Studio 360

Political Poetry

Two émigré writers say that among the Iranian people, poets are the national heroes. But today’s Iranian artists struggle to express themselves in the face of government censorship. Reza Aslan is a religion scholar and wrote No God but God, a brief history of Islam and the West. Roya Hakakian is a poet and the author of Journey from the Land of No, a memoir of growing up in Tehran’s Jewish community.

Getting Past the Censors

Goli Taraghi is a writer with an international reputation. Yet she found herself condemned in her home country for allegedly slipping sexual messages into a children’s story. We caught up with Taraghi in France, where she described the long, frustrating process of getting her work past the authorities. Produced by Michele Siegel.

Masters of Persian Music

Persian classical music goes back more than 2,000 years, predating Islam. Maybe that’s why it has had such a rocky relationship with the dominant religion over the years. Curtis Fox traces the renaissance of Persian classical music back to the Revolution of 1979, when nobody knew if music itself would survive.

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