Suchergebnisse

The ratification of the Press Law in February 1908 marked a significant development in the history of censorship in Iran. However, in the little that has been written on this subject, the Press Law has been explained primarily in terms of constitutional politics, and the pressure that the first majles was put under by royalist forces who had been upset at the critical and anti-royalist tone of constitutional newspapers. This article takes a different approach; it contextualizes the Press Law and evaluates it in light of the attempts at control that had been put into effect by the state in the pre-constitutional years. To this end, this article considers the largely untold story of censorship in Qājār Iran. How did the understanding of what censorship should entail evolve through the years? How was censorship exercised, and what challenges did censorship pose for both the authorities and the subjects in the Nāseri and Mozaffari eras, culminating in the Press Law in February 1908?

Revolutions are by nature unpredictable and unsettling. That the wave of revolutions in North Africa and the Arab Middle East began so unexpectedly and spread with such speed, leading to the fall of the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, has added to the concern regarding the "new order" that is to come after the initial euphoria. From the outset, the fear has been that these revolutions will follow the same trajectory as Iran did in 1979—in other words, that they will marginalize those who launched the revolutions and provide the grounds for the rise to power of the most savvy, purposeful, and best organized of the opposition groups, namely, the Islamists. Yet when one considers the recent uprisings in the Arab world through the prism of Iran's experiences in 1979, the parallels are not so evident. Mindful of the variations and distinctions between each of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it would appear that in broad terms, and beyond superficial similarities, there is little in common between the events of Iran in 1979 and what has happened in the past year in the Arab world.

Nabavi reviews 'Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran' by Afshin Molavi.

Ever Since The Appearance of the Notion of the "Intellectual," Writers and theorists have been preoccupied with attempting to define just what an intellectual is, or ought to be. Is an intellectual a detached observer, one who is free from the immediate concerns of life, and interested primarily in the pursuit of timeless and universal truths, as Julien Benda argued inLa Trahison des clercs,or is an intellectual one who very much engages with society, necessarily challenges power, one who, in Edward Said's words, "is a spirit in opposition" who raises "embarrassing questions … and cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug"? Sociologists and historians have adopted a variety of approaches to this concept: in a sociological sense, they have applied the term to all those who produce and propagate thought and culture, thus designating a neutral although wide socio-professional category, or in an attempt to narrow down the grouping, they have qualified the word with distinct characteristics, pointing out a certain way of acting in public life.