Author condemns Iran's social repression

EDITORS' NOTE: The original version of this article incorrectly quoted Iranian author Azar Nafisi. She supports criticism of the Iranian government, not intervention.

Also in the original article, Nafisi was incorrectly paraphrased. She said that the Iranian government's censorship turned books into absurdities, not the Muslim religion.

Nafisi was also incorrectly paraphrased concerning the diversity of the Muslim world. She said each country in the Muslim world is as unique as each country in the Western world, not that the Muslim world is more diverse than specific Western countries.

Also in the original article, the incorrect number of books Nafisi has published was given. She has published two books, not four.

The online version of this article has since been corrected.



Iranian author Azar Nafisi, who recently published the memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran," addressed her views on the lack of freedom of expression and oppression in Iran at the ASEAN auditorium last night.

Through personal ideas that relate to the four sections of her memoir, Nafisi told the audience of 90 that the freedom to read, to imagine, and to express are vital rights necessary in all societies including Iran.

Nafisi, an ex-national of totalitarian Iran, said that imagination is considered obscene from the Iranian regime's perspective, and that the government seeks to repress it as much as possible.

She noted that in order to attempt this repression, the Iranian regime uses all modes of censorship.

The Iranian version of Shakespeare's Othello, for example, omits Othello's suicide on the grounds that "it would make the people too depressed ... [in this version,] Iago is killed for no reason," Nafisi said. She added that in Iranian children's books, "scarves are put on female chickens for fear that the male chickens would get too excited."

The laughter from the audience these examples garnered was, according to Nafisi, proof that the government has reduced the books to absurdities from the Western perspective.

According to Nafisi, such harsh censorship protocols are rooted in the massive changes and restrictions imposed at the beginning of the Iranian revolution. These are responsible for creating the negative regards some Westerners hold towards the Muslim world, Nafisi said.

Nafisi said the Islamic world is seen as savage and hateful in Western eyes. "I was shocked by these [Western] images of 'The Muslim World'," she said. "I reject these beliefs." The different countries of the Muslim world, Nafisi argued, are as unique as different countries are in the West.

To categorize all Muslim countries is to "reduce [nations] only to religion, and to the most extreme interpretation." Nafisi believes that such generalizations, especially in regards to women, condemn people to one stereotypical image.

Through this manifested concept of the "The Muslim World," Nafisi believes that the West looks at the Middle East in a condescending manner. "To respect someone's culture is acceptable, but it is unacceptable to avoid criticizing during a dire time by justifying that 'it is their culture,'" she said.

"How do you define their culture? Do you define it by female genital mutilation? By Osama Bin Laden? Equals give each other criticism and create a critical dialogue. But this has been cut because we seem to sweep it under the carpet and let the politicians do the talking... "

The personal experiences in her book recount her life as a clandestine teacher in Iran, despite the extreme consequences both she and her pupils faced. "Readers are born free, and should remain free," Nafisi said, quoting author Vladmir Nabokov.

The people of Iran, she believes, may not be born free, but show signs of defiance against government restrictions. "Some women walk the streets with some of their hair exposed and get severely punished," Nafisi said. "They return to the streets again and do it again."

Despite the limits of available literature in Iran, Nafisi said that her students there "quote [their readings] more than students in America."

Azar Nafisi is a former resident professor of at a university in Iran and currently teaches at Johns Hopkins Universitys' School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. She has published two books, and her essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Times.