Cultural Restrictions Quotes

Moslem fundamentalists use 7th century customs to keep 21st century women in line.

Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.

Sexual behavior was also generally considered off limits.

Maybe Elvis was inhibited by inbred religious prohibitions or an Oedipal complex, or maybe he simply preferred the thrill of a denied release. Whatever put the brakes on the famous pelvis, it ground to a halt at a certain point, and that was it.

We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks' cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims. We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it. We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit. We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor bear any kind of arms nor carry them on our persons. We shall not sell fermented drinks. We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Moslems We shall not bury our dead near the Moslems

Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.

Many Muslim parents are authoritarian, which leaves young men and women with limited spaces to express themselves. Self-expression and autonomy are regarded as symptoms of 'Westernisation.'

More than half of the women of the world are held in Oriental seclusion. They were unwelcome at birth, married in childhood to men they had never seen, and shut away from all possible teaching except that of their husbands or of other women.

Every Iranian artist dreams of the black market. We don't care about making money.

We've surrounded the most vital and commonplace human function with a vast morass of taboos, convention, hypocrisy, and plain claptrap.

The hat is the common headgear of the Turkish people, and the government forbids habits to the contrary.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.

Mexican music runs through my veins. I loved it. Growing up, my father didn't allow us to listen to English music at home. That's all I heard. I had no choice.

Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.

Remember, taboos are just a map of what a society feels it's acceptable to be neurotic about. Taboos aren't rational.

The problem is that in order to publish a book in mainland China, you have to agree to be subject to censorship. That's the nature of the system. I don't challenge that system on its face. It's their system. But as an author, I have a choice to make whether I'll participate or I won't.

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough?' Is my veil in place?' Can my make-up be seen?' Are they going to whip me?' No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought?' Where is my freedom of speech?' My life, is it livable?' What's going on in the political prisons?

South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison.

There is a ban on Indian films in Pakistan, so that's half of our market gone.

When I was teaching at the University of Tehran we were struggling against the implementation of the revolution rules.

In Romania, during the communist regime, we were very culturally suppressed. At 18 years old, I wasn't allowed to wear bell-bottom jeans and eyeliner. I couldn't understand why!

One of the obsessions that the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist parties had was always controlling the message - all information that everybody gets has to be carefully controlled and monitored. Art was no exception.

They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know.

I wasn't allowed to listen to a lot of music growing up. It wasn't until I started to make my gospel record when I was around 14 or 15 that I started to be exposed to more outside influences.

With Storytelling, at least, it's explicit: this is what the censors say American citizens, no matter what age, are not permitted to see, even though it can be seen by other people all over the world. I suppose you could call it a political statement.