It is now 11:30 in the morning in Shiraz, Iran. I have had little sleep, but feel compelled to write. Last night, I listened to shouts of Allahu Akbar from the rooftops across Iran. I have updated my status on various social networks, shouting Allahu Akbar on Twitter and marked my location as being in Shiraz, Iran.

A friend from Ghana asked to make sure that I know what Allahu Akbar means. It means God is Great. He is used to hearing his fellow Muslim countrymen proclaim this, but not some Western Christian. Yes, we may have slightly different understandings of who the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is, but we should all be proclaiming God’s greatness and praying that He will bring wisdom to the leaders of Iran and peace to her people.

Allahu Akbar means not only God is Great. It is also a cry of His people when they are ruled by a despot. It was a cry of the people of Iran in 1979 when they overthrew the Shah and it is the cry of the people of Iran now.

I listen to the words of a young woman on the rooftops asking, ‘Where is this place?...Where is this place where people are simply calling God?...I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases, It shakes me. I wonder if God is shaken. Where is this place where so many innocent people are entrapped? ... This place is Iran...The homeland of you and me... This place is Iran”

I read reports from the Western Press. There are some stationed in Iran who have not seen the violence first hand or who have not traveled beyond confines of Northern Tehran. They cannot verify the size of protests in other cities or the rural areas, so the question whether what is written online is really true and do not report it. This is journalistic solipsism.

What is happening in Iran is so much bigger than any of us. It is happening faster than any of us can verify, especially with the restrictions on the foreign press. We cannot verify all that is happening, nor can we verify that God exists. If we take our solipsism to the logical extreme, all we can verify is that we are having perceptions of the chair we are sitting in, and not even of the existence of a chair external to our perceptions. Yet this is no way to live.

There is need for verification or disclaimers. Since I have updated my status on various sites to list me as being in Iran, Google has started showing traffic to my website from an article on CNN entitled Iran Eyewitnesses. I cannot find the article, so I am not sure what it has said, but I am not an eyewitness. My friends from around the States ask if I am really in Iran and warn me to be safe.

I know of high school students that set their relationship in Facebook to being Married. They are not married in the eyes of the law even thought they may feel that their relationship has the same weight, or even greater weight than those of people who are truly married in the eyes of the law.

For me, I have changed my location on social networks to say I am in Iran, in part in response to a call to provide cover for people who may be in danger of being found by the Iranian intelligence forces. Yet I also changed my location to show my solidarity with people that are struggling for freedom and democracy. I am in Iran, just as I have been in Tianamen Square, Tibet and Myanmar.

I use my location to find others near me, just as I suspect intelligence officers might. A search on geocode=35.7061 51.4358 10mi q=+near:Tehran timezone=Tehran units=mi within=10 shows many messages from Tehran. I change my location to geocode=29.5889 52.5419 10mi q=+near:shiraz timezone=Tehran units=mi within=10 to get a different perspective, and then do a search centered on 15 Khordad, Qom.

I do not have to fear the tear gas and the billy club the way other Iranians do, at least right now. I am safe that way. Yet the words of John Donne come to mind and that any man’s death diminishes me. The threat to any person’s freedom and the threat to democracy is a threat to me.