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" Look at Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-colonialism; the struggle of the have-nots against the haves; the state monopoly over economy, which was very much patterned after the Soviet Union. All of these things did not come out of Islam. Islam is not that developed. "

Azar Nafisi

Islam

Struggle

Revolution

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Azar Nafisi

Years

Women

" A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue. "

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" 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? "

" The biggest crime in Nabokov's 'Lolita' is imposing your own dream upon someone else's reality. Humbert Humbert is blind. He doesn't see Lolita's reality. He doesn't see that Lolita should leave. He only sees Lolita as an extension of his own obsession. This is what a totalitarian state does. "

" I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine. "

" 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. "

" Thus the regime has deprived Iranian women not just of their present rights, but also of their history and their past. "

" Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent. "

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Azar Nafisi

People

Become

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