen but usually you just give them ten bucks and they leave you alone.” He went on to explain how mostly, for young, affluent, liberal Iranians like himself, life is a cycle of “going to house parties, smoking up, getting wasted and choppin’ girls” (which to my relief was slang for picking them up, not hacking them to pieces). But how, I wondered, did that work under such a stringent Sharia law?

The only way to find out was to try it myself. As it turned out, to my surprise, it is still possible to break the rules in a country that is ruled by an extreme Islamic theocracy. At night, Behruouz and his friends drive shiny vehicles to meet a dealer, who sells both drugs and drink in whatever quantities are required, and then, after ‘choppin’’ a sufficient number of women, head back to a large house for all-night parties, Iranian style.

After this turning point in my perception of the country, the more time I spent in Iran, the more it became apparent that the frightening situation presented in the media back home was a fabrication. The people, for one, are incredibly warm. The word ‘hospitality’ does not even begin to describe the friendliness that Iranians will bestow upon you. Not an hour would pass without someone, somewhere, offering something for free. Smiling old men proffered cigarettes stuffed with ‘herbs’; laughing vendors offered ice creams, and people I’d only just met welcomed me into their homes. While it is true that a system of T’arof (a code of hospitality) applies in Iran, the people, along with practically all those I came across in the Middle East, were unquestioningly generous and gracious.

So, why should this have surprised me? The answer, of course, is the portrayal of the Middle East in the media. Iran is presented as a dystopia where crazed police roam the streets, machete in hand, itching to deal out Moral Thought Justice, while rioters explode anything they can get their dissenting hands on. And yet here were children chasing each other round on roller-skates and BMXs, whilst plump mothers invited me to join enormous family picnics that continued until sunset. Of course, one should not become carried away with idyllic notions of Iranian life and forget the country’s problems. Something is definitely rotten in the state of Iran. Singing and dancing are illegal, the right to free speech is essentially void and women are subjected to what I would consider inhumane treatment (although that is another discussion). What is crucial to understand, however, is that the danger is not from the Iranian people to us, but from the government to its own people. Countless Iranians I spoke to expressed disgust at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his band of Imams, rather than at the British people. More importantly they also distinguished us from our government. Over a Nargile in Esfahan, I spoke to Khalid Houssein, who commented: “I love the English, but your government will rule the world in the end and you won’t have to fire a bullet.” This chimed with an earlier report I had heard about a media fostered conspiracy theory that the British, ‘the little Satan’, were behind everything in Iran (even the attacks on the embassy.)

Media propaganda works both ways. The US branded Iran’s revolutionary guards as terrorists so Iran branded the CIA as terrorists. Amnon Levy, an Israeli, told me how “the Israeli news tells us how groups from Gaza want to kill us on holiday.” The Palestinians have created a Micky Mouse lookalike, ‘Farfur’, who gets beaten to death by Israeli settlers on live television. Then there is the Turkish pro-US television news which flashes up numbers of killed terrorists to a soundtrack of gaudy, Wagnerian synth.

There is a somewhat questionable saying that every country gets the government it deserves. Perhaps it gets the media it deserves, too. We may ask ourselves why we are being told that the Middle East is full of people who threaten our freedom and jeopardise democracy. Or why there is more negative media about Iran than China, whose government executes far more of its own people and has Tibet to answer for. What is clear to me is that the public perception of Iran panders to leaders’ political agendas, and that the media greases the wheels of government propaganda. What better way to break down communication between countries and cultures than to present them as hostile, radical and unapproachable?

If the time finally rolls around for the west to invade Iran, the public will probably perceive the country as an abstract land of Islamic violence, stubborn dictators and intolerant people. Even if you believe that you are worldly enough to spot a lie when you see one, the fact remains that all the while your perceptions are vicarious: you are already submitting yourself to somebody else’s version of the truth. So do it. Go travelling. Find out for yourself.

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