07/05/2025
Open Letter to Richard Engel: Journalism Is Not Colonial Theater
Dear Mr. Engel,
You have long reported from some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous regions, and for that, many have admired your bravery. But bravery without introspection can become spectacle — and your recent reporting from Iran has crossed that line.
Your coverage didn’t just fail to inform. It reproduced the very structures of Orientalism that generations of journalists and academics have tried to dismantle.
Your tone, framing, and facial expressions as you observed Iranian mourners during Muharram resembled less the stance of a reporter and more the gaze of a colonial anthropologist encountering a newly discovered tribe. It was not reverent, curious, or neutral — it was patronizing, exoticizing, and disturbingly dehumanizing.
Religious Expression Is Not Regime Endorsement
Muharram ceremonies — held by Iranians across social classes and political ideologies — are centuries older than the Islamic Republic. They are acts of grief, solidarity, and spirituality. They do not signify loyalty to the regime any more than Christmas mass signifies allegiance to a pope or president.
But in your report, these deeply rooted cultural and religious practices were flattened into a single narrative: “See? They’re all still with the regime.” That is not analysis. That is propaganda — whether intentional or not.
Orientalism, Redux
Edward Said once warned that the “Orient” was not a place — it was a Western invention, crafted to assert superiority and justify control. Your segment fits neatly into that tradition. The subtext was clear: Iranians are irrational, mystical, inherently theocratic — they are the problem.
This portrayal is not only inaccurate, it is dangerous. It erases the very real suffering of Iranians who have died for secular freedom. It validates those in Washington, Brussels, and elsewhere who say: “There’s no alternative to the current regime. Let’s keep dealing with them.”
A People, Not a Puzzle
Iranians are not a monolith. They are not a mystery to decode. They are a people — proud, diverse, and deeply wounded by decades of both domestic tyranny and international misrepresentation. Your role, as a journalist, is not to explain them away to a Western audience as though they were an unsolvable riddle — your role is to give voice to their reality.
But in that moment, you didn’t. You reinforced the myths. You nodded along to the regime’s staged theater and projected it onto an entire civilization.
We Deserve Better
Iran deserves better journalism. Journalism that doesn’t reduce its people to props or proxies. Journalism that can tell the difference between faith and fascism. Journalism that treats Iranians not as “others,” but as fellow human beings with agency, complexity, and the right to define themselves.
Mr. Engel, we ask you — not with hostility, but with conviction — to reflect. To listen. To do better.
Because the stakes are too high for lazy narratives, and the Iranian people are too dignified to be miscast again.
Sincerely,
An Iranian who refuses to be exoticized
