These are dark times. Censorship is on the rise in many places around the world. Autocracies and dictatorships are suppressing freedom of speech with harsh repression. But liberal constitutional states are also eroding – global democratization is experiencing a backlash from powerful populist movements. At the same time, we are witnessing courageous protests against repression and state terror. Currently, Iran is experiencing the largest freedom movement since 1979, since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The news and pictures of courageous women and men fighting for their freedom in the streets, in prisons, in schools and universities, have been going around the world since the fall of 2022.

Censorship has been part of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the beginning. This is shown in the book by Alireza Abiz, Censorship of Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Politics and Culture since 1979 (2021), based on his 2015 doctoral thesis. In Abiz’s work, one learns a lot. About the diverse censorship dogmas and censorship practices of post-revolutionary Iran, which change depending on the government. About the moral-religious censorship arguments, their arbitrariness and contradictoriness. And about the agonies of self-censorship that every writer in Iran has to deal with. Abiz at the same time makes known another study: Mmomayyezi-ye Ketāb: Pajuheshi dar 1400 Sanad-e Momayyezi-ye Ketāb dar Sāl-e 1375 (Censorship of Books: Research on 1400 Documents of Book Censorship in 1375 AH). The author of this study, Ahmad Rajabzadeh, was in the archives of the State Book Office and analyzed the censorship decisions of 1996/1997. In this short period alone, about 1400 books, originals and translations, were censored in Iran, about 10% of the planned new publications.

Die Kasseler Liste shows its colors and makes Iranian censorship visible. Only some of the books banned in Iran from Abiz’s study could be included, not least for linguistic reasons. Supplemented by other titles, there are now 125 new entries in the Kasseler Liste (found via the site of the ban, IRN). They are only the tip of the iceberg. They represent the countless unnamed and unknown writings that have been and continue to be suppressed under the Iranian dictatorship.

Help make the iceberg of censorship more visible. Tell us about other books that are currently banned in Iran.

Die Kasseler Liste, February 2023