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Demonstrators hold pictures of Mahsa Amini and others killed in Iran during a protest outside the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul on Monday. (Sedat Suna/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

The “morality police” came for me exactly 13 minutes into my lecture on gender and sexual politics in post-revolutionary Iran. Four sets of auditorium doors swung open simultaneously. In they came, boots pounding, weapons clanking. The Tehran lecture hall erupted in confusion as the komiteh, as the morality police are known, filled the room.

Audience members ran every which way. I should have been shredding my lecture notes, running from the lectern into the nearby street. But the sight of a dozen bearded men in dark green uniforms rooted me to the floor. Two of the thugs climbed the steps to the stage; one raised his hand above my head, and then everything went black.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iranian women protest for the Islamic hijab on July 12, 2014 in Tehran. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)

Religious indoctrination starts early in Iran, when you are forced at school to learn the Koran. I was a dutiful student, praying assiduously while wearing a loose, ugly school uniform, with my hair hidden under a big scarf. At age 8, I even won a prize for fasting.

At 9, I was introduced by my father to the beautiful game of chess, beloved by ancient Persian poets. Chess requires logic and critical thinking — not faith. Slowly, in my teens, I began to question why, if God is fair, is there so much pain and suffering in the world?

Even if my faith was fading, as a woman in Iran I had no choice but to tolerate the hijab — the Islamic emblem of constant, misogynistic oppression.…  Seguir leyendo »

Le «chef spirituel» officiellement reconnu de l’Iran aujourd’hui est peut-être l’ayatollah Ali Khamenei, mais pendant les centaines d’années qui ont précédé l’institution actuelle des mollahs et des ayatollahs, les Iraniens, toutes confréries confondues, s’étaient tournés vers un autre chef spirituel: Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Si ce poète soufi persan du XIIIe siècle est connu dans beaucoup de pays occidentaux sous le nom de «Rumi», il est désigné plus affectueusement en Iran sous le titre de Mowlaana ou Maître. Pour les Iraniens, c’est un guide spirituel et un gourou dont le verbe est d’une autorité morale inégalée.

Plus de 700 ans après sa mort, il est presque impossible de passer une journée à marcher dans une ville, une banlieue ou un village iranien sans que ses mots ne fassent écho.…  Seguir leyendo »

For several weeks last year, I shared a cell in Tehran's notorious Evin prison with Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, two leaders of Iran's minority Bahai faith. I came to see them as my sisters, women whose only crimes were to peacefully practice their religion and resist pressure from their captors to compromise their principles. For this, apparently, they and five male colleagues were sentenced this month to 20 years in prison.

I had heard about Mahvash and Fariba before I met them. Other prisoners spoke of the two middle-aged mothers whose high spirits lifted the morale of fellow inmates.

The Bahai faith, thought to be the largest non-Muslim minority religion in Iran, originated in 19th-century Persia.…  Seguir leyendo »

As the Iranian government struggles to contain growing demands for freedom and democracy from its courageous people, it is flailing around trying to deflect blame for the protests. Foreign media and other countries, including Britain, have been accused of encouraging unrest. But the regime is also ­worryingly turning on all too familiar scapegoats within Iran.

Once again, followers of the Bahá'í faith within the country are in the firing line. Fresh arrests and harassment of Bahá'ís in recent days have been accompanied by increasingly extreme proclamations in the state-run media against this gentle and unifying religion. Bahá'ís find themselves once more accused of co-operating with Israel to undermine their own country.…  Seguir leyendo »