As I listened to Western political analysts babbling about Iran on the airwaves this past week, I thought about Um Kulthoum and the West’s tendency to filter non-Western modes of expression, whether musical or political, through its own frameworks, often missing the deeper emotional logic at play.

Um Kulthoum’s maqamat (a system of melodic modes, like scales in Western music with more complex structures and rules) and Iran’s strategic calculus both emerge from traditions with their own internal coherence, but they are often flattened into caricatures when viewed through Western paradigms.

Her music was not just entertainment; it was a vessel of cultural memory, political resistance, and poetic sophistication. Songs like Al Atlal were steeped in classical Arabic poetry and postcolonial longing, yet Western media often framed her as a diva rather than a cultural force who shaped Arab identity during decolonization.

Iran’s military responses — like its recent missile strike on a U.S. base in Qatar — are often framed in Western media as escalatory or irrational. But from Iran’s perspective, these are calibrated signals: “We will respond, but we don’t want total war.” Um Kulthoum expressed her music the way a ballistic missile scientist uses equations, calculating every note’s emotional impact. But all the West heard from her was “primal wailing,” or “emotive spectacle,” failing to understand “tarab,” the deeply immersive, almost spiritual state of musical ecstasy she evoked in her audience.

The West’s interpretive frameworks are tools of soft power, a structure of erasure, granting legitimacy to what it understands and marginalizing what it does not. In doing so, it not only misreads the Other, but it also misses opportunities for deeper engagement.

Iran’s strikes avoid mass casualties, signaling restraint. Retaliation follows provocation, not the other way around. Shaped by memories of the Iran-Iraq War and decades of sanctions, their military doctrine revolves around survival.

In contrast, Israel’s military doctrine is built around preemption, deterrence, and rapid escalation control. The Dahiya Doctrine involves disproportionate force and destruction of civilian infrastructure in areas used by non-state actors like Hezbollah or Hamas; their Samson Option involves destruction through undeclared nuclear power.

When Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns that U.S. military intervention would cause “irreparable damage,” he’s not just issuing a threat — he’s invoking a theological worldview where martyrdom, resistance, and divine justice are deeply intertwined.

Resistance against the U.S., Israel, and domestic dissent is a sacred struggle in post-revolutionary Iran, reinforcing the idea that martyrdom could be a possible outcome. Divine justice (‘Adl in Sunni theology, ‘Adalah in Shia theology) is a fundamental attribute of Allah, who judges all humans with perfect fairness. For Khamenei, survival is not simply about statecraft; it’s about spiritual legitimacy. Israeli threats to eliminate him are sacrilegious and were condemned by Iran’s leaders of minority religious groups: Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Mandaean.

In contrast Zionist theological worldview is tied to a specific political entity. Divine justice (Tzedek or Mishpat) in Judaism is closely tied to covenantal theology — God’s justice is expressed through His covenant with the Jewish people, rewarding obedience and punishing disobedience. Historical suffering (e.g., exile, pogroms, Holocaust) is sometimes interpreted as divine punishment, while the establishment of Israel (1948) is seen as a restoration of justice. No doubt, members of the Jewish Gush Emunim movement look on the Iranian missiles that fell on Tel Aviv and Haifa as their punishment for failing to achieve their divine obligation of seizing full control over the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

The Islamic concept of ṣabr (صَبْر) — translated as patience, steadfastness, or endurance — has deep roots in Iran’s wartime rhetoric and behavior. To Iran’s leaders, sabr is both a religious virtue and a strategic posture. It’s endurance under sanctions, assassinations, and military strikes, a form of divine resilience, not passive waiting. It’s “calculated restraint,” rooted in Shi’a theology and the legacy of Karbala, where moral victory is achieved through suffering and perseverance.

By contrast, Israel’s doctrine emphasizes preemption, speed, and overwhelming force. Its narrative is built around “never again,” a post-Holocaust ethos used to justify rapid, often disproportionate (i.e., catastrophic) responses to perceived threats. Where Iran speaks of dignity through endurance, Israel speaks of survival through dominance.

When Umm Kulthoum sang “للصبر حدود” (“Patience Has Its Limits”), she was voicing a powerful emotional boundary — a declaration that even the deepest love cannot justify endless suffering. And now, especially after high-profile assassinations and attacks on Iranian interests, Tehran has begun to shift. The traditionally-restrained posture is giving way to more direct confrontation — missile strikes, public threats, and symbolic gestures like Khamenei’s sermon with a rifle beside him. Umm Kulthoum’s line was about emotional dignity, Iran’s evolving stance echoes a similar threshold — where endurance is no longer seen as virtuous, but complicit. The cultural resonance is striking: both speak to a moment when patience becomes a form of self-erasure, and action — however costly — becomes a reclamation of agency.

Western governments and media have interpreted Iran’s restraint as strategic hesitation or lack of capability, internal weakness due to economic strain or political dissent, fear of escalation or deterrence by superior Israeli or U.S. firepower. But this misses the point. This misreading leads to policy missteps. For example, Western leaders often urge Iran to “de-escalate” after Israeli strikes, ignoring Iran’s legal right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. This double standard reinforces Iran’s narrative of Western hypocrisy and fuels its resolve to act on its own terms.

Just as Um Kulthoum’s music was stripped of its political and cultural context, Iran’s policies as viewed by Western media are also divorced from the regional dynamics and the internal pressures that shape them.

For example, Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in occupied Palestine, various Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and others in Syria and Bahrain represent a broader “Axis of Resistance” against Western influence and Israeli occupation. These non-state actors are legitimate resistance movements, not “terrorists,” as the West views them.

Even under the Shah (i.e., predating the Islamic Revolution), Iran supported groups abroad to counter regional rivals. By empowering allies beyond its borders, Iran extends its influence and creates buffers against adversaries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Iran’s support for non-state actors is a cornerstone of its regional strategy, shaped by a mix of ideology, security concerns, and geopolitical ambition.

The western narrative about Iran’s support of non-state actors is framed as destabilizing, while its security concerns — surrounded by U.S. bases and hostile neighbors, especially one with nuclear arms — are rarely given equal analytical weight.

The United States has also used non-state actors as tools of asymmetric power projection — in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Libya, to name a few. Israel, too, has a long history of conducting deniable operations, particularly in intelligence gathering and sabotage, often through non-state actors, local collaborators, or covert units. While it doesn’t maintain a formal proxy network like Iran’s, it has leveraged tactical relationships and clandestine assets to extend its reach — especially in countries like Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

But it’s fair to say the balance of moral authority has shifted in Iran’s favor. Even though Iran is regularly portrayed by Western media as a rogue actor, and the U.S.’s interventions as promoting stability or democracy, countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America view Iran not as a rogue actor, but as a symbol of defiance against Western domination. Nations that endured Western imperialism empathize with Iran’s narrative of resisting U.S. and Israeli pressure. As countries seeking to assert their independence in a multipolar world, they admire Iran’s refusal to bow to sanctions or military threats or interference with its sovereignty.

Iran’s formal accession to BRICS in 2024 was a major diplomatic win, and despite Israeli influence among some nations, BRICS has not condemned Iran’s proxy strategy outright. Instead, they’ve emphasized de-escalation, sovereignty, and multipolar diplomacy, a tacit nod to Iran’s legitimacy in resisting what is clearly Western overreach. In short, the war is not just a military contest; it’s a battle of narratives, and Iran’s proxies are helping it win hearts and minds in places Washington and Tel Aviv often overlook.

In the Middle East, we are often systematically misheard: Liberation is mistranslated as extremism; cultural endurance is downgraded to nostalgia, and strategy is dismissed as fanaticism.

When we listen to Iran’s strategic logic, its fear of encirclement, its memory of the 1953 coup, its doctrine of deterrence, we begin to see that what’s often labeled “provocation” is, in fact, a form of survival. To listen differently means to refuse to filter what you see and hear in the Middle East through Western grammars of reason or strategy.

When Um Kulthoum sings for 40 minutes on a single verse, or when Iran invokes Shi’i cosmology in its political rhetoric, or when a Palestinian poet grieves in metaphor, the West mustn’t look at these as puzzles to be decoded into something familiar. Rather, they are demands to sit with dissonance and foreignness.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She writes on Medium.

Source: Rima Najjar

Image: Umm Kulthoum, the legendary Egyptian singer known as “The Voice of Egypt,” was not only famous for her powerful vocals and emotional delivery but also for her distinctive stage presence, particularly her use of a white handkerchief. This small accessory became an iconic part of her performances, carrying both practical and symbolic significance.

Umm Kulthum sings Al Atlal at the Olympia Theater in Paris in November 1967