Via Vinay Kolhatkar, this news item about the Iranian government’s decision earlier this year to censor dangerous words such as wine and elephant.
From The Telegraph‘s report:
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, has urged the culture ministry to “focus on producing appealing books and films, designing video games, and developing attractive and meaningful toys” to counter a “Western cultural invasion of Iran that seeks to destroy Islamic identity”.
Happily, my books have been twice translated into Persian and both times made it safely past the censors: Farsi translations of Explaining Postmodernism by H.P. Safir, Khatereh Zohrabi, and Farzaneh Ehsani (Tehran: Qoqnoos Publishing, 2013) and of Nietzsche and the Nazis by Mohsen Mahmoudi (Tehran: Bourgeois Publishing, 2015).
Luckily I used only safe words like liberal and revolution in my books and not dangerous ones like Mickey Mouse and beer.
