2020 Visionaries
Writing for Rights:
An Interview with
Iranian Dissident
Azar Nafisi
A prominent Iranian memoirist sees a better, more open
future.
SJ STANISKI
THE FUTURIST: You are regarded as a proponent
both of women’s rights in the Muslim world and of
Westernization. How have recent events changed your
views of the influence of Western culture in Iran? On of Western U.S. foreign policy; this isn’t among my crit-
the one hand, there is evidence that students in Iran icisms. We should put our efforts into taking these
were using mobile technology to organize protests fol- weapons out of the hands of all countries, whether Pak-
lowing the 2009 Iranian presidential election. (Most of istan, Iran, or North Korea. Yes, Ahmadinejad mentions
the people “tweeting” about it, however, were from the this supposed double standard, and nuclear weapons
United States.) On the other hand, the Iranian govern- are dangerous in America’s hands, just as they are in
ment has used that same technology against protesters. anyone’s. But the United States is far more open and
Does mobile tech like cell phones and the Internet make democratic than is Iran. The system in the United States
the fight against authoritarianism easier or more diffi- is more reliable. The government is more accountable
cult? What are the pitfalls? than that of the Iranian regime. I can trust it more. But I
Azar Nafisi: You see the adverse effects of technology don’t feel good about America or any other country
in America itself. It’s become a challenge to turn infor- having nuclear weapons.
mation into real knowledge. The United States is be- THE FUTURIST: You’ve said: “At the beginning of the
coming a superficial culture. But right now, inside Iran [Iranian] Revolution, not only the Islamists but also the
and other repressive countries, this technology is far radical left were all very set in what they wanted and
more advantageous to the people than to governments. the way they saw the world. As the revolution pro-
The Internet and cell phones are allowing the Iranian gressed, two things happened to the young Islamists.
people to connect to the world through human-rights One was that the Islamic Republic failed to live up to
sites where texts about democracy are available. These any of its claims. Apart from oppressing people and
texts are read and translated widely in Iran. I’ve con- changing the laws, and lowering the age of marriage
nected with hundreds of Iranian students to learn about from 18 to nine, [the Islamic government] did not ac-
what’s actually going on there. A similar phenomenon complish anything economically, socially, politically, or
is playing out in China. But the continuance of this in terms of security.” Today, as part of the so-called
progress requires the help of companies like Google Green Revolution, thousands of Iranians are directly
and Yahoo. challenging the results of the latest presidential elec-
THE FUTURIST: Looking more broadly, the current tion. Do you think the Green Revolution’s aims are
tension between the United States and Iran has become more realistic? Do today’s rebels stand a greater chance
a dispute over technology — does Iran have the right to of success? And what’s the most important thing the
the