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
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, esp... AZAR NAFISI For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's strug... AZAR NAFISI It was an ugly measure. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to sacrifice its life for its belie... GHOLAMHOSSEIN ELHAM Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who ris... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN When you have a Jewish mother who has a very strong Jewish family, it's very ethnic in its pract... GOLDIE HAWN Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable. We call for tolerance and resp... JANELLE HIRONIMUS Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for 'religious toleration' are arrogantly dis... NEWT GINGRICH God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions, so that when he c... JOHN PIPER I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam... MUHAMMAD IQBAL I thought that I was the Warrior and Cersei was the Maid, but all the time she was the Stranger, ... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The Islamic Republic of Iran will pass through this situation by protecting its legitimate rights, p... AKBAR HASHEMI RAFSANJANI You know something is wrong when you are known for what you are against, instead of what you are for... JADE HAJJ I feel so honored to be able to say "What I do is for my son" without that being an excuse to do stu... C. JOYBELL C. Hold onto one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying w... RAY BRADBURY North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam a... NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV When we look it is always forward ,but if we did not think of the past at all we would not be able t... GARY F EVANS... There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --ex... STEPHANE MALLARME There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /excep... STéPHANE MALLARMé Malaysia is a country unlike any other: Full of promise and fragility. Its history, cultural and rel... TARIQ RAMADAN (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes... JEAN SASSON We have tears in our eyes As we wave our goodbyes, We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL Muslim children should be raised with the understanding that once they hit puberty they are adults a... ABU MUAWIYAH ISMAIL KAMDAR If I was comforting the Islam nation for its crisis of Pakistan's earthquake, I today congratulate i... AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI The sheer diversity of literature in the Bible is one of the secrets of its continuing popularity th... JOHN DRANE Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China." "That expression has never made sense to m... LISA KLEYPAS You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently. Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m... SARAH J. MAAS There is a twofold deception here: one side supports the Islamic veil or polygamy in the name of the... PASCAL BRUCKNER I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in ... DANIEL PIPES To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli... ASK AND IT IS GIVEN He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be. CRAIG GROESCHEL Bush talks of regime change or change of its behavior, which is the same. It means no Islamic regime... AHMAD KHATAMI Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary inte... LIONEL TRILLING Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary inte... LIONEL TRILLING For centuries, the Yangtze River - the longest in Asia - has played an important role in China's... REBECCA MACKINNON 'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS And what good is a voice when so few will listen? STACEY JAY The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularit... LIONEL TRILLING I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It i... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind.... GAUTAMA BUDDHA Selfish people look for success and are in great majority with good bonhomie, but others who crave f... ANUJ SOMANY Its origins are ancient but it burgeons with brash modernity, and it lounges upon its delectable sho... JAN MORRIS To the representatives of theoretical Islam, i.e. Islamic fundamentalists, the Jews, the Christians,... ABHIJIT NASKAR And these Things, which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient, they lo... RAINER MARIA RILKE Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, (while) any (Islam... MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD Whenever women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws a... SHIRIN EBADI Tomorrow is promised to no one. Prioritize today accordingly. GINA GREENLEE A western audience might not appreciate 'Chanakya's Chant' because of its dependence on ... ASHWIN SANGHI Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the lov... JOSEPH CAMPBELL Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against t... PETER L. BERGEN ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It's not Islam; it&... HAMZA YUSUF The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you. SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain... SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor. GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need SARAH J. MAAS I turned. Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere... SARAH J. MAAS Iran's continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and politi... WILLIAM HAGUE All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics. WILLIAM BLAKE Notable features - besides its overall clarity - are the naming of Iran and Syria, and his willingne... GLENN REYNOLDS Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good... JACK KINGSTON The Doctor: This is bad, I don't like this. [kicks console and yells in pain] Never use force, you j... STEVEN MOFFAT It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, it... ALI SMITH They reflect the cultural diversity of China as a multi-ethnic country. They represent the enthusias... LIU QI Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are. SOMAN CHAINANI It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we... BERNARD LEWIS Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic fi... STEPHEN KINZER The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name ... AYAAN HIRSI ALI The author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all th... AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI struck by the pain of the ice and the rage of the water below that was forced to make room for the h... GARTH STEIN Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that enc... AHMED ZEWAIL You feel sometimes when you hear analysts and knowledgeable people talking about Iran that they fear... HILLARY CLINTON Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who�... CHERYL R COWTAN Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty. BRIAN JACQUES Mis-information is rampant in this great age of mass-information. While we have more access to learn... DAVID D. FLOWERS The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but wha... STEPHEN R. COVEY But poetry is a way of language, it is not its subject or its maker's background or interests or... THOMAS LYNCH New Orleans has to rebuild not just its buildings and its political culture, but its image, ... The ... JOEL KOTKIN The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fan... ADOLF HITLER Marriage is a kind of prison for anyone who's miserable in it - men and women alike - and anyone... ADAM ROSS I think sometimes there is no right thing. ROSAMUND HODGE For years, Iran has worked to position itself to dominate the entire Middle East and to impose its v... BILL FLORES Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stor... CARRIE RYAN Anger - a beast within us that needs taming. SARU SINGHAL Judaism is a civilization. It has history, culture, literature. It has jokes, ... Part of any civili... CHARLES ISBELL It's for scientists to lay out the data and lay out what they think, and then it's for the p... VENKATRAMAN RAMAKRISHNAN If in barbed wire things can bloom, why couldn't I? I will not die, I will not die. FRIEDL AND THE CHILDREN OF TEREZIN In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free e... ELLIOTT ABRAMS A real totalitarianism is at work in the world and wants to impose its views not only on Arab Muslim... PATRICK CHAPPATTE For the last 27 years, Iran has been the only country that has had a fundamentalist regime in power,... ZOLAL HABIBI I am meeting Diaspora Jews all the time, and we are developing programmes to prevent distancing. We ... OFRA STRAUSS Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence... JILL LEPORE ...in the assassination of three of its first four caliphs, the “successors” to Mohammed and rul... RICHARD ENGEL A community having the breadth and scope of a people still cannot claim to be an ethnic community un... EDITH STEIN The U.S. has many vulnerable targets around Iran, and its bases are within the range of the Guards... JOHN C. STENNIS Everyone gets dumped and everyone gets hurt and there's karma to love in regards to what you'... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS My dad's quite a conservative person, and he brought me up to be very questioning of the commerc... MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS
More Azar Nafisi
Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to pro... AZAR NAFISI The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn ... AZAR NAFISI You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist. AZAR NAFISI I would like to think of my own status as what you called 'citizen of the world' or a 'citizen of a ... AZAR NAFISI Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in. AZAR NAFISI You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist. AZAR NAFISI Many times I tell my American students my Iranian students understood how valuable [freedom] is beca... AZAR NAFISI Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more inte... AZAR NAFISI First of all, there are aspects of culture which are really reprehensible, and we should [all] fight... AZAR NAFISI Whenever religion, no matter where it comes from, when it claims to spread the word of God through [... AZAR NAFISI Iranian fiction has entered a new era...The Islamic Revolution has shaken all values and norms withi... AZAR NAFISI Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to cha... AZAR NAFISI The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scot... AZAR NAFISI Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no ma... AZAR NAFISI Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their histo... AZAR NAFISI Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological ... AZAR NAFISI I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and sta... AZAR NAFISI I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our cultur... AZAR NAFISI In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, esp... AZAR NAFISI Look at Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-c... AZAR NAFISI You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how compl... AZAR NAFISI . . . none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with ev... AZAR NAFISI Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they... AZAR NAFISI We had always segregated sex from feeling and from intellectual love, so you were either pure and vi... AZAR NAFISI You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss ... AZAR NAFISI I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly ... AZAR NAFISI A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that mo... AZAR NAFISI [A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by ... AZAR NAFISI I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we ... AZAR NAFISI That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourni... AZAR NAFISI The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights,... AZAR NAFISI It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen's novels are those who are inc... AZAR NAFISI For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's strug... AZAR NAFISI I turned on the flashlight; it cut a small circle of light from the darkness around me. AZAR NAFISI She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and ... AZAR NAFISI When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the... AZAR NAFISI I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to i... AZAR NAFISI The biggest crime in Nabokov's 'Lolita' is imposing your own dream upon someone else'... AZAR NAFISI America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry? AZAR NAFISI I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself. AZAR NAFISI Well, that was in 1995 when I resigned from my last academic job. AZAR NAFISI When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to w... AZAR NAFISI People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was n... AZAR NAFISI A message was sent by the regime to the faithful: to survive they would have to be loyal to only one... AZAR NAFISI Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe. AZAR NAFISI When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how si... AZAR NAFISI Those who are close to us, when they die, divide our world. There is the world of the living, which ... AZAR NAFISI You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people ... AZAR NAFISI None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you... AZAR NAFISI It's the state and local distribution plans that will define victory. ALEX AZAR We are overdue for the next pandemic. None of us, nobody, would have immunity. ALEX AZAR Nothing from my personal experiences with him would ever have led me to question his integrity, his ... ALEX AZAR It is so critical that on every level, every individual becomes prepared. ALEX AZAR The looming threat of a global influenza pandemic demands global, regional and national attention, a... ALEX AZAR We've got to be prepared on the local level. ALEX AZAR Any community that fails to prepare -- with the expectation that the federal government can or will ... ALEX AZAR It will not be a cause for panic. It will not be a cause for people to stop hunting. It will not be ... ALEX AZAR I liked the look in Carolyn's eyes when she started the second half. She walked out on the court, hi... JAN AZAR But she's got to lead us. JAN AZAR I don't think we'll do anything differently. We'll try to put a lot of pressure on them. JAN AZAR They played like seniors at the end, and we've got to make sure they continue to do that throughout ... JAN AZAR We haven't seen the new study yet, and we're not in the habit of prejudging these sorts of things. (... LARA AZAR He'll look forward to what they have to tell them. LARA AZAR In general, it (the study) appeared to have succeeded in gathering and combining a lot of different ... LARA AZAR Oh, boy, that never happened. LARA AZAR We're keeping a very close eye on it, but at this point, nothing seems to point to the need for a st... LARA AZAR We had another paper that ran the whole thing almost (verbatim) ... and we finally got that paper to... LARA AZAR Randall's a good guy, and the governor looks forward to working with him in his role as speaker. LARA AZAR The main purpose is to visit troops as their commander in chief to relay the support of the folks ba... LARA AZAR With Central Oregon's phenomenal growth, it attracts competition. We feel that, the more choices the... PAUL AZAR The sole purpose of universal justice is to keep man's character in balance JUDY AZAR LEBLANC Those whose eyes are open cannot see for they are blinded by the lust of all that is around them, an... JUDY AZAR LEBLANC Do not let one hand say to another, 'Stop, for I have already given' JUDY AZAR LEBLANC For the beauty that adorns the earth is not imitation JUDY AZAR LEBLANC Ask not 'who will love me?' but rather, 'whom can I love?' JUDY AZAR LEBLANC Freedom is to forgive one another for a perceived wrongdoing JUDY AZAR LEBLANC When a customer receives the heat sink, we have tested it thoroughly, thus in almost every case, we ... DR. KAVEH AZAR I advise engineers to start by performing first-order calculations to see where a heat-transfer prob... DR. KAVEH AZAR Misunderstanding transpired, when common sense became the essence. MOHAMMAD NAVID NAFISI BAHABADI