I have written a blog entry last year (http://vanderhaven.net/blog/20080311.html) with the title "Freedom of Speech is Overrated" and I think that one still summarises my thoughts about freedom.
Freedom is a great good, of course, and one that is sadly unavailable to many people around the world. It is therefore a good thing to strife for.
However, freedom can have its excesses as well in the case where one person's freedom limits another person's freedom. When would such a thing happen? Foremost in the case where, in the name of freedom, people with a certain habit or culture are forced to adapt to another culture that is dominant in the country they are living in and which is assumed to be "superior" to the other culture.
I am indeed referring to integration of immigrants in their host country. There is a lot of talk about the lack of integration of immigrants and a lot of, mostly unfounded, fear for their religions or cultures, specifically when Islam is involved. The discussions often result in blunt statements being made with gross generalisations that do nothing to solve the perceived problem.
I believe that different cultures can easily live side-by-side, provided that some level of integration has taken place. That integration should at least involve learning the language and adapting to the local laws. What integration does not have to involve is laying off one's own religion, culture, values or habits, insofar as they do not conflict with the host country's ones. As much as the original inhabitants of a country differ from each other in those aspects, the newcomers may equally differ from them.
A step to take for people is to get genuinely interested in other people's cultures and values and not see them as a threat anymore. Once this step has been taken, real freedom can be created by allowing other people to live in the same freedom that is desired by ourselves.

All over the world, the news about Iran is hitting the headlines. The tragedies of protesters being killed every day are being spread foremost across the Internet, in the absence of foreign reporters in the country itself. Among Iranians abroad, there is a mixture of shock and hope: shock about the regime's brutal reaction to peaceful protests, hope for the possibility of a change in the country's regime.
It is thirty years ago now that the Islamic revolution made an end to a different despotic regime in Iran, that of the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The excesses of that regime became too much to carry for the people and they found a strong movement for change in Khomeini's Islamic organisation. However, once the dust of the revolution settled, this turned out to be an equally oppressive regime that turned the people into prisoners of extremely fundamentalist values.
Now, thirty years later, there is a whole generation that does not know what freedom was like, except for the sparse information that they can grab from the Internet, as far as it is not blocked by the government. What they do know is that they are sick of being oppressed, being forced into a way of living that is not theirs, being cheated at supposedly democratic elections.
So here is another uprising, similar to a couple of years ago, but again with more force. Would the people succeed this time in their struggle for freedom or is a real strong movement still missing, so that the uprising will eventually be smothered again? Time will tell. May the sacrifices needed for change not become too high a toll to pay for freedom.

Please sign the following petition to the UN and support the Iranian people in their fight for freedom!

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/protest-against-the-june-2009-coup-detat-in-iran.html