Confronted with technology of execution, it will not help us to close our eyes to the reality of state crimes. As it appears, belonging to a common world as ours is synonymous to a shared suffering. Suffering refers to our being immersed in the human web of human relationships and making sense of our humanity in the world.

In Iran, people constantly have to lie. I believe that the schizophrenia this has caused is the biggest crime of the Islamic regime against its people. It is tragic that all Iranians have to create a fake copy of their true self.

The central question addressed to Islamists in particular and to the Muslim world in general is to know the ways in which they can come to terms with their own experience of modernity, because modernity is more and more an intrinsic value and a lived practice.

I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another – where cosmopolitanism is not so much an identity as the normal condition of life. To be sure, there is something self-indulgent in the assertion that one is always at the edge, on the margin. Such a claim is only open to a certain kind of person exercising very particular privileges. Most people, most of the time, would rather not stand out: it is not safe.

The pro-democracy movement in Iran needs to combine the ‘war of maneuver’ characterized by rapid attacks with ‘the war of position’, in which the movement digs itself deeper into society, fortifies its positions and strengthens its counter-power.

Shirin Neshat has worked six years to finish her movie Women without men, a long and difficult process that she described as giving birth, and its delivery comes at a time where Iranians are, once again, highly sensitive to political content. Today, Iranian artists have no real choice to act otherwise. If politics cannot be avoided, then they are forced to seek a balance between political content and artistic form, with its own, usually sensible, content.

All in all, Europeans generally feel that Iran is a country that has nothing to do with Europe and never really had in the past. The contrary however is true. Europe and Iran have a long shared history. A lot has been written about the recent European (British) interference in Iran, but I want to focus on the beauty that our shared past has brought about.

As long as the constitution remains in force in Iran, the tension between the ‘republican’ and the ‘Islamic’ will continue. The crisis, therefore in Iran is basically over how political agency and political sphere are defined in the country.

By suppressing acts of festive rituals and fun, ideological regimes tend inevitably to politicize the practices of everyday life, thus contributing to the instability of these very states.

Ann De Craemer, English editor at TehranReview, travelled through Iran in June 2009, following the track of the famous Trans-Iranian Railway. She has written a book about her journey which will be presented to the public today. Title of her book is Duizend-en-een dromen. Een reis langs de Trans-Iraanse Spoorlijn (Thousand-and-one dreams. A journey along the Trans-Iranian Railway).

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a good friend of Gandhi one of the most influential tolerant Muslims, has left a deep impact on the idea of pluralism in Islam. He will not only be remembered in the history of India for the role he played in the national liberation movement of the country, but will also be considered as a Muslim leader who stood for a dialogue among Muslims and Hindus. He fully recognized the humanist element in religion.

Women like Shirin Ebadi, Shirin Neshat, Shadi Sadr, Neda Agha Soltan and Azar Nafisi have become symbols of the worldwide struggle for women’s rights and emancipation. On this International Women’s Day, they deserve more than ever to be honored.

There are some people who think the protesters are going to succeed and set everything right. The extremists in the government say that they have actually dealt with the problem, and it is over now. At this point, no one can predict a definite future.

Iran undoubtedly has one of the most dynamic civil societies and women’s rights movements in the Middle East. From the 1990s onward, the Iranian civil society has been marked by the vitality of debates on social, civil, cultural, economic and political dimensions of women’s citizenship

In an interview Dr. Hamid-Reza Jalayipour (sociologist & university professor, Tehran) has made an analysis of the behavior of the Iranian Regime and the opposing ‘Green Movement’

Tehran is the heartbeat of Iran. It is the place where an invisible hand keeps making new sketches for the future. It is a patchwork where all forces and thoughts of Iranian society meet; all differences in ethnicity, religion, intellectual movements, ideology and lifestyle.