In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.
From Azar Nafisi
The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.
America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?
I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality.
I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.
When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to which all my desires and dreams returned.
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