Tales of Subversion: Women Challenging Fundamentalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract

I will begin with a tale. Its plot centers on a woman and poet known as Tahereh. Tahereh was not her real name; it was the title bestowed on her by Bab, a religious leader and the precursor of the Baha'i faith in Iran. It means ``the pure.'' Tahereh was born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1814, to a well-known and influential clerical family.1