چکیده:
Censorship has a long history in Iran that has interfered with text production, i.e., original writing as well as translation. This phenomenon seems to have marked the borderline between the government and the ‘enlightened’ intellectuals throughout history in Iran. Different governments have delineated ‘redlines’ for authors and translators and dealt with these constructors of culture based on the definitions they set for those ‘redlines’. This historical research aims at exploring and finding out the features of these ‘redlines’ as well as the mechanisms and rules of text screening (censorship) throughout Iran’s modern era since the importing of the printing press.
خلاصه ماشینی:
’11 According to the press law in Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, if a book, essay or any cultural form of expression violated one of the following sanctities, it would be censored: (1) The political foundation that created the national unity (2) The faith of Islam (3) The Pahlavi dynasty (4) Public decency.
In practice, other rules were involved, such as a ban on speaking against friendly countries, notably the Allied countries during World War II and the US and Israel after 1953, writing or translating Marxist or revolutionary texts or on any social movements, publishing books in other local languages or dialects other than Persian, or saying anything against corruption among high-ranking officials, using any proper names or nick names kept exclusively by the Royal family, or revealing any tortures in the regime’s prisons.
Browne provides a translation of the whole Article 20 in his book The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 as follows: ‘All publications, except heretical books and matters hurtful to the perspicuous religion [of Islam] are free, and are exempt from censorship.
During the early years after the revolution, the publishers had to bring their books to be checked by the office in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for different reasons, particularly in order to observe the law.
For a few years (particularly after the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88) those in charge of book publishing affairs in the Ministry of Culture did not believe in the screening of books before their publication and considered it as contrary to the practice known in the modern world.