In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?

Khatami is a symptom and not the cause of change in Iran.

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.

Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition. Without this empathy there can be no genuine dialogue, and we as individuals and nations will remain isolated and alien, segregated and fragmented.

She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.