Iranian perspective on the election

Interesting interview of the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, on the English Al-Jazeera site:

The results of these elections have taken the world by surprise. Was there a failure here of the international media to guage Iran's affairs and sentiment?

Yes! That is what fascinates me most ever since coming to the US. When I wrote about students reading Lolita in Tehran, I was accused of saying Western literature is great. That is not what I was saying - I was saying people in Iran are taking these texts and analysing and seeing them in their own way - in a way the West doesn't.

The homogeneous picture of extreme belief where the majority of people believe in orthodox Islam which comes out of Iran is not true. Iran is a country of different ethnic minorities and different religions. Many of the Muslim minorities have been oppressed by the regime. This is not Islam - this is a state using Islam for power and we have to break this myth.

You've talked about and write about the importance of literature and culture in the fight for human rights and liberty in Iran and around the world. But is art, culture, literature ever going to be more powerful than religion? Is it enough to start a revolution?

If you look at it in the long term - yes it is. I never forget when Paul Ricoer, the philosopher, came to speak in Iran. He was an eighty-year-old but was treated like [the American rock star] Bon Jovi.

At one point the minister for Islamic Guidance said to him: "People like us [politicians] will vanish but you people will endure." That will always remain with me. We don't remember the king who ruled in the time of [14th century Persian poet] Hafiz, we remember Hafiz.