MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2009) Abdel-Latif, Omayma. In the Shadow of the Brothers: The Women of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2008). Al-Ali, Nadje and Nicola Pratt. What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (Berkeley, CA: University of Califor The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Elizabeth Warnock Fernea I recently visited a small Turkish village that seemed in many ways similar to the 1950s Iraqi village Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, known to her friends as B.J., described in her now classic ethnography, Guests of the Sheikh, from the muddy lanes to the daily lives of its men and women. Having just lea Jenny White • 3 min read
MER Article Activism Under the Radar Few would disagree that the 1979 Iranian revolution, despite the massive participation of women, rapidly became a catastrophe for women’s legal status and social position. Under the Shah, Iran had a mildly forward-looking family law limiting men’s rights to polygamy and unilateral divorce, and, at least theoretically, basing Homa Hoodfar • 14 min read
MER Article Foot Soldiers of the Islamic Republic’s “Culture of Modesty” “Simplicity has disappeared,” laments Minoo Shahbazi, energetic at 50, and animated in the cheap manteau and black scarf she wears beneath her chador. Look at her 16-year old son, she says: “He likes to wear famous brand-name clothes. Obviously, I do not agree. He is very different from me.” Fatemeh Sadeghi • 16 min read
MER Article The Islamic Republic's Failed Quest for the Spotless City It is characteristic of modern social revolutions to seek moral improvement of the population, as well as redress of the injustices of the ancien regime. In 1794, Paris echoed with calls to “righteousness”; in 1917, the Bolsheviks denounced the bourgeois decadence of the czarist era. For Ayatollah R Azam Khatam • 14 min read
MER Article Baluchistan’s Rising Militancy Baluchistan, a region long associated with instability and armed conflict, straddles the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan is home to the largest number of Baluch, at 5 million, and the largest province of Baluchistan, at 43 percent of the country’s land mass. In Iran, the Baluch, Sonia Ghaffari • 11 min read
MER Article Thirty Years of the Islamic Revolution in Rural Iran Development, or modernization, of the Iranian countryside became an ideological imperative at the very outset of the post-revolutionary period. Both the religious and secular leaders of the Islamic Revolution believed that the deposed Pahlavi monarchy deliberately had neglected agriculture and rural economic development in its efforts to create in Iran Eric Hooglund • 15 min read
MER Article Survival Through Dispossession Since the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the burning economic issue in Iran has been the privatization of public assets and, more recently, the elimination of subsidies for a vast array of goods and services. Leading figures, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hav Kaveh Ehsani • 21 min read
MER Article Change of Power The poet Esmail Khoi once remarked to Ardeshir Mohassess that many of his drawings focused on oppression, depicting both the oppressor and the oppressed as ugly and animal-like. “You seem to suggest,” Khoi observed, “that those who suffer from oppression are no less cruel that their oppressors.” Ard Shiva Balaghi • 3 min read
MER Article Tied Up in Tehran I want to begin with a story. Like the best of stories, it is true. Norma Claire Moruzzi • 17 min read
MER Article The Reformist Moment and the Press The story of Iran’s “reformist moment” of 1997-2005 can be told through the story of the Iranian press in this period. Previously, the Islamic Republic had severely restricted freedom of the press, issuing permits only to newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets that mimicked the hard line of sta Ramin Karimian • 2 min read
MER Article Cultural Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran Article 2 of the constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran states, “The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in…cultural independence.” This clause goes on to exalt the “sciences and arts [as] the most advanced results of human experience.” The very next article of the charter calls for Shiva Balaghi • 2 min read
