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Religion is separate from the institution of the state.

Akbar Ganji

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Akbar Ganji
Age: 54
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Ghazvin
Akbar Ganǧī
Religion
States
Institution
Separate
Institutions
State

More quotes by Akbar Ganji

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Khomeini obviously had many problems, but he had one clever side to him. He never made economic promises to people and as a result, he never led to dissatisfaction in this perspective. Because they need to get votes, they use misleading slogans. And this leads to rising expectations. I had a personal experience.
Akbar Ganji
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The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.
Akbar Ganji
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The regime kept saying that all of my opponents are lackeys of the United States. We used to say that this is all lie, that we are lackeys of the United States.
Akbar Ganji
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It began early in the revolution. It was a process that was unfolding on a daily basis. We expected the system to be dispensing justice, but every day that passed by, we recognized that the justice we expected and hoped for was not about to be achieved.
Akbar Ganji
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I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran? But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.
Akbar Ganji
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Supporters of the national front, Mosaddeq, believe that in Iran, we don't have a nationalities problem, we don't have an ethnic problem. It is like living with your wife, with whom you are in love and you are intensely involved in, but you also have tensions. And their position is that they want to deny that these tensions exist.
Akbar Ganji
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If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist...the entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.
Akbar Ganji
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Today, as a result of a miraculous set of circumstances, Iran is going to get between $50 to $55 billion in oil revenue, which is unheard of in the history of the revolution.
Akbar Ganji
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In the West, when all of these reactors, nuclear reactors, are matters...part of the public domain, there are all kinds of supervision over them. We see that the ecological movement, environmentalist movement, organizes all kinds of demonstrations against these. They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.
Akbar Ganji
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Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market. It is not clear what they have bought, how many secondhand materials they have bought. I am very worried that something like Chernobyl will happen to Iran.
Akbar Ganji
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I went to the front, but I never participated in the war itself.
Akbar Ganji
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It was universal pressure on the regime to secure my release. International pressure was certainly helpful in my release.
Akbar Ganji
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The Revolutionary Guard was created to help defend the revolution, but it soon was diverted from its initial path.
Akbar Ganji
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We've had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system? Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.
Akbar Ganji
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We have two kinds of oppression. Oppression that is universal - everyone in Iran is subject to it. But everyone has also their own, unique way of experiencing this oppression.
Akbar Ganji
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I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.
Akbar Ganji
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When I was on my hunger strike, and I was in a hospital, the guards who inflicted all manner of injustice against me, and all manner of hardship...I could witness that as a result of Ahmadinejad, they lived in a dream. They believed that paradise is around the corner and that all their demands shall be met.
Akbar Ganji
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Let me begin by saying not only you can't have democracy with $75 million. You can't even have it with $750 billion.
Akbar Ganji
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When I talk about secularism, I'm talking about theories today. To give you for example, one example: Those who consider themselves followers of Mosaddeq today are adamantly against federalism.
Akbar Ganji
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The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.
Akbar Ganji