MER Article Ideology and Revolution in Iran Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993). Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993). John Foran, Fragile Resistance: Soci Misagh Parsa • 7 min read
MER Article "Tilt but Don't Spill" “Kaj dar-o mariz” (the jar is tilted but not spilled) describes how the Islamic Republic came stumbling through its first decade. Unlike Iraq, Iran fought the war between them entirely on its own resources, which enabled the state to maintain a sense of achievement and independence. [1] However, with the Kaveh Ehsani • 16 min read
MER Article Squatters and the State The early 1990s saw a period of renewed urban popular uprisings in Iran, unprecedented since the 1979 revolution. From August 1991 to August 1994, six major upheavals took place in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak, Mashhad, Ghazvin and Tabriz, and there were frequent minor clashes in many other urban centers. M Asef Bayat • 14 min read
MER Article An Open Letter to a Jailed Iranian Writer Dear Dr. Saidi Sirjani: For almost 20 years now, I have known and admired you and your writings. Whatever your detractors may say, Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani cannot justly be accused of partisanship. I have known you as a fierce critic of Mohammad Reza Shah’s insufferable pretensions and intolerance o Andrew Whitley • 3 min read
MER Article Iran's Revolutionary Impasse Two quite different images emerge of the current political situation in Iran depending on whether one looks from the perspective of the state or from that of society. From the state perspective, it appears as though the Islamic regime is becoming more and more ideologically rigid, economically unstable, politically repressive Ali Banuazizi • 19 min read
MER Article From the Editors This issue looks at the economic and social crises that beset Iran more than 15 years after the Islamic Revolution. While the articles presented here share a critical perspective toward the present government, the authors allow us to see aspects of a society that both endures and challenges the inep The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Devices and Desires The development of population policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran provides fertile ground for reexamining the widely held assumption that Islamist ideology is the antithesis of modernity and surely incompatible with any form of feminism. Recent strategies that the Islamic Republic has adopted to Homa Hoodfar • 22 min read
MER Article The Kurdish Experience Numbering over 22 million, the Kurds are one of the largest non-state nations in the world. Their homeland, Kurdistan, has been forcibly divided and lies mostly within the present-day borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, with smaller parts in Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The greatest number of Kurds Amir Hassanpour • 20 min read
MER Article Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijani Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge, 1992). Moyara de Moraes Ruehsen • 3 min read
MER Article Is the "Fatwa" a Fatwa? In saluting author Salman Rushdie and expressing solidarity with his plight, I would like to put on the table the question of whether the notorious “fatwa” issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against Rushdie is really a fatwa in the first place. This is neither an academic exercise nor a purely theoretical Sadiq al-Azm • 3 min read
MER Article Fischer and Abedi, Debating Muslims Michael M.J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (Wisconsin, 1990). In the older literature on the Middle East and the Muslim world, Islam almost invariably appeared as a religion of fanaticism: austere in its outlook, menacing in its prosely Vinay Lal • 4 min read
MER Article Qashqa'i Nomads and the Islamic Republic The Qashqa’i, an important tribal confederacy of approximately 400,000 people in the Zagros Mountains of southwestern Iran, are one of Iran’s national minorities. They speak Turkish and are Shi‘i Muslims. The nomads’ low-altitude winter pastures and high-altitude summer pastures are separated by hundreds of kilometers, and Lois Beck • 13 min read
