What is a revolution about? What caused the Tunisian revolution? Why is this spirit contagious? Why is it instilling fear in the hearts of the dictators in the region? Do we (the non-Tunisians, non-Egyptians) have a duty to care about what’s happening in those countries?

The main goal of the absurd accusations of the Iranian regime is to stop Iranians in Europe from getting involved in the democratization of their country.

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.

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.

What does an average Iranian neighborhood do when confronted with the announcement a new mosque will be built in their green area?

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.

Peace and welfare can only be protected and defended by those who have already shown a commitment to it. Ahmadinejad only seeks to create war, tension and provocation.

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.

My uncle works in one of our ministries, and he told me that all of the employees are at work at 8 o’clock, almost all of them snooze until 9 o’clock, then they gather in one of the rooms and eat breakfast, then they come back to their offices at about 10, and they play with the papers and files on their desks and talk with their roommates, then they go for lunch and pray from 12 to 1, and after coming back from lunch they say that they are tired.

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.

We are fighting for the freedom of speech while we don’t have any of the human rights. What do people in free countries think when they hear that the police can arrest us because our manteau is one that doesn’t reach our knees?

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.

Being in the streets is not so important now; you can hear the sound of the breath of the Green Movement in the Internet halls. The thing that we need now is hope. We have to keep our hope, and think about the future and the days that we will feel again that we are countless.

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.

“Everything that has the pressure of compulsion and force behind it is ruined. When sometimes they arrest people because of eating in Ramadan and whip them, it’s clear that young people do exactly these things out of spite.”