13 Feb 09 | Comment, Middle East and North Africa
On 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran declared a death sentence on novelist Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Twenty years on Lisa Appignanesi, recalls how a ground-breaking, visionary novel was hijacked and transformed into an international political cause
Plus: Bernard-Henri Lévy says the fatwa marked a retreat from tolerance
Kenan Malik on why Rushdie’s critics won the war
Peter Mayer on how Penguin faced down the threats
Malise Ruthven describes a political storm
Salil Tripathi says religious offence stifles debate
(more…)
30 Jan 09 | Comment, Middle East and North Africa
The celebrated photographer and Pulitzer prize-winner Kaveh Golestan was one of the great defenders of free speech in Iran. He reflects in this essay, first published in 1994, on the fallout of the revolution
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30 Jan 09 | Comment, Middle East and North Africa
When Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Tehran on 1 February 1979, a brief period of freedom for Iranians came to an end. Yassamine Mather
looks at the development of the Islamic Republic’s suppression of dissent
(more…)
14 Jan 09 | Uncategorized
The BBC’s Persian TV service goes on air today. At the press launch last week, Nigel Chapman of the World Service said the hope was that the BBC’s combined Persian service (TV, radio and web) would attract an audience of 20 million. Currently, the BBC’s Persian radio service boasts 10 million listeners. Interestingly, only one-fifth of these are in Iran itself, the majority of listeners being Dari speakers in Afghanistan.
The BBC doesn’t have the most tranquil of relationships with Tehran. The authorities refuse to allow a Farsi-speaking correspondent in the country, and the BBC’s website has been banned in Iran in the past. A spokesman for the Iranian embassy in London has already said the government considered the station illegal.
The new TV service promises to be a mix of entertainment (including pop music shows and BBC documentaries dubbed into Farsi) and current affairs — with a heavy emphasis on user-generated content, i.e. emails and texts. On the upside, this could provide another outlet for Iranians, but of course there is a risk that participating in such programmes could draw the attention of the authorities.
