The old and the new intersect

The image of Iran in the West isn't the most flattering one. The antics of Iran's President don't help. However, things might not be as much as we think in this Middle Eastern country as a piece in the LA Times reveals. The old is adopting the new to foster and further the message. Read on...

"This has always been a city with one foot in the present and two in the medieval past. A walk down its dusty main boulevard threads through epochs. Fast food chelo kebab stands and souvenir shops, with wallet-size portraits of the 7th century martyr Imam Hussein, crowd outside the colossal gold and blue domes of the Hazrat Masumeh shrine.

"Mullahs in turbans pick their way defiantly through tangled ribbons of cars. Here, in a city that is the revered seat of Iran's powerful Shiite Muslim clergy and home to 52 Islamic seminaries, women in black chadors emerge from late-model Mercedes-Benzes with tinted windows.

Nowhere is this jarring juxtaposition of old and new more apparent than at the ut far from being some Middle Eastern backwater, it seems from this LA Times article that Aalulbayt Global Information Center, the place where Qom's ancient religious teachings and the Information Age intersect.

Here, stocking-footed men sit behind rows of computer screens in large rooms padded with deep Oriental carpets, typing out Web pages of Koranic analysis and religious edicts translated into 30 languages."

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