People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao’s China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
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. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry? Azar Nafisi Read Quote
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. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran’s ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry? Azar Nafisi Read Quote
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. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries, as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west. Azar Nafisi Read Quote
