#ed

Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#ashamed #challenge #change #create #culture

You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#exist #future #imagine #need #order

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

#apologists #ask #centuries #culture #degrades

America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry? ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#based #happen #loses #poetic #poetry

Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#been #emotions #evoke #fundamentalism #german

For more than 30 years the Islamic regime and its apologists have tried to dismiss women's struggle in Iran as part of a western ploy. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#dismiss #iran #islamic #more #part

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. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#american literature #degree #english #finally #got

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

#criticism #culture #especially #in the past #iran

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

#china #control #forced #ideology #instrument

The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don't compromise, you may suffer. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#american dream #best #best work #compromise #dream