While Tavakolian's work is featured in many Western publications, it is not always intended for a Western audience. In her speech to the seventh biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, she used an old family photo to demonstrate how photography helps to build collective memory. Believing this framework to be largely missing in her…

The author wrote a piece called "What Our Children Should Learn about 9/11." In that piece, the author made just four simple points. These include: (1) children should know the facts; (2) once they had a grounding in the facts, the children should not abjure moral judgment; (3) children should learn to make both analytical and moral…

The Nobel Peace Prize is recognized as one of the most prestigious global awards. Each year the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is appointed by Norway's parliament to select the winner, receives many nominations from around the world. Shirin Ebadi, who is from Iran, became the eleventh female Nobel Peace laureate in 2003. Ebadi is the third…

During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, millions of Iranian women left their homes and entered the public sphere, but their public presence was soon restricted with the ascension to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini. For Westerners the Iranian women's seemingly easy acceptance of the forced wearing of the veil (chador) appeared to be their ultimate…

The chapters in this volume do not represent the whole of the Middle East and North Africa, as such a collection would have been too large for one volume. Rather, the selection here is intended to present different perspectives on a range of educational issues, relevant to a particular focus or country, or common to a number of countries in the…