Mohsen Makhmalbaf is one of more than two million Iranians forced by politics to live abroad. The sooner he can return to making the films he wants to, preferably in and around his native country, the better, not only for Iran, but for all lovers of cinema in the rest of the world.

Makhmalbaf became a kind of roving ambassador for Mousavi’s Green Movement, giving interviews, writing op-ed pieces, donating his film prizes to the Green Movement, and making the rounds of various European capitals, the European Parliament, and the White House. He says he no longer has time to make films because he is too busy “working for the Iranian people”.

بگو هنوز هم می گویی خشم را کنار بگذاریم و متانت به خرج بدهیم وقتی تو را شبانه به خاک سپردند و بی گناه جانت را گرفتند؟ بگو هنوز هم می گویی خواسته هایمان را روی کاغذ بنویسیم؟ بگو صدای ضجه های سوگواران این سالها را به گوش خدا خواهی رساند؟

Dr. Elizabeth M. Bucar, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, has recently published a book comparing the feminist politics of U.S. Catholic to Iranian Shi’i women. Such a comparison might seem strange and challenging at first glance, but Bucar’s views on feminism and the nature of Shii and Catholicism seem even more challenging than the subject of her book.

Yes Mr. Mario! You writers are the ones who encourage sedition. You are the ones who reproduce sedition with your dark books and blasphemous pens. Reading these books one begins comparing the existing situation with that of the fiction and becomes encouraged to do something.

Injustice is the only thing that makes sense to the Iranian regime. It is the only thing with which they can satisfy their sick brain; it is the only thing that makes them feel powerful and alive when they are looking in the mirror. And when they do so, they can only see their own image and not that of people suffocating in the great prison that Iran has become.

It is my hope that Western Iranians will try hard to understand their fellows in Iran, but also that Iranians in Iran and the many who are coming to the West today try hard to understand their Western friends, in particular the multiplicity of their identities.

It has been a long time that I don’t like Tehran anymore. Sometimes I feel tempted to go to one of those villages around Tehran where there is even no gas for heating, and start my life there. Maybe I ask someone to make a korsi for me and I get a stack of firewood in the yard, and during long autumns and winters I sit under the korsi.

As we are only a couple of days past the previous decade, let us look at the political currents which shaped its politics, and which, if looked into properly, could tell us a thing or two about what is up with us in the decade(s) to come.

Of course, we have to be outraged and keep talking about the cruelty of the Iranian regime. But as a writer with a passion for Iran, I want to share with my readers my belief that there is always room for optimism, which is exactly what can help people in Iran who are daily struggling for their future. Why always put so much emphasis on only the bad things that are happening?

Kiosk, Abjeez, Mohsen Namjoo and the complete soundtrack of ‘No one knows about Persian cats’ are the musical future of Iran that we can already discover today. This is the music of a green Iran, this is the music of a generation that is saying salam to the entire world and embraces the entire world in their music, without denying – contrary to the Iranian LA musical kitsch – their Persian origins.

Standing on the mountaintop and looking around gives you such a great feeling of power: it seems as if after having done this, everything else is easy for you. From up above, Tehran is a small matchbox that you can hold with your two fingers and shake out of it whatever you hate and is persecuting you.

Keeping your dream is not easy in Iran. From the very beginning you should keep in mind that thousand and one obstacles and limits will appear along your way. You have to learn the ways to pass and most importantly the ways not to pass through.

The very fact that there have been so few voices raised in opposition (and even those voices are nowhere near consistent) to the incessant discrimination against the Roma in Europe is yet another proof to the sad fact that Europe is experiencing yet once more a strong tide of xenophobia.

After having watched Shirin Neshat’s enchantingly poetic version of Women without Men, I decided to read Parsipur’s novel for the second time. Again, I was blown away by how relevant this story still is today.

Last week when I was looking at the newsstand, I only saw government newspapers and yellow magazines. A passer-by, who was also looking at the newspapers, shook his head insorrow and said: ‘Do you know what? Nowadays the best newspaper is ‘Keyhan’!

What worries me is that the British once again offend the Iranian people by giving the Cyrus cylinder to a regime that is trying to erase ancient Persian history, as this history proves that the country is now more backward than it was 2500 years ago.

With regard to Iran, there are two more reasons to give the Turkish referendum proper attention. Like in Turkey, current political debates in Iran are centered on ‘democratization’, ‘secularism’ and ‘religion’. Moreover, Turkey is an important point of reference for political thought in Iran since at least the early 20th century

The rise of the culture of death that we are witnessing today in our societies is an infallible sign that many in the West and elsewhere have given up the project to think and to feel responsible toward the concept of “humanity” which transcends them or even to sacrifice, in the extreme, life itself to that which makes life meaningful. In short, I cannot overcome the impression that Western culture is threatened far more by itself than by Islamic fundamentalism.

There is a chronic lack of transparency and a dizzying complexity of power relations within the Iranian state. This labyrinthine form of networks that together make up Iranian politics is in my view no coincidence.