Art Is No Longer Snobbish Or Cowardly.

This Is A Good Time To Ask Apologists For The Islamic Regime, Who Degrades Islam? Who Imposes Stoning, Forced Marriage Of Underage Girls And Flogging For Not Wearing The Veil? Do Such Practices Represent Iran's Ancient History And Culture, Its Ethnic And Religious Diversity? Its Centuries Of Sensual And Subversive Poetry?

I Believe In Empathy. I Believe In The Kind Of Empathy That Is Created Through Imagination And Through Intimate, Personal Relationships. I Am A Writer And A Teacher, So Much Of My Time Is Spent Interpreting Stories And Connecting To Other Individuals. It Is The Urge To Know More About Ourselves And Others That Creates Empathy. Through Imagination And Our Desire For Rapport, We Transcend Our Limitations, Freshen Our Eyes, And Are Able To Look At Ourselves And The World Through A New And Alternative Lens.

I Believe That It Is Only Through Empathy, That The Pain Experienced By An Algerian Woman, A North Korean Dissident, A Rwandan Child Or An Iraqi Prisoner, Becomes Real To Me And Not Just Passing News. And It Is At Times Like This When I Ask Myself, Am I Prepared - Like Huck Finn - To Give Up Sunday School Heaven For The Kind Of Hell That Huck Chose?

The Worst Crime Committed By Totalitarian Mind-sets Is That They Force Their Citizens, Including Their Victims, To Become Complicit In Their Crimes. Dancing With Your Jailer, Participating In Your Own Execution, That Is An Act Of Utmost Brutality.

Most Great Works Of The Imagination Were Meant To Make You Feel Like A Stranger In Your Own Home. The Best Fiction Always Forced Us To Question What We Took For Granted. It Questioned Traditions And Expectations When They Seemed To Immutable.