 for coming. The title of today's event is Iranian civil society past, present and future. I'm Karim Sajid for the Carnegie Endowment. I think given the results of the Republican primary discussion about American civil society may have been more apt today, but I'm really thrilled to have such a tremendous panel. You have the brief bios, but let me introduce them one by one. I'll start with my far left, Masi Al-Nujad, who I would argue is Iran's most dynamic, perhaps most important women's rights activists at the moment. She has her own program on Voice of America and she's really a social media phenomenon. She has almost a million followers on Facebook, her page, My Stealthy Freedom, which I'll ask her to talk about a little bit more. She's based in Brooklyn. To my left is Nina Ansadi, who's written a beautiful book, which she's going to be selling and maybe signing afterwards called Jewels of Allah, which was based on her PhD dissertation at Columbia. Nina and Masi were both born in Iran, but come from very different backgrounds and have very different perspectives. Masi comes from a village in northern Iran with a population of about 600 people. Almost 600 people and very traditional family. Nina's background is much different. She was born in Tehran. Her father was a very prominent and esteemed minister during the time of Bashar. He was actually, at what point, Iran's ambassador to the United States and still very active. They have very kind of different perspectives, although they've arrived in similar places, different backgrounds, but arrived in similar places. Last but certainly not least is my friend, Laura Sikor, to my right. We met in 2005, if you remember, at the home of Siamak Mamazi, a close friend of ours, who's now been in jail for about seven months in Iran. I believe that was your first visit to Iran. It's remarkable that a decade later she has written, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful narrative book on Iran's contemporary history called Children of Paradise. Laura hopefully will be signing some books for all of you as well. I don't know how you sign things on the Kindle. I read now electronically, but I highly recommend both books. Maybe a good place to start. Something I'm very curious about, especially Laura having just finished your book, is about the state of Iranian civil society, and in particular Iran's intellectual classes, because you profiled young men, women who in the 1970s were inspired by people like Ali Shariati, who kind of fused leftism and Islamism, or people who were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, and then in the 80s, inspired by Islamic thinkers like Abdul Kerim Sadoosh. I'm curious, you profiled a lot of kind of contemporary writers and thinkers and civil society activists. I'm curious who are the new sources of emulation and intellectual inspiration for the younger generation of Iranian civil society, and also if you can talk about kind of the evolution and thinking of those who were young in the 70s and how they think about Shariati and solution Khomeini That's a big question. One of the major projects of my book was to trace this train of thought from the time of the revolution up through the reform movement that came into being really, we think of it as the late 90s, and through the Khatami presidency up until the time of Ahmadinejad. What's been sort of curious about this project is that I started visiting Iran, I think it was actually 2004 when I met you there, really at the end of that reform period. So by the time I started going to Iran, this history was already behind us to some degree. And I was curious about it precisely for that reason, because the young people that I met in those years under Ahmadinejad had already to some degree passed beyond the sort of religious intellectuals of the 90s. And there was already a sense that for people who were reform-minded or who had taken up the call to build Iran's civil society, although the intellectuals of the reform period were hugely important in terms of bridging that distance between the revolution and modern life. Not that the revolution wasn't modern, that's another question. But even so these young people were looking elsewhere and looking for other figures to read and to emulate. So honestly I can't speak with confidence about who it is that students today in Tehran are reading because I haven't been able to speak with them. I haven't been back for a few years and when I was going in the later years it was under-increasingly restricted. But it seemed to me that the trajectory was in an increasingly more secular direction and the religious intellectuals of the 90s came out of the revolutionary movement. There's a conventional wisdom which says that in the 70s Iranian civil society and Iranian revolutionaries were very utopianist. You describe them as utopianist in your book and that today people are much more pragmatic. One of the things I say is that in 1979 Iranians had a revolution without democracy and today they want a democracy without a revolution. Do you think that conventional wisdom is an accurate assessment? Yes and no. I think the reform movement which sort of it came out of the revolutionary strain but it sort of it built in some influences from both from inside Iran and from the west and it looks to even democratic theory and all kinds of unlikely liberal sources. That movement was in a sense utopian just not in the same way that the revolution was utopian. There were people when you look at the writings of some of the key reformist thinkers they were visionary in a way. They were looking at building democratic institutions almost from the ground up and it's not a small project that they had in mind. Some of them you know the one thing that gets short-tripped and that I tried to spend a little time on in my book was the city councils project. In 1999 the reformist government held the first ever elections to city council in city and provincial councils in Iran. This was a provision that had been on the books under the Shah it was on the books under the Islamic Republic but no one had ever pursued it. The idea was not just that we're going to elect some city council people but we're going to create a whole political class that didn't didn't exist before bring a hundred thousand new people into the political process and not just that but provide pressure points where people locally can organize around their interests and their ethnicities and start to pressure their local council people to be heard and this will in turn build political parties. Well this all went in a very unexpected direction because in the end you could really say that the political machine that was built in the city council of Tehran wound up being the machine of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The reformists didn't wind up becoming the beneficiaries of what they had built there but it was not but it was a in a sense a utopian project but it was a utopian project in a kind of homely way from our point of view here there is a sense of these are mechanisms of democracy that don't sound like they don't sound visionary in the way that the rhetoric of the revolutionaries sounded visionary but they were they were visionary in another sense they were looking toward toward a very major long-term change in the relationship between society and the state. Now after after Khatami left office you could say that the people behind that vision have had to recalibrate their their expectations and I think now one hears a lot about pragmatism and and that's that represents maybe a chastening of some of some hopes or maybe a substantial a substantially less utopian less revolutionary mindset. Nina one of the great things you're doing in your book is talk about the paradox of the Islamic revolution and that women's rights were curtailed precipitously as a result of the revolution someone like Shireen Abadi who was a judge pre revolution became secretary immediately after the revolution but at the same time unwittingly the revolution kind of empowered traditional classes and traditional women by by allowing them to go to school you know before the revolution when schools weren't segregated some traditional families didn't want their daughters to study with with boys and after the revolution that changed so I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about the Iranian women's rights movement today as opposed to the 70s the my obsession is that it was a much more elitist movement in the 70s as compared to now but is that accurate? That's true in the during the Pahlavi era specifically the 70s not by textbook definition of movement because it was dictated from the top down so when you have a woman's rights itinerary but you are not allowing everyone to have a voice per se that is not typically what constitutes what is remarkable about another like you mentioned the paradox of this patriarchal climate has been the fact that some of the initial what seems to the western for the outsider discriminatory and oppressive some of the initial impositions namely the veil and single-sex ended up empowering a traditional segment that was really in seclusion during the Pahlavi era which really had embarked on an overnight trend towards a westernized society which back then many women were uneducated many traditional first towards this trend actually a renowned sociologist and historian Asif Bayat I don't know if you're familiar with him has said that the Islamic revolution came about not because of a strong Islamic movement but because of the absence of one. Shireen Abadi talks about in her memoir Iran Awakening House despite the fact that she was one of the first women in Iran to become a judge how she was lured to support Khomeini initially that Khomeini's rhetoric of a return to cultural authenticity of which Shiite Islam was a part of a keel to her and the masses it resonated in the way that the Shah's overnight western trend didn't and she mentioned something fascinating in her book she said it took scarcely 10 minutes after Khomeini landed in Iran in Tehran that I realized that I had enthusiastically participated in my own demise so so I think that's powerful one because we tend to and I'm guilty of that I've three years the only narrative that I had about Iran was from mainstream media and family and friends and I'm guilty of what Mrs. Abadi did which is we tend to not look beneath the surface and not dissect the layers especially with a country like Iran and I'd like to preface this and everything I say Iran has an exceptionally convoluted historical political and social landscape and when you hear Khomeini's rhetoric his interviews given when he was in exile specifically in France especially about women it's very vague so you cannot fault women like Mrs. Abadi who were highly educated for supporting someone who was really preaching speaks to his knowledge of where there was a deficiency within the Iranian population at large so but if you go back in history Khomeini had written a manifesto on the conduct of the devout called the clarification of questions in that he enumerates all the subordinate his subordinate stance regarding women so you know if you go back in history the rhetoric is already embedded it's just when he wanted to amass support he omitted all all of that it was a clever politician yeah yeah yeah so there's a there's a wonderful quote I like from Abbas Milani at Stanford University who says that in the age of the internet and social media diaspora communities become part of the civil society of their native countries and both you and and Masi are so active on on social media first I'll start with you need I'm just curious what you talked a little bit about the interactions you've had despite having not actually visited Iran for three decades but the the Iranian women who who reach out to you from throughout the country and questions they have for you as someone who I always say I'm from the typewriter generation so as someone who didn't even have a Facebook friend page which I always say is from my daughter's generation for me and Laura and I were talking earlier about this I was extremely anti social media because I've been very private and you know for 10 years I was literally in the archives researching on my own so to put myself out there was just daunting but I was told I cannot and Masi would attest to that you cannot spread the word you're doing you cannot have any make any kind of an impact if you don't put yourself on social media which for me was one step at a time but fast forward three years I see the benefits in my work namely that yes Twitter and Facebook are blocked but this generation in Iran is very savvy they have lots of servers that bypass the blockages Instagram is not blocked and the communication that I have literally on a daily basis specifically on Twitter and Instagram with people from Iran especially young girls in Iran is really the best part of my day I get a lot of feedback I get a lot of young women sending clippings of accomplishments that Iranian women have had in small villages that I that I really in the beginning was saying to them don't send me this because I was afraid they get in trouble but if there is such a fearless generation and their answer is categorically we don't care they really want um this regime has really tried to close all the doors and they really really want to reach out and come out of isolation so that's the beauty of social media yeah and it's a good segue to Masi Masi's page Cheryl Sandberg from Facebook said that Masi's page was her favorite Facebook page my selfie freedoms and just is it two years now yes they was yeah third million followers in less than two years which is is just unbelievable and she posts these photos and videos and gets tens of thousands of comments and likes and things like that so so just an event that not everyone in the room is familiar with it can you talk about where that project came from how you thought of it and where it's at now sure just to make it clear it's Cheryl Sandberg's favorite page and for sure it's the most hated page for the government of Iran um I was listening to what Laura and Nina are saying about the revolution and I was a little bit embarrassed because for me I grew up in a small village and my parents were involved in the revolution and I am the child of revolution but now when you go to any Iranian parents and you ask them whether they are responsible about what we are suffering now after the revolution you won't find any of them saying that yes we were supporting the revolution but my my parents and I know a lot of people from my village they were supporting the revolution I was only two years old and that's true what Nina said it just opened the door towards my family to go to to schools and university and I think they regret now because all I I was educated after the revolution and all I learned I just just put it back and I started to realize that all we're learning about history it's it's wrong it's a big lie and some people and now I mean of course the young generation move on from Khomeini or Shariati but I remember when I was a only I was a teenager and I was reading Shariati's book it was forbidden in my village and I was punished by reading one of the most you know big supporter of the revolution so I was banned but now when I just look back and I ask my family they're still proud of revolution but they are not proud of me and and so I just wanted to make it clear that the generation of revolution people like me they are called by the government of Iran anti-revolution and this is what I mean this is the most I mean the best label that the government give it to me anti-revolution because I got a lot of them like ugly duckling they don't know the end of the story of ugly duckling so don't expect me or the servant of the queen or paid by CIA MI6 so anti-revolution is this is a label that we all get from here and yes this generation now use social media as an alternative media and I always say that we have two Iran one in the map which you can see through Iranian state TV Iranian official media but the face which is which I called it a stealthy face hidden face you never have the chance to see through Iranian state TV it's on social media if you want to hear the real voice of Iran it's on social media when Nina said that she get a lot of comments from brave Iranian young people and commenting on her book I'm not surprised because when I was in Iran I was brave but when I left Iran I just lost my bravery and I think the new generation are really brave inside Iran so for you maybe just sharing a picture of you know a woman without a scarf it's just nothing but for us that means a lot that means from the age of seven we had to hide our own identity and go to public and when we share our picture on social media that doesn't mean just we want to feel the wind through our heart which is really important and enjoyable but we want to get our own identity back so I use social media only to make these people to be their own storytellers and to show the rest of the world the hidden face of Iran because freedom is freedom and cannot come with any adjective and when we call it stealthy freedom that means a stealthy freedom secret freedom never scared any government but when you shout it loud and you share it with the rest of the world that can scare the government so that's why for me social media is just the window to go to Iran and give a platform to the young generation who want to show the hidden face of Iran and want the rest of the world to recognize the hidden face of Iran the stealthy Iran and when I started my stealthy freedom I have to be honest I was not even a plan because my main focus you can stop me anytime if I talk too much that's why I got expelled from MPs from Iranian parliament because I talk too much and I'm loud so when I started my stealthy freedom it was not a plan it was as I said it was my stealthy freedom and I just was enjoying the wind through my hair in a nice and beautiful street in London and saying that every time when I run in a free street and I feel the wind through my hair it just reminds me of the time when my hair was like a hostage in the hand of Iranian government that was all so my main focus was about human rights and you know giving voice to those people who lost their loved ones inside Iran after 2009 election that was my main concern I was a political journalist and my main focus was writing about politicians and finding corruption in Iranian politics that's all and then when I shared my own experience on social media I was bombarded by pictures from women inside Iran so maybe for you it's a small issue or it's just a piece of cloth but for the young generation in Iran it's the first step toward full equality and it's the first step to get their own identity back so that's why one million followers on social media they don't want to you know to just have the freedom of choice to wear what they to wear what they want to wear this is not the only demand this is just the first first step because from the age of seven they were not allowed to be the true self so for me to just make it easy social media it's the tool to just let the new generation to be the true self. Masi let me ask you two part follow-up one thing you will hear from people is that well these are just women from the north of Tehran and they don't represent the country's broader socioeconomic diversity how do you answer that and two is those who say well of all the challenges facing Iranian women and civil society the veil isn't at the top of the list we need to fight for legal rights and things like that how do you answer those good question first of all I am not from north of Iran I'm from a small village and through my stealthy freedom I receive a lot of pictures and experiences from people from small village small town and different society and from the beginning for me it was like okay we're fighting with the government but through receiving a lot of comments from Iranian women I just found that that these women need a you know a platform to debate about the issue in their own society their own family so maybe it would be good if I give you some example like I received a picture from a woman and a week later I received a comment from her husband saying that remove that photo because I don't want my wife to be in trouble in Iran so I was not sure what to do then I received another comment from her daughter saying that you create you're causing argument and fight inside my house please remove my mother's photo what should you do if you receive these comments I did the same I removed it because I didn't want to you know get this family into trouble and then one week later I received a comment from that lady saying that you are not the voice of Iranian women you are the voice of my husband and the men because I'm not fighting with the government I'm fighting for my own right through my own family and you just now let my husband to win the fight so I receive a lot of comments from people from different society not just north of Iran they need to have such a debate in their own family and spawn society and as I said yes I get a lot of comments from especially men saying that this is just a piece of class you know what I do I carry a helicopter with myself and I go and give it to that man and saying that you have to wear it right now and if they don't be rude and I'm talking to you about a serious topic I will force him to wear it and I said you have to understand how does it feel if you're forced to wear this and then we have time to talk about so bigger issues so this is the way because otherwise they won't understand that for more than you know 37 years we have been forced to be someone else and then you want us to talk about bigger issues of course we have so many bigger issues in Middle East but this is important because be honest with me every morning if you want to go out what do you do you care about freedom of speech every morning you think okay now I want to go out and I have to talk about freedom of religion you talk about freedom of expression no you all care about your appearance you use mirror to make yourself beautiful or handsome so let us first of all to be our true self we the women of Iran know that this is not you know the only demand but we want to be ourselves and we don't want to use the mirror every morning to make ourselves ugly freedom of choice is beautiful so we're going to come back I have to make it clear by ugly I don't mean those women who wear a job they are not beautiful but when you're forced to wear a job this is ugly all the female in my family my mother my sisters in fact all the female in my family they wear a job and I strongly believe that they have to be free what they want to wear but I want to walk shoulder to shoulder with my mother and my sister inside you know and have the same freedom as they do that's just one important thing I also agree with Massey I grew up with two grandmothers that I write about in the book one of them was a devout woman who wore the headscarf till the day she passed away in California even so she had the freedom not to wear the headscarf but she chose to wear the headscarf and I had my other maternal grandmother who was very liberal she went to one of the first missionary schools in Iran in the early 1900s she was so liberal that she swam Pappas in our pool in Iran in the 1970s so I grew up with one grandmother who was praying and devout and the other who was you know very much bare and out there so I like Massey agree that everyone should every woman and not just in Iran everywhere should have a choice an entire choice the other interesting phenomenon about Iran and the veil is Homeini called the veil the flag of the revolution fast forward on his granddaughter Zahraishal he recently said I'm sorry that the veil was ever imposed because it has become a symbol of this regime which is an oppressive regime so I'm taking what Homeini revered and fast forwarding it to his own grandchild granddaughter who's actually not in favor of this oppressive measure this is a very important point and I'm mindful of the fact that there are so many prominent Iranian thinkers and activists in the audience so I'm actually going to turn it over to all of you soon so think about your questions I wanted to acknowledge Najma Batman Glige and her husband Muhammad she's Iran's most famous chef and her and Muhammad have a wonderful publishing house so I just don't want to embarrass you but I see you and we appreciate so much that you all that you do you both mentioned Homeini and one of the things I'm very curious about in contemporary Iran is the legacy of Ayatollah Homeini and the popularity or lack thereof of Homeini there was a very interesting article in the New York Times a couple months ago about the resurgence of Stalin in Russia the popularity and kind of romanticism of Stalin among Russians when you travel to China these days you see kind of t-shirts and church keys of Chairman Mao everywhere you know these are two people responsible for the deaths of millions tens of millions of their own citizens but there seems to be kind of a whitewashing of history or you know romanticism and I'm curious Laura in your time the time you spent in Iran the time you spent over the last decade interviewing Iranians how would you assess the legacy and the popularity of Ayatollah Homeini and how people have evolved to think about them over the years I think there's a crucial difference between the role of Homeini in Iran and the role of Stalin in Russia which is that the Iranian system is still Homeini's system so there is not that sense of distance or nostalgia for better or worse one of the things that really has struck me over the course of time in reporting on and from Iran and talking to Iranians has been the legacy of the Homeini era the 1980s the period of the revolution and after we're really the first decade were a really violent and dark time in Iranian history both politically there was the war with Iraq there was also political violence inside Iran and a sort of a consolidation of the regime that cost a lot of lives and livelihoods and I felt very strongly that that sort of sits as a as a trauma in the consciousness of a lot of Iranians and it's not really shared very much because there are some red lines around some of these subjects but it seems to me like somewhere down the line some kind of reconciliation with that history is going to be a crucial part of moving moving forward because especially for people of Massey's generation the first post-revolutionary generation whose childhoods coincided with this kind of frightening period in history every single one of them who I interviewed would speak of those of those years with a certain kind of unresolved sense of trauma so I mean I mean that maybe that's that's a term that is that's maybe not so precise but you know it's a historical trauma not in the sense not not everybody has a personal experience of that violence but everybody had an experience of the ambience of it so that's definitely one thing that strikes me for the younger generation who I don't think has a lot of nostalgia for that period in terms of of Khomeini the man himself you know that one other really interesting moment in the reinterpretation of his legacy was 2009 where you had his sort of favored prime minister here in St. Mooseve who was the standard bearer of the Green Movement in 2009 who was really constantly invoking Khomeini in a positive sense and there was a lot of kind of interesting rhetorical appropriation of that legacy which could be interpreted as necessary in the environment that existed at that time and with the constraints that existed at that time that was a way of legitimizing one's one's position and one's stake was to sort of say this actually it's Khomeini's legacy has been has been perverted and we're going to return it to the original to the greater legacy of this great man I don't I don't know for how much of that of the audience for those remarks really believed that and how much of the audience of those remarks was instrumentalizing that but just sort of anecdotally you know I wanted to sort of address also just very quickly the point that you raised about class and this kind of recurring critique that we hear that well not just the women's movement but the democracy movement the reform movement all of this is just the irrelevant posturing of people from the north of Tehran and as a reporter I found that to be a sort of maddening refrain because I think anybody who has spent time in Iran can tell you that it's not that this is not the locus of activism that the people who and I the people who have really committed their lives to to civic activism in Iran that's a ruinous profession it's not like you go to be a civic activist for the glory when you're living in a closed society where you can cost you your freedom and really mess with with you and your family for for the rest of your life so the people who who committed themselves to that I found interestingly many many of them came from the lower middle class and that's partially I think it has something to do with demographic changes that have happened since the revolution and with this sort of rapid urbanization in Iran and the expansion of the middle class that's one of the achievements of the Islamic Republic has been to to improve the countryside and to bring more rural people into a growing and increasingly urbanized middle class this is the part of the population that is chafing in many ways against the restrictions of the regime and is creating friction for the Islamist. It's an important point which I think is sometimes confusing to outside observers which is you can be very religious and you can be pious and you can on those grounds not not be a fan of the Islamic Republic because you see that conflating religion and authoritarian politics can actually repel people away from from from religion but just to follow up briefly on the previous question which is these people you've profiled women's rights activists journalists others who are the people that they are looking up to maybe the answer is nobody but are there individuals movements whether inside the country outside the country that they see as potential political leaders thought leaders objects of emulation? I think that varies somewhat and I structured the the book in a way to account for the evolution of these movements this movement or movements because in the reform period so really from like the early 90s through about 2005 you had a movement that was in a sense organized around this internal reformist faction and those activists had or believed they had allies within the political system and people who were thinkers or they were politicians or they were license holders of newspapers who were their elders and who brought them into this space and who said that the demand on them was to expand civil society and create a more dynamic civic culture so those those activists had a particular experience of being a part of a more sort of knitted together movement and they experienced a very harsh disillusionment because the their elders were not able to protect them when the full force of the judiciary and the security establishment came down on them and many of them many of them turned on some of those mentors or turned away from them let's say the fourth part of my book which is which takes place under Athenazad I chose to center on the women's movement because it seemed in some way to me like the this was the kind of activism that survived in this period and it's very different I don't see the that movement as having as having ever expected to be knitted into the establishment of the country is more oppositional they're very different there are different ways of approaching the fight for women's rights in Iran and the person I profiled had a particular was a anti-stoning activist but but they're all different sort of ways of approaching this and this was really a movement that was putting pressure on the legal system the judiciary and and also on on law so I don't you know in some ways I see that as a little bit less of a hierarchical it's more of a it's it's not the same kind of movement that as one that sort of sees itself as belonging to a political faction and moving through particular political avenues with with visions articulated by with intellectuals so it's interest just listening to your answer it sounds like there isn't whereas in the 70s there often was this kind of knight in shining armor that people were were looking to whether that was sharia here Khomeini that doesn't seem to be the case today and it may be by design that people of in some ways as you said them more maybe more pragmatic and and not looking for kind of instant instant fixes we'll have to see where these kinds of impulses go under the under the Rohani administration and I think in some ways we've been waiting to see what happens because the nuclear agreement was the first real mandate of the Rohani administration and now that the parliament has turned over and and you have sort of reform minded Iranian voters who actually came to the polls and expect to be represented by this parliament and expect to have some kind of a role going forward politically we'll see what form that takes and whether it's influenced by some of the by some of the harsh history that's gone before yeah let me let me ask a pointed question to both of you which is is gender equality possible in an Islamic bureaucracy is it possible to reform the Islamic Republic into a system which which respects women's rights and the answer to that is yes you know how do you see that reform happening and if the answer is no then are we at a dead end when it's talking it's not so black and white as yes and no women have made some gains within this patriarchal climate within the discriminatory gender laws they have you know the the women's rights movement in post-revolutionary Iran is a grassroots movement and as Laura mentioned there you know there's no leader everyone contributes to different pockets so these women do work religious minded women and secular women do work in sync because they have a common cause that they're working towards so any way you can make it work you know sort of a means to an end everyone is for that for example with the one million signature campaign they were able to make some strides and reverse partially at least some of the gender discriminatory laws for example they successfully these women pressured parliaments into amending the inheritance laws whereby a woman has the right to inherit her husband's property women are also this you know in the western world this might not be much of a gain but it's all one small step at a time women were entitled to equal blood money in accidents covered by insurance you know sort of partial amendments right now with the last parliamentary elections we have more women in the parliament now than Clarence that is unprecedented when the first parliamentary elections there were 164 clerics now it's dwindled to 16 outnumbered by women just by 117 but none nonetheless shows significant gains for women who had nine women in the parliament during the last parliamentary it's moved up to 17 so these are incremental changes the reformist movement did a lot to help the women's rights movement so within this oppressive patriarchal pocket it is possible to reverse some or amend some of the gender discriminatory laws I don't believe it is as black and white as yes and no I think with the ongoing activism and the resistance and the resilience these women have shown and they're not about the back down women suffer harsh penalties for the slightest deviation but they still keep keep going look you're talking about a country where a former president raffzahn johnny's daughter went to evine prison for women's rights activism so you know these women just don't back down which is a great sign that being said we don't have gender equal gender equality really even in this country so you know what I want to put into perspective when I talk about women's rights in Iran is that um in a from a global perspective Iran has a long way to go within this theocratic regime but also from a global perspective that this is not just strictly an Iran problem this is a global epidemic I mean you're talking about over 150 countries worldwide have at least one gender discriminatory loss there are um ongoing um issues with women worldwide but within this theocracy full emancipation is highly unlikely because we in America we call it a glass ceiling in Iran it's more of a concrete ceiling which is much lower right but how would you answer that question this is a controversial question I mean I mean honestly I'm as a campaigner I don't want to go deep on that because I'm a little bit I'm not optimistic my tactic is to use all the religious politicians and all the religious people to remove all the religious laws because from the age of seven as a woman I just faced all the religious laws against myself and I often get asked but I mean he even here by uh Western journalists whether by my activities whether I'm against Islam and my clear answer is this I have nothing to do with Islam but in Islamic Republic of Iran this is a storm which is against me from the age of seven you know if I want to go to school I have to wear a scarf my brother know and if I want to get married I have to get permission from my father so you think after getting married you're free no if you want to get a get an education or if you want to get a passport and travel abroad you have to get a permission from your husband the testimony of woman so as you make it you made it clear but the rest as a woman you cannot be a judge as a woman you cannot be president as a woman you are second-class citizen so this is all coming from from religious laws inside Iran so that's why I always say that yeah like the one million signature campaign and the rest of the women activists inside Iran we need to to work with those religious members of Iranian parliament and the activists women activists inside Iran but their goal should be to remove all the Islamic laws because in my opinion these are against women. Well I have so many more questions but I want you to ask your questions while you're getting your questions where you just one quick question I wanted to ask you we were talking about the legacy of Khomeini and how. Let's forget about Khomeini and go to new generation. Well I'm just curious when when you hear the name Ayatollah Khomeini I remember being as a young boy like it was like a cartoon villain for me I was scared of him how do you think of Khomeini when you when you see his his his picture or you hear his name. Okay don't expect me to speak as well as they speak English but I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you a memory of Khomeini in Iran so my father as I said he was big fan of Ayatollah Khomeini I was just two years old I have nothing to do with the revolution but I just wanted to make my father happy so he was a a Dastpurush Dastpurush street vendor street vendor street vendor street vendor so he used to you know grow up vegetable in our garden my mother actually and then he used to go out and and sell them sell chicken dogs so it was his job so when in his way back home all was in my mind to just make him happy so I started to draw Ayatollah Khomeini's portrait and I I told myself in that age where is the first place that my father go out and getting back home was Tabile the stable stable so I got the drawing and I put it there to make my father happy and I was punished because my father just you know went to the Tabile and then saw the cows and Ayatollah Khomeini's together and he didn't like it so my memory is just that and I was punished from that age and couldn't draw anything from that age so but apart from my memory as a Laura said you know the some of us might not face any you know direct torture or direct problem after Khomeini but we used to see around ourselves that in my there was one village you know after my village and I used to see a mother moaning in a small grave in his in her garden and I was wondering why so after the you know mass executions during the mother was forced to bury his children her children in her garden so my memory is this but as I learned from my own experience and the young generation inside Iran right now we have to move on from Ayatollah Khomeini and we have to believe in ourselves and I'm sure that there are a lot of young people they want to criticize Ayatollah Khomeini inside Iran but there is no chance and there is no opportunity for them that's why they just you know as Ayatollah Khomeini said just recently learning English is unhealthy and I have to say that the young generation speaks English very well and I asked them to respond to Ayatollah Khomeini's comments and I received like more than 50 audio messages from through telegram which is new and you have to try it and it was all in a perfect English and they study a lot of books which we never had the chance to read about our own history inside Iran so and I get to know about you know our own history a lot after living Iran so this is new generation and my memory about Khomeini yeah thank you for that so let's take few questions at once if you can just be concise and introduce yourself this is the first time I saw up here in the front thank you very much Michael Kurtzig who was retired from the Department of Agriculture was the Iranian desk officer in 1970s and 80s left Iran in July 1978 after doing some work and said the Shah would not survive six months and I sort of saw things coming very quickly but I wanted to ask something a little bit different from the feminine side and so on maybe not so much there's a very sharp drop in fertility rate in Iran and I suspect that's partly because the women have moved to the to the cities now and become more educated and how do you see that as a long-term impact on the economy on the labor force and and yeah I think that's basically the question that's a very good question is any any in the back question by audience there's one I know I'll write it down the question is can't you just look like a man and not sexually harass everyone who sees you I know it's illegal in Islam to make your appearance a man but it's also illegal in Islam to take off your headscarf do you have to show your legs and arms if men do not so it can take it the first is about the the drop in birth rate in Iran the impact it's having on its politics economics do you have any thoughts on that um yeah there has been there was a precipitous drop in the birth rate um under the Islamic Republic and that has certainly um been beneficial to particularly to rural women that's where the drop was most um most clear and um and also as you mentioned um with the sort of with the increasing urbanization and with the spread of under rough Sanjani um the Islamic Republic established campuses university campuses all over the country in hard to reach areas that previously hadn't had access to higher education so overall the effect has actually been a a real rise in the education educational attainment of women and that has produced its own pressures so you know yet again here's an area where the Islamic Republic is in a sense the victim of its of its success if it were to see that as it has a success because now you have I think it's we all have heard the statistic that now more than 60 percent of college educated people in Iran are women however if you look at employment statistics by far the highest unemployment is among the most educated women so um if you wanted to track that against the rise of the women's rights movement that might be interesting I see you're one of how many children how many brothers and sisters do you have five five and what about the second your generation in the villages are there is the number of children gone down among your siblings yeah the the the school that I used to go is just useless now yeah yeah but the you mentioned about women coming to the cities and um they educated as Laura said it's more than 60 percent of the university places are women inside Iran but the thing is I just want to say something about a nuclear deal if I have time after the Iran deal I mean women's rights in in in in Iran hasn't started just recently and it has a history but after Iran deal we keep hearing shh and they they care about you know the economic situation in Iran and they want us to keep silent because they want to get Iran deal succeed which we want to get Iran deal succeed too and we want to open the door to why the tourism but the red line first was about Iran deal and now there is another red line it's about tourism and they they're saying that because you're talking about human right abuse inside Iran so you're creating Iran phobia so my question is this who I mean I really want to ask the audiences who is causing Iran phobia you really think human right activists or women right activists inside Iran who talk about human right abuse causing Iran phobia or those you know morality police within a year arrested 3.6 million women just because of not having a proper Islamic a job so after 2009 election more than 100 people got killed and got into prison and tortured to death I myself interviewed the family of more than 50 you know protesters who got killed I mean I just want to ask you who is causing Iran phobia the killers or the storytellers so and all the time they say that because we want to get the Iran deal succeed and you know open the door and we want to get the women and the economic situation better they ask us to keep silence and the fingers in front of us just shh but I want to just say that here and use the opportunity and say that the we are not against Iran this is Islamic Republic of Iran which is against Iran and when they say shh do not embarrass your own country it reminds me of a woman who was in a abusing relationship with his uh with her husband and she was beaten by her husband in daily life she was blue and black and she was screaming she was loud and asking for help and the family were just you know telling her shh you embarrassing the family it's an internal matter go and talk to your own family we keep hearing that people saying that shh this is an internal matter you're embarrassing your own country go and talk to your own country and this is a problem should be solved within the country this is just remind me of the abusing relationship more than you know 30 years the Iranian laws abusing human rights inside Iran and we keep hearing now that just because of nuclear deal do not embarrass Iran and do not put pressure on Iran we're just embarrassing islamic role we just embarrassing islamic republic of Iran and the point is you have to talk to Iranian government and not just asking human right to keep silent of course we want nuclear deal to be you know succeed but we do not want to bury human rights deal under the negative that's a very good point there's a quote I really like from George Orwell he says that patriots are proud of the country for what it does and nationalists are part of the country no matter what it does and there's a lot of Iranian nationalists these days and we need more patriots Cornelius in the back thank you very much Cornelius out of our with the Carnegie Endowment the last comment inspired me to a question about the role of western governments the Europeans the Americans especially when it comes to to civil society there is a lot of talk about being well soft on the current government because it's the best one can hope for supporting Rouhani and Zarif in their endeavors the same being silent is also made as an argument here for you as authors and civil society activists what do you see as the role of governments both in Europe and the United States how engaged should they get how much pressure can this current government sustain what should the western governments do thank you that's a great question let's actually go to that right now so you don't forget because I think it's an important topic well you want to start myself yeah you know I myself do not expect anything from western government except do not keep us silent when we are shouting and because it just reminds me of the time when people were in the street and shouting you know during the demonstration the peaceful demonstration actually got cracked down by the government of Iran and people were shouting and saying that obama you either with us or with them obama yaba una yabama and obama what with was with them so I'm sending a letter to the supreme leader of Iran so for me because I always ask the female politicians who travel Iran and who visit the government of Iran I always want to tell them that we do not ask you to come and save us because as I said more than 60 percent of the university places are women you know and these women show that they are brave and strong and smart enough to defend themselves but what I want to point out here and make it clear when you go Iran and you see that how they manage to raise their voice don't ignore them and don't keep them silent you know we are against compulsory hijab and now it has like one million followers and women just risk their life and sending their pictures without headscarf which is a punishable crime inside Iran but you see Mogherini goes to Iran without asking a single question about compulsory hijab there are so many just excuses one because hijab is required by law and Mogherini or other female politicians they do not want to interfere in any you know Iranian internal matter because it's required by law as I always say that slavery used to be legal if no one objected against slavery so nowadays slavery could could have been with us or they say that this is a cultural issue they might be kidding me we're talking about compulsion so you say compulsion is our culture my mom she's not even able to read and write but she doesn't force me to be like her this is the culture of Iran so when I asked female politicians actually I sent several letters to them they all ignored me except one Mauritius Khake why because she covered her hair not properly and she got arrested not arrested she got attacked by the politicians inside Iran and then she mentioned about my stealthy freedom and she said that I covered myself the way you know when I saw women were covering themselves in the street so she never faced the morality place so she mentioned about our cause the only thing that I want when you go and visit Iran when you see the women and people inside Iran they managed to to raise their voice to not ignore them because people the government of Iran can use this and put more pressure on the women and I want to give you just one example I interviewed the mother of Sattar Beheshti Iranian people they know him he was a young blogger criticizing the government and then he was arrested after nine days he got killed his mother was like my mother not even able to read and write but she was brave and smart to raise her voice she's outspoken and she started to shout and scream when Catherine Ashton went to Iran she couldn't ignore Sattar Beheshti's mother why because women right activists and human right activists they helped Sattar's mother to be her and in that time no one was saying why because Ahmadinejad was in power as a journalist and women right activists doesn't matter who is in power of course we welcome Iran deal and we don't want Iran to be isolated we don't want Iran to suffer from sanction but we have to ask any politicians do not sanction or on our own people whether western government or Iranian government who do sanction their own people so for me it's important to ask all the western government to not ignore Iranian people just because of commercial matter or having you know business with Iranian people which is important for us but human rights is important for us as well if you ignore Iranian people you give Iranian government power to ignore us and this is the only way that we can empower Iranian people inside Iran I think I said everything thank you I oppose that to both of you as well if you have thoughts about how either the US the Europe the West can help the cause of civil society and women's rights in Iran I think the international community especially international organizations can help I'll give you an example because this question I can go on and on about for example Iran was you know women are banned from attending all male sports games recently the international volleyball federation which in their bylaws say they're committed to gender equality allowed Iran a couple months ago to host an all male volleyball game on the island of quiche well guess what women are not allowed to attend my whole stance on this is if you are committed to gender equality why are you allowing a regime that denigrates women and is not committed to gender equality to host a game where women are not allowed to go so what the international volleyball federation can do for example let's say okay we will allow you to host this game if you allow women if you don't sorry you can't it's as black and white as this it's not and it's not just one organization it's like massey said different pockets in the western community at large have to band together and put these kind of nonviolent pressures on the regime hoping for incremental change it's a very good concrete prescription lord do you have any thoughts on that I think one thing that I'm sort of hearing from both of my co-panelists is that a lot of of the constructive space is in civil society more even than foreign governments putting pressure on Iran on human rights because there we have a sort of a politically explosive and possibly counterproductive set of concerns but within civil society I think absolutely it makes sense for for international NGOs for for the media for journalists and I see this listening to Massey I was sort of I was thinking about some of the dilemmas that western journalists face when they go into Iran and you know that if if you do report honestly in some areas you may risk your access permanently and that's those are dilemmas we all face and I think that I think that westerners need to be need to be brave about them and need to be willing to say that we're not going to be held that we're not going to that we're not going to be silenced by the preferences of the of the Iranian government and and that's that's about you know the truth telling and about some of the kinds of initiatives that that Nina mentions yeah I mean I was amazed that Laura over the years has written many beautiful profiles in the New Yorker which in which she didn't pull punches and I'm amazed you always were able to go back and come back with those tough stories and they let you back so I take my hat off to you we have about five seven minutes left so I want to take two final questions there was one I see in the back hi Nazan in search with IHS my question is directed at the panel what sort of processes or capabilities are at your disposal or at the civil society of Iran's disposal to bring about the sort of changes that we're talking about here the reform movement as we have discussed they pushed and obviously there's no denial that there is an active civil society within Iran and there is a desire for change but we haven't seen that reflected within the political processes within the political establishment and when we saw a push we saw them being marginalized it doesn't appear to me that the Iranian civil society is prepared to go into the streets or bear the sort of the blood that sometimes comes were expected with the sort of movements and the political processes even the latest round of the parliamentary elections we saw that the reformists were talking about economic sort of access and reforms rather than political ones the narrative was changed from 2009 and was a lot more aligned with allowing Rouhani to be you know the better of the the horrible options that were sort of on the table so given those sort of options how do you see these activism translating to sort of results in Iran great question thank you any final questions way in the back thank you um Anthony Vance office of public affairs for the Baha'is of the United States it seems almost inevitable that there will be a great deal of new business investment into Iran coming from the west what would you think about the possibility of placing or encouraging western businesses to adopt fair employment practices that that compelled them to treat fairly women and minorities with any wrong do you think that's a realistic possibility or do you think it's just a paper exercise do you think there is any space within the the economic and political reality of Iran or something like that to have some kind of impact thank you so Laura I start with you Laura any answers to those questions and any final thoughts the first question was a really acute sort of summation of the political moment we've arrived at now and these are sort of the big the big questions and those sort of fault lines among people sort of watching Iranian politics today there's on the one hand I think you know we have to be we have to be honest about what happened in 2009 the reform movement as it once existed was was thrust into a legal no man's land there are people there are still reformist politicians and thinkers and activists and for them and there are still places where one cannot go in public life in Iran this entire movement that had been a part of the establishment was now termed this addition which is a clear indication of how far outside the realm of the possible it it's at now with Ro honey we see something that looks more hopeful where we have both candidates from the reformist end of the spectrum and Ro honey himself embracing the reformist electorate and there is some hope that now these people who had been excluded from political public life for the final four years of Afghanistan that's term are coming back into the system and are buying into the system and therefore they have some some right and some reason to expect it to be responsive to their demands the question is to what extent and and what it means that this you know in a sense you can look at at President Ro honey as really a figure from the pragmatic center of the Iranian political spectrum once known as the center right and he is his faction essentially relies on coalition building this is not a faction with its own constituency in a sense although it has it has some but in order to survive in power it needs to pull in moderate conservatives and moderate reformists and and hold them in a in an alliance to do that how many of these are the demands of civil society can actually be addressed in that and how many of them then become sort of a drag on Ro honey who needs to maintain his viability so I don't have an answer to that question because honestly by day you kind of you don't ever want to be pessimistic about Iran because the civil society is so dynamic and there are so many people who have staked their their lives on the project of creating a better country and it's almost impossible to to meet those people and talk to those people and not feel optimistic for the future on the other hand the political system has not shown a great deal of responsiveness and I think that we have to be honest about that so I don't know what the future holds when I talk to people who are optimistic they say well you know the the original reform movement was it pushed too hard too fast and we're talking about really slow going incremental change at this point and we're much savvier than we used to be and we're going to use the spaces that we have and if we use them if we use them right without provoking a crackdown we can eventually build we can eventually build some some better things into this system my sense is that honestly that was actually the agenda reform movement to begin with so to what extent this is different I don't know there is one thing that is different is the history that's that's behind the Islamic Republic and the rupture that 2009 caused we don't know psychologically where that has left the leader and to what extent it has you know it's become a place of no return but that would lead the regime to be more flexible on the other hand maybe he considers it a success and now the regime has been strengthened and consolidated toward its center and we know where the boundaries lie six of one half dozen of the other that's always the smart option not to make predictions about you know the way I see the Islamic Republic the problems are multifaceted but one of the main problems with Iran moving forward and making and building on the gains of the best case scenario post-revolutionary Iran which was the reformist movement is the fact that there's a hardline supreme leader and that is there that is something that is always going to be an obstacle in terms of what Lord describes and moving forward and for civil society you have a highly educated not just female population but you have a young Iran is I think over 70 million and a very young population close to 80 million under most of them are under the age of 35 Iran's one of Iran's biggest wasted resources is its highly educated population approximately over 160,000 Iranians leave Iran every year annually because of weak economic prospects this tug of war that exists under the banner of the Islamic Republic is a continuous obstacle look they put a ban on Khatami his his image and his words really the icon of the reformist movement you still have Mir Hossein Musavi and Karabi who are under house arrest the other big obstacle for Iran is I always say this is there who is the knight in shining armor who do do this young generation have to look to for salvation so what do you know it's almost like you pick evil or lesser of all evil but the problem with Iran unfortunately is you know let's just say the people decide they're going to go through another bloody revolution but who is standing in the on the sidelines waiting to rescue Iran that is the big question that is the sad question yeah it's well put messy you have the final words three minutes you can say whatever you want so yeah let's I lost everything I lost my family I left my family in Iran I lost my books my house my home everything but not hope and that that is scares the government of Iran and that's why I strongly believe that change will not come except through Iranian women if I force any of men here any of you to wear headscarf and go to school you won't get more than 60 percent of university this is women power and you have to believe in women power in Iran otherwise the change will not come this is not just a you know slogan slogan or there's just a nice statement I strongly believe that the loudest voice you can hear against human right abuse it's two mothers inside Iran so I ask all the female politician to be as brave as Iranian women inside Iran that is the only way that change comes through civil society inside Iran thank you so much I thank you for coming I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did I really enjoyed it