My name is Greg and I am a Canadian seminarian studying at Imam Khomeini (RA) Specialized University, a branch of al-Mustafa International University, in the Holy City of Qom, Iran. This week I met a group of three tourists from Switzerland near the Holy Shrine of Lady Fatimah al-Ma’soumah. One of the Swiss tourists was a woman who was wearing a hijab for the first time in her life.
The tourists were non-Muslims but praised Islam as being “a more complete religion than Christianity,” upon enquiring why I have converted to Islam and come to Iran. Although they had some misunderstandings about Islam, I understood their perspective as the “soft war” against the Islamic Republic is very strong. I have witnessed this myself, coming from a Western country. My family, who are mostly Roman Catholic Christians, have many of the same misconceptions regarding Iran and Islam.
They remarked that they had heard a lot of negative propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran and this propelled them to visit Iran to see for themselves. They had been in Iran for 15 days, and spent the last day of their journey to see the city of Qom, which is the centre of Shi’ite Islamic scholarship in Iran, and is filled with mosques, turbaned clerics and women covered in head-to-toe chadors. It is unlike many other cities in Iran and the tourists found this fascinating. It was unfortunate that they were leaving the next day, as I wanted to know more about their trip and visits to other cities and their encounters with the wonderful Iranian people, their culture and foods!
They were surprised that Iran is nothing like the Western media propagates and they had a wonderful time and praised the Iranian peoples’ kindness, courtesy, and hospitality. They were happy that they did not let the strong negative propaganda prevent them from making the decision to visit Iran which they described as "a wonderful and peaceful country."
Despite most Iranians not knowing English, and they not knowing much Persian, they were able to communicate to others by using a few words, body language, pointing and the few words of Persian they picked up along the way.
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