# Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Ira Lapidus, Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino:
> 
> Review
> 
> Ira Lapidus
> 
> published in New York Times
> 
> 2000-09-27
> 
> Review of: Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran
> 
> Written by: Elaine Sciolino
> 
> Published by: The Free Press, 2001
> 
> Review by: Ira Lapidus
> 
> Review published in: New York Times (2000-09)
> 
> Finding the Seeds of Hope in a Society of Paradoxes
> 
> By IRA LAPIDUS
> 
> For many Americans, Iran conjures up the hostage crisis, terrorism,
> the crowds chanting "death to America" and the fierce Ayatollah
> Ruhollah Khomeini denouncing the United States and Israel.
> 
> Elaine Sciolino shows a different Iran. More than 20 years of visits,
> interviews, encounters and analyses have given Ms. Sciolino, a senior
> correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, her
> deep and wide-ranging insights. Her perceptive book "Persian Mirrors:
> The Elusive Face of Iran" conveys the diversity of Iranians and the
> subtleties, dilemmas and contradictions of their society today. Iran
> is not easy to know well, but Ms. Sciolino knows it intimately. Its
> people are warm and welcoming, but do not reveal themselves readily.
> Conversation, she reports, is full of politeness, self-abnegation,
> hypocrisy and lying, all to avoid offense and loss of face. What
> happens can be accepted, but talking about it is taboo if it strips
> away dignity and honor. Ms. Sciolino succeeds because she has
> unraveled a difficult code of cultural expectations.
> 
> She is particularly sensitive to Iranian women. "There is an unspoken
> bond among us that transcends culture, history, nationality and
> language," she writes. She shows both their helplessness and their
> power. In public life Iran's women must not be visible. Their heads
> and bodies must be covered. They may be beaten for violations of
> these rules. In private and family matters, Islamic law puts them at
> a disadvantage. Although it is easy for a man to obtain a divorce, a
> woman can get one only in extreme circumstances, and the husband is
> given custody of all but the youngest children. Husbands can also
> take second wives or arrange "temporary marriages," which are
> religiously acceptable. Nonetheless, women fill almost all the roles
> of a modern society. More than half of Iranian university students
> are women. Women work, drive, own property, have access to birth
> control and vote. Moreover, the book notes, women "are experts in
> finding ways around the constraints of the male-dominated system."
> Ms. Sciolino found everything from gender-segregated parties to
> beauty salons to a woman who ran a gambling business in her
> apartment, where women in low-cut dresses drank and danced to
> heavy-metal music.
> 
> This activity is very dangerous. There is always the possibility of
> an unexpected intrusion by the morals police, perhaps just to extort
> a bribe, perhaps to arrest the participants. The insecurity is deeply
> resented.
> 
> Women also show extraordinary courage in fighting the system. Azam
> Taleghani, the publisher of the weekly newspaper Payam-e Hajar, is
> committed to Islam and the revolution but challenges clerical ideas
> of male supremacy and promotes a more feminist interpretation of the
> Koran. Another activist, Faezeh Hashemi, published a newspaper until
> it was banned and now promotes sports programs to combat depression
> among women and to encourage them to fight for their rights.
> 
> Minorities do not fare well at all, but are nonetheless loyal to the
> Iran of their ideals. Zoroastrians and Christians are barely
> tolerated. Jews are accepted in business, medicine, engineering and
> law, but anti-Semitism is widespread, and the government maintains
> incessant anti-Israeli propaganda. Bahá'ís are persecuted
> relentlessly. Their marriages are not recognized by the state. Their
> property has been confiscated. They have been expelled from the
> universities and many have been executed. But even under this
> pressure, the religious minorities are loyal. Jews — Persian is their
> native language — feel profoundly, truly Iranian. And a Bahá'í
> engineer says: "I am Iranian. I love this country."
> 
> Courage and love are essential because the authorities are powerful
> and oppressive. The clerical establishment, headed by the supreme
> leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, controls the judiciary and large
> sectors of the economy. A vast apparatus of military, police,
> intelligence officers, morals enforcers and organized vigilantes is
> used to crush drugs, gambling, homosexuality, prostitution, rape,
> murder, spying, counter-revolutionary activities and "sowing
> corruption on earth." Above all, it punishes women for being
> improperly dressed in public. Recently Iranian journalists and
> students have been beaten and killed.
> 
> Still, the authorities have not been able to check the demand for a
> transformation of the Islamic Republic into an Islamic democracy.
> There is a vigorous though embattled press. Guardedly, young people,
> women and intellectuals, including many liberal clerics, struggle for
> the future. Recent elections gave 70 percent of the seats in
> parliament to liberals, but they are still paralyzed by the powers of
> the conservatives, and it is not yet clear who will win. Although the
> struggle is sometimes framed as a conflict between Persian and
> Islamic identities, religion and popular culture, clerical rule and
> freedom, dictatorship and democracy, in this supple and sophisticated
> country even liberals accept the Islamic state. Looking beneath the
> surface, Ms. Sciolino makes us aware of deeper currents flowing
> toward political compromise and synthesis.
> 
> Iranians, she points out, have a love-hate relationship with the
> United States. In politics it is the Satan that opposed Iran in the
> war with Iraq, shot down a civilian airliner, orchestrated an embargo
> and sides with Israel. Yet America, avidly consumed on television,
> audio and videocassettes and computer software, is the country of
> Iranian dreams. It embodies their fantasies of a good life. American
> relations with this fascinating nation hold unanticipated
> possibilities.
> 
> Through the eyes of Ms. Sciolino, we see a culture of paradoxes: a
> nation that is open and welcoming but remains hidden and mysterious;
> a clerical dictatorship but one of the Middle East's liveliest
> democracies; a puritanical regime but a people who love everyday
> life; a severe orthodoxy but an expressive cinema and an
> argumentative press; a state that makes control of women its first
> concern but whose women are powerful as personalities and even
> subversive; a revolution that has rejected secularism but a nation
> heading toward a fusion of Islamic and Persian identities.
> First and foremost, Ms. Sciolino shows Iranians as human beings
> trying to cope with an unusual and very difficult situation. For this
> wise perspective the reader is grateful.
> 
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> Views9589 views since posted 2001; last edit 2026-04-17 21:42 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../lapidus_sciolino_persian_mirrors;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review (Used by permission of the curator)*