Despite changes in Iran’s drug policy over the past decades, dehumanisation of people who use substances persists. What is the nexus between language, images and treatment that dehumanise people who use substances and the violence that is committed against them and why should we all care about the manner in which people who use drugs are depicted?
memories and narratives of the war, referred to by the state as the ‘sacred defence’ , have remained an ideological pillar of governance by the Islamic Republic and vital to the state’s claim to political legitimacy and the ability to exert social control
This is the same Tajrish that kept its spirit even during bombings. The same square that stayed alive through Nowruz with its vendors selling sabzeh, samanu, and haft-seen decorations.
The head of our research group posted a message in the Baleh app telling us to come to the university building sometime between tomorrow and next Saturday to collect our personal belongings and take them home. For now, only three of the eight members of the group will have their six-month contracts renewed. The rest of us have been sent home.
In a conversation with Maryam Fumani, a leading Islamic scholar in Iran, Sedigheh Vasmaghi says her book Why I Rebelled Against the Hijab, published by aasoo, was written to challenge religious justifications for inequality.
This is a collection of accounts from different cities in Kurdistan. With the internet and phone lines cut, it has been difficult to reach people in Iran. Still, I have tried to speak with as many people as I could, through friends, and sometimes even strangers I came across by chance.
Corruption is often described as one of the greatest obstacles to justice and prosperity worldwide. In countries such as Iran, where corruption is part of the governing structure, who can hold the corrupt accountable?
The Bahá’í cemetery lies alone along Khavaran Road in the southeast of Tehran, not far from the Christian cemetery. Yet while the Christian burial ground has a clearly marked entrance, a sign, and its own access road, the Bahá’í cemetery—just a short distance away—has no address, no sign, no indication that it is there.
I stood there amid the stream of kolbars pouring down the mountain all at once, taking pictures. A young man with a small frame passed in front of me. A large box of cigarettes was strapped to his back. He could easily have been me, or one of my friends.
Outside, groups of regime supporters drive through the streets again. Motorcycles and cars carrying Iranian flags. They shout “Allah-o-Akbar” and “Heydar Heydar.” They do not look like mourners. They look like they have just come from a political rally.
The streets feel empty, cold, and frightened. Security patrols are everywhere. Armed forces stand in the streets, sometimes with armoured vehicles... When I hear the jets, I feel a wave of panic. But when I go up to the roof to see where the explosion happened, the panic somehow becomes less intense.
Cultural Iran brings together writers, scholars, and artists from Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and beyond to illuminate the idea of Iran as a shared cultural realm. Through essays, interviews, and reflections on language, identity, migration, cinema, and heritage, the volume maps the diverse yet interconnected world of Persianate culture. Its contributors examine the forces that have shaped this civilizational domain and the figures who have sustained a cultural world that transcends political borders.
At a time when state repression and political deadlock have shaken many people's faith in nonviolent struggle in Iran, this book confronts a pressing question: can peaceful resistance still bring change? Through penetrating interviews with four Iranian thinkers, it explores the ethics, limits, and realities of violence in political struggle. The book examines the risks of armed resistance, the complexities of civil disobedience, and the dangers facing a society pushed toward violent confrontation.
This landmark volume brings together leading scholars and writers to commemorate the bicentenary of the Bab’s birth and to reassess the inventive power of his message two centuries on. The essays trace how the Bab’s uncompromising call for radical renewal — his insistence that true transformation required revolution rather than reform - continues to echo through Iranian history and thought.
This incisive study traces the shifting fortunes of Iran’s Baha’is under the last Pahlavi monarch, revealing phases of persecution, uneasy respite, and renewed violence. Highlighting the Shah’s conflicting impulses -appeasing clerics while courting a human-rights image - the book shows how Baha’is were alternately scapegoated, ignored, or tolerated. Clear and meticulously researched, it offers a vital overview of a community navigating danger and denial.
A collection of powerful reflections on the Covid-19 crisis from leading international voices, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Yuval Noah Harari, Alain de Botton, Arundhati Roy, and Anne Applebaum. This second special edition examines how the pandemic reshapes global unity, climate policy, inequality, social order, and our relationship to mortality. From the dangers of tech opportunism to the hope for renewal, these essays challenge us to imagine - and build - a more resilient post-pandemic world.
The book brings together essays by leading global thinkers — including Gordon Brown, Yuval Noah Harari, Anne Applebaum, and Zygmunt Bauman — to explore the profound impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This first special edition examines the global history of pandemics, the vulnerabilities of populism, the shock to world economies, and the contagious power of fear. Through international perspectives, the collection argues that only cooperation and trust between communities and nations can shape a shared post-Covid future.
From the invention of the word “white” in 1613 to the forgotten histories of African Iranians and enslaved Europeans in the Islamic world, The Illusion of Race dismantles the myths that shape modern identities. Featuring leading writers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Angela Saini, the collection brings together a wide range of perspectives - including Baha'i narratives - and exposes race as a shifting political construct with real human costs. It challenges much of what we think we know about race, history, and belonging.
The collection brings together leading scholars to examine the social and political perspectives of the Baha’i faith. Through studies of community-building, minority experience, global networks, and evolving interpretations of justice, unity, and reform, the essays illuminate how a persecuted religious minority navigates power, identity, and modernity. Rich in insight and grounded in diverse contexts—from Iran and the Middle East to East Asia—this volume offers a nuanced portrait of a global faith in transformation.
Iraj Ghanooni gathers classic and contemporary essays, translations, and reflections on death, the soul, and the desire to outlive our finite lives. From Socrates and Simmel to Bergson and modern thinkers, the volume explores how philosophy, literature, and lived experience recast mortality as a condition for meaning rather than its negation. Moving between East and West, these texts ask what, if anything, in us can resist oblivion.
The collection brings together powerful essays, interviews, and case studies exploring the practice of capital punishment, with a focus on Iran. Combining legal, historical, economic, and psychological perspectives with first-hand testimonies from those scarred by executions, the volume questions whether the death penalty can ever be just, effective, or compatible with human rights. Offering informed, fair-minded arguments rather than slogans, this collection invites readers to reconsider the moral, social, and political costs of state killing.
The book confronts the persistent reality of so-called “honour killings” in Iran and the wider region. Bringing together investigative essays, interviews, legal analysis, and testimonies from Kurdish, Arab, Baluch, and other communities, the volume exposes how law, religion, patriarchy, and media indifference collude in the killing of women. It also documents local resistance and feminist activism, arguing that naming these crimes is the first step toward ending them.
The bookgathers probing interviews and essays from leading Iranian scholars to examine the past, present, and uncertain future of Iran’s clerical establishment. Spanning historical roots, the rise of clerical power, the transformations brought by the Islamic Republic, and the challenges posed by social change, the contributors debate legitimacy, authority, gender, economics, and post-theocratic possibilities. This collection offers a rare, multifaceted inquiry into what place the clergy may occupy in Iran’s tomorrow.
In this ground-breaking volume, Reza Alijani brings together leading Iranian thinkers for a series of candid, searching conversations about the future role of Islam in Iran’s social and political life. They grapple with pressing questions: After the experiences of ISIS, the Taliban, Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and decades of Islamic rule in Iran, can Islam still offer a path to progress? Is a constructive reformist vision possible, or must Iran imagine a future in which religion retreats to the private sphere? A bold and essential exploration of the crossroads facing Iran and the wider Muslim world.
