The Power of Culture

Surprising developments in a country where more than forty newspapers have been banned in the past eight years, but blogging can also be dangerous. Sina Motallebi, a journalist, was the first blogger to be imprisoned in April 2003, and many other arrests followed. According to Reporters without Borders, 43 on-line journalists and internet users have been arrested in the past eighteen months because the Iranian government found their blogs to be too critical. We are Iran is an excellent introduction into the Iranian blogosphere, showing much more nuances of Iran than seen in the regular media.

Alavi collected fragments from the most popular blogs and commented on them in her heavy book. The strongest are the chapters in which she discusses the history of her country, feminism and daily life in Iran. The chapter 'Unveiled Women' is particularly revealing. Alavi paints a picture of Iranian women as emancipated trendsetters who originally considered their veils to be a symbol of resistance against the West. Now they allow as much hair as possible to escape from their veils as a sign of resistance against the strict moral police.

The book's greatest shortcoming, however, is the fact that Alavi has a tendency to go too far in her analyses of the current political situation, as a result of which some themes, including the importance of the blog community for Iranian culture, are strangled. Here she unveils her undying belief that Iran will some day be freed from the 'beards' thanks to the revolution that this blog community will trigger. Reporters without Borders seem to believe her to some extent: its 2007 annual report on Iran describes internet as a 'battlefield between the rigid regime and the increasingly-active militant feminists who demand that discriminatory laws be rescinded'.